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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2021
This article argues that the governance project of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) oscillates between rule-based formalism and anti-formalist scepticism about rule-based governance. In this dichotomy, anti-formalist arguments support CCP leaders’ efforts to maintain and increase the Party’s influence over the judiciary and other state organs, which is a key justification for the Party’s power. Formalist language, in contrast, supports Party leaders’ attempts to constrain lower-level cadres’ uses of power within the Party. Formalist language is particularly prominent in the writings of Party ideologues on the interpretation of the Party’s internal regulations, including the CCP Constitution. At the same time, Party ideology also provides for various anti-formalist arguments about rule-based governance within and outside the Party. Paradoxical as it may be, the Party leadership seeks to exert rule-transcending political leadership through formal rules. While the focus of this article is on China, it argues that other illiberal regimes may also be studied in terms of similar, potentially incoherent approaches to rule-based governance.
1 See, for example, Song Gongde, Danggui zhi zhi [Governance Through Intraparty Regulations] (Falü chubanshe, Beijing, 2016) 247–52; Wang Zhenmin, Zhongguo Gongchandang dangnei fagui yanjiu [Study on CCP Intraparty Regulations] (Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 2015) 193.
2 For explicit scepticism about rule-based governance in the legal system, see for example Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party, Shehui zhuyi fazhi linian duben [The Socialist Rule of Law Concept—A Reader] (Zhongguo Chang’an chubanshe, Beijing, 2009) 30–31; Fan Mingzhi, ‘Xifang ‘sifa duli’ weisheme zai Zhongguo zoubutong’ [Why Western ‘Judicial Independence’ Cannot Break Through in China], Qiushi, 15 January 2018, available at <http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2018-01/15/c_1122241714.htm>. For scepticism about formal constitutional law, see Office of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party, Shehui zhuyi fazhi linian xuexi wenda [Questions and Answers on the Socialist Rule of Law Concept] (Zhongguo Chang’an chubanshe, Beijing, 2012) 21–22. For similar arguments in Chinese legal scholarship, see Zhu Suli, ‘The Party and the Courts’ in Randall Peerenboom (ed), Judicial Independence in China: Lessons for Global Rule of Law Promotion (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010) 52, 57, 64; Zhu Suli, Sending Law to the Countryside (Springer, Singapore, 2016) xxxviii–xxxix, 17–20, 123. Ideological statements on the CCP’s leadership over the legal system often avoid detailing how such leadership is meant to be exercised. See, for example, ‘Xi Jinping’s report at 19th CPC National Congress’, Xinhua, 3 November 2017, 32–33, available at <http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/special/2017-11/03/c_136725942.htm>.
3 Morton J Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy (Oxford University Press, 1992) 16–18; Frederick Schauer, ‘Formalism’ (1988) 97 Yale Law Journal 509, 510, 535.
4 Horwitz (n 3) 18–19. There are various (present and historical) forms of anti-formalist critique. The critique of formalism may object to: (1) the possibility of legal deduction and the presumed ability of a legal system to facilitate meaning-based interpretation; (2) the assumption that law is a gapless system, which does not need to consider social desiderata; (3) the presumption that there are easy cases; and (4) the possibility of meaning-based interpretation in general. Kennedy, Duncan, ‘Legal Formalism’ in Smelser, Neil J and Baltes, Paul B (eds), Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences: Volume 13 (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 2001) 8634, 8635–36Google Scholar.
5 Schauer (n 3) 548; Stone, Martin, ‘Formalism’ in Jules Coleman and Scott Shapiro (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002) 166, 172Google Scholar.
6 Kennedy (n 4) 8634. For an early example, see Roscoe Pound, ‘Mechanical Jurisprudence’ (1908) 8 Columbia Law Review 605, 615–16.
8 Martti Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001) 500; John Manning, ‘Constitutional Structure and Statutory Formalism’ (1999) 66 University of Chicago Law Review 685, 691.
9 Kennedy (n 4) 863.
10 Horwitz (n 3) 154; 194–98; Duncan Kennedy, ‘Three Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought: 1850–2000’ in Trubek, David and Santos, Alvaro (eds), The New Law and Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006) 19, 37–39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 ‘Xi Jinping: Ba quanli guan jin zhidu de longzi li’ [Xi Jinping: Shutting power into the cage of a system] Xinhua, 22 January 2013, available at <http://www.ccdi.gov.cn/ldhd/gcsy/201307/t20130710_114955.html>.
