The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader has amended the law to slash the administrative power of the State Council. Experts say this would speed up the self-destruction of the totalitarian regime in a vicious cycle of constant purges and hostility within the party.
On March 11, at its rubber-stamped National People’s Congress (NPC), the CCP passed the newly revised Organic Law of the State Council, the first-ever amendment in over 40 years.
The revision highlights the current CCP leader’s topmost position, stipulating that the communist government should “resolutely safeguard” and “resolutely implement the decisions and deployments of centralized leadership of the Party Central Committee.”
So far, this is Xi Jinping’s most significant move toward the State Council to ensure that the “government” is loyal to the “party” through legislation.
Outsiders noted that when the amendment bill came up for a final passage at the conference, Xi leaned forward and pressed the vote button, while State Council Premier Li Qiang sat still and stared coldly at Xi with a mixed expression.
Earlier, the Chinese Premier skipped the regular press briefing during the two sessions, the NPC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), with no official reason given to the public.
Further, rumors swirled that the premier will not be meeting with global CEOs at the China Development Forum (CDF), which will kick off later this month. The CDF has been held annually since 2000 at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing. In the past, the exchange between the Chinese premier and representatives of foreign enterprises is one of the most essential parts of the forum.
It is not a usual practice in the CCP bureaucratic system, as the new Premier has weakened his role with fewer public appearances and less importance in presiding over the government than his predecessors.
It still takes time to verify whether the news is accurate and whether the premier chose not to attend the meeting or whether the party chief prevented him from participating, according to Zhuge Mingyang, an independent writer and contributor to The Epoch Times.
“In any case, Mr. Li must not be allowed to replace Xi’s ‘personal command and deployment.’”
Comparing the Chinese premier’s dilemma to a “maid who holds the key but is not the master of the house,” Mr. Zhuge argued that a state’s premier could not exercise his administrative function in running governments, which would “inevitably lead to a more extreme dictatorship of the Party chief and the accelerated decline of the CCP.”
Li Yuanhua, a former professor at the Capital Normal University in Beijing, told The Epoch Times that the current CCP head’s covetousness for power, even taking power from the State Council into his own hands, seems to secure his rights. “But the more Xi concenters his power, the less other members of the party can do anything; that is, with less propulsion support, this authoritarian machine would be harder to maintain.”
CCP and its ‘State Council’
The CCP’s two supreme political bodies—the State Council and the Central Committee—are located in Zhongnanhai, but their offices are separated from the north and south by a cordon.
Official information shows that since 1949, when the CCP was founded, the State Council has been an integral part of the party’s Central Committee. Until 1954, the Constitution defined the State Council as the “supreme administrative organ of the CCP,” thus, the State Council has acquired relative independence from the Central Committee.
In Mr. Zhuge’s view, although Xi has been weakening the State Council’s power in recent years, it still had more or less independence when former Premier Li Keqiang took the helm.
However, he added that this amendment to State Council Organic Law had deprived the State Council of even formal independence, effectively returning it to a pre-1954 situation.
“It renders Xi the only foremost figure with a monopoly trip over party, political, and military power, even surpassing Mao Zedong, the founder of the Chinese communist regime,” Mr. Zhuge commented.
Current affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan also believes that the State Council has been downgraded as a government office. “This time, Xi Jinping took the opportunity of the two sessions to turn the State Council back into a de facto government office, which is a complete abandonment of former leader Deng Xiaoping’s line of economic development after 1989,” He told The Epoch Times.
As Mr. Tang observed, the Communist Party chief’s “seizing of power” over the State Council has proceeded step by step.
Deng’s Model or Mao’s Model
Mr. Tang pointed out that neither the economic reform model of Deng Xiaoping nor the extreme political rule of Mao Zedong would prevent the CCP from going down the drain.“Deng proposed economic reform by decentralizing power in the economic sphere, which promotes the relaxation and vitality of part of the market economy. However, Deng did not reform the party’s political system, thus producing a collusion of political and business interest groups and forming an invisible division of power forces [in the party.]”
Mr. Tang noted that Xi abolished Deng’s line, and his drastic crackdown on the private sector has caused China’s economy to rapidly recede from a wave of high growth, making everyone see the true face of the original deformed development of China’s economy since the Deng era.
“In other words, Xi personally destroyed the CCP’s economic accumulations over the past 40 years.”
Meanwhile, Xi chose to align with Mao’s model, as per Mr. Tang. “Xi’s absolute centralization of power amounts to a repeat of Mao’s mistakes under the communist ideology,” he said, “placing himself as a loner who can be trusted by no one, which is the most fundamental reason why he has repeatedly emphasized that political security comes first.”
“This model may seem ultra-stable on the surface but creates a pressure cooker. The removal of Defense Minister Li Shangfu and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, handpicked by Xi himself, reflects his predicament—a vicious cycle of continuous purges and increased hostility, which opens up a pattern of CCP’s self-destruction.”
In addition, according to Mr. Tang, Xi’s initiation into totalitarianism was not only to save the CCP but also to achieve his successes, such as attempting to reunify Taiwan by force during his reign. “Xi’s approach has backfired and significantly accelerated the demise and disintegration of the CCP.”
“This is why Xi has been called the ‘Chief Accelerator’ of the disintegration of the CCP.”
