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Opinion | China’s Communist Party wants to be everything everywhere all at once: but will centralised social control work?
- New social work commission set up directly under Central Committee to oversee public petitions and opinion
- How far the party succeeds in being the sole agent to discover problems and solve them all in a vast and complex nation remains to be seen
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Beijing announced a fresh round of institutional reforms last Thursday, setting up several high-level commissions and offices that will report directly to the ruling Communist Party’s core Central Committee.
Among these is a new central commission for social work, whose duties include coordinating and guiding the handling of public complaints and soliciting public opinion.
A closer look at its responsibilities suggests that it is an overarching body of social control.
According to the central government statement, the commission will oversee the petitioning system, as well as grass-roots party and government organs, industrial associations and volunteer organisations.
It is also tasked with forming party committees in all types of enterprises – including mixed-ownership and non-public ones.
Many of these institutions thrived about two or three decades ago, as Beijing sought to cultivate a civil society – or “third sector” – to complement the functions of the government and the market.
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