Divergent Implications for Xi’s Power From New Party Regulations

Executive Summary:

• Speculation is growing about a power struggle at the top of the Party. An announcement of new regulations for influential decision-making and coordinating bodies is a clear sign of change in how the leadership makes policy. Its implications for Xi Jinping’s power remain unclear. 
• One interpretation sees the regulations as evidence of Xi enhancing his vertical control over the system, while another reading sees him being constrained by the rest of the leadership.
• If Xi’s power remains supreme, the new regulations signal tighter control, allowing him to more effectively drive his agenda and giving more formal authority to Cai Qi.
• If the regulations are an attempt to bind Xi to formal mechanisms, the move to institutionalize the organizations through which he has driven the Party-state system could signal that other parts of the leadership are wresting some power from Xi and forcing him to abide by bureaucratic procedure.

On June 30, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping chaired a meeting of the Politburo to consider a new set of rules governing certain influential Party bodies. These are titled the “Regulations on the Work of the Party Central Committee’s Decision-Making, Deliberative, and Coordinating Institutions” (党中央决策议事协调机构工作条例) (Xinhua, June 30). As the readout makes clear, the Politburo met to “review” (审议) the regulations. This implies that the regulations already exist internally and are being amended, or that they are currently being drafted and will be released at a later date, as has been the case for other Party rules. [1] 

The meeting has drawn attention because of what it might signal about Xi’s hold on power. As internal and external problems continue to mount for the CCP, two lines of analysis have swelled in volume, each painting a strikingly different picture. One posits that Xi Jinping himself is under fire and is engaged in a struggle to retain his position as supreme leader. The other views Xi as continuing to implement a system tailored to execute his specific policy ambitions. Either analytic line is an attempt to make a call on what appears to be an ongoing and evolving political struggle within the CCP’s leadership. Historically, outside analysts have not had  a good track record of making such judgments in real time. Concerns about Xi’s power deserve to be taken seriously, because anomalies continue to arise in personnel decisions and purges that seem to be targeting Xi’s people or destabilizing bureaucratic leadership—as four Jamestown contributors have assessed independently (China Brief, February 14; March 15; April 23). 

The Politburo meeting’s readout provides details that could be used to support either of these hypotheses (summarized in the table below). From the beginning of Xi’s tenure as general secretary, he has repeatedly expressed concerns about unity, discipline, and efficiency (Xinhua, October 28, 2017, October 25, 2022). These same themes appear in the readout. Yet, some language could reasonably be read as Xi being shunted aside or otherwise constrained. Xi’s honorifics as the “core” of the Party or taking Xi’s thought as a guide are notably absent. The readout also notes the need to “avoid taking over others’ functions or overstepping boundaries” (不代替、到位不越位), which could be read either as Xi’s concern with effective policy execution or as a direct critique of Xi’s overbearing leadership. 

Table 1: Implications of the New Regulations for Xi 

*This is only the third instance (from a total of 28) in which a readout of a meeting of the CCP’s 20th politburo has not included either of these phrases. The other two took place in October 2023 and August 2024. Both covered relatively mundane matters, making it unclear what the cause for omission might be (Party Members Net, October 27, 2023, August 23, 2024). [2]

April Meeting Set Stage for New Regulations

The substance of the June 30 meeting was unusual—and not just because it provided the first mention of regulations for decision-making, deliberative, and coordinating institutions. The context for the regulations is a national meeting of the CCP’s secretaries-general that was held in April and hosted by Cai Qi (蔡奇). Cai is a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and director of the Central Committee General Office—the first person to hold both roles simultaneously since the Mao era. The meeting focused on coordination and political discipline across the general offices, heralding further institutionalization of one-man rule. It previewed much of the language of the latest readout, calling for using the general offices system to support the authority of the centralized and unified leadership of the Party center and improving effective execution of policy, thereby becoming “model agencies” (模范机关) of loyalty and responsiveness. It also called for cadres to serve as “political gatekeepers” (政治把关作用) (Xinhua, April 24). 

The focus on the general office system as a frontline mechanism of ideological supervision and political enforcement is directly relevant to the new regulations. The organizations that the Party categorizes as “decision-making, deliberative, and coordinating institutions” under the Party Center are all supported by general offices. While an official list of such bodies has never been published, they likely include various commissions and leading small groups that have emerged or been reformed under Xi. The online encyclopedia Baidu Baike provides a list of 10 such organizations on a page about the Central Committee’s subsidiary organizations. This list, which is supported (with one minor change) by the Chinese large language model DeepSeek, is as follows (Baidu, accessed June 30):

• Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform (中央全面深化改革委员会)
• Central Comprehensive Law-based Governance Commission (中央全面依法治国委员会)
• Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission (中央网络安全和信息化委员会)
• Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission (中央财经委员会)
• Central Foreign Affairs Commission (中央外事工作委员会)
• Central Auditing Commission (中央审计委员会)
• Central Education Work Leading Small Group (中央教育工作领导小组)
• Central Institutional Organization Commission (中央机构编制委员会) (According to DeepSeek, this should instead be the Central and State Organs Work Commission (中央和国家机关工作委员会)).
• Central Finance Commission (中央金融委员会)
• Central Science and Technology Commission (中央科技委员会)

