Of Constitutions, Campaigns and Commissions: A Century of Democratic Centralism under the CCP

Patricia M Thornton

doi:10.1017/s0305741021000758

Abstract

AbstractDemocratic centralism, a hallmark of Leninist party organizations, has played a formative role in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet despite being hailed as an “inviolable” and “unchanging” Party principle, understandings of democratic centralism have shifted dramatically over the century of its existence. This study traces the long arc of the concept's evolution across successive Party Constitutions, focusing on three critical historical junctures: the Sixth Party Congress, which formally adopted democratic centralism into its Constitution as an organizational principle; the Seventh Party Congress, which adopted rectification as the Party's practice of democratic centralism; and the 19th Party Congress, which set a new milestone in codifying the system as a disciplinary tool. I argue that while democratic centralism exemplifies the CCP's institutional plasticity and adaptive governance and is critical to understanding Party-driven constitutionalism in contemporary China, it also highlights an irresolvable paradox inherent in Party rule. Adaptability does not necessarily impart resilience. I conclude that the CCP's normatively unconstrained extra-constitutional leadership under Xi Jinping highlights the essentially and increasingly irrationalist aspects of its illiberal governance project.

Highlights

Democratic centralism, a hallmark of Leninist party organizations, has played a formative role in the history of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Xi simultaneously issued “important instructions” for Party branch secretaries to measure themselves against the yardstick of Mao’s 1949 “Party committee work methods”, “the core content of which is the strengthening of the system of democratic centralism.”4 Xi’s October 2017 report to the 19th Party Congress called upon the “key minority” of cadres in top positions to lead all members in upholding democratic centralism as laid out in the Party Constitution, disciplinary rules and regulations
In the section of his 1938 report to the Party Central Committee on Party discipline, Mao asserted that only democratic centralism made it possible “to unite the whole Party, overcome new difficulties, and obtain new victories,” and defined its “concrete application” in terms of the classic “four obediences”: “the individual is subordinate to the organization; the minority is subordinate to the majority; the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee.”8 Violations of this chain of subordination, Mao declared, were “intolerable” and “did great damage to the Party’s unity and to the Party’s revolutionary struggle.”