Embedding “Society” into the Chinese Communist Party’s Rule of Law

Abstract This paper examines how the Chinese Communist Party envisages building a particular type of society based on the precepts of law, which the Party calls “rule of law-based society”. To Party legal theorists, building a “rule of law-based society” is an integral part of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law. Drawing on the Party’s 2020 “Implementation Outline for the Construction of a Rule of Law-based Society (2020–2025)”, this paper argues that the Party’s “rule of law-based society” vision seeks to bring cohesion to the expansive social governance system to produce both social cohesion and social and political stability. In doing so, social services and stability maintenance mechanisms are brought together under the auspices of a plan to legally institutionalize social governance. Placing the concept of “rule of law-based society” in a broader political context of social governance, this paper analyses how this important element of Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law seeks to make Party-led social governance cohere through ideology, policy and law.