12 Song (n 1) 73, 249.
13 (n 1).
14 (n 2).
15 See Stone (n 5) 172.
16 Weber, Max, Economy and Society (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1978) 220–24Google Scholar.
18 Zhonghua renmin gongheguo xianfa [PRC Constitution], as amended on 11 March 2018, Art 1, available at <http://www.gov.cn/guoqing/2018-03/22/content_5276318.htm>.
19 Song (n 1) 249.
20 There are few English language sources on intraparty regulations. See Ewan Smith, ‘Party Norms and Constitutional Conventions’ (SSRN, 1 January 2017), available at <https://ssrn.com/abstract=2942770>; Yang Fan, ‘The Role of CPC Regulations in Chinese Judicial Decisions: An Empirical Study Based on Published Judgments’ (2019) 19(2) The China Review 69; Zhang Xiaojun, ‘The Historical Track of Internal Regulations of the Communist Party of China Ruled by Law’ (2019) 7 China Legal Science 3.
21 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, New York, 1976) 457; Ernst Fraenkel, The Dual State (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017) 3; Carl Schmitt, Dictatorship (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003) 117. For a contemporary discussion on Fraenkel and Schmitt in Chinese legal studies, see Fu Hualing, ‘Duality and China’s Struggle for Legal Autonomy’ (2019) 1 China Perspectives 3, 3.
22 Fraenkel (n 21) 3.
23 Pils, Eva, Human Rights in China: A Social Practice in the Shadows of Authoritarianism (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2018) 7Google Scholar.
24 For such preference within China, see for example Central Political and Legal Commission (n 2) 111; Office of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (n 2) 20–21; Song (n 1) 66. For such preference outside China, see for example Arendt (n 21) 457; Fraenkel (n 21) 3; Schmitt (n 21) 117.
25 Lubman, Stanley, Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China after Mao (Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA, 2002) 131Google Scholar; Peerenboom, Randall, China’s Long March Toward Rule of Law (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002) 23 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ringen, Stein, The Perfect Dictatorship: China in the 21st Century (Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2016) 84–85 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Zhang and Ginsburg (n 17).
26 Xi Jinping, The Governance of China (Foreign Language Press, Beijing, 2014) 405; ‘Four Forms of Decadence’, China.org.cn, 7 September 2015, available at <http://www.china.org.cn/english/china_key_words/2015-09/07/content_36528042.htm>.
27 Jing Yi, ‘Jianjue zhengzhi xingshi zhuyi, guanliao zhuyi’ [Resolutely Remedy Formalism and Bureaucratism], Qiushi, 30 September 2019, available at <http://www.qstheory.cn/wp/2018-09/30/c_1123509631.htm>.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Central Political and Legal Commission (n 2) 76.
31 Kennedy (n 4) 8634. As Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in his famous dissent in Lochner v. New York, ‘General propositions do not decide concrete cases.’ See Lochner v New York 198 US 45 (1905) 76. The majority opinion in this case did, however, allude to the social consequences of contractual freedom. Ibid. 57. For a self-consciously anti-formalist reading of the majority opinion, see Pound (n 6) 615–16.
32 Central Political and Legal Commission (n 2) 30–31.
33 Ibid. The legal realist and pragmatist arguments are elaborated in Office of Central Political and Legal Commission (n 2) 173–76.
35 Central Political and Legal Commission (n 2) 99.
36 Ibid 104–09.
37 Ibid 110.
38 Ibid 110. For a supportive discussion of the same arguments, see Office of Central Political and Legal Commission (n 2) 189–92.
39 Fan (n 2).
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 ‘Xu Xianming’ China Vitae, available at <http://www.chinavitae.com/biography/Xu_Xianming/full>.
44 Xu Xianming, ‘Gongchandang ji zai falü zhi zhong, ye zai falü zhi xia, hai zai falü zhi shang’ [The Communist Party is in the Middle of the Law, Under the Law, and Above the Law], China Digital Times, 16 April 2017, available at <https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2017/04>.
45 Ibid.
46 For the association of ‘legal formalism’ with socially out-of-touch foreign influences in twentieth-century Western legal thought, see Kennedy (n 10) 48–49; for an example, see Roscoe Pound, ‘The End of Law as Developed in Juristic Thought II’ (1917) 30 Harvard Law Review 201, 211.
