The following document is the final, authoritative version of China’s major 2018 Party and state agency reorganization plan. The plan continues and expands upon the Xi Jinping-era trend of merging Party and government agencies with similar functions, and creates a number of new ministries. This final reorganization plan is much more modest in scope than the plan the PRC government originally proposed, indicating that the PRC leadership decided the original plan was too ambitious.

Recently, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) issued the Plan for Deepening the Reform of Party and State Agencies¹ and issued a notice requesting all regions and ministries to conscientiously implement it in light of actual conditions.

The full text of the Plan for Deepening the Reform of Party and State Agencies is as follows.

To deepen reform of the Party and state agencies at this new historical turning point, we must comprehensively implement the spirit of the 19th Party Congress and persist in taking Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Important Thinking of the “Three Represents,” the Scientific Development Concept, and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guide. We must firmly establish political consciousness, consciousness of the big picture, consciousness of the core leadership, and consciousness of falling in line with Party directives.² We must resolutely maintain the authority and centralized unified leadership of the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core. We must adapt to the development requirements of socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, persist in the general principle of seeking progress while maintaining stability, and adhere to the proper direction of reform. We must persist in being people-centered, and persist in comprehensively ruling the country according to law. We must take strengthening the Party’s total leadership as our command, and take modernizing our national governance structure and governance capacity as our orientation, with a focus on promoting the optimization, coordination, and efficient utilization of the functions of Party and state agencies. We must reform the setup of agencies, optimize the allocation of functions, and deepen the transformation of functions, methods, and work styles. We must improve our efficiency and effectiveness, and actively construct a functional system of Party and state agencies with perfected systems, scientific norms, and high operational efficiency, to provide a powerful system guarantee for a decisive victory in establishing a well-off society in an all-round way, setting out on our new journey of building a modernized socialist country, and realizing the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

1. Plan for Deepening the Reform of Party and State Agencies

The leadership of the Chinese Communist Party is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Party exercises overall leadership over all areas of endeavor in every part of the country. To deepen the institutional reform of Party Central Committee agencies, there must be a focus on strengthening the Party’s overall leadership system. The Party’s organizational structure must be optimized, and the Party’s leadership system for major tasks must be established and improved. Better play must be given to the role of functional departments, and the merger or establishment of joint Party-government offices must be promoted where duties are similar. Ministerial duties must be optimized, and the Party’s ability and resolve to chart our course, craft overall plans, design policy, and promote reform must be improved. Pervasive Party leadership and firmer and more forceful Party leadership must be ensured.

1. Translator’s note: The Plan for Deepening the Reform of Party and State Agencies is the final, approved version of an earlier draft plan for the reform of CCP Central Committee departments and government ministries entitled Plan for the Reform and Functional Readjustment of Central State Agencies (中央国家机构改革和职能调整方案). Many of the reforms proposed in the Functional Readjustment Plan were omitted from the final version of the reform plan translated here. For a translation of the Functional Readjustment Plan, see: https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/t0178_govt_reform_plan_EN.pdf
2. Translator’s note: Xi Jinping introduced this concept of the “four consciousnesses” (“四个意识”) at a Politburo meeting on January 29, 2016. In Chinese, the “four consciousnesses” are: 政治意识、大局意识、核心意识、看齐意识.