Source: http://florasapio.blogspot.it/2015/10/
Timestamp: 2017-10-17 16:48:16
Document Index: 664402394

Matched Legal Cases: ['Art. 6', 'art. 1', 'art. 6', 'art. 18', 'art. 25', 'art. 26', 'art. 35', 'art. 36', 'art. 37', 'art. 38', 'art. 39', 'art. 40', 'art. 4']

Forgotten Archipelagoes: October 2015
Reading the CCP Notice on Diligently Studying and Implementing the Standards and the Regulations
In various European countries, different persons are using their own technique to read Chinese legal texts, so I thought I would share mine as I go on constructing it. This is an important endeavor: European sinologists and political scientists were perhaps the first ones who attempted to read and understand Chinese legal texts. Their techniques - as well as the ones used in Australia - however rest for the most part upon the tacit, and practical knowledge each interpreter has acquired over the years by trial and error. This knowledge should be made explicit: multitasking and information overflow (very few people still read the paper texts of legal documents) are changing the way we read, with the result that these techniques are slowly being lost.
In this post I will explain by simple questions and answers what I focus on when I read some legal texts, using the 'Notice on Diligently Studying and Implementing the CCP Standards on Integrity and Self-Restraint (original|translation) and the CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments' (original|partial translation) as an example. The full text of the Notice can be found here (Chinese).
What typology of document is this?
The Notice on Diligently Studying....as its title says is a Notice/通知. Notices/通知 are used either to disseminate documents, or to issue communications to Party or to state bureaucracies. The 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' were issued by a notice. The goal of the Notice on Diligently Studying...is not disseminating these texts, but explaining why and how the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' should be taught and studied, and making their study mandatory.
Is it a public document?
If it is not a public document, then you cannot read it...if it is a public document, then the next questions to ask are:
Which institution issued it?
The Notice was issued by the General Office:
The Central General Office is responsible for coordinating the enactment of Party laws and regulations; its agency for regulatory work is responsible for specific duties. (Art. 6, par. 2 Zhongfa [2012] no. 5 )
The Notice was published on the front page of the paper edition of the People's Daily, in a column:
....and on the landing page of the People's Daily website
and on the frontpage of the Procuratorial Daily, the People's Police Daily etc. The importance of any document is signaled by the media outlet where the document is published and by its positioning on a newspaper or internet website.
The timing when speeches, notices, regulations etc. are published can and does vary. Xi Jinping's speech on culture and the arts, for instance, was delivered on 15 October 2014 but, its full text was released on 15 October 2015, eleven days before the date of the Fifth Plenum. The 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' were issued on 18 October, and the Notice came out today - on the closing day of the Fifth Plenum.
Is an official translation available?
If an official translation is available, then an official translation should be used, and read alongside the Chinese text. Great care goes in producing the official translation of legal and political documents. The choice of words used to translate the equivalent Chinese characters can be taken to reflect how legal concepts and/or political concepts are (in part) understood by those who supervised the translators, and how they are meant to be understood by readers. The risk inherent in producing one's own translations of available documents (or improving available official translations) is pre-imposing our own understanding of legal or political concepts on the text. For instance, translating 宽严相济 as 'tempering justice with mercy' is a choice that produces definite effects on what the text will mean to U.S. trained lawyers. 'Balancing leniency and severity' may sound unfamiliar to the ears of a U.S. trained lawyer but, it has the advantage of being closer to at least some of the ideas the sight of 宽严相济 evokes. Not all of the ideas that come to one's mind whenever one sees 宽严相济 (or anything else) are legal concepts. It is possible that seeing the four ideograms will remind one of proverbs (成语 chengyu)， stories from the Chinese classics, episodes in Chinese history etc. All of these ideas can in turn shed light on the broader meaning of 宽严相济 in Chinese law because, they are part of the context where 宽严相济 was created and used.
Is this document as important as it seems?
