Public sector reform and party dominance: China’s 2023 Party-state institutional reform

In 2023, China launched a new round of Party – state institutional reform that further consolidated Party dominance. This article analyzes the reform’s underlying dynamics and the reconfiguration of Party leadership within the administrative system. The findings suggest that the reform represents a nationally driven, adaptive institutional project aligned with Chinese modernisation. In response to internal and external pressures, it advances a “new national system” and institutionalises a Party-dominated networked governance structure linking the Communist Party of China Central Committee’s decision-making bodies with the State Council’s functional departments. Culturally, the reform embodies continuity and change, grounded in Confucian and Marxist-Leninist conceptions of governance and democracy. From a polity perspective, Party dominance is further institutionalised through administrative restructuring. Overall, the reform reflects China’s effort to develop an autonomous governance knowledge system and a Party-state governance model centred on Party leadership. The study contributes to public administration scholarship by providing an empirically grounded interpretation of institutional reform in a non-Western context.