How China’s Party Congress Actually Works

Contrary to a common belief held by many, communist parties have an obsession with institutions. There is a reason why “organization” is often used as a comprehensive and all-purposeful reference. It almost seems to be a term of endearment referring to the omnipresent and omnipotent collective entity of the Communist Party whenever its identity is too complicated or inconvenient to dissect and specify. In the television series “The Americans,” a popular Hollywood spy drama set in the Cold War era, the word “organization” pops up in casual conversations between the protagonists as if it was the nickname for a common acquaintance.

Half a century later in China, the word “organization” (组织 in Chinese) still commands loyalty, honesty, and reverence – so much so that any behavior contrary to those noble values would invite disciplinary reproaches. In the Directive of the Disciplines and Sanctions of the Chinese Communist Party (2018), the word “organization” appeared 120 times. Fifteen types of inappropriate behavior are identified as “violations of organizational discipline,” which can lead to “excommunication,” as it were, the most serious form of disciplinary sanctions that often triggers prosecution.

The appreciation of party institutions as a source of strength and a tool for power-seeking is not an invention of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chinese imperial rulers had championed institution-building, already running a mature bureaucracy, a complicated form of institution, during the reign of the Western Zhou Dynasty more than 3,000 years ago. However, to weaponize institutions as a combative strategy rather than merely an administrative instrument stems from a Leninist communist legacy.

“In its struggle for power, the proletariat has no other weapon except organization,” Lenin wrote in 1904. Philip Selznick, the late Berkeley professor of sociology and law who coined the term “organizational weapon” defines it as an instrument that “can be used by a power-seeking elite in a manner unrestrained by the constitutional order of the arena within which the contest takes place.” Bolsheviks used it with decisiveness and skills to subvert an established political order and to replace it with their own. The Chinese Communist Party followed suit and achieved more.

Once the Communist Party obtained power, the organization had to be repurposed for the opposite aim of its weaponized deployment. As the single ruling political force, the party has no other political establishment to subvert in the homeland. Its political operation not only is no longer illegal but is protected by self-enacted laws. The state system, which used to be so alien and antagonistic that it had to be infiltrated and sometimes smashed, now has its doors wide open and is ready to service the Communist Party, to sustain its life and to fuel its growth.

In this “emancipated” world of the party-state, it is only natural that institutions, especially formal institutions, have become an indispensable instrument of political governance to regulate not only state-society relations but also elite politics, such as the issue of leadership succession.

In the run-up to the 20th National Party Congress, which will open on October 16, there has been no shortage of international commentary on what to expect. But, regrettably, the operation of the Congress itself, one of the oldest institutions of the CCP, has been overlooked in relevant discussions. What is the National Party Congress, what happens there, and who ultimately makes the decisions?

Electing What?

When the 2,300 representatives of the 20th Congress meet in October, they will elect the CCP Central Committee. Members of the Central Committee will then proceed to elect the Politburo, the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC), as well as the General Party Secretary (GPS).

It is important to note that in CCP elections candidates are not voted into specific offices. The election only decides on the membership of decision-making bodies mentioned above, except for the office of the GPS. It is not entirely clear whether the nominated candidates are already slated, upon some sort of internal agreement, to specific portfolios and executive positions before the election or will be assigned to those positions only after the election.

A Bifurcated Election

Party elections are bifurcated into two phases: nominations of candidates and voting. Here, “bifurcation” is not meant to denote a chronological separation between the two phases. Naturally, nominations of candidates must precede voting. Rather, “bifurcation” is used to stress the procedural disconnection between them. This disconnection is highlighted most conspicuously by two aspects.

First, while the process of nominating candidates is subject to intensive competition, competitiveness is reduced to a minimum after the nomination, when votes are about to be cast. At the nomination phase, competition for seats on the Politburo (currently numbering 25), for instance, will take place between the current incumbents who intend to retain their seats and members of the Central Committee (around 200) who want a promotion. In contrast, the voting is completely non-competitive for the Politburo and the PSC because only one candidate will be nominated for each seat.