To this question there are many possible answers. To some the Notice may be unimportant - the sky is high and the Emperor far away, therefore local Party organs may or may not abide by the Notice they would argue. Others may say that even though study sessions on the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' may be mandatory, those attending study sessions will pay more attention to their iPhones and iPads screens than to the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations'.
To me, the Notice is very important because it is one of the various explanatory texts that are being produced at the moment of writing. Some of these texts explain the genesis of the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations', while the Notice explains why and how they should be taught and studied.
Why, according to the CCP, the 'Regulations' and the 'Standards' should be taught and studied.
This point is illustrated by the opening sentence(s) of each one of the paragraphs of art. 1 of the Notice:
To take care of the affairs of China the focus must be placed on the Party. 'To rule the state one must first rule the Party', and 'the Party should be governed strictly'. [1]
Since the 18th Party Congress the Party with Comrade Xi Jinping as its General Secretary has upheld 'the Party should rule the Party and the Party should be ruled severely' (...) it has summarized the lessons of Zhou Yongkang, Bo Xilai, Xu Caihou, Ling Jihua, Guo Boxiong (...) the fruits of these experiences in severely ruling the Party have been summarized and turned into moral and disciplinary requirements (...) [2]
Natural requirements of 'Comprehensively severely ruling the Party' are 'combining ruling the Party according to regulations and ruling the Party according to virtue/morality' (de 德) [3]
In documents as this one, the opening sentence of each paragraph is the most important one, because it sets forth the premises, which are then elaborated by the rest of each paragraph, that should guide the correct use of the 'Standards' and 'Regulations'. I will explain how I read sentences as 'To rule the state one must first rule the Party', and 'the Party should be governed strictly' in a later post.
How the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' should be taught and studied, and by whom.
The 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' should be taught by the Party Committee Core Groups, by Party schools, by schools of public administrations and by cadre training institutes in 2016 and 2017. The 'Notice' does not specify which method should be used to study or teach these documents.
Study and teaching are necessary to understand the real significance of the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations'. The significance is illustrated by the Notice as follows: 1) the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' add greater specificity to the rules set by the Party statute. 2) Political discipline is the most important kind of discipline, on grounds that state capacity and legitimacy derive from the ability to maintain political discipline. 3) Party members must be held to a higher standard of behavior than persons not affiliated to the Party.
These three points are meant to guide, to frame how the 'Standards' and the 'Regulations' are to be understood, and in turn used.
Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments: Violations of the personality of the Party - Chapter 6
This post outlines the content of Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of the General Part, Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment, and then comments on Chapter 6 – Violations of Political Discipline.
CCP Standards on Integrity and Self-Restraint
CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments - Chapter 1
CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments: Chapter 2. Sources of intra-Party law
As I wrote last week, the Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments play, in the economy of intra-Party legislation, the same role the Criminal Law of the PRC plays in the state's legal system. The structure of the Regulations closely mirrors the structure of the Criminal law.
Chapter 1 of the Regulations lists their goals and principles, Chapter 2 specifies the concept of “disciplinary responsibility” (art. 6), and describes disciplinary punishments for Party members and Party organizations. Chapter 3 contains rules on:
- mitigating and aggravating circumstances (articles 16, 17, 19, 20)
- sentencing (articles 20, 21, 22)
- exemption from disciplinary punishment (art. 18)
- unified punishment for multiple violations of discipline (articles 23, 24)
- joint violations of discipline and instigation to violate discipline (art. 25)
- negligent violations of discipline (art. 26)
Chapter 4 contains rules on:
- the mandatory punishment of disciplinary violations (articles 27, 28, 29)
- deprivation of active and passive voting rights (31)
- the mandatory transfer of cases to judicial organs (30)
- the relationship between disciplinary punishment and criminal punishment (articles 32, 33, 34)
Chapter 5 lists miscellaneous rules on disciplinary violations by prospective Party members (art. 35), by Party members who have gone into hiding (art. 36), and by deceased Party members (art. 37). It defines vicarious liability (art. 38), voluntary confession (art. 39), direct economic loss (art. 40) etc.
