The Exceptional Model

This chapter focuses China’s constitutional amendments in 1999, 2004, and 2018 in the global era. China’s Constitution and its amendment processes are surrounded by controversial constitutional dynamics, which struggled for rights and constitutional change. This chapter examines the formal constitutional change and the functional constitutional dynamics. It demonstrates that, in the era of globalization, constitutional change in China is being shaped by Chinese constitutional exceptionalism: the country’s confident attitude and belief in developing its own socialist constitutional model as a competitive alternative to those of the West.