Xi’s Leninist Selectocracy has Cemented Party Dictatorship
Executive Summary:
- General Secretary Xi Jinping’s reforms to the nomenklatura system has built a selectocracy that is best understood as a realignment with Leninist party-building norms after experiments with more democratic bottom-up mechanisms under Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao. Such changes are intended to strengthen the Party as a whole, not just Xi’s own power.
- Notable Xi-era reforms, such as eliminating the use of straw polls for cadre selection, simply reverted changed made under Hu Jintao. Those initiatives, which allowed for limited lower-level political engagement, were seen as incompatible with the Party’s top-down governance system.
- As chair of the leading small group (LSG) for cadre selection, Xi can personally enforce Party loyalty and incorruptibility in the promotion process. His personal involvement also helps to counter factionalism and the emergence of alternative power structures, thus preserving the centrality and long-term survivability of the Party.
- A cadre selection LSG for the 21st National Party Congress is likely already established, populated by personnel from the Central Organization Department and the Central Secretariat, and will likely follow the procedures used for the last congress in 2022.
On June 15, Politburo Standing Committee members Cai Qi (蔡奇) and Li Xi (李希) chaired a National Conference on Party Building in Beijing (People’s Daily, June 15). The conference codified Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building (习近平党建思想) as Party doctrine. [1] This was the first time a leader’s Party building policies have been venerated in this way, which indicates a general acceptance within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s reforms in the key area of Party work (Lianhe Zaobao, June 17). Despite its apparently norm-breaking appearance, Xi’s leadership often has been one in which deviation from previous Party practice has occurred within a broader continuation of policies championed by his predecessors.
Analysis of the cadre selection process for the quinquennial National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—the highest leading Party body alongside the Central Committee, which the congress elects—shows that most pre-existing practices either have remained in place or have been only slightly modified under Xi. Analyzing this particular process is significant as the nomenklatura system, which refers to the power to appoint officials, is the most important tool the Party leadership has for controlling positions in the Party-state (Xinhua, October 26, 2022). Understanding changes to its implementation thus provides key insights into the nature of the regime. Xi’s Party-building reforms, which have strengthened the Party overall rather than just his own power, are in line with this general approach.
Hu Jintao’s Flirtation with ‘Democracy’
The selection process applied in the run-up to the last two Party congresses (the 19th and 20th) shares certain similarities with the process followed under General Secretary Hu Jintao. Where Xi has made changes, they have seen a reversion to Leninist principles following a brief experimentation with more democratic mechanisms. Viewed in this light, Xi is understood less as a norm-breaker and more as an institutionalizer of longstanding Party principles.
The Hu-era cadre selection process was an experiment. Much of it, such as sending out “cadre assessment teams” (考察组) or relying on “democratic recommendations” (民主推荐), was based on regulations only passed in 2002 and first formally applied later that year at the 16th Congress under General Secretary Jiang Zemin (Chinese Academy of Sciences, October 4, 2002; Communist Party News, June 13, 2013).
The first opportunity to conduct this experiment came in June 2006, a year prior to the 17th congress, when the Politburo Standing Committee and then the Politburo formulated a set of principles for cadre selection. These established specialized groups that operated under the direct leadership of the Politburo Standing Committee to “recommend, vet, and nominate” (推荐、考察、提名) candidates to the “two committees” (两委), the Central Committee and the Central Commission for Disciplinary Inspection (Xinhua, October 22, 2007; CCP Members Network, October 23, 2025). Between July 2006 and mid-2007, the Party center then sent out over 60 cadre assessment teams to local jurisdictions across the country. These teams went into central financial institutions, state-owned enterprises headquartered in Beijing, and the military. They consulted with local Party officials and held straw polls at Party committee plenary sessions to suggest candidates, reporting the results to the Politburo Standing Committee. Then, in September 2007, a month prior to the congress, the Politburo Standing Committee drafted the final candidate list. As there were approximately 8–10 percent more candidates than vacant seats, congress delegates elected the two committees and their alternate members using competitive voting (Xinhua, October 22, 2007). The process for the 18th Congress five years later was similar (Xinhua, November 14, 2012).
This process was lauded by state media as a display of “intraparty democracy” (党内民主) (Xinhua, October 22, 2007; Shirk, 2018). [2] The Party’s experimentation extended straw poll voting to the Politburo in 2007 and to the Politburo Standing Committee in 2012, where members of the Party center voted for candidates in the spring prior to the national congress (Xinhua, October 23, 2007; Xinhua, November 15, 2012). Even at their peak, however, these polls only provided input for the final candidate list, drafted by Party center and approved by the Politburo and its Standing Committee months later.