47 Jiang Shigong, ‘How to Explore the Chinese Path to Constitutionalism? A Response to Larry Cata Backer’ (2014) 40 Modern China 196, 199.
48 Jiang Shigong, ‘Written and Unwritten Constitutions: A New Approach to the Study of Constitutional Government in China’ (2010) 36 Modern China 12, 38, 42
49 Ibid 26.
50 Zhu, Sending Law to the Countryside (n 2) 123.
51 Zhu, ‘The Party and the Courts’ (n 2) 58.
52 Ibid 66.
53 (n 18) Art 127.
54 Lu Hui, ‘China Focus: Supervision Law Gives Legal Teeth to China’s Graft-busting Agency’, Xinhua News Agency, 20 March 2018, available at <http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-03/20/c_137053224.htm>.
55 (n 23) 38; Sapio, Flora, Sovereign Power and the Law in China (Brill, Leiden, 2010) 102–05CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Lu (n 54).
57 Arendt (n 21) 457.
58 Fraenkel (n 21) 3.
59 Ibid.
60 Ibid 25.
61 Carl Schmitt, Constitutional Theory (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2008) 154. See also Preuß, Ulrich K, ‘Carl Schmitt and the Weimar Constitution’ in Meierhenrich, Jens and Simons, Oliver (eds), Oxford Handbook on Carl Schmitt (Oxford University Press, 2016) 471, 477Google Scholar.
62 Schmitt (n 21) 117.
63 Schmitt, Carl, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005) 30 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
64 Hannah Arendt, for instance, described the relations between a totalitarian party and the state (the site of formal legal processes) as maddeningly complex. Arendt (n 21) 395. According to one interpretation, Carl Schmitt ‘did not try to eliminate the norm in favour of exception but to elucidate the conditions of its emergence and of its possibility’. Kalyvas, Andreas, Democracy and the Politics of the Extraordinary: Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, and Hannah Arendt (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008) 95 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 Fraenkel (n 21) 27–28.
66 Weber (n 16) 223.
67 Ibid 223–24.
68 Ibid 63.
69 Weber, Max, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007) 152 Google Scholar.
70 Fraenkel (n 21) 206.
71 Shambaugh, David, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2008) 119 Google Scholar.
72 Central Political and Legal Commission (n 2) 64.
73 Mao Zedong, ‘The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War’, in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, available at <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_10.htm#p8>.
74 ‘Communiqué of the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of The Communist Party of China’, Beijing Review, 22 December 1978, 6, 16.
75 Sapio (n 55) 84–95.
77 For a definition of intraparty regulations, see Zhongguo Gongchandang dangnei fagui zhiding tiaoli [CCP Regulations on the Formulation of Intraparty Regulations], 27 May 2013 (revised on 30 August 2019), Art 2(1).
79 (n 77) Art 14, requiring, among other things, that intraparty regulations be clear and specific and within the scope of higher-level intraparty regulations.
80 Song (n 1) 26–27.
81 Ibid 52–57.
82 Ibid 249.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid.
85 Ibid.
86 Ibid 251.
87 Ibid 249.
88 Wang (n 1) 176.
89 Ibid 176–79.
90 (n 66) 63.
91 Zhang (n 20) 6.
93 Jiang Shigong, ‘Cong xingzheng fazhiguo dao zhengdang fazhiguo: Dangfa he guofa guanxi de falixue sikao’ [From an Executive Rule-of-Law State to the Party’s Rule-of-Law State: A Legal Theoretical Analysis of the Relationship Between Party Law and State Law], (2016) 11(3) Zhongguo Falü Pinglun 35, 41. See also Zhi Zhenfeng, ‘Dangnei fagui de zhengzhi luoji’ [The Political Logic of Intraparty Regulations] (2016) 11(3) Zhongguo Falü Pinglun 42, 46.
94 ‘Xi Jinping’s report at 19th CPC National Congress’ (n 2) 19.
95 Ibid.
96 (n 15) 170–71.
97 (n 77).
98 Ibid Art 31.
99 Ibid Art 33.
100 See, for example, Zhongguo Gongchandang dangyuan quanli baozhang tiaoli [CCP Regulations on the Protection of Party Members’ Rights], 25 October 2004, Art 37; (n 77) Art 34.