The General Part of the Regulation has attracted less attention than the Special Part (Chapters 6 – 10). The Western press has commented on the decision to punish conducts as “forming cliques” (Quartz), "extravagant eating and drinking" (Reuters), and "holding golf club membership" (BBC) in slightly sarcastic ways. Perplexity has been expressed by Weibo and Weixin users, too. There is, however, nothing sarcastic about the rationale behind the decision to prohibit the formation of "cliques" (as distinct from legitimate CSOs), the propaganda of capitalist liberalization, etc.
Continental criminal codes list conducts that constitute crimes against the personality of the State in the first chapter of the special part. The choice as to how to organize some European criminal codes reflects the ideas that prevailed at the time when codes were drafted.
The CCP was established at a different time and in a completely different context. The choice to open the special part of the Regulations with a chapter on violations of political discipline is consistent with the role the CCP plays in China's political system. As Zhang Hui (deputy secretary of the CCDI) stated earlier today to the press: "political discipline is the most important and most fundamental discipline".
But...what is political discipline? In my understanding, political discipline includes all the rules of conduct necessary to protect the personality of the Party.
The point of the personality of the Party is still very much debated by Western scholars of Chinese law. The general consensus, a consensus that dates back to the late 1980s, is that under the law of the PRC the Party has no legal personality. I will not go into the legal technicalities of this argument. Under this argument, if under PRC law legal personality is acquired when a group of natural persons creates and successfully registers an organization, and if the CCP never registered as a social organization, then the CCP has no legal personality under PRC law.
This argument misses a key distinction between the CCP and CSOs. The CCP was established to reach an openly acknowledged goal: changing the pre-1949 political order, and creating a new social, moral, and political system. The CCP is a membership-based, political organization that pursues a revolutionary goal. CSOs may be membership-based organizations but, they do not pursue a revolutionary goal in the same sense as the CCP did between 1921 and 1949.
The concept of political personality may be more useful to understand the reason why conducts as "using the internet to oppose the opening up and reform policy" violate Party discipline.
But, again...what is the political personality of the Party? The political personality of the CCP is given by the motivations, values, and behavioral tendencies that prevail among the members of the CCP. Chapter 6 of the Regulations has the goal to avoid that Party members deviate from the promise they have made to do or not to do something, and to believe or not to believe in certain values in political morality, and to act upon them.
The promise a person makes when he or she decides to join the Party is not limited to maintaining a generic belief in the worldview and values presumably shared by the majority of Party members. The worldview protected by Chapter 6 possesses different sides and different facets, and therefore it is expressed in various ways. The ways in which this worldview is expressed and acted upon depend on the contexts where political activities occur. Political activities are understood broadly, as involving the day-to-day operations of Party organizations (organizational discipline); the professional conduct of individual Party members (integrity); the impact Party members have on society (mass discipline); their work performance (work discipline), and finally the way in which Party members live their lives after work (life discipline).
Chapter 2 - Sources of CCP Law. CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments
Previous posts on the same topics:
Comment: CCP Standards on Integrity and Self-Restraint
Comment: Chapter 1 - CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments
As requested by Susan Finder (Hong Kong University), I am further commenting upon the CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments. This post examines Chapter 2 of the Regulations - violations of discipline and disciplinary punishments.
Chapter 2 (articles 6 - 15) lists and describes each one of the seven disciplinary punishments. These are punishments for natural persons (members of the Chinese Communist Party), and punishments for legal persons (Party organizations). Punishments for natural persons are:
(1) a warning (article 9)
(2) a serious warning (article 9)
(3) removal from Party posts (article 10)
(4) probation (article 11, article 13 for delegates to Party congresses)
(5) expulsion (article 12, article 13 for delegates to Party congresses)
while punishments for legal persons are:
(1) reorganization (article 14)
(2) dissolution (article 15)
Compared to the 1997 and to the 2004 regulations, Chapter 2 has not undergone significant changes. A new article has been inserted:
Article 13. Where delegates to Party congresses at any level receive a punishment higher than probation (probation included), the Party organization shall terminate their qualification as delegates (daibiao zige).