Xi’s Centralized Selectocracy
Since coming to power, Xi Jinping has left many of the Hu-era selection practices in place. The schedule is similar, the Party still sends out cadre assessment teams to gather the main inputs for drafting candidate lists, and congress delegates elect the two committees in a competitive vote. The experiment with bottom-up democracy, however, was doomed to fail. A Leninist top-down system cannot tolerate independent (or even quasi-independent) agency (Cabestan, 2022). [3]
The most obvious change was the rejection of the straw poll mechanism during Xi’s first term. According to state media, the Party concluded that the mechanism had led to a rapid expansion of factionalism and corruption—both of which the Party views as existential threats. Referring to the practice as “mass recommendation” (海推), Xinhua claimed in 2017 that it led to malpractices such as “voting at random” (投票随意), “voting through guanxi” (投关系票), and illegal activities including “buying votes and bribery” (拉票贿选), as in the cases of senior officials purged during Xi’s first term, such as Zhou Yongkang (周永康), Sun Zhengcai (孙政才), and Ling Jihua (令计划) (Xinhua, October 26, 2017).
Starting with the selection process for Xi’s second term, Xi and the Party centralized the system and replaced straw polls with consultations with senior Party leaders and in-depth interviews with potential candidates (Xinhua, October 26, 2017; China Leadership Monitor, December 2025). Following the Two Sessions in 2016, Xi introduced a Cadre Assessment Leading Small Group (干部考察领导小组), personally taking charge of coordinating cadre assessment teams (Xinhua, October 24, 2017; Zhou Na, February 2020). [4] This method, which involved creating an ad hoc body roughly one year prior to the congress, was repeated for the 20th Party Congress (Xinhua, October 22, 2022). Although the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee still approved the guiding principles for cadre assessment work, the specific leading small group (LSG), chaired by Xi, produced a “comprehensive plan” (总体方案) for the principles’ implementation in July in the year prior to the congress (Xinhua, October 24, 2017; Xinhua, October 22, 2022). Xi then consulted on the “Two Committees” selection process with current Party and state leaders, members of the Central Military Commission, and veteran Party members. The “relevant leading Party center comrades” (中央有关领导同志) then solicited the opinions of leading officials from ministries, provinces, military and the Central Committee (Xinhua, October 26, 2017; People’s Daily, October 25, 2022).
We should expect this cadre selection process to persist for the upcoming 21st congress, likely to take place in late 2027, though it is as sensitive as it is secretive. Open sources only describe the process, including the existence of the cadre assessment LSGs, after a congress has concluded. This is why we know nothing about the composition of either the assessment teams or the LSGs for previous congresses, and why no such groups have been revealed for the 21st Congress. It is probable, however, that they are composed of personnel from the Central Organization Department and the Central Secretariat. [5]
Political Loyalty and Incorruptibility as the Key
Xi’s ambitions for reforming the cadre selection process were already evident in 2014. That year, a revision of the Regulations on the Selection and Appointment of Leading Cadres in Party and Government Organizations (党政领导干部选拔任用工作条例) stipulated that “thorough deliberation” (综合考虑) must be employed to ensure that “recommendation votes are not equated with election votes, and that candidates are not selected solely on the basis of the number of recommendation votes received” (防止把推荐票等同于选举票、简单以推荐票取人) (Xinhua, January 15, 2014, October 24, 2017).
Xi implemented these regulations in 2017 through the Cadre Assessment LSG, which coordinated cadre assessment teams. This involved the LSG following a new process for selecting candidates for the two committees. First, it conducted comprehensive research and analysis to identify organizations with candidates for assessment; second, it engaged in further research, conducted interviews, and solicited recommendations within organizations to identify candidates for assessment; and third, it followed a further internal assessment process to propose a shortlist of candidates. Finally, the Politburo Standing Committee reviewed the proposal and finalized its shortlist, which a Politburo session chaired by Xi approved for submission to the congress for election (Xinhua, October 24, 2017).
During this process, each candidate had to meet three quality standards. First, anyone not politically aligned with the Party center or lacking political discipline and ideals was to be automatically “vetoed” (一票否决) in accordance with the Several Guidelines on Intraparty Political Life under the New Circumstances (关于新形势下党内政治生活的若干准则), a 2016 document that lamented factionalism and hedonism in the Party while stressing the need to restore belief in socialist ideals (Xinhua, November 2, 2016, October 24, 2017). Second, assessment teams reviewed candidates’ profiles and solicited reviews from the disciplinary system to make sure the candidates were “incorruptible” (廉洁) (Xinhua, October 24, 2017). Third, candidates had to be capable. [6] As a media platform under the People’s Daily Overseas Edition noted, when deciding between two politically correct and honest candidates, work results would decide (The Press, 2016; WeChat/东郭栽树, October 27, 2017).
