Party Leadership and Legislating: Party Documents Through a Party–State Relationship Lens

Abstract For over a decade, the Chinese Communist Party has been building its rules into a coherent ‘intra-party regulatory system’ with implications for the way the Party runs itself and ‘leads’ its state. This article examines the system-building project through the lens of the Party’s relationship with its state. It draws on a comparative analysis of the different iterations of the Party Charter since the Party became ‘governing party,’ and of pre- and post-19th Party Congress versions of the foundational documents of the intra-party regulatory system. It argues that since the 19th Congress Party Charter transformed the Party’s longstanding articulation of its own identity, redefining ‘Party leadership,’ the intra-party regulatory system has begun to reflect this change. ‘Party leadership’ is by nature relational—it cannot be defined or practiced in a vacuum—hence the Party’s transformed notion of ‘Party leadership’ entails a reconfigured Party–state relationship. Examined in this context, the Party’s project of ‘intra-party regulatory system’ building appears to be reconfiguring the relationship between Party documents and state laws and policies.