101 Wang Zhenmin notes the same in Wang (n 1) 191.
102 This article, written by two Wuhan University professors, discusses the relationship between state law and intraparty regulations. See Qin Qianhong and Su Shaolong, ‘Lun dangnei fagui yu guojia falü de xietiao xianjie’ [On the Linking and Coordination of the CPC’s Regulations and the National Laws] (2016) 10 Frontiers 50.
103 Guo Shuchen and Xu Junting, ‘Jian xi dangnei fagui jieshi de goujian yuanze yu fangfa’ [Brief Analysis on the Principles and Methods of the Interpretation of Intraparty Regulations] (2018) 20(1) Journal of the Party School of Leshan Municipal Committee of CPC 71; Liao Xiujian and Lei Haowei, ‘Wanshan Zhongguo Gongchandang dangnei fagui jieshi tixi’ [Perfecting the Interpretation System of CCP Intraparty Regulations] (2019) 4 Changbai Journal 80; Lü Pin, ‘Guanyu dangnei fagui jieshi zhidu jianshe de sikao’ [The Construction of an Interpretation System for Intraparty Regulations] (2019) 4 Theoretical Horizon 70; Sun Caihua, ‘Lun dangnei fagui jieshi de guifanhua’ [The Standardisation of the Interpretation of Intraparty Regulations] (2017) 172 Huxiang Forum 64; Tan Bo, ‘Lun dangnei fagui jieshiquan guishu ji qi fazhi wanshan’ [The Attribution of Interpretive Powers on Intraparty Regulations and Its Perfection Under the Rule of Law] (2018) 4 Jianghan Academic 76; Wang Fuyou, ‘Dangnei fagui zhidu jieshi tiaowen ruhe biaoshu’ [Explaining the Interpretation of Intraparty Regulations] (2018) 5 Office Administration 33.
104 Liao Xiujian and Lei Haowei (n 103) 85 (discussing the situation in May 2019). By way of comparison, as of 16 August 2019 the CNKI database included 85 articles with the words ‘intraparty regulation’ (dangnei fagui) and ‘law’ (falü) in their titles.
105 Yang Xiaoguang, Dangji chufen tiaoli shi’an jiedu [Interpreting the Party’s Disciplinary Regulation Cases] (Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 2008).
106 Ibid 5; Zhongguo Gongchandang jilü chufen tiaoli [CCP Disciplinary Regulations] 18 February 2004, Art 5. For the clause in revised regulations, see Zhongguo Gongchandang jilü chufen tiaoli [CCP Disciplinary Regulations], 1 October, 2018, Art 4.
107 (n 105) 5–6.
108 Ibid 5–6.
109 This is the case, for example, with the textbook’s section on a one-year promotion ban for the recipients of warnings. Ibid 13.
110 Ibid 19 (regarding state law); 125 (regarding intraparty regulations).
111 Wang (n 1) 191.
112 Ibid.
113 Ibid 192.
114 Zhongguo Gongchandang zhangcheng [CCP Constitution], 24 October 2017, Art 5.
115 Wang (n 1) 192.
116 Ibid 192.
117 Ibid 193.
118 Ibid 193.
119 In fact, Wang articulates more stringent rules for interpretation than, for example, Robert Alexy. See Alexy, Robert, A Theory of Legal Argumentation: The Theory of Rational Discourse as Theory of Legal Justification (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) 245–50Google Scholar.
120 Wang (n 1) 193.
121 Falixue: Makesi zhuyi lilun yanjiu he jianshe gongcheng zhongdian jiaocai [Jurisprudence: Key Teaching Materials on Marxist Theoretical Research and Construction] (Renmin chubanshe, Beijing, 2010) 178–79.
