Freedom House 2015 Rating of China

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping, who had assumed his post as part of a broader leadership rotation in November 2012, continued to consolidate his power in 2014. He headed a growing list of new coordinating bodies, or “leading small groups,” that gave him direct supervision over policy areas including domestic security, internet management, and ethnic relations, emerging as the most powerful CCP leader since Deng Xiaoping.

An aggressive anticorruption campaign reached the highest echelons of the party during the year, and party and government bodies pushed forward incremental reforms of the petitioning system, household registration (hukou) rules, and laws on domestic violence. In October, the CCP Central Committee convened for its fourth plenum, focusing on improvements to the legal system.

