Chinese President Xi Jinping applauded by delegates at the closing session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference on Sunday.

“The changes would emphasise the party’s leadership over the Cabinet, and encourage it to follow certain ideologies including Xi Jinping Thought.”

(March 11): The Chinese legislature voted to change a four-decade-old law so it tightens the Communist Party’s grip on the Cabinet, underscoring President Xi Jinping’s drive to give the party control over all the main levers of government.

Some 2,883 delegates to the annual National People’s Congress gathering in Beijing voted in favour of the amendments to the State Council Organic Law on Monday. Eight voted against, and nine abstained.

The changes would emphasise the party’s leadership over the Cabinet, and encourage it to follow certain ideologies including Xi Jinping Thought, Li Hongzhong, the vice-chairman of the legislature’s Standing Committee, said earlier. They would also subject the body to greater oversight from the legislature, which is packed with party members.

The exact wording of the amended law wasn’t immediately available.

The first changes to the law since it was adopted in 1982 follow on from Xi’s campaign over his decade-plus in power to elevate the status of the Communist Party that he dominates. That desire has ensured the party is represented in all walks of life, from company boardrooms to university lecture halls.

Last year, Xi led a revamp of the party of 98 million members that included the creation of two separate financial bodies — one to take control of a financial stability committee that had been under the State Council.

“The new law could help entrench Xi’s vision for party-led governance into the future by also making it easier for future leaders to keep the State Council in check,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis.

Changhao Wei, a fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center and a founder of the NPC Observer website, said the amendment was intended to modernise the law “by codifying some of the newer principles and practices concerning the State Council and harmonising the statute with later-enacted laws”.

He added that the move to ensure the party had leadership of the Cabinet “had great symbolic value”.

The changes come as policymakers seek to transform the economy by moving production up the value chain, a change referred to in party terminology as “high-quality development”. That project is complicated by a slow economic recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, which has faced headwinds including stubborn deflation, an unfolding property crisis, and trade tensions with the US.

Li also said that the changes to the Cabinet were important to “safeguard the authority of the party’s Central Committee led by comrade Xi Jinping”, and to make sure “party’s policies and decisions are being fully and effectively implemented in the work of state organs”.

A meeting of the 24-member Politburo hosted by Xi in September provided “scientific guidance” to the process, Li added.

Those comments highlight the party’s philosophy that it should handle all aspects of policy, and that government officials are strictly limited to implementing their edicts. That may be a concern for investors, given that Xi has elevated the significance of his ideology and national security matters.

In the 1980s as China’s reform and opening kicked off, paramount leader Deng Xiaoping encouraged the clear separation of the party and state. That arrangement allowed the State Council to have a certain degree of influence over decision-making that was free of party priorities.