Chinese Law & Politics

 Originally published on March 31, 2022, China Dialogues Blog, LSE IDEAS Speculation about Xi Jinping’s succession thickens as we approach the 20 th National Party Congress this autumn, where a leadership reshuffle is scheduled to take place. Before we can proceed to predict its possible outcomes with any degree of confidence, there are two a priori assumptions that have distracted current discussions and need to be first re-examined. One such issue concerns the term limit of the General Party Secretary (GPS) of the Chinese Communist Party (the Party), and the other concerns the normative quality of the so-called “succession norms” developed under Deng Xiaoping. The myth of term limit As soon as taking the GPS position as the head of the Party, Xi Jinping executed a number of political manoeuvres that dazzled China observers around the world. Among all his political moves, the one that is most shocking and remains a key talking point to this very day is the lifting o...

Written on 1 November 2021 . Posted in Article , Op-eds .  Originally published in Made in China Journal, Issue 2, 2021   Author: Ling Li Earlier this year, two veteran analysts of Chinese politics, Richard McGregor and Jude Blanchette (2021), published a comprehensive report, laying out four possible scenarios for the next leadership succession in China’s new era. In two of these scenarios, Xi Jinping is out of the picture as the result of either a coup or ‘unexpected death or incapacitation’. In the other two, he stays in power either by extending his tenure as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to a third term or by retiring from that office but continuing to rule behind the scenes. Below I outline a third path Xi could take to stay in power: reactivating the office of the Chairman of the Party Central Committee (hereinafter Party Ch...

 First published in Made in China Journal Since coming to power, former US President Donald Trump has attracted and maintained a remarkable following among the Chinese diaspora in and outside the United States. These Trump followers come from different backgrounds and their support has a variety of motivations, which is nothing unusual. What is out of the ordinary, though, is the popularity of Trump among one particular group: the so-called Chinese liberal/prodemocracy intellectuals, dissidents, and activists (hereinafter ‘Clidas’). Members of this cohort include some of the most celebrated Chinese liberal academics and political thinkers, political activists, and human-rights lawyers. The embrace of Trumpism by the Clidas is most unusual and noteworthy because of the glaring incongruity between the illiberal policies and ideology that Trump represents and the liberal ideals these individuals have advocated through their intellectual output and/or political activism....

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...