Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI)[note 1] is the highest supervisory organ of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCDI is under the control of the CCP Central Committee, per the principle of unified power. It is tasked with defending the party constitution, enforcing inner-party regulations, coordinating anti-corruption work, and safeguarding the core position of Xi Jinping in the CCP Central Committee and the party as a whole. Safeguarding the political position of Xi and the Central Committee is, officially, the CCDI's highest responsibility.[1] Since the vast majority of officials at all levels of government are also CCP members, the commission is, in practice, the top anti-corruption body in China.
Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
中国共产党中央纪律检查委员会
Supervisory organ
Deputy national level agency
National Congress
Five years
None
by 5th National Congress on 9 May 1927
9 May 1927
9–11 January 2023
19 members (20th)
133 members
88 members (20th)
45 members (19th)
The 20th National Congress on 22 October 2022
The 21st National Congress in 2027
中國共產黨中央紀律檢查委員會
中国共产党中央纪律检查委员会
China Communist Party Central Inspection Discipline Commission
Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng Zhōngyāng Jìlǜ Jiǎnchá Wěiyuánhuì
Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng Zhōngyāng Jìlǜ Jiǎnchá Wěiyuánhuì
中央紀委
中央纪委
Central Discipline-Commission
Zhōngyāng Jìwěi
Zhōngyāng Jìwěi
中紀委
中纪委
Central-Discipline-Commission
Zhōngjìwěi
Zhōngjìwěi
At its first plenary session after being elected by a CCP National Congress, the CCDI elect its secretary, deputy secretaries, secretary general and other Standing Committee members. The CCDI then reports the election results to the Central Committee, which can either approve or disapprove of the results. The CCDI Standing Committee is responsible for convening and presiding over plenary sessions of the CCDI. When the CCDI is not in session, its powers and responsibilities are delegated to the CCDI Standing Committee, which has to implement the decisions of the CCP Central Committee and the CCDI plenary sessions. It is held accountable to the CCDI plenary sessions. The secretary convenes, presides over the work and sets the agenda of the CCDI Standing Committee meetings. The current secretary is Li Xi, who was elected by the 1st Plenary Session of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and approved by the 20th Central Committee on 23 October 2022.
The modern commission was established at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978. Control systems had existed previously under the name "Central Control Commission" for a brief period in 1927 and again between 1955 and 1968, and under its present name from 1949 to 1955. It was disbanded during the Cultural Revolution in 1969. In 1993, the internal operations of the agency and the government's Ministry of Supervision (MOS) were merged. However, beginning with Hu Jintao's term as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2002, and especially following Xi Jinping's assumption of the party leadership in November 2012, the CCDI has undergone significant reforms to increase its autonomy.
History[edit]
Before the People's Republic[edit]
The idea of a control system was inspired by Vladimir Lenin in The State and Revolution. Lenin argued that every communist vanguard party, at all levels, needed a system to supervise party-official elections, dismissals, and performance. His writings led to the establishment of the Soviet Central Control Commission. The control system and the party structure were imported to China. The importance of discipline and supervision was emphasized since the CCP's founding. The 2nd National Congress amended the party constitution, devoting a chapter to party discipline. However, no institution was established to safeguard party norms or supervise cadre behavior. Until the establishment of the Central Control Commission (CCC) at the 5th National Congress in 1927, local party committees were responsible for supervising members.[2]
The 5th National Congress again amended the party constitution, adding a chapter on control commissions and their aims, but devoting little attention to their operations. Partly because of this, the control commissions actively participated in several party rectification campaigns during the late 1920s and early 1930s. At that time, the commissions tended to participate in political struggles, most notably the purges of Zhang Guotao and Wang Ming.[3]