State media appreciated that the new method “fully brings out the truthfulness and results-oriented nature of democracy, enhancing the quality and efficacy of intraparty democracy” (要将民主的真实性、有效性充分发挥出, 进一步提升党内民主的质量和实效) (Xinhua, October 24, 2017). According to a 2022 Xinhua report, all members of the Politburo Standing Committee agreed that Xi’s new methods proved superior to the system of “mass recommendations” and “open nominations” (海选) with which the Party had previously experimented (Xinhua, October 24, 2022).
Xi’s Party-building reforms ensure that political loyalty and Party discipline are the top criteria for cadre promotion. Putting himself at the center of the process through the Cadre Assessment LSG allows him to ensure these are strictly enforced. The new subset of Xi Jinping Thought further demands close alignment with the Party center and strict Party discipline in Party-building work (People’s Daily; CCP Members Network, June 16). The version of this “thought” distilled for practical use, known as the “Fourteen Upholds” (十四个坚持), makes this clear: the first “uphold” states that Party leadership is “the most essential characteristic of socialism with Chinese characteristics” (中国特色社会主义最本质的特征), a phrase that was added to Article 1 of the PRC Constitution in 2018. The remaining 13 upholds include requirements to uphold both the “centralized and unified leadership” (集中统一领导) of the Party center and the establishment of an organizational system that is “vertically integrated and effective” (上下贯通、执行有力), as well as ensuring officials dare not, cannot, and do not wish to engage in corruption (CCP Members Network, June 16).
Conclusion
Under Xi Jinping, the Party’s brief flirtation with bottom-up democracy under Hu Jintao has proven a short-lived exception to tight, top-down control of the nomenklatura. Xi’s preference for a centralized, consultative selectocracy is more in line with Leninist principles, and his Party-building reforms are part of a larger Party-state overhaul that has strengthened the Party, the Party center, and the general secretary through deepening the institutionalization of centralized Party rule. [7]
Tighter control over personnel appointments may seem less legitimate to some, but it significantly decreases the risk of alternate power structures emerging within the system. In the same way, Xi’s constant purges, typical of Stalinism, may indicate a level of insecurity but nevertheless work well in removing political threats (China Brief, January 26). Although Xi has done much to centralize the political system in the PRC, the Party-state’s institutions remain designed such that the Party that Xi leads is the dictator, not the person of Xi himself.
The Party’s upcoming 21st National Congress will see a major reshuffle. According to researchers at the Centre on Contemporary China and the World in Hong Kong, up to two thirds of the members of the next Central Committee will be new. As only a few will have been born before 1960, most of the top cadres will have reached adulthood only after Mao’s death (ThinkChina, March 13). These newcomers will also have been subject to Xi’s selection criteria for over 15 years, so they should be adamantly loyal to the Party, its Center, and its Core. Whatever implications this might have for effective governance of the country, governance of the Party is likely to remain under control.
Notes
[1] Xi Jinping Thought on Party Building is a component of the Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想) already enshrined in both state and Party constitutions in the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
[2] Susan L. Shirk, “China in Xi’s ‘New Era’: The Return to Personalistic Rule”, Journal of Democracy (2018) 29(2): 22–36.
[3] Jean-Pierre Cabestan, “Organisation and (Lack of) Democracy in the Chinese Communist Party: A Critical Reading of the Successive Iterations of the Party Constitution”, Journal of Current Chinese Affairs (2020) 51(3): 364–385.
[4] Zhou Na, “The 19th Central Committee for Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’: Breaking Conventional Party Rules?”, China: An International Journal, (2020), 18(1): 76–94.
[5] For a comprehensive overview of the congress cadre assessment and election process, see China Leadership Monitor, December 2025.
[6] As the Xinhua report succinctly characterized the criteria: “Those who are politically untenable will not be considered; those who have flaws in their integrity will not be considered; and those who lack outstanding abilities will not be considered” (政治上立不住的，不列入考察；廉洁上有瑕疵的，不列入考察；能力上不突出的，不列入考察).
[7] The reforms have included the transfer of ethnic minority, religious and overseas Chinese affairs from the state to the Party’s United Front Work Department (China Brief, May 9, 2019). The procuratorates have, similarly, lost power to investigate corruption, in favor of the CCP Central Commission for Party Discipline. See Li Ling, Governance of a Party-state: Corruption, Law, and the Modus Operandi of the Chinese Communist Party, Cambridge University Press (2025) p.190.