Article 13 is based on the CCP Trial Regulations on Electing Basic Organizations (here - in Chinese), and it is modeled after article 25 paragraph 1, CCP Trial Regulations on the Terms of Office of Delegates to the National and Local Party Congresses (here - in Chinese).
Text of the Party Oath
Disciplinary measures (jilv chuli 纪律处理), or alternatively disciplinary punishments (jilv chufen 纪律处分) are applicable only when a violation of binding rules occurs. Article 6 specifies that binding rules are posed by:
(1) the Party Statute
(2) other intra-Party rules (dangnei fagui 党内法规)
(4) Policies of the Party and the State
(5) Socialist Morality
(6) The interest of the Party, the interest of the State and the People
We already know from the Regulations on intra-party rules that the Party statute is the "cornerstone and basis on which other Party laws and regulations are enacted" (article 2). Differently from the Legislation Law, neither the Party Statute nor the Regulations on intra-party rules introduce a hierarchy of sources of law. Article 6 indirectly specifies what is a source of law - in China and for Party members, listing several sources of law, one by one and in order of importance.
Some of these are sources of the rules of intra-Party law, others give life to the rules of state law. Binding rules are posed also by policies (zhengce 政策), by morality (daode 道德), and by interest (liyi 利益). Policies, morality and interest are not generic and undetermined concepts - they are qualified as policies of the Party and the state, as socialist morality, and as the interest expressed by the Party first, and then by the State-and-people. Every organization has a set of written and unwritten rules, and the Chinese Communist Party is no exception. Rules posed by policy, socialist morality as well as those posed by interest may be written or unwritten. In the case of unwritten rules, they may be explicit - that is openly acknowledged by Party organizations, or implicit and unspoken. Regardless of the form moral rules and interest may take, the role of morality as a source of law as been acknowledged, in various and different ways, by Western and Chinese authors as a feature of Chinese law. An understanding of morality as a source of law, and the use of morality as a source of law is necessary to drive social forces towards a specific direction (see paragraph 16, Party Statute).
Very similar considerations can be made in the case of interest. Article 6 of the Regulations is peculiar, as it does not refer to the interest of the people using the formulation - "interest of the Party and the People" (dang he renminde liyi 党和人民的利益) but, separates the interest of the Party-and-the-state from the interest of the people. Notice the use of the half comma and the conjunction "he":
第六条 党组织和党员违反党章和其他党内法规， (....)、危害党、国家和人民利益的行为, 依照规定应当给予纪律处理或者处分的，都必须受到追究
The claim, made by mainland Chinese media, that the Regulations have introduced a separation between Party law and State legislation is a claim that should be taken at face value.
A further question posed by article 6 is the question of where does the force of law come from. The binding force of Party rules, policies, morality and interest derives from a person's decision to bind himself or herself to the Party.
As I have explained here, the choice to bind oneself in a "contract" with the Party is a voluntary choice, made by swearing an oath in front of the Party flag. The making of such a choice, as the making of any choice to bind oneself to a person, a group or an organization, produces rights and duties for both parties. Obligations (as well as rights) are generally known to prospective Party members, as the Party statute specifies what is expected from those who decide to join the Party.
These specifications are as follows:
Article 3. Party members must fulfill the following duties:(...)2) To implement the Party's basic line, principles and policies (...)
CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment. Comment.
The CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment was the second CCP regulatory document amended last week, on October 12, together with the CCP Standards on Integrity and Self-Restraint. I need not elaborate on the importance of the Regulations. The Regulation are to the Party legislative system what the Criminal Law of the PRC is to state law.
