Towards a command civil society? China’s Xi-Era rules on social organising

The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule system, the state’s legal and regulatory systems, and social norms and customs all contribute to shaping policy systems in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). So too does the interplay between them. Yet the commonplace state–society analytical lens obfuscates the distinct relationships between the Party and its state and society—a weakness notable in analysis of the institutional environment for social organizing. This paper posits that in a single-party system, the ruling party may have a role distinct to that of its state. It adopts a historically informed ‘multi-rule-systems’ approach to examine changes and continuities in the PRC’s institutional environment for social organizing under Xi Jinping as compared with the first thirty years of ‘reform and opening.’ It argues that the CCP is attempting to develop a command civil society: seeking to suck away space for organizing outside of planning and regulation; and to build a social organizational infrastructure that works reliably in the service of Party preferences. In attempting to do so, the Party is heavily reliant on its state, hence, to capture the ‘full’ picture requires attention to the interplay between multiple rules systems.