Reddening Cheeks and Inducing Sweat: The Logic of Party Law in Xi Jinping’s China

Abstract The Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping has spent the past 13 years creating an “intraparty regulatory system,” or what this article calls “Party law.” Scholars ascribe different meanings to this system and its implications for Chinese law and governance. This article submits the novel claim that Party law has its own internal logic characterized by six features which distinguish it sharply from “thin rule of law.” These six features, summarized through systematic analysis of central-level Party regulations and supplemented with fieldwork, combine to forge the logic of Party law. They include: the regulation of thought, active and tailored application, an open system design (as opposed to a closed, self-sufficient loop), porously bounded jurisdiction, pre-emptive punishments, and a common—arguably sometimes selective—absence of clarity. The article submits that rather than developing a system which is more consistent with thin rule of law criteria of generality, promulgation, prospectivity, clarity, consistency, and so on, the rise of Party law means an emboldening of “Party law logic” and its potential to seep into state law.