Analysis Of the Chinese Communist Party’s Political-Legal Work Directive - First impressions

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Analysis Of Chinese Communist Party’s Political-Legal Work Directive - First impressions



Chinese Communist Party’s Political-Legal Work Directive
(effective from Jan. 13, 2019)
English translation
Original Chinese text
Ling Li 
University of Vienna 

1. It declares the absolute leadership of the Party over the work of all zhengfa institutions, including courts and procuratorates. The assertiveness of this declaration indicates a complete and unambivalent severance from the judicial independence framework.

2. It officially brings back the concepts of two contradictions/conflicts: (external) contradiction/conflicts between the enemy and us (the people) and internal contradiction/conflicts among us (the people), as well as the concept of people’s democratic dictatorship as one of the guiding principles of political-legal work. (Article 6.6). We can expect to see two tracks of legal practices, one for external conflicts and one for internal conflicts, and both would be legal.

3. It introduces the concept of political security (appeared 9 times in the document) and commands that the party-groups of all legal institutions shall take the preservation of political security as a major task.

4. General-Secretary is directly involved in supervising zhengfa work. Both the Central Political-Legal Committee and party-groups of zhengfa institutions at the central level are required to report to and seek for approval from the General Secretary (as well as the Party Centre) on a number of issues. (Article 17)

5. Party-groups of all zhengfa institutions answer to, first and foremost, the Party Centre (not the Central Political-Legal Committee). (Article 17) 6. The National People’s Congress and the new National Supervision Commission are not subject to this directive.

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