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In its April 2026 Edition, the CPC's theoretical Journal, 《求是》[Qiushi], published an interesting essay on the relationship between Leninist New Era principles of Socialist Rule of Law and the Communist Party of China (CPC). It was authored by 付子堂 [Fu Zitang], Researcher at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law Branch of the Chongqing Research Center for the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics [重庆市中国特色社会主义理论体系研究中心西南政法大学分中心研究员]. Entitled the article 体系化学理化研究阐释 | 法治之魂论 ——学习习近平法治思想关于法治根本保证论述 [Fu Zitang, A Systematic Theoretical Exposition: On the Soul of the Rule of Law — Studying Xi Jinping Thought on the Rule of Law regarding the fundamental guarantee for the rule of law] argues that Socialist rule of law is inextricably intertwined with and an expression of the fundamental constitutive role of the CPC in and as a part of its expression in the CPC's fundamental political line.
That is how the essay starts, though more poetically: "The leadership of the Party is the soul of the rule of law under socialism with Chinese characteristics and the fundamental guarantee for advancing the comprehensive rule of law in China." [党的领导是中国特色社会主义法治之魂,是推进全面依法治国的根本保证。]. This in turn is grounded in a synthesis of the “十二个坚持” [12 Principles of the Rule of Law] developed under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, expanded from the previous "十一个坚持" (11 Principles) following revisions published in the 习近平法治思想学习纲要(2025年版) by the Central Committee of the CCP.
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1. Uphold Party leadership: Persist in the Party's centralized and unified leadership over all-around law-based governance.
2. Put the people first: Adhere to building the rule of law for and relying on the people, and protect human rights.
3. Adhere to the socialist path: Maintain the path of socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics.
4. Constitution-based governance: Uphold governance and the exercise of state power in accordance with the Constitution.
5. Legal modernization: Persist in comprehensively building a modern socialist country on the track of the rule of law.
6. Build the rule of law system: Persist in constructing a socialist rule of law system with Chinese characteristics.
7. Integrated development: Coordinated progress in law-based governance, exercise of state power, and government administration; and the integrated construction of a rule of law country, government, and society.
8. Comprehensive advancement: Promote scientific legislation, strict law enforcement, impartial administration of justice, and observance of the law by all.
9. Coordinate domestic and foreign rule of law: Balance and coordinate progress in both domestic law and foreign-related rule of law.
10. Foster a high-quality team: Build a professional legal work team with both political integrity and professional competence.
11. The "key minority": Grasp the leading cadres at various levels, ensuring they play a leading and exemplary role in abiding by and using the law.
12. Unification of governance and Party discipline: Persist in organically unifying the rule of law with the rule of the Party, linking the governing of the country with the strict governing of the Party. (学习资料 | 习近平法治思想).
What follows?
I. Historical-Teleological Legitimacy and the State Matrix
Fu’s essay constructs a tripartite framework—historical, jurisprudential, and practical—to rationalize the absolute primacy of the Communist Party of China (CPC) within the domestic legal order. This structural approach directly aligns with what Backer conceptualizes as the "dual-constitution" model of the Chinese party-state, wherein the vanguard party acts as the pre-legal sovereign whose authority precedes and shapes the formal state apparatus (Backer, 2012).
A. Historical Teleology vs. Legal Transplants. Fu rejects the assumption that legal systems develop organically through pluralistic civic evolution, arguing instead that the rule of law under socialism (Fazhi) is an intentional construction generated by the political vanguard. He frames Western liberal-democratic models as historically incompatible with Chinese state-building: "Since modern times, various visionary figures attempted to transplant Western models of the rule of law, but these efforts invariably failed due to the lack of a strong leadership core, as well as factors such as incompatibility with local conditions, social turmoil, and external interference." [近代以来,一些仁人志士曾尝试移植西方法治模式,但因缺乏强有力的领导核心,加之水土不服、社会动荡和外部干预等因素影响,均以失败告终。]
From a comparative perspective, this historical teleology justifies the necessity of the Party not merely as a political actor, but as the indispensable architect of the state apparatus: "History has eloquently demonstrated that without the leadership of the
CPC, there would be no development or progress in China's rule-of-law endeavors; a socialist rule-of-law state could not be built,
and comprehensive law-based governance could not be effectively
advanced." [历史雄辩地证明,没有中国共产党的领导,就没有中国法治事业的发展进步,社会主义法治国家就建不起来,全面依法治国就难以有效推进。] The emphasis is on the characterization of the CPC is a "constitutionalized vanguard" whose legitimacy is historically derived rather than exogenously validated through mechanical electoral loops (Backer, 2022).