Second, popular support, though only applied to the 2,300 delegates attending the Congress, is a decisive factor for the voting but not for the nomination. As will be explained in the next section, candidates’ nomination is based on highly subjective factors, in which popular support, carried out in the form of a “democracy test” (民主测评), will only have a marginal impact. The outcome of voting is, however, openly and solely determined by counting of votes from the CCP delegates at the Congress.

Given the predictability of the voting outcome at the Congress, it is easy to believe that votes of delegates are coerced. However, in reality, voters’ consent is not coercively enforced but engineered through a combination of electoral rules and devices. The CCP’s constitution grants delegates the right to vote for or against the officially nominated candidates, or abstain from voting altogether, or even to nominate and vote for their own candidates. If a delegate deviates from the party line and fails to vote for CCP-nominated candidates, he or she may face retaliation under a pretext, but cannot be openly disciplined, let alone penalized, for different voting choices.

This is, of course, not to say that CCP elections are not subject to control. Rather, what must be stressed is that such control is safeguarded by the installation of a number of consent-engineering devices instead of through blatant coercion. In other words, to secure the necessary votes in an election, the CCP does not need to “rig” it by playing dirty tricks or engaging in illegal activities. The Congress is an institution that has, by design, provided the necessary electoral devices that allow its organizers, and them alone, to mobilize and engineer voters’ consent to the party-nominated candidates on the ballots.

These electoral devices are mostly restrictive. For the sake of brevity, I will only highlight those concerning electoral campaigns, which are the least discussed but arguably the most impactful among all.

First, in party elections of national leaders, no one decides to “enter a race” or to “run for office.” It is the nominators who decide who will be in the race and it is the party and the party alone that can campaign for the candidates. For instance, when Mao Zedong “helicoptered” Wang Hongwen to the candidates’ list at the 10th Party Congress in 1973, Wang’s nomination encountered strong resistance from other CCP leaders. To secure Wang’s election, Mao sent Zhou Enlai to “unify the thoughts of delegates” or rather to “bring them on the same page,” so to speak, in several organized meetings prior to the election.

It would constitute a serious violation of party organizational discipline if a candidate attempted to canvass delegates for his or her nomination or election, which can lead to expulsion from the CCP. The banning of unauthorized campaigns has effectively curtailed any possible electoral success for “independent” candidates, or candidates nominated by party delegates, not the party.

The reason is twofold. First, it would require a lot of blunders on the part of the Congress organizers to let a sizable group of disloyal party members to pass vetting and get invited to the Congress. Second, even if these “subversive” members had miraculously passed the vetting and were invited to the Congress, they would not have the floor, forum, and platform required to reach voters and to campaign for their candidates within the bounds of party rules.

Hence, for a “coup” or a usurpation of power to succeed, the coup leader(s) need to take over power from the incumbents before the Congress convenes so that they can run the Congress themselves. Once the Congress is underway, it is nearly impossible for a group of defectors to instigate a “coup” or to “steal” an election without detection.

Second, candidates do not compete on policies and do not formulate individual political programs. Instead, the newly elected CCP leadership inherits the collective political program passed down from their predecessors and can only make measured adaptations during their terms of office. The banning of policy competitions helps to ensure party unity and to avoid organizational schisms and breakups because of internal policy differences.

Other restrictive electoral devices to engineer consent include the closure of floor debates, the segregation of delegations, the “rehearsal” voting procedure, quasi-open ballot, and the grant of unrestricted and monopolistic access to the election organizers to canvass among voters on the sites of an election, just to name a few. (Readers interested in concrete examples of these practices can read Wu Guoguang’s 2015 book, “China’s Party Congress: Power, Legitimacy, and Institutional Manipulation,” which contains numerous historical cases documented in great detail.)

Who Nominates Candidates?

A lot of what has been said above points to the “million-dollar question”: Who nominates the candidates? Given the fact that the Party Congress is structured so as to engineer consent and to safeguard votes only for the candidates nominated by the CCP, the nominating power is as potent and consequential as the appointment power.

