Party reform plan; Central Social Work Department 中央社会工作部; Qin Gang speaks with Ukraine FM; TikTok

The Party continues to swallow the state.

The plan on reforming Party and state institutions came out Thursday, and it is very meaningful. In the best case scenario this should give Xi and Party Center much better control throughout key parts of the system, to improve policy coordination and implementation, and perhaps in the financial sector better prevent and control risks.

There is still a lot we do not know, and at least one new institution, what the abridged Xinhua English report calls the “social work department of the CPC Central Committee” but which shares a similar name in Chinese - 中央社会工作部 - as the original Central Social Affairs Department - 中共中央社会部 - founded in 1936 and first headed by Kang Sheng, could function as an additional system of control down into the grassroots. And as you will see from the translation and additional commentary in item 4 below, its mandate may not inspire confidence in the private sector, or in other sectors given the echoes of the early days of Mao’s rule.

As expected there is a new Central Committee for the Science and Technology 中央科技委员会. One of its explicit mandates per the readout is to “coordinate and promote the development of civil-military integration in science and technology”, which will further raise concerns in the US and some other countries about science and technology collaborations with and exports to the PRC.

Here are the new Party bodies:

• Central Financial Commission 中央金融委员会

• Central Financial Work Committee 中央金融工作委员会

• Central Commission for Science and Technology 中央科技委员会

• Social Work Department of the CPC Central Committee 中央社会工作部

• Central Office for Hong Kong and Macao Affairs 中央港澳工作办公室

We do not yet know who will be in charge of each of these new bodies, or how they will be staffed. The document states that “the central level of the reform task will strive to be completed by the end of 2023, and the local level of the reform task will strive to be completed by the end of 2024”.

I have created a lightly edited machine-language translation of the announcement and posted it here on Google Docs, and it is open for comments to improve it.

Summary of the Essential Eight:

1. Reform Plan

2. The financial system reforms - The Central Financial Work Committee sounds like it will make life in the financial system even less fun and remunerative, especially as the CCDI has said crackdown on corruption in the financial system is one of its 2023 priorities.

3. Central Commission for Science and Technology

4. Social work department of the CPC Central Committee - It is almost like it will be an entirely new system to reach down into the grassroots, outside of the existing bureaucracies, including the Ministries pf {Public Security and State Security.

5. Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office now under the Central Committee

6. Qin Gang speaks with Ukraine FM - Foreign Minister Qin Gang spoke with Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. Perhaps this was a setup call for the possible Xi-Zelensky future call, but that was not mentioned.

7. US wants Bytedance to divest TikTok stake - The Wall Street Journal broke the story that CFIUS that TikTok’s PRC owners sell their stakes or the US will ban the app. Several other outlets then confirmed the WSJ’s scoop. It is not clear that divesting those stakes would solve the technical security concerns, nor is it clear who would be in the market to spend $20+ Billion buying those shares. There is a new report for an Australian Senate committee by John Garnaut and others that will not help Bytedance'/TikTok’s case.

8. CAC white paper - China's Law-Based Cyberspace Governance in the New Era

Thanks for reading, and feel free in on the reform plan in the chat I started earlier today:

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