The Hidden Significance and Resilience of the Age-Limit Norm of the Chinese Communist Party

Ling Li | In this essay, I point out that the age-limit norm is misrepresented and misperceived in current analyses…

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Appeal of Strategic Ambiguity on Party Centre – Reading the Party Directive on the Operation of the Central Committee (Part I)

[social_warfare] It is easy to dismiss the value of any written rules laid down by the Party because the latter…

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Cultural Revolution, Again? What next approaching 2022?

A conversation between Carl Minzner and Ling Li   Carl Minzner and I discussed about what it might mean when…

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New political-legal rectification campaign 2020-2021

A new nation-wide rectification campaign targeting political-legal institutions, incl. courts, procuratorates, police, prisons, administrative body for lawyers… It’ll begin in…

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Rebranding of weiwen and rebirth of Zhou Yongkang’s stability maintenance committee 解析平安中国建设协调小组和中央综治委

The latest Ping’an China Small-Group re-erects the stability maintenance steering machine that had grown significantly under Zhou Yongkang but was…

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Why are heroes so important in narrative construction of public crises?

Yesterday, a reporter asked me: Why do state media and officials praise individuals for their heroic actions in a public…

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Xi Jinping’s Succession: What Did the West Get Wrong?

What would happen if Xi Jinping suddenly died, killed by assassination or incurable illness? Would such an unexpected departure of…

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Party Rules 101 – Are all Party Committees the same? Answer is NO.

Explaining Party rules gives me the strange gratification of feeling like a lawyer that I have never felt when dealing…

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Backstory of China’s Anticorruption Supervision Commission

When I wrote the paper The Rise of Party Commission of Discipline & Inspection (1927-2012) three years ago, I thought…

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