For a long time, the identity of the nominators of candidates for the top CCP leadership has been almost as elusive as Himalayan snow leopards: We know they exist, we have some general ideas of where they inhabit, but we are not sure how many of them are out there exactly, who they are, and when and where they will show up.

Based on my recent research of party rules and records of past electoral practices, the identity of this mysterious group is in fact on open display, visible right before our eyes. This critical group is an official entity that is called the Standing Committee of the Chairmen-League of the Party Congress (SCOCL).

Based on a page posted on the website of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the SCOCL is the leading core of the Party Congress. Its main electoral duties are:

1. To discuss and to seek consent through political persuasion on important issues related to candidates and to propose solutions to the Chairmen-League;
2. To chair plenary meetings of the Chairmen-League and to chair the electoral proceedings;
3. To review the outcomes of the rehearsal voting and to submit a list of officially nominated candidates to the Chairmen-League for discussion and approval;
4. To submit to the Chairmen-League, according to the vote-counts of the final election of the congress, a list of moderators for the plenary meeting of the newly elected Party Committee, for discussion and approval.

These duties are also stipulated in the party directive on the work of local party elections. Although the CCP has never published a written code for its national elections, the rules indicated above are almost certainly applicable to it because local party organizations enjoy little autonomy in terms of rule-making on political matters as important as party elections. Most often than not, local CCP organizations simply copy the regulations of the party center, aside from modifications to simplify matters when relevant because the former is much smaller in size and has fewer executive decision-making bodies than the latter.

My findings on the SCOCL are corroborated by further research on past electoral practices. The Chairmen-League is a part of the Soviet legacy and is as old as the institution of the Party Congress itself. In the earlier years of the CCP, when party elections were held at irregular and sometimes extremely long intervals, Chairmen-Leagues were also set up at plenums and used to replace the Central Committee that was elected by the Congress.

In recent elections, regular members of the SCOCL included all sitting members of the Politburo, the PSC, and the Central Secretariat. The size of the SCOCL is not fixed, which makes it easier to create contingency seats from time to time. These seats are allocated to second-in-command, and sometimes also third-in-command, leaders from strategic institutions, including the Central Military Commission, the Central Advisory Committee (1982-1992), the State Council, the National People’s Congress, the Chinese People’s Political Consultancy Conference, and the Central Commission of Discipline and Inspection.

In 1997, which marked the beginning of the third term of Jiang Zemin, four fully retired party elders – Yang Shangkun, Wan Li, Song Ping, and Bo Yibo – were each given a seat at the SCOCL of the 15th Congress, which they were able to retain at the successive Congresses until their deaths. Starting from the 16th Congress in 2002, this privilege was extended to all living and politically loyal (not expelled) PSC members as well. This practice has been consistently observed since 1997.

This very mechanism, namely, to allow retiring and retired PSC members a say in the selection of future leaders, is perhaps the secret behind the peaceful power succession that has been widely acknowledged by China observers.

Lifetime Privileges of PSC Members

Unlike all other party positions, nominations for which are determined by their superiors, the PSC membership nomination is subject to self-rule among peers. This is because no one, except arguably for the period when Mao ruled as the party chairman, sits above the PSC since the CCP gained autonomy from the former Soviet Union Communist Party. The result of this self-rule is life tenure for each PSC member unless one volunteers to retire or is unseated by peers for cause.

In the Maoist era, Politburo politics was much less institutionalized than it has become today. Under Mao’s reign, the structure of the top tiers of party decision-making bodies changed constantly and the duration of the electoral term was different from one to the next. Nevertheless, even Mao could not remove a PSC member without cause. The tragic and dramatic fall of Liu Shaoqi is a perfect example.

The positive side of life tenure from the perspective of the CCP is that it provides the PSC members with security, which helps to stabilize factional politics. However, it also creates a problem of gerontocracy. Already starting in 1982, when the average age of the PSC members had reached 74.5, the party began to experiment with various schemes to persuade them to agree to retire. One such scheme was the creation of the Central Advisory Committee (CAC), which removed the first-generation CCP elders from the day-to-day administration but allowed them to continue to participate in decision-making from backseats. However, sometimes, backseat drivers can be as disruptive as uncooperative co-pilots.