The control system was reorganized as the Central Review Committee (1928–1933), the Central Party Affairs Committee (1933–1945), and the Central Control Commission (1945–1949). Despite these changes, the duties and responsibilities of the control bodies remained vague until the amendments to the party constitution at the 7th National Congress in 1945. Although it may be argued that the 1945 amendments did little to clarify the role of a control body, the party leadership expanded on the theoretical reasons for its existence. It was argued in the party constitution that the control system "was born to serve the needs of a Leninist party for its ideological and organizational consolidation. Such a role was reinforced in the Party's frequent campaigns against its real or perceived enemies in and out of the party organization."[4]
In 1949, the Central Committee established the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI).[5] It differed from its predecessors in several respects. It was responsible to the Politburo, and its local organizations were responsible for their corresponding party committees, despite the committees' authority to restrict their behavior. In reality, the CCDI was established to check all party organizations except the central leadership.[6]
Political history[edit]
During its early years, the CCDI was not a powerful institution.[7] Although it focused on abuses by party veterans and senior officials, the CCDI rarely appeared on record at that time as investigating (or solving) those problems.[8] The few mentions of CCDI inspectors in the press highlighted their failures.[9] Despite the support of Mao Zedong and the central party leadership, it was often unable to fulfill its mandate in the provinces.[9] According to a People's Daily editorial, party inspectors "gave up the struggle and proved themselves unable to persist in ... upholding the dignity of Party discipline when they encountered great obstacles."[9] Aware of Yan'an Rectification Movement successes and CCDI failures, the party leadership used mass mobilization and ideological campaigns to tackle party corruption during the 1950s.[9] In the wake of the Gao Gang–Rao Shushi affair, the CCDI was replaced by the CCC.[10]
Although the CCC became a powerful political force in the following years, at the 8th National Congress in 1956, its inspectors were warned about abusing their power and becoming independent of their local party committees.[11] Its power waned during the Great Leap Forward, but the CCC, the Secretariat, and the Organization Department became the chief weapons in the aftermath of the Great Leap to combat corruption and reverse verdicts on rightists.[12] The CCC played its new role until the Cultural Revolution, a socio-political movement which lasted from 1966 until 1976, when it was affected by purges (partly due to its close ties to Peng Zhen, one of the first highly ranked officials purged during the Cultural Revolution).[12] At the 9th National Congress in 1969, the CCC was abolished, removed from the party constitution, and replaced by special-case organizations (such as the Central Case Examination Group) formed under Mao and Kang Sheng.[12] Despite its abolition at the congress, little criticism was directed at the CCC during the Cultural Revolution;[13] although CCC Deputy Secretary Min Yifan was criticized by the Red Guards, a revolutionary youth movement independent of the party (but inspired by Mao) during the Cultural Revolution. Most of their disapproval focused on his career on local committees, rather than the CCC.[13] Talk of an internal party-control system would not resurface until the death of Mao and the arrest of the Gang of Four in 1976.[12]
The CCDI was reestablished at the 11th National Congress in 1977.[14] It had three goals: removing the social influence of the Gang of Four, implementing the leadership's cadre policy, and removing "despotic" local party secretaries, and reversing poor verdicts handed down during the Cultural Revolution.[15] Due to the power struggle between Deng Xiaoping and Hua Guofeng, the control system was not implemented in 1977–1978.[16] The 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978 formed a new control system under its 1949–1955 name, with responsibilities identical to those of the CCC before its abolition.[17] After the 3rd Plenary Session, the CCDI convened its 1st Plenary Session and elected Chen Yun as First Secretary,[18] Deng Yingchao as Second Secretary, Hu Yaobang as Third Secretary, and Huang Kecheng as Permanent Secretary.[19][20] However, the election of these people (and others) was purely symbolic; the new CCDI consisted generally of people who had never been involved in control affairs, and overwhelmingly of members considered too young to be taken seriously.[21] In its 1st Plenary Session, the CCDI stated three overarching goals: to "protect party members' rights", to enforce and safeguard the system of collective leadership "with the division of labor by the individual", and to generally oppose the over-concentration of power in one individual.[17] It would combat corrupt tendencies in the party and handle individual complaints.[17]
Duties and responsibilities[edit]
Inner-party supervision[edit]