122 Ibid 181.
123 Ibid.
124 Ibid 181–82.
125 Zhang Wenxian, Falixue [Jurisprudence], 5th edn (Beijing daxue chubanshe, Beijing, 2018), 295–96.
126 Ibid.
127 Ibid 296.
128 Ibid 297.
129 For example, the above-mentioned six articles containing the terms ‘interpretation’ and ‘intraparty regulations’ in their titles (n 103) can be summarised as follows: Guo Shuchen and Xu Junting advocate various methods for the interpretation of intraparty regulations, including interpretation according to the principles of legality, rationality and purposefulness. The authors also contend that the interpretation of intraparty regulations may not expand or limit the meaning of a text. See Guo and Xu (n 103) 73–74. Liao Xiujian and Lei Haowei contend that the interpretation of intraparty regulations cannot be marked by rigid adherence to legislative intent alone. The authors also maintain that intraparty regulations should be applied through ordinary methods of legal interpretation, including textual interpretation and restrictive interpretation. See Liao and Lei (n 103) 81–82, 85. Lü Pin describes the interpretation of intraparty regulations as a hermeneutic process, acknowledging that some regulations are inevitably vague. At the same time, Lü argues that intraparty regulations must be made clearer and less ambiguous. See Lü (n 103) 71, 75. Sun Caihua calls for the standardization of Party organs’ powers to interpret intraparty regulations and criticises the fact that the CCP Constitution does not spell out which organ has the power to interpret it. See Sun (n 103) 67. Tan Bo is concerned about maintaining the jurisdictional hierarchies and the supremacy of state law in the interpretation of intraparty regulations. See Tan (n 103) 80. Wang Fuyou criticizes the fact that some Party organs do not adhere to the jurisdictional rules on interpretative powers when issuing intraparty regulations. See Wang (n 103) 33. As mentioned, above some Chinese scholars have advanced less formalist, even explicitly anti-formalist, arguments about intraparty regulations. See (n 93).
130 Fu (n 21) 7.
131 Zhang (n 20) 11.
132 Wang (n 1) 9–11.
133 Gallagher, Mary E, Authoritarian Legality in China: Law, Workers, and the State (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017), 30–31, 49 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
134 Interviews with seven Chinese legal scholars (Shanghai, May 2017; Beijing, June 2017; Shanghai, July 2017; Beijing, June 2018; Beijing, April 2019). All interviewees were promised anonymity.
135 (n 54).
136 Interview with a Chinese legal scholar (Beijing, June 2017).
137 See Jamie P. Horsley, ‘What’s So Controversial About China’s New Anti-Corruption Body?’ The Diplomat, 30 May 2018, available at <https://thediplomat.com/2018/05/whats-so-controversial-about-chinas-new-anti-corruption-body/>; Smith (n 20); Minxin Pei, ‘Rewriting the Rules of the Chinese Party-State: Xi’s Progress in Reinvigorating the CCP’ China Leadership Monitor, 1 June 2019, available at <https://www.prcleader.org/peiclm60>.
138 Mao Zedong, ‘On Contradiction’, Marxist Internet Archive, available at <https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm>.
139 For the argument that ‘the Party’ is ‘an organic whole’, whose ‘unified will’ determines the essential attributes of intraparty regulations (and, confusingly, vice versa), see Song (n 1) 39–41.
140 Song Gongde can again be relied upon to make these points. Ibid 7.
141 Among other things, CCP intraparty regulations prohibit the collection of evidence through threats, deception and coercion in the Party’s internal discipline inspection process. It is easy to imagine that Party cadres may be occasionally tempted to suspend such regulations. See further Samuli Seppänen, ‘Interrogating Illiberalism Through Chinese Communist Party Regulations’ (2019) 52 Cornell International Law Journal 267, 301–02. For over- and under-inclusive rules, see Schauer (n 3) 548.
142 (n 114) Art 3, 32.
143 Feng Lin, ‘The 2018 Constitutional Amendments: Significance and Impact on the Theories of Party-State Relationship in China’ (2019) 1 China Perspectives 11, 16; Horsley (n 137); Liu Songshan, ‘Quanli jiguan xingshi zhiquan zhong de dangnei fagui yu guojia falü’ [Intraparty Regulations and the Law in the Exercise of Authority by Organs of Power], (2016) 11(3) Zhongguo Falü Pinglun 28, 28–29; Pei (n 137).
144 Koskenniemi (n 8) 500.
145 Article 1 of the PRC Constitution (n 18) states that, ‘The People’s Republic of China is a socialist state under the people’s democratic dictatorship.’
146 Schmitt (n 21) 117. Lenin contended that in the dictatorship of the proletariat, ‘the people can suppress the exploiters [almost] without a special apparatus, by the simple organization of the armed people’. Vladimir Lenin, ‘The State and Revolution’, Lenin Internet Archive 1993, 1999, available at <https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev>.
148 Pei (n 137).
149 (n 114) Art 10(1).
151 Zhongguo Gongchandang zhongda shixiang qingshi baogao tiaoli [CCP Regulations on Seeking Instructions and Referring Significant Matters] 28 February 2019, Art 3, available at <http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2019-02/28/c_1124177187.htm>.
153 Liu (n 150) 29.