The amendment to the Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment was planned since 2013, when Chapter 6 of the intra-party legislative plan eloquently spoke of "perfecting Party rules and regulations on anti-corruption and earnestly placing power within a cage of regulations" (paragraph 4) explaining how the circumstances of disciplinary violations, the sentencing standards and the definition of disciplinary violations were among the weak points of the 2004 Regulations. The amendment has remedied these and other deficiencies. Most importantly, it has introduced new concepts and principles in Party legislation, systematized them, or specified the meaning of existing concepts and principles. Most of these principles and concepts are contained in the first chapter of the Regulations.
In the rest of this post therefore I will attempt to read the first chapter of the 2015 Regulations against its 1997 and 2004 versions.
The present Regulations have been enacted on the basis of the Statute of the Chinese Communist Party, to safeguard the Party statute, make Party discipline stern, purify Party organizations, protect the democratic rights of Party members, educate Party members in the respect of discipline and in the observance of the law, safeguard the unity of the Party, guarantee the implementation of the Party's basic line, its direction, policies, resolutions and laws and regulations of the State.
Article 1 lists one by one the principles behind the 2014 Regulations. First, there is the requirement of consistency between the broader goals and principles of Party discipline set by the Party statute and other intra-party regulations, and those of the Regulations. Then, the reasons why the principles were enacted are listed. Article 1 is closely similar to article 2 of the 2004 Regulations. The 2004 Regulations posed no requirements about consistency. They spoke of "tasks" (renwu 任务) to be achieved - not by Party members, but by the Regulations themselves: "本条例的任务， 是... (the tasks of the present Regulations are)". Whereas now "safeguarding the Party statute" etc. are no longer qualified as tasks or purposes (mudi 目的), but may be the reasons behind the proscription of certain conducts.
The present Regulations take Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping theory, the important thought of the Three Represents, the scientific outlook on development as their guide, and deepen the implementation of the spirit of the series of important speeches of General Secretary Xi Jinping, and carry out the strategic deployment of comprehensively strictly ruling the Party.
Article 2 references the Party Statute (paragraph 2), with the significant difference that Xi Jinping's important speeches and the so-called "third comprehensive" are mentioned immediately after Hu Jintao's Scientific Outlook on Development. Jiang Zemin's Three Represents were not named in the 1997 Regulations, for the obvious reason that this political theory was created in 2000. But, they were part of the ideological basis behind the 2004 Regulations. Article 1 recited "The CCP Regulations on disciplinary punishment take Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought (...) and the important thought of the Three Represents as their guide." In 2004 the Three Represents had already been official acknowledged as a part of CCP ideology.
The Party Statute is the most basic intra-party regulation, it is the established standard whereby the Party governs the Party. Party discipline is the rule of conduct that must be respected by Party organizations at every level and by the entire body of Party members. Party organizations and Party members must voluntarily abide by the Party statute, strictly implement and safeguard Party discipline, voluntarily accept the constraints posed by Party discipline, and abide by the laws and regulations of the State in an exemplary way.
Article 3 specifies the place the Regulations occupy in the CCP regulatory system relative to the primary source of intra-party legislation - the CCP Statute; specifies what Party discipline is; introduces four requirements (必须 bixu) for natural persons who have sworn an oath to the Party, and for legal persons (Party organizations). Neither the four requirements nor the statement that the Party statute is the primary source of intra-party legislation are new. Both of them were more or less absent from the 1997 and 2004 Regulations, but their absence can be explained by the lesser focus that, until very recently, was placed on legal reform within the Party. The definition of Party discipline is the same as the one contained in article 37 of the Party statute. The Statute does not go beyond defining Party discipline as "the rule of conduct (...)". The 2014 Regulations instead conceptualize Party discipline as composed by six interrelated and interdependent aspects of the activities of legal and natural persons:
(1) political discipline;
(2) organizational discipline;
(3) integrity (廉洁纪律);
(4) mass discipline;
(5) work discipline;
(6) life discipline.
