Chinese Law & Politics

Suggested reference: Ling Li (2020) Mapping the power of the Party Centre – Reading the Party Directive on the Operation of the Central Committee (Part II), Chinese Politics and Law Blog, https://bit.ly/2YtrHpw     In Part I, I advocated that one should take Party rules seriously because breaking rules entails costs, even for people who make these rules. Another reason that we should take Party rules seriously is that rules matter when they are about the sharing or distribution of power among the powerful. When actors of more or less equal power are in dispute, their conduct will be subject to the similar level of scrutiny and the rules become an important criterion to assess the propriety of conduct. Therefore, rules on the constitution and operation of the highest decision-making body of the Party are particularly noteworthy. The Directive on the Operation of the Central Committee (the Directive) issued on September 30, 2020 is one such set of rules. Next, I summari...

  It is easy to dismiss the value of any written rules laid down by the Party because the latter seems to suffer little from cognitive dissonance when ignoring or violating them just for the sake of expediency. So, if the Party itself does not take its own rules seriously, why should we waste time studying them? We should take these rules seriously because any rules, if clear and operative, would set constraints on behaviours. It means that the Party has to defend its conduct when the rules are violated. To have a political actor on the defensive means that the latter has to doctor facts, twist meanings, commit logic fallacies, invent lies or all the above in order to make an offense and violation of the rules look lawful and legitimate. Erecting such a defence entails costs, which increases deterrence on violation, compared with having no rules at all. In other words, once rules are laid down, the Party will be incentivized to observe them the best they can. Other than const...