The CCDI (and its local affiliates) enforces the inner-party supervision system.[82] Although the system's history dates back to the 1970s and 1980s, it was not formalized until the 2004 "Internal Supervision Regulation" (ISR).[83] The ISR reaffirmed the powers of the CCDI, institutionalized the central inspection teams, and clearly separated the party's decision-making institutions from its supervisory ones.[84] With the ISR, the CCP issued a list of member responsibilities subject to oversight by the CCDI and its local affiliates.[85] Member supervision was not new. However, information on what was supervised (and explanations for why things were under supervision) was novel.[85] Every party member is subject to supervision, but the ISR emphasizes that leaders would be its focus.[85] This was probably in reaction to the fact that no institutions, except the central party leadership (including the local CDIs), had the de facto ability to supervise lower-level party institutions.[85]
The ISR defines three forms of inner-party supervision: top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, and peer-to-peer.[86] Of the three, bottom-to-top is the least institutionalized[87] and was presented as the moral – but not institutional – responsibility of ordinary party members.[87] The mechanism for lodging complaints against higher-level party officials or proposing their dismissal was unspecified.[87] According to Ting Gong, the main problem is that if an ordinary party member lodges a complaint or accuses an official of corruption, "there is no guarantee that personal petitions will be accommodated or even processed as they are subject to further investigation and the approval of higher-level authorities".[87]
The top-to-bottom system requires party committees at higher levels to supervise lower-level committees.[88] According to the ISR, the central party leadership should regularly send central inspection teams to regions, state organizations, and state-owned enterprises.[86] The central inspection teams' structure was reformed by the ISR. Before it, they were ad hoc institutions in the fight against corruption.[87] The ISR introduced formal criteria for joining a central inspection team and empowered its investigative authority.[87]
Peer-to-peer supervision is defined as regular "democratic life meetings" and the duty of standing committees to report their work to the party committee to whom they are responsible.[89] The primary goal of peer-to-peer supervision is to strengthen party members' subjective responsibility by making them feel collectively responsible for the party as a whole.[82] This system is supervised by the party committee and the CDI at the next higher level.[82]
Jurisdiction[edit]
The jurisdiction of the party discipline inspection system mirrors that of the MOS, with the CCDI responsible for cases involving breaches of party discipline and state law by party members.[90] Like the MOS, the CCDI lacks judicial authority[90] and is limited to investigating allegations of corruption and breaches of party discipline.[90] Since the CCDI does not have the power to prosecute, it is supposed to transfer cases (after investigation) to the Supreme People's Procuratorate or the Supreme People's Court.[90] Despite this, its formal jurisdiction is loosely defined.[90] The CDI's ability to begin investigations and administer party sanctions has often led to the slow transfer (or sometimes no transfer) of cases to the Supreme People's Procuratorate.[91]
According to Graham Young, the CCDI's "responsibilities deal with four types of offences: [w]ork mistakes, [p]olitical mistakes, [l]ine mistakes, [and] [c]ounter-revolutionary actions".[92] Andrew Wederman wrote that by looking at the "offences based on annual reports by provincial DICs contained in provincial yearbooks", its responsibility includes 20 types of offences; "[a]rbitrary and dictatorial exercise of power, [a]narchism, [f]actionalism, [f]avouritism, [i]nsubordination, [h]eterodoxy (such as bourgeois spiritual pollution, leftism), [p]rivilege seeking, [n]epotism and use of Party authority to advance their families, friends and relatives, [b]ureaucratism, [a]dministrative inefficiency, [c]ommandism, [h]oarding, [p]etty corruption, [f]raud, [e]mbezzlement, [t]heft, [s]muggling, [b]ribery, [i]llegal acquisition of and dealing in foreign exchange, [and] [w]asting and squandering public funds".[92] According to Jeffrey Becker, "CDIC handbooks and regulations typically list six general types of mistakes (cuowu); political, economic, organisational, dereliction of one's duty, opposition to the party's socialist morals, and violations of integrity laws and regulations."[93] Although the CCDI overlaps the MOS, it has more responsibilities since it is obligated to prevent breaches of party rules, norms, and other non-criminal behaviour.[92] The party constitution vaguely defines the CCDI's jurisdiction:[94]
(in Chinese)