This conceptualization of Party discipline is different from the one adopted by Party commentators, and which does not include mass discipline, work discipline and life discipline. The 1997 Regulations did not refer to party discipline but to "errors" (错误 cuowu), whereas the 2004 Regulations divided party discipline in political discipline, organizational and personnel discipline, and self-restraint and self-discipline.
The Party's work of disciplinary punishment shall uphold the following principles:
(1) the Party must govern the Party, and the Party must be strictly governed. Strengthen the education, management and supervision of Party organizations at every level and of the entire body of Party members; place discipline at the first place; pay attention to catching them at an early stage and catch the small ones.
(2) All are equal before Party discipline. Severity must be used on Party organizations and Party members who contravene Party discipline, discipline shall be enforced fairly; the Party does not allow Party organizations and Party members not to accept the constraints posed by Party discipline.
(3) Seek truth from facts. Where a Party organization or a Party member keeps a conduct that contravenes Party discipline, the nature of their violation of discipline shall be determined in accordance with the facts as the basis, and the Party Constitution and other intra-Party regulations and the State law and regulations as the criterion, by distinguishing between different circumstances, and giving an appropriate punishment.
(4) Democratic centralism. Party discipline punishment shall be decided after a collective discussion by the Party organization, according to statutory procedure. Individuals and a minority (of Party members) are not allowed to arbitrarily make and approve decisions. Lower-level Party organizations must enforce the decision that higher-level Party organizations have made on Party organizations or Party members who have contravened discipline.
(5) Learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones, cure the sickness to save the patient. Combining punishment and education shall be practiced in dealing with Party organizations and Party members who have contravened discipline, to achieve "tempering leniency and severity".
Article 4 states the five principles that should inform and shape Party discipline. The point of whether the five 原则 listed under article 5 are political-legal principles (or legal principles, or political principles, or principles tout court), in a Western sense, is still unsettled. At least, according to those who drafted the 2015 Regulations, "the Party must govern the Party", "All are equal before Party discipline" etc. are the five driving forces that ought to determine how the Regulations are understood and enforced. The principles of Party discipline were listed in chapter 2 of the 1997 Regulations. The 2004 Regulations mentioned "all are equal", "seek truth from facts", "uphold democratic centralism", "learn from past mistakes...", "the Party must govern the Party" under articles 4, 5, 6, and 7.
What Party discipline principles are, and what they mean to those who use them are entirely different questions. To these questions there are at least five possible answers:
(1) Skeptics would construct arguments to prove that the wording of article 4, despite all the work that must have gone into drafting the amendments, soliciting comments, reading the written comments sent by provincial party units, redrafting the Regulations and finally achieving a consensus on the final formulation of this and other articles, is meaningless.
(2) Philologists, linguists, historians and political scientists would point out the strong similarities in language between the 2014 Regulations, Xi Jinping's speeches, and certain speeches of Mao Zedong, using Mao's works as textual evidence of a direct ideological continuity between Mao Zedong and Xi Jinping. This interpretation would however be unable to account for the changes Party ideology has undergone over time.
(3) Realists would notice how Party theorists are still at work to achieve a consensus on what each one of those principles really means. Therefore, they would express caution as to what these and other similar formulations mean. Else, they would reason by analogy: if "the sky is high and the Emperor is far away", or if "the higher ups have policies, while the lower downs have their own ways of getting around them" are true, then it is also true (or at least possible) that local Party organizations may distort the intended meaning of Party discipline principles, regardless of what this meaning may be.
(4) Lawyers would approach the questions of (1) what principles of Party discipline are and (2) what they mean to those who use them using definitions, analytical concepts and methodologies that belong to their legal system. The choice to use any of these definitions, analytic concepts and methodologies, however, would pose the the inherent risk of conceptual misalignment.
