CCP Sets Up Social Work Department to Further Tighten Its Control

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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) recently formed a Central Social Work Department to further tighten the regime’s control of the Chinese people. Observers pointed out that the move is to target petitioners and potential social unrest against its one-party rule.

According to Chinese state media, Wu Hansheng, the former deputy party secretary for a state department, has been appointed as the first head of the Central Social Work Department. He hosted the closing ceremony of a special seminar for provincial and ministerial communist cadres on dealing with petitioners on July 7.

The Central Social Work Department is the latest being added to the functional departments of the CCP Central Committee, following the Central Organization Department, the Central Propaganda Department, the United Front Work Department, and the Political and Legal Committee.

Targeting Petitioning

The CCP’s Social Work Department oversees the State Petitioning Bureau, which deals with petitioners from all over the country who file complaints and grievances against local officials.

Mainland Chinese media outlet Nandu cited a CCP expert saying the establishment of the Central Social Work Department means that petitioners have now become what the CCP considers affairs requiring special dealings and that “the petition work will become more and more specialized in the future.”

A petitioner holds photos of evidence in her grievance against local officials outside a government petition office in Beijing on March 2, 2016. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

The expert, professor Wu Guoguang, a senior researcher at Stanford University’s China Center for Economic and Institutional Research, told Voice of America that the establishment of the Social Work Department by the CCP Central Committee is to strengthen the party’s control of society and to use the organizational capabilities of the CCP to control the people.

“I say this is a big patch to mend its totalitarian system,” he said.

Feng Chongyi, a China studies professor at the University of Technology Sydney, told The Epoch Times on July 10, “The motivation for the establishment of the Central Social Work Department was to prevent possible social turmoil under China’s economic collapse and to strengthen stability maintenance for the regime. But this new department overlaps with the existing party and governmental departments of the CCP.

“Its intention is to strengthen the control of the society, but this function has also been carried out by public security and national security system, which have already made very careful arrangements.”

Leading the United Front

Tang Yun (pseudonym), a Beijing-based current affairs observer, told The Epoch Times on July 10 that as the responsibilities of the Central Social Work Department and the Central United Front Work Department overlap, “it is possible that parts of the United Front Work Department’s Fourth Bureau, Fifth Bureau, and Sixth Bureau will be transferred to the Central Social Work Department.”

United Front is a department of the CCP that carries out the party’s strategy to influence and infiltrate the nonparty, nongovernmental circles both within and outside mainland China.

Members of the Coordination Council of Chinese American Associations (CCCAA), a major Chinese communist united front organization, perform at a Chinese New Year and Cultural Festival organized by the CCCAA at the Leesburg Premium Outlet in Leesburg, Va., on Mar. 25, 2023. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

“In addition, the China Federation of Industry and Commerce may also be transferred to the Central Social Work Department in the future,” Mr. Tang said.

Mr. Feng said the CCP has been further clamping down on civil society and activities in China in recent years. Many nongovernmental organizations, non-state-owned enterprises, and other organizations have been eradicated in China. The ones that survive are government-affiliated organizations. But the party has been doubling down on its control through both state and party systems.

Mr. Feng also believes that the establishment of the Central Social Work Department “shows that the division of labor in the party and government system of the CCP is chaotic and that Xi Jinping has found that some of his orders cannot be carried out,” which is why he has set up the new department.

Ning Haizhong and Luo Ya contributed to this report.