Communist Party – European Chinese Law Research Hub

A new book proposal by Shuyu Chu

The headquarters of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection / National Supervision Commission at 41 Pinganli West Street (平安里西大街41号) in Beijing

When Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, he spoke of institutional cages to constrain public power. While many saw this as signaling a move toward legal constraints, the reality has evolved quite differently. Instead of strengthening external checks, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has developed an elaborate disciplinary apparatus that simultaneously constrains and shapes its members’ behavior.

My research examines a fundamental puzzle: why does the CCP persist with its opaque, Party-centered disciplinary approach despite widespread criticism? Drawing on Party regulations, news reports, propaganda TV programs, internal cadre training materials, Chinese and English scholarship, and interviews with Party disciplinary officials, I argue that the answer lies in understanding the dual nature of Party discipline (党纪). While commonly viewed as a regulatory system of rules and punishments, Party discipline also functions as what I call a “disciplinary infrastructure”, a Foucauldian framework, in that it simultaneously shapes Party members’ behavior and deters misconduct. This duality reveals that the CCP uses discipline not just as a control mechanism, but as an elaborate apparatus for producing political compliance.

The metaphor of infrastructure is purposeful. Much like urban infrastructure shapes city life while remaining largely invisible, the Party’s disciplinary mechanisms operate through everyday practices and routines that fundamentally mold behavior. This infrastructure becomes apparent mainly when it malfunctions, as its influence permeates all aspects of Party life. Consider how water systems shape urban development – similarly, the Party’s disciplinary infrastructure determines the flow of power, the patterns of behavior, and the development of political culture within the organization.

The system’s effectiveness stems from four distinctive characteristics. First, it functions productively, actively shaping behavior rather than merely constraining it. This is exemplified by the Party’s “comprehensive and strict governance” (全面从严治党) approach, which integrates political education with detailed conduct regulations. Cadre training programs, for instance, don’t just teach rules; they create experiences that reshape how officials understand their role and responsibilities.

This leads to the infrastructure’s second key characteristic: it addresses not only external behavior but also seeks to transform the “soul”. The Party’s rhetoric of “curing the illness to save the patient” reflects this deeper aim. The goal is inner transformation, not just external compliance. Study sessions, self-criticism meetings, and political education serve to reshape members’ fundamental orientations rather than just their outward compliance. This therapeutic approach transcends simple deterrence, aiming instead to manufacture compliance through deep psychological transformation.

The system also generates comprehensive knowledge about its subjects, creating a power/knowledge nexus that reinforces Party control. Beyond tracking professional performance, the Party maintains detailed records of personal connections, political attitudes, and daily behavior. This accumulated knowledge enables precise calibration of control mechanisms, allowing the Party to shape conduct through carefully targeted interventions. The depth and breadth of this information collection creates full legibility of the members- a condition where every aspect of member behavior becomes potential data for evaluation and control.

Finally, drawing on the concept of the panopticon, the system creates an environment of constant potential oversight that converts external monitoring into internalized self-discipline. Party members are acutely aware that supervision can occur at any moment—whether through inspection teams, peer monitoring, or documentation reviews. This unpredictability, combined with calculated isolation, promotes self-regulation as members internalize disciplinary standards. The system’s brilliance lies in how it creates an automatic, self-sustaining disciplinary mechanism where members effectively police themselves, significantly reducing the need for costly direct oversight.

This framework helps explain several paradoxes in the CCP’s approach to discipline. Consider the Party’s handling of official misconduct through internal disciplinary system. While seemingly lenient compared to criminal prosecution, this “therapeutic” approach actually optimizes power by preserving valuable human capital while reinforcing the Party’s authority to discipline and reform. The official is isolated, made to study Party documents, write self-criticisms, and undergo “thought reform” – a process aimed at producing not just compliance but loyalty.

The disciplinary infrastructure’s interaction with China’s legal system reveals its calibrated design. At one level, it creates fine-grained behavioral controls that operate beneath legal thresholds – regulating matters too subtle for formal law to address. It also maintains parallel oversight mechanisms outside legal frameworks, allowing the Party to address conduct that might be politically problematic but not legally wrong. Most intriguingly, it sometimes supersedes legal protections in service of Party control, as seen in special investigative procedures and detention powers. The recent establishment of the National Supervision Commission institutionalizes these dynamics in new ways.

