China passes law granting Communist Party more control over cabinet

After postponing the premier’s press conference till after the legislature for the first time in thirty years, the Chinese parliament on Monday amended a statute to essentially give the Communist Party more executive power over the State Council, China’s cabinet.

The modified State Council Organic Law was approved on the last day of the National People’s Congress in Beijing with 2,883 delegate votes in favour, 8 against, and 9 abstention.

It was the most recent of several actions taken in recent years that have progressively reduced the State Council’s executive authority. The State Council, led by Chinese Premier Li Qiang, is supposedly in charge of all 21 of China’s government departments in addition to local governments.

The State Council Organic Law was amended for the first time since 1982, according to legal experts, continuing a pattern of the Party gaining greater authority from the state and the government to faithfully carry out Party commands.

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Articles that have recently been added emphasise that the State Council should “resolutely uphold the Party Central Committee’s authority and its centralised and unified leadership” and adhere to the party’s signature ideology, Xi Jinping Thought, which elaborates on a variety of topics from culture to diplomacy.

“This is a significant shift in the reorganization of executive authority in China,” said Ryan Mitchell, a law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “While it is always clear that the head of the Party is the most influential figure in the overall hierarchy, the exact division of labour in policymaking and, especially, oversight of policy execution, can be opaque.”

Li Hongzhong, vice chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, said in an address last week to parliament that the revision is intended to “deepen reform of party and state institutions” and “fully implement the Constitution”, which was changed in 2018 to reassert the Party’s leadership over everything.

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“It is yet another sign that the Party is both increasing its overt control over state organs and wants to be seen as fully in charge,” said Thomas Kellogg, professor of Asian law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

“Politics is in command, and both Party cadres and government bureaucrats are meant to pay ever-closer attention to the Party’s dictates and ideological directives as the key guide for day-to-day decision-making,” he added.

The cancelled post-parliament news conference for the premier is traditionally one of the most widely followed events on Beijing’s economic and policy calendar.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has established several new central party committees overseeing multiple ministries that report directly to him. Some even encroach on economic and financial policy, traditionally viewed as falling under the premier’s remit.

China last year unveiled a sweeping government re-organisation that created a new Party entity to oversee some ministries. Shortly afterwards, the State Council also amended its working rules to clarify that executive decision-making power lies within the Party.

Since the new working rules passed, the State Council also no longer holds weekly meetings, instead gathering two or three times a month.

Kellogg also cited the scrapping of the premier’s news conference as “another example of state governance institutions falling by the wayside” in favour of the Party.

“We’re still in the middle of this years-long transformation of the Party-state structure, with likely more such changes to come,” he said.