B. The Jurisprudential Basis of Sovereign Priority. Addressing the foundational legal mechanics of the state, Fu clarifies the sequence of constitutional legitimacy. The State Constitution does not generate the authority of the vanguard Party; rather, it formally codifies a sovereign status achieved prior to the document's drafting. Citing Xi Jinping, Fu notes: "Our Constitution, in the form of a fundamental law, reflects the achievements the Party has led the people to attain through revolution, development, and reform, and it affirms the leadership status of the CPC—a status established through the choices made by history and the people."
Consequently, the Party's authority cannot be subordinated to the Constitution because the Constitution is the legal expression of the Party's historical victory. Fu codifies this structural reality by asserting that "[a]ny attempt to deny the leadership of the CPC under any pretext constitutes a fundamental violation of the Constitution." This validates Backer’s assertion that under Chinese party-state constitutionalism, the written state constitution represents an administrative framework overseen by a political authority operating outside and above it (Backer & Wang, 2014).
II. The Dialectic of the "Party-Law" Relationship
A significant portion of the essay addresses the domestic theoretical tension regarding the supremacy of the Party versus the law. The text categorizes the Western formulation of this conflict as a systemic incompatibility with the Marxist-Leninist framework, resolving the apparent contradiction through a strict institutional bifurcation.
A. Rejecting the Separation of Powers. Fu systematically deconstructs Western liberal frameworks, categorizing the desire for an autonomous legal sphere as an ideological subversion of the party-state architecture:
"Some people have blindly worshipped the Western model of the 'separation of powers,' one-sidedly emphasizing the so-called 'purity' of legislation, law enforcement, and judicial work, and stressing a supposed 'opposition' between judicial independence and Party leadership... In essence, they aim to sever the link between Party leadership and the rule of law and set them against each other..."This analytical rejection demonstrates Backer's thesis that the Chinese system consciously substitutes a horizontal separation of powers with a vertical distribution of functional authority, privileging unified party leadership over institutional fragmentation (Backer, 2012).
B. Institutional Whole vs. Administrative Actors. To resolve the question of "whether the Party is greater than the law or the law is greater than the Party," Fu labels the inquiry a "political trap and a pseudo-proposition." He achieves this by differentiating between the Party as a supreme institutional collective and the Party's individual administrative agents. Regarding the institutional collective, the Party and the law are perfectly unified; the law serves to institutionalize Party policy. Conversely, individual cadres and local state organs act as subordinate actors strictly bound by statutory limits, a mechanism designed to prevent local administrative deviation and corruption.
General Secretary Xi Jinping has unequivocally pointed out that "the question of 'whether the Party is greater than the law or the law is greater than the Party' is a political trap and a pseudo-proposition." The assertion that no such issue exists refers to the Party as a governing whole—specifically, to the Party's governing status and leadership position, both of which are affirmed by the Constitution. Every Party and government organization, as well as every leading official, must submit to and abide by the Constitution and the law; they must not place the Party above the law or use Party leadership as a shield to substitute their words for the law, override the law with power, or bend the law for personal gain. []习近平总书记旗帜鲜明地指出,“‘党大还是法大’是一个政治陷阱,是一个伪命题”。之所以说不存在“党大还是法大”的问题,是把党作为一个执政整体而言的,是指党的执政地位和领导地位而言的,这是宪法确认的。具体到每个党政组织、每个领导干部,都必须服从和遵守宪法法律,不能以党自居,不能把党的领导作为个人以言代法、以权压法、徇私枉法的挡箭牌。This dual distinction aligns precisely a tracking of Socialist Rule of Law as a mechanism for bureaucratic discipline (Backer, 2006). The law does not function to constrain the sovereign author (the central Party leadership); it functions as an objective system to control and align peripheral state and local party actors with central mandates.
III. Institutional Integration and Governance Technologies
The final section of the essay focuses on the structural mechanisms through which New Era theory is institutionalized, emphasizing the standardization of Party authority over arbitrary personal rule.
