Law-Morality Ideology in the Xi Jinping Era

In this chapter, we focus on how the elevated supremacy of Party leadership goes hand in glove with an increasing emphasis on governing the country by moral virtue in shaping the architecture of the Chinese socialist rule of law for the new era. We do so from three perspectives. First, we examine the shift in the Party’s ‘language of the law’ towards a pronounced supremacy of Party leadership in the Xi Jinping era and the idea that the law contains intrinsic moral qualities. Second, we examine the shifting discourses of governing the country by moral virtue and Socialist Core Values in the context of strengthening centralised Party leadership. Third and finally, we address the use of Confucian and Legalist legacies of morality politics and centralised power, which provides further discursive lucidity to the ‘Party leads over everything’ claim in Xi Jinping’s New Era.