China 2018: Bringing the Party Back into State Institutions

This article attempts to explain how and why the year 2018 represented a major turning point for Chinese domestic politics, characterized by the transition from a collective authoritarianism to a centralized, repressive and personalistic authoritarian leadership. It analyses the institutionalization and systematic legalization of the centralized Communist party’s authority in the political, economic and social sphere. For this purpose, the article contains a description of the major 2018 institutional reforms, through which the Chinese leadership rebuilt its centralized authoritarianism into state and social institutions. Much attention has been devoted to the establishment of party and state supervisory commissions, the establishment of «super ministers», the reinforcement of political Marxist education, and the subordination of judicial power to the party’s will. Furthermore, the paper argues that one of the main reasons behind the creation of this repressive and authoritarian stance was the emergence of multiple sources of social and political instability. The final part of the article focuses on the beginnings of an embryonic alliance between workers and students and on the increase of nationwide strikes.