Law According to the Chinese Communist Party: Constitutionalism and Socialist Rule of Law

Modern China ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 322-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ding Xiaodong

This article argues that the Chinese Communist Party has adopted a unique understanding of law. Unlike the liberal view and the unwritten constitution view, which generally consider law as positive norms that exist independently of politics, the party understands law as a reflection of the party’s and the people’s will and a form of the party’s and the people’s self-discipline. In the party’s view, liberal rule of law theories are self-contradictory, illusive, and meaningless. This article argues that the party views the people as a political concept and itself as a political leading party, marking a fundamental difference from a competitive party in a parliamentary system. The legitimacy of the party’s dominant role and the party-state regime, therefore, depends on whether the party can continue to provide political momentum to lead the people and represent them in the future.

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Ling Li ◽  
Wenzhang Zhou

By focusing on the underlit corners of authoritarian governance in China, this article challenges the thesis that constitutions matter to authoritarian regimes because they provide solutions for problems of governance. We argue to the contrary: the constitution appeals to the Chinese Communist Party (the Party or the ccp) because it does not provide solutions to fundamental issues of governance. Instead, such issues are kept out of the constitution so that they can be addressed by the Party through other regulatory mechanisms outside of the constitutional realm. In support of our thesis, we provide a unique review of the most up-to-date authoritative research on three key constitutional issues: central-local relations, party-state relations and power relations in the Politburo. These three issues correspond to three distinctive fields in China studies that were treated only in isolation but here we consider them together under the single framework of authoritarian constitutional governance.


Author(s):  
Christian P. Sorace

This chapter examines how the Chinese Communist Party engineered “glory” in the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake by mobilizing the discourse of “Party spirit” (dangxing). In addition to being responsible for state administration and economic growth, the cadre is also an embodiment and conduit of Party legitimacy. Antithetical to Max Weber's definition of institutions as that which remove embodiment from governance, in China, cadres are Party legitimacy made flesh. As flesh, they must be prepared to suffer. This chapter argues that the Party revitalizes its legitimacy by showing benevolence and glory, which depend on the willingness of cadres to suffer and sacrifice themselves on behalf of the people. In the aftermath of the Sichuan earthquake, these norms and expectations were implemented in concrete policy directives and work pressures.


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Satriono Priyo Utomo

During the leadership of President Sukarno, China had an important meaning not only for the people of Indonesia but also as a source of political concept from the perspective of Sukarno. In addition, China also had significance for the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) as a meeting room prior to communist ideology. The paper employs literary study method and discusses about diplomatic relations between Indonesia and China during the Guidance Democracy ( 1949-1965). The relationship between two countries at that time exhibited closeness between Sukarno and Mao Tse Tung. The political dynamics at that time brought the spirit of the New Emerging Forces. Both leaders relied on mass mobilization politics in which Mao used the Chinese Communist Party while Sukarno used the PKI.Keywords: Indonesia, China, diplomacy, politics, ideology, communism


2016 ◽  
Vol 08 (04) ◽  
pp. 38-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yongnian ZHENG ◽  
Wen Xin LIM

China’s rule of law took an ugly turn in less than a year after the legal reform was announced. The country detained lawyers on 9 July 2015. The Chinese Communist Party seems to have inherited the "Rule of Man" from the past and acts like an "organisational emperor". While it took the West a few centuries to build its system of rule of law, it will take China even longer to do so.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Huwy-Min Lucia Liu

This article discusses how the Chinese Communist Party governed death in Shanghai during the first half of the People's Republic of China. It examines how officials nationalized funeral institutions, promoted cremation, and transformed what they believed to be the unproductivity of the funeral industry into productivity (by raising pigs in cemeteries, for instance). I show how each of these policies eliminated possible sources of identity that were prevalent in conceptualizing who the dead were and what their relationships with the living could be. Specifically, in addition to the construction of socialist workers, the state worked to remove cosmopolitan, associational, religious, and relational ideas of self. By modifying funerary rituals and ways of interment, the Chinese state aimed to produce individualized and undifferentiated political subjects directly tied to the party-state. The civil governance of death aimed to produce citizen-subjects at the end of life.


1993 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jieli Li

Geopolitical theory is employed to address the question of why the Chinese Communist Party-state persists, despite Western pressures stemming from the suppression of student demonstrators in “Tienanmen Square” in 1989. As the theory postulates, macro dynamic forces revolving around the geopolitical processes are crucial to the resource mobilization and legitimacy of the state. The entire history of the Chinese Communist Party is reviewed in order to document the conclusion that changes in the geopolitical position of the Party are associated with periods of internal strength and weakness. Since 1979, the Chinese Communist Party-state has been increasingly favored by geopolitical circumstances, thereby facilitating its internal strength even in the face of Western pressures, potential for internal dissent, and collapse of the Soviet empire. As long as this favorable geopolitical trend continues, the Chinese Communist Party will likely exist as a ruling political force in China.


Asian Survey ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (5) ◽  
pp. 870-888
Author(s):  
Wen-Hsuan Tsai ◽  
Zheng-Wei Lin

Rumors are a set of collective discussions used by cadres or the masses to attain specific goals. Both political elites and the general public reveal their dissatisfaction or concern with the Chinese Communist Party regime through the dissemination of politically charged rumors, fueled by the party-state system’s habit of withholding information and amplified by traditional Chinese superstition.


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