Understanding this infrastructure helps explain several puzzling aspects of Chinese governance. Why do legal reforms often falter against Party discipline? How does the Party maintain control over its massive membership? The answer lies in how this disciplinary infrastructure shapes behavior through multiple, reinforcing mechanisms that formal law cannot replicate. By revealing the dual nature of the CCP’s power as both coercive and productive, this framework offers a new paradigm for understanding how modern authoritarian organizations maintain control.

Consider how this plays out in practice. When local officials implement policies, they’re motivated not just by legal requirements but by an internalized understanding of Party expectations, shaped through years of disciplinary training and oversight. Their behavior is guided by both formal rules and informal norms, enforced through a complex web of organizational practices that constitute the disciplinary infrastructure.

This analysis offers crucial insights for understanding the CCP’s resilience and the sophistication of its political control mechanisms. Rather than relying solely on coercion, the Party has developed an intricate disciplinary infrastructure that fundamentally reshapes member behavior through comprehensive oversight and systematic interventions. This helps explain why the CCP has maintained such effective control over its massive bureaucracy and why Western observers often underestimate its organizational capabilities.

For scholars of Chinese politics and law, this framework illuminates why conventional legal reform models based on Western experiences often fail to capture the reality of China’s party-state system. The Party’s disciplinary infrastructure operates beyond the bounds of formal legal institutions, creating a comprehensive environment for behavior modification that works simultaneously through political, organizational, and institutional channels. This explains both the durability of Party control and the limitations of viewing China’s governance solely through the lens of formal legal institutions.

These insights are particularly relevant as China continues to refine its governance model under Xi Jinping. The multifaceted nature of the Party’s disciplinary system demonstrates how modern authoritarian regimes can maintain control through complex institutional mechanisms that go far beyond the simple repression emphasized in traditional authoritarian regime theory. This analysis thus contributes not only to our understanding of the CCP’s intra-Party disciplinary regime but also to broader theoretical debates about authoritarian resilience and state capacity in contemporary authoritarian regimes.

Shuyu Chu, former China Law and Policy Fellow at Georgetown University (2021–2023), completed her PhD at the University of Hong Kong’s Faculty of Law. Her doctoral thesis, “Beyond Anti-Corruption: The Chinese Communist Party’s Disciplinary Infrastructure,” was ranked in the top 5% and awarded the HKU Dissertation Year Fellowship (2024) and nominated for the prestigious Li Ka Shing Prizes for Best PhD thesis. Drawing on unique access to internal Party materials, extensive empirical research, and an innovative application of Foucauldian theory, this groundbreaking study offers unprecedented insights into China’s disciplinary systems. It is now being developed into a book manuscript. She welcomes discussions with publishers interested in bringing this timely analysis to market. She can be reached at chushuyu@connect.hku.hk.

A new paper by Susan Finder

The main entrance of the Supreme People’s Court of China in Beijing ^{Photo by Rneches}

How does the Chinese political-legal system operate in the Xi Jinping era? This article published in the China Law and Society Review provides a detailed discussion of the poorly understood operations of the Supreme People’s Court (SPC) including its intricate interactions with central Party and state institutions, against the background of strengthened Party leadership. It provides insights into specific aspects of the Party’s leadership of the judiciary and its implications, usually unseen functions and operations of the SPC, and the link between Party policy, the judiciary, and the development of Chinese law.

I focus on the roles of the SPC in supporting “foreign-related rule of law” as an example of how the work of China’s highest court has evolved in the Xi Jinping New Era to support more robustly major national strategies. The article examines functions of the SPC little explored previously, because some are only partially transparent. I first summarize developments concerning the strengthening of Party leadership over political-legal institutions, because those have a direct and indirect impact on the SPC’s foreign-related judicial work. I highlight the greater focus on the SPC’s leadership’s fulfillment of political obligations and responsibility to the Party leadership. Providing appropriate judicial support for national strategies is an important way in which the SPC as a political-legal institution fulfills its political obligations to the Party leadership.

The SPC functions identified as most important in developing foreign-related rule of law are, first, policy-making and guidance of the lower courts; second, “law-making;” third, case hearing and selection; and fourth, coordinating and cooperating with central Party and state institutions. The characterization of the functions is original to this article. The non-case hearing functions are linked in some way to hearing cases and are ones the SPC has always performed.

In contrast to most apex courts globally, the work of the SPC in supporting “foreign-related rule of law” is more focused on policy-making and influencing legal and judicial policies; providing guidance to the lower courts, what this article describes as “law-making”; and coordinating and cooperating with other central Party and state institutions, rather than making judicial decisions.