Many of these organizations have either been created or undergone changes in the Xi era. Most notable is the Central Commission for Comprehensively Deepening Reform, created in 2013. Others, such as the Central Comprehensive Law-based Governance Commission, Central Auditing Commission, and the Central Education Work Leading Small Group, are products of the 2018 “Plan for Deepening the Reform of Party and State Agencies” (深化党和国家机构改革方案) (Xinhua, March 21, 2018; CSET, March 17, 2021). This plan also upgraded several extant organizations to the level of a commission. These include the Central Foreign Affairs Commission and Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, which both had existed in different forms since 1958. The Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, which also became a commission in 2018, had only existed in its previous form since 2014. As for the Central Financial Work Commission and Central Science and Technology Commission, they were established almost exactly five years later in a similar reorganization: the “Plan on the Reform of Party and State Agencies” (党和国家机构改革方案). This more recent reform replaced coordinating bodies that had previously existed under the State Council, thereby centralizing more control under the Central Committee (Xinhua, March 23, 2023; Policy-Making Magazine, August 22, 2023).

These organizations have allowed immense power to accrue to Xi Jinping. Of the ten organizations listed above, Xi heads half of them. (The Central Finance Commission is led by Li Qiang (李强), the Central Science and Technology Commission is led by Ding Xuexiang (丁薛祥), the Central Education Work Leading Small Group is led by Huai Jinpeng (怀进鹏), and Cai Qi leads the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission and the Central Institutional Organization Commission.) As the key bodies that coordinate across the system, they work with multiple ministries and Party departments on specific elements of national strategy. Crucially, they lack legal enforcement mechanisms and external oversight, operating outside of constitutional constraints. This has made them powerful tools for Xi to drive his policy agenda forward, but also has attracted criticism due to their lack of clear status within the Party-state’s organizational structure. A drop in the regularity of meetings held by some of these commissions in Xi’s third term could reflect increasing limits to their power (Foreign Policy, June 25). 

Two Conflicting Interpretations of the New Regulations

As Table 1 above suggests, there are two possible interpretations of the June 30 readout, each relying on different hypotheses of Xi’s current hold on power or the current state of an ongoing power struggle at the top of the Party. 

• Xi Remains the Party Core. Xi is using these latest regulations to further reform the system in pursuit of his goals. The readout features key phrases associated with his rule, like “centralized and unified leadership” (集中统一领导) and “top-level design” (顶层设计). This Politburo meeting was a regularly scheduled monthly meeting, with Xi chairing the session and delivering remarks, and was followed by a collective study session. No unusual announcements were made about personnel changes. While Xi has been absent from some high-level meetings in recent months and is set to miss the BRICS summit in Brazil next week, he has nevertheless maintained a packed schedule of travel and high-level meetings.

• Xi is Losing Ground. The Party is moving power away from Xi, both organizationally and ideologically. Although Cai Qi has been Xi’s man, loyalty is not forever. His amassing of decision-making power through the general office system—which the Politburo readout formalizes in part—may be an acceptable compromise between Xi and his reputed opponents. For those opponents, any power clawed back from Xi himself is a positive development. The readout’s omission of Xi as the Party’s core or as providing the guiding ideology, though not unprecedented, could reflect such a compromise, even if the propaganda apparatus continues to publish those points elsewhere. [2] 

Conclusion

Power struggles have been a feature of Leninist systems for the last century, even if the leader usually carries the day. The CCP has had a political crisis at least once every political generation. Top leaders, seemingly secure in their positions, had their influence wax and wane, and in some cases, had to remove their comrades, as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping did on multiple occasions. Trusted proteges have long faced questions of how to secure their positions by promoting their confidants without attracting the ire of the paramount leader. Central Military Commission Political Department Director Miao Hua’s purge could be just one more example (China Brief, April 23). 

In his 20th Party Congress speech, Xi emphasized struggle and how he reforged the Party over the preceding decade (Xinhua, October 25, 2022). Xi has brutally driven the Party forward through constant campaigns, personnel reshuffling, and perpetual anti-corruption investigations. If Xi now faces a serious challenge, more developments that constrain Xi’s position will emerge. These will show that he must follow Party procedures rather than operating above them, or force him to pass more decision-making power to other leaders, such as Premier Li Qiang. If, instead, Xi wins in a contest for power, the clearest signal will come from the outcomes communicated at the fourth plenary session of the Central Committee, set to take place later this year. 

Notes

[1] Other internal Party regulations for which the full text is published include the 2020 “Regulations on the Work of the CCP Central Committee” (中国共产党中央委员会工作条例), the 2021 “Regulations on the Work of CCP Organizations” (中国共产党组织工作条例), and the 2019 “Regulations on the Work of the CCP’s Organizational Structure (中国共产党机构编制工作条例).

[2] References to Xi as the Party core have continued elsewhere. For instance, the July 2 issue of the People’s Daily contains a front page story on the All-China Youth Federation that uses this language (People’s Daily, July 2). The propaganda apparatus is one of several CCP elements that are essential to a leader’s ability to rule and guide the rest of the Party. Early in his tenure, Xi asserted himself over the propaganda apparatus. He has maintained control ever since, as evidenced by the early development of a “cult of personality” and promulgation of Xi’s contributions to Party canon (China Brief, March 6, 2015).

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this article mistranslated “中央金融委员会” as “Central Financial Work Commission.” The Central Financial Work Commission (中央金融工作委员会) is a dispatched institution (派出机构), a separate body of lower status that the institutions covered in this article. The earlier version also erroneously stated that Xi headed all 10 of the organizations listed.