China Communist Party approves resolution to limit leadership power

The Communist Party approved a 17,000-word resolution during the fifth plenum of the 20th Central Committee last week.

Under this "last-to-speak" rule, department heads or top local officials are required to withhold their views until all other members of the leadership team have finished speaking. This practice was first formalised in 2015 regulations regarding the work of party leading groups.

The resolution specifies that party committee secretaries must not demand that the personal authority of principal leaders be upheld at every level. In 2017, President Xi Jinping issued a warning that lower-level officials should not claim authority similar to that granted to the central leadership.

Xi Jinping told provincial and ministerial-level officials that only the party Central Committee has authority and should be the benchmark, noting that the logic of upholding authority cannot be applied at every level.

These remarks were published in June as part of an official compendium titled "Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building".

In 2019, Ding Xuexiang, who was then a top aide to Xi, cautioned that the "two upholds" phrase for political loyalty applied strictly to Xi and the central leadership and could not be extended at will. The latest resolution reaffirmed that leadership team members have the right to report misconduct by principal leaders to higher party authorities.

Xie noted that because a city's anti-corruption chief, deputy party secretary, and deputy mayors sit on the same standing committee chaired by the party secretary, whistle-blowing or open dissent has historically resulted in career problems.

The plenum resolution sought to "pierce this administrative shield by creating direct, vertical reporting lines to higher authorities". Candidates for principal leadership roles will now be judged on their ability to uphold democratic centralism. The resolution also states that principal leaders will be a primary focus of corruption investigations.

A communique released on Thursday confirmed the party will hold its next national congress in Beijing during the second half of next year.