In 1992, the CAC was abolished. First-generation CCP leaders no longer held any offices of power in the party except in the military. In return, as mentioned above, four elders that were still politically active at the time were each given a permanent seat in the SCOCL. That enabled them to continue to participate in the selection of future party leaders. This privilege has been extended to all living PSC members as well since 1997.

It is not a coincidence that the age limit rule was formed during the same period. The close timing of these two events raises the possibility that it was the assurance of a permanent seat on the SCOCL that facilitated the voluntary retirement of PSC members at a certain age, which later became known as the “seven-up eight-down” rule. In 1997, two PSC members who were older than Jiang Zemin (71) retired. Since 2002, all PSC members at the age of 68 or above have retired. This rule has been consistently observed since then.

It is important to note in this context that the age-limit rule also applies to Politburo members but, unlike with the PSC members, it is not the only criterion for their exit. Being inferior in rank, Politburo members do not enjoy life tenure, as the PSC members do, and can be replaced at an election not only for age but for other reasons as well. For instance, three Politburo members who were below the age limit failed to retain their seats at the election in 2017.

It is currently widely debated whether the age-limit is also applicable to Xi Jinping, who turned 69 in June, or whether he is exempted from this restriction due to his elevated position as the GPS vis-a-vis ordinary PSC members. Past practices are inconclusive: Hu Jintao retired at 69 while Jiang Zemin did not retire until 76. Xi could follow Jiang’s precedent or create his own, claiming special privilege as the GPS. The answer will be revealed in a matter of weeks.

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the age-limit rule is so far the only observable operating mechanism that regulates the exit of sitting ordinary PSC members who are not the GPS. It is also the only life-tenure-terminating device that can be objectively and equally applied among ordinary PSC members. If Xi wants to advance or delay the retirement of a particular PSC member at the 20th Congress, he can modify the cutoff age accordingly. This would no doubt require a lot of renegotiation and maneuvering at the SCOCL, but the outcome would be sustainable as long as he applies the modified cutoff age equally and fairly among other PSC members. This way, the CCP can continue to employ the age-based mechanism to regulate the exits of future PSC members.

If, however, Xi intends to dismantle the age limit rule altogether, namely, to replace it with some individualized and subjective grounds to terminate the life tenure of a PSC member, then the CCP would have to face a serious “constitutional crisis” regarding power succession at the PSC in the future.   

Conclusion

Xi Jinping has frequently been accused by China observers worldwide of the offense of rule-breaking and institution-dismantling. The most grievous “crimes” that he has allegedly committed include the abolition of the term limit of the PRC Chairman (often referred to as China’s president) with the constitutional amendment in 2017, the refusal to anoint a successor, and the encroachment upon or detraction of power from his peers. Some of these accusations are based on false premises and/or misreading of the practices combined with an almost willful neglect of the CCP as an institution, of what its actual rules are and how exactly it operates.

For a long time, studies of Chinese elite politics focused almost exclusively on informal politics, in particular, factional politics. By contrast, the formal aspects of the operation of CCP were not to be taken seriously, because, as it was believed, the party does not follow its own rules.

The seemingly contagious allergy toward the notion of formal politics in an authoritarian system such as China stems from an ideologically tainted understanding of institutions. In an ideologically conditioned vocabulary, institutions are meant only to constrain power, perhaps underpinned by the wishful thinking that institutionalization, the same as economic growth, leads a linear path to democratization. This bias has ignored that institutions can also enable those in power and even be deployed as a weapon, as Selznick argued cogently 70 years ago.

In his last two terms, Xi Jinping has turned the party-state into more, not less, institutionalized cojoined twins. And there is no sign of a reversal of this process after the autumn election, regardless of whether or not the rest of the world cares to take notice of it.