Ruling China: The Politics and Institutions of the Communist Party Congress

This research, undertaken by China Chair, Guoguang Wu, proposes to examine how the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (referred to as the ‘Party Congress’ hereafter), works as an institution to rule China. The Party Congress is nominally the highest decision-making body of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the single ruling party of China since 1949. It is the formal, and sole, institutional mechanism through which the CCP Central Committee and Politburo are elected. It also makes party constitutions, which the state constitutions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) always follow. In short, the Party Congress makes the rules for Chinese politics and choses rulers of China.

In the English, and even in the Chinese world, however, so far there has been no single book-length treatment of this significant political institution. The justification for this academic lapse should be apparent: 

1. The Party Congress’s power to rule China is conventionally understood as nominal, rather than substantial.
2. The research materials about it are not easy to get, as it often operates behind closed doors.

To produce the first book on the Party Congress, this project will develop its research by challenging both of the above justifications.

The contribution of this project will be three-fold: 1) empirically, its investigation will for the first time expose the details of Chinese political mechanisms through Party Congress operation to the English world; 2) conceptually, it will enrich human knowledge on the interplay of political entrepreneurship and institutional evolution; 3) practically, both above achievements are significant for the outside world to deepen the understanding of China, a rising economic and diplomatic power on the world stage. To Canada in particular, China is already the second largest trade partner, and the bilateral relationship has recently been upgraded to ‘strategic partnership.’ This project is important to Canadian interests in Asia and China, which to a great extent depends on how the Chinese regime works, how China changes, and how much we know about and understand it.