First, part of the SPC’s role is to create, amend, and implement judicial policy in response to or in anticipation of the impact of changes in Party and state policy or other social, economic, or legal changes. One of the principal ways in which the SPC publicizes new or amended judicial policy is by issuing judicial policy documents. These documents guide and inform the lower courts about new or readjusted judicial policy and inform related central Party and state institutions about these developments. They also signal to the Party leadership that their initiative is being implemented. In some areas of law, the SPC leads the legal and judicial policy initiative, while in others, it provides its expertise when other institutions take the lead. The policy documents and any typical cases issued in addition to or in lieu of a policy document contain both political and substantive guidance intended to guide lower court judges both in frontline and leadership roles. These documents may not be cited in court judgments or rulings but may have an impact on judicial thinking.

Second, an important but less-understood part of the role of the SPC in contributing to the development of China’s foreign-related legal system is “law-making.” This characterization is meant to convey the SPC’s contribution to legislation described by the SPC as “actively cooperating with foreign-related legislation” (积极配合涉外立法), not as a formal assertion that the SPC makes law. This contribution takes several forms, not all of them formalized in law. The first type is provided by the Legislation Law which authorizes the SPC to submit legislative bills to the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the NPC Standing Committee. The second type is by drafting and issuing judicial interpretations, as authorized by the Organic Law of the People’s Courts and the Legislation Law. The SPC has the authority to issue meeting minutes (conference summaries) and similar documents which have a less certain formal authority but are highly persuasive in practice.

Two other types lack specific legislative authority but are important ways in which the SPC contributes to legislation, particularly foreign-related legislation: providing support to the NPC and the NPC Standing Committee when it drafts legislation; and providing support to the Ministry of Justice and other Party and state institutions when those institutions draft legislation that is eventually submitted to the NPC or the NPC Standing Committee. These two ways combine the SPCs indirect law-making role with its cooperation role. The extent to which the SPC participates in “law-making” in foreign-related matters is not entirely clear because related documents are made public sparingly.

The people’s courts are a highly political professional institution, and a highly professional political institution (人民法院是政治性很强的业务机关，也是业务性很强的政治机关)

Official SPC media channels

Third, the SPC decides some cases involving foreign-related commercial law and issues some cases as guidance, either as guiding or typical cases. It decides some cases relating to arbitration through an administrative procedure, others through retrial or second instance procedures, and others when certain selected SPC judges sit as panels of the China International Commercial Court. Additionally, the SPC issues cases as guiding, or more often typical cases as a form of guidance. The SPC occasionally issues guiding cases but more often issues typical cases to provide political and substantive guidance for the lower courts, sometimes linked to a policy document.

Fourth, one of the unrecognized functions of the SPC is coordination with other central Party and state organs regarding specific legal issues, based on bureaucratic custom. This work is only partially visible. The SPC has coordinated and cooperated with other central Party and state institutions on a broad variety of legal matters for many years, but it appears to be little discussed in English-language literature. The coordination and cooperation take a variety of forms, and which institutions and departments are relevant depends on the matter under consideration. For example, the SPC provides support to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or other ministries that lead treaty or convention negotiations, such as the Ministry of Commerce.

The article concludes that the SPC’s foreign-related legal expertise, as shown by the Politburo’s November, 2023 collective study session on foreign-related rule of law, has become significantly more important to China’s political leadership and other central-level Party and state institutions. Its significance to the political leadership is in its work in creating a body of foreign-related law. Given that the Party leadership increasingly stresses political leadership of the courts and political competence of members of the judiciary, carrying out the functions described above requires SPC judges dealing with foreign-related matters to have both a high degree of political consciousness and technical expertise. Why? As the SPC media often say, “the people’s courts are a highly political professional institution, and a highly professional political institution” (人民法院是政治性很强的业务机关，也是业务性很强的政治机关).

Susan Finder is a long-standing observer of the Chinese judicial system with more than 30 years of experience. She is a member of the international commercial expert committee of the China International Commercial Court (CICC) of the Supreme People’s Court and on the committee of the Shanghai International Arbitration Center. The views expressed in this article are her own, not those of either institution. She is a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the School of Transnational Law of Peking University (Shenzhen), where she teaches about judicial reform in comparative perspective. Her blog, the Supreme People’s Court Monitor, is arguably the most authoritative scholarly resource on developments around the People’s Republic of China’s highest court. Follow her on Twitter @SPCmonitor or get in touch per email at susan.finder[at]outlook.com

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The Infrastructure of Control: Rethinking Party Discipline in China’s Political-Legal System

A new book proposal by Shuyu Chu