Chinese Communist Party Standards on Integrity and Self-Restraint - comment.
The Chinese Communist Party Standards on Integrity and Self Restraint (the Standards - here, in Chinese) were adopted by the CCP Central Committee on October 12, together with the CCP Regulations on Disciplinary Punishments (here, in Chinese). This post offers a short and very simple commentary on the Standards.
Together with the Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment, the Standards are one of the most important pieces of Party legislation. The Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment define certain conducts as violations of Party discipline and specify the punishment associated with each one of them. The Standards, as they were enacted in 1997 (here - Chinese) and amended in February 2010 (here - in Chinese), aimed at "regulating the honest performance of official duties" (规范廉政从政行为).
As I have explained elsewhere, the Standards did more than specify a set of principles of conducts Party cadres should have followed: they proscribed a broad range of behaviors. Most of the behaviors proscribed by the Standards however duplicated conducts defined as criminal offenses by the Criminal Law of the PRC. The overlaps between Party legislation and the Criminal Law were among the factors that allowed a considerable discretion in the punishment of erring cadres. Overlaps were not entirely inconsistent with the rules on inner-Party law making, as these rules were effective until recently. Between 1990 and 2012, intra-Party rule making was regulated by the CCP Regulations on the procedure to enact intra-Party rules (for trial implementation). This document did not pose any requirements about consistency between Party rules and regulations and the state law.
Things changed in 2012, when article 7 of the CCP Regulations on Enacting Party Rules and Regulations specified the principles that should guide intra-Party rule making. These are:
(1) starting from the developmental needs of the cause of the Party and from the realities of Party building;
(2) implementing the Party's theory and line, principles and policies taking the Party Statute os the fundamental basis;
(3) complying with provisions that the Party must conduct its activities within the scope of the [State] Constitution and the law;
(4) meeting the needs of scientific governance, democratic governance, governance on the basis of the law;
(5) advancing the institutionalization, regulatization, proceduralization of Party construction;
(6) upholding democratic centralism, give full play to inner-Party democracy, safeguard the unity of the Party;
(7) safeguarding the unity and authoritativeness of the system of Party laws and regulations;
(8) privileging ease of use and avoid complexity and redundancies
Conflicts and overlaps between the Standards and the Criminal Law violated principles (3) and (8). The 2015 amendment to the Standards has solved most of these problems by reducing the number of provisions from eighteen to eight, and introducing fundamental changes in their substantive content.
"Standards", the 2012 Regulations on Party rules say, are a category of Party rules that "make basic provisions on the political life of the Party, its organizational life, and the conduct of Party members." (art. 4). Besides,"perfecting the construction of a system of morality for Party members and cadres" is among the goals of the current intra-Party legislative plan (section 3, paragraph 3).
The Standards look closer to a code of ethics for Party members and Party cadres, than to any other piece of legislation on Party discipline. Adherence to the ethical standards set for members of the CCP after all is a fundamental component of what the 2012 Regulations call "political life". Given the requirements of "political life" and the opportunities for unethical behavior are in part determined by the rank a cadres occupies, the Standards are divided in two sections:
- regulating Party members' integrity and self-discipline
- regulating leading cadres' integrity and self-discipline
Each one of the two sections poses four behavioral prescriptions, which are expressed using political rather than legal language: "uphold the distinction between public and private; the public comes first, the private comes next; sacrificing yourself for the public", or "use power with integrity; protect the fundamental interest of the people" and so on.
One should not be tempted to dismiss the Standards as a mere exercise in political rhetoric. Together with the amended version of the Regulations on Disciplinary Punishment, as well as other legislative and regulatory documents, they have given legal form to Xi Jinping's theory of the "Four Comprehensives". Even though the short preamble to the Standards does not reference the Four Comprehensives, the Notice with which both the Standards and the Regulations were issued makes it clear that the two regulations embody "comprehensively strictly governing the Party" and introduce a partially new and different set of ethical and behavioral standards.
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