China’s latest reforms strengthen Communist Party control over finance, science and tech
- Beijing’s latest restructuring plan bolsters ‘party-state’ and continues trend of consolidating party oversight over crucial domains, observers say
- Professor likens most recent overhaul to ‘pre-Deng Xiaoping period’ – before changes aimed at preventing the concentration of power
According to a directive that accompanied the plan on Thursday, the changes were necessary to ensure the party’s dominance in steering China down the path of modernisation and “delivering a national renaissance”.
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Over the past four decades, the country has regularly revamped its government and party structure to respond to pivotal issues and improve efficiency. But since 2018, restructuring plans have diverged from the trajectory of earlier reforms by consolidating party oversight over core issues.
Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said the most recent overhaul, which extended to the economic domain, had jeopardised the role of the State Council.
“When we understand China, everyone would say [it is a] party-state … It is party and the government. Now it is no longer structured like before, so that is very fundamental,” he said.
“It is a little bit like going back to the pre-Deng Xiaoping period.”
From 1982 to 1999, both party and state institutional reforms were carried out twice per decade. Since then, only state overhauls have happened every five years.
The reforms also aimed to simplify administration as China moved from a planned economy to a socialist market economy.
One of the most remarkable rounds of reform was led in 1998 by former economic tsar Zhu Rongji, who halved the size of the state administrative establishment and made room for marketisation.
Over the years, China has consistently cut or merged redundant ministries, commissions, and staff to boost administrative efficiency. Since 2008, it has combined commissions with overlapping functions into larger ministries to streamline bureaucracy.
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Until 2013, “a lot of the effort [of reform] was to adapt to an economy that had become increasingly diversified, and in society as well”, said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.
Yang noted that in the 2000s, most reforms occurred within the state, rather than the party, as there was an understanding that economic development was the responsibility of the State Council.
“But today, [the focus] is really to enhance and make sure that the fundamental issues are in the hands directly of the party,” he said.
The reforms established a handful of party committees and commissions – headed by party or state leaders – to strengthen the party’s central coordinating role in cyberspace, foreign affairs and economic issues. They also merged several government departments into the party apparatus.
Yang said these “continued efforts to reconfigure party-state organisations” ensured party leaders, rather than the State Council, were the key decision makers, relegating the state ministries to implementing party decisions.