A. Centralized Coordination Mechanics. In an integrated party-state model, bureaucratic fragmentation poses a direct threat to centralized political will. Fu highlights the creation of specialized institutional hubs designed to ensure legislative and administrative activities function as coordinated components of a single national strategy:
"To break new ground in building the rule of law in China, we must uphold and strengthen the Central Committee’s overall coordination of reforms in the legal sphere, ensure more vigorous implementation of the Central Committee’s decisions and plans, and coordinate the development of a socialist rule-of-law system with Chinese characteristics and a rule-of-law state." [推进法治中国建设开创新局面,必须坚持和加强中央层面对法治领域改革的统筹协调,更加有力推动党中央决策部署贯彻落实,协调推进中国特色社会主义法治体系和法治国家建设。]This institutional configuration perfectly illustrates a conceptualization of the party-state as a coordinated enterprise where the legal system acts as a technology of statecraft to unify administrative outputs under a singular ideological line (Backer, 2012).
B. "Upholding the Party's leadership is not an empty slogan"--The Four-Dimensional Operational System. The essay details the practical operationalization of Party leadership across four state vectors.
(i) Legislation: The Party establishes the mandatory political parameters. Fu illustrates this using geopolitical implementation: "For instance, during the formulation of the Hong Kong National Security Law, faced with national security risks, the Party Central Committee made a decisive decision... [which] fully demonstrated the Party's role in setting the direction and providing oversight for major legislative work."
(ii/iii) Judiciary and Enforcement: Political alignment is maintained without subsuming daily professional operations. The Party "focuses on direction, policy, principles, and personnel management rather than taking over specific operational matters."
(iv) Law Observance: Legal education is utilized as an internal disciplinary technology for cadres, creating a culture where "the entire Party acting within the bounds of the Constitution and the law reflects the Party's high level of self-awareness.
C. The Hierarchy of Intra-Party Regulations (Dangnei Fagu). Aligning with political constitutionalist theory's analysis of the dual-normative system of Chinese law, Fu praises the formalization of intra-party regulations as a mechanism to govern the vanguard itself.
"The *Regulations of the Communist Party of China on Leading Comprehensive Law-based Governance*, reviewed by the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee, codify into institutional outcomes the Party’s long-standing decisions, strategic plans, concepts, institutional mechanisms, and successful practices regarding comprehensive law-based governance. These regulations are of great significance for enhancing the Party’s capacity to govern and exercise state power in accordance with the law, and for building a more robust socialist rule-of-law system with Chinese characteristics and a socialist rule-of-law state at a higher level." [二十届中央政治局审议的《中国共产党领导全面依法治国工作条例》,把党长期以来领导全面依法治国工作的决策部署、思路理念、体制机制和成功实践转化为制度成果, 对提高党依法治国、依法执政能力,建设更加完善的中国特色社会主义法治体系、建设更高水平的社会主义法治国家具有重要意义。]By legalizing the methods by which the Party interacts with state organs, New Era theory has built a cage of regulation in the form of socialist rule of law that replaces informal political influence as a driving force of administration with a highly structured, rule-based party-state framework, fulfilling the imperative to "advance all aspects of comprehensive law-based governance through the concepts, systems, and procedures of the rule of law." This underscores the argument that the institutionalization of Dangnei Fagu generates a distinct layer of inner-party constitutional jurisprudence that forms the structural prerequisite for governing the broader state apparatus (Backer & Wang, 2014).
References
Backer, L. C. (2006). The Rule of Law, the Chinese Communist Party, and Ideological Campaigns: Sange Daibiao, Socialist Rule of Law, and Modern Chinese Constitutionalism. Journal of Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems, 16(1), 29-102.
Backer, L. C. (2012). Party, People, Government, and State: On Constitutional Values and the Legitimacy of the Chinese State-Party Rule of Law System. Boston University International Law Journal, 30(1), 101-168.
Backer, L. C., & Wang, K. (2014). Extra-Judicial Detention and the Chinese Constitutional Order. Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 23(2), 241-316.
Backer, L. C. (2022). “The Flower of Democracy Blooms Brilliantly in China”: The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Constitutional Order. In Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law in China (pp. 67-84). Routledge.
























