Early history The Central Committee's role has varied throughout history. It was founded in 1927 as a successor organization to the "Central Executive Committee" (), a group of party leaders charged with executing party work during the pre-revolutionary days of the CCP. Over the next several decades it served to confirm the party leadership lineup and legitimize military, strategic, and foreign relations decisions of the party. In practice, power was concentrated in a small group of military and political leaders (the Secretariat or the Politburo), and, beginning at the
Zunyi Conference in 1935, Mao held great power personally. Moreover, during the
Second Sino-Japanese War and the
Chinese Civil War between 1937 and 1949, the Central Committee rarely convened, partly because of the logistical difficulties of bringing together leading cadres involved in different theatres of war and agitation. Beginning in 1949 at the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Central Committee gradually transformed from a revolutionary organ to a governing one, though again the day-to-day work and most political power resided with a few leaders, most notably the Politburo, then
de facto chaired by
Liu Shaoqi, and the Secretariat, then under Deng Xiaoping. Although the Central Committee was required to convene at least once a year, it did not convene at all in 1951–1953, 1960, 1963–1965, and 1967. Informal and 'extraordinary' mechanisms were sometimes used for the purposes of discussing party policy, for example, the
Seven Thousand Cadres Conference in 1962, meant to be a summation of the lessons of the Great Leap Forward. Mao did not hold absolute power over the Central Committee, as evidenced by the debates surrounding the policies of the Great Leap Forward, as well as the economic policies of the early 1960s. However, Mao used Central Committee meetings as a platform to project authority or legitimize decisions which have been made in advance, such as at the
Lushan Conference of 1959, when the Central Committee ratified the decision to denounce
Peng Dehuai, who had spoken out in opposition of the
Great Leap Forward. During the early stages of the
Cultural Revolution, the Central Committee essentially ceased to function; it was convened in August 1966 (11th Plenum of the 8th CC) to cement decisions already made by Mao on launching the Cultural Revolution. Mao faced some opposition at the 11th Plenum but ultimately most delegates were goaded into ratifying Mao's decisions. Many members were politically disgraced or purged thereafter. The committee was then convened again in October 1968 (12th Plenum) to ratify the decision to expel then head of state Liu Shaoqi from the Party. At the 12th plenum, less than half the members actually attended, as many had fallen victim to the Cultural Revolution. In a letter to Mao "evaluating" the members of the Central Committee at the time,
Kang Sheng wrote that some 70% of CC members were considered "traitors, spies, or otherwise politically unreliable". The Central Committee membership at the
9th Party Congress in April 1969 was largely handpicked by Mao and a small group of radical allies. The decisions at the Congress were later deemed to be "wholly and absolutely wrong" by official party historians.
Since the reform and opening up Since economic reforms began in 1978, the Central Committee has usually been composed of the leading figures of the party, government, the provinces, and the military. In contrast to Party Congresses, which have always been essentially ceremonial exercises, full meetings of the Central Committee have occasionally emerged as arenas in which there were substantive debates and decisions on party policy. An example of this was the
Third Plenary Session of the 11th CCP Central Committee in 1978, at which China formally embarked on the
reform and opening up. Deng Xiaoping also attempted to increase the level of "intra party democracy" in the 1980s by introducing so-called "more candidates than seats" election method (). The ''Cha'e'' method meant that not everyone who was nominated would be elected to the Central Committee. Despite experimenting with power separation on a broad scale in the 1980s, including the separation of party and state leadership positions, real decision-making power continued to reside in the hands of a dozen or so party elites, including party elders that formed the
Central Advisory Commission (later abolished). For instance, the decision to crack down on the
1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and on top leadership changes in its aftermath, such as the purge of then General Secretary
Zhao Ziyang, were made by "party elders" and a small group of top leaders, without first convening the Central Committee. Zhao questioned the legality of his removal in his memoirs released in 2006. While Central Committee meetings do not usually serve as forums for substantive debate, they have sometimes 'fine-tuned' the policies agreed upon at the Politburo level. But the Central Committee does not, by convention, overturn policies decided at higher levels. The Central Committee is larger and has a somewhat more diverse ideological spectrum than the Politburo. Since its plenary sessions is a rare event that concentrates almost all of China's top leaders in one location, it could also be seen as a convenient venue for informal deal-making.
21st century Hu Jintao's administration (2002–2012) attempted to embrace collective leadership, as well as more "intra-party democracy"; Hu was not a strong "core" figure in the same sense as Mao or Deng Xiaoping. The Central Committee thus gained more prominence as a
bona fide consultation body. In 2003, Hu also cancelled the traditional August leadership retreat at the coastal town of
Beidaihe, while giving more media coverage to the Central Committee plenums held in the fall. This was seen as an indication that Hu wanted to eschew informal decision-making by the handful of elites in favour of "inner-party democracy" involving bodies such as the Central Committee. However, the Beidaihe meetings resumed in July 2007, when political deliberation took place in anticipation of the
17th Party Congress; the same Bedaihe retreat also took place in 2011 in anticipation of the
18th National Congress. This indicated that important personnel and policy decisions continued to be the domain of a small group of elites at the very top of the party hierarchy. Since the 17th Party Congress, the Central Committee has seen an increase in the number of regional leadership figures. The 17th Central Committee formed with every province-level Party Secretary and Governor gaining a full seat on the Central Committee. The rise of regional party representation came at the expense of that of government ministries. Since Xi Jinping's rise to power at the 18th Party Congress, the Central Committee plenums in 2013 and 2014 were given significant media coverage, as they marked the beginning of another round of comprehensive economic and social reforms (2013) and legal reforms (2014), respectively. == Function ==