The Leadership of the CCP: From the Preamble to the Main Body of the Constitution—What Are Its Consequences for the Chinese Socialist Rule of Law?

Abstract

In the latest amendment of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was reincorporated into the main body of the Constitution. This reincorporation constitutionally overarches a series of institutional reforms concerning the Party and state organs in 2018. In the analytical framework of the Party–state separation, this article aims to reveal the transformation of the Party–state relationship behind the positional alteration of the leadership of the CCP in the constitutional text and to indicate its possible consequences for the Chinese socialist rule of law.