China’s ‘Two Sessions’ Break With Norms, Suggesting Possible Leadership Shake-Up

.

The meetings, known as the “Two Sessions,” convened on March 4 in Beijing and are expected to last a week. It brings together the regime’s rubber-stamp legislative body, the National People’s Congress (NPC), and the political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), to set the agenda for policy priorities in the year ahead.

However, beyond the official agenda, the seating arrangement for senior officials and the composition of the leadership personnel sparked discussions among analysts about the elite politics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The arrangement underscores the close institutional link between the United Front system and the CPPCC, which serves as a political platform for the CCP’s influence and coalition-building efforts.

This year, however, the current United Front chief, Li Ganjie, has not appeared in the CPPCC leadership structure.

“The United Front minister almost always enters the CPPCC leadership,” a China-based analyst who has long followed the CCP’s senior personnel movements told The Epoch Times. “It has become a fairly fixed institutional arrangement over the past several decades.”

According to publicly available information from the CPPCC’s current session, Li is not listed as a member of the advisory body—an essential requirement for serving as its vice chairman.

The Party’s Organization Department oversees appointments and promotions across the government, military, and Party bureaucracy, making it one of the most influential institutions in the CCP’s political system.

“Whoever runs the Organization Department controls the gate through which cadres rise or fall,” a veteran Chinese media editor told The Epoch Times.

From that perspective, the editor said, Li’s transfer from the Organization Department to the United Front portfolio was widely viewed as a step down in political influence.

The reshuffle also disrupted the traditional link between the United Front system and the CPPCC.

In the past, the United Front minister would typically become the first-ranked vice chairman of the advisory body, serving as a bridge between the two institutions.

“The CPPCC has long functioned as an important stage for the Party’s united front work,” the editor said. “Having the United Front minister in the CPPCC leadership has been a regularized arrangement for decades.”

However, since Li took over the United Front portfolio, he has not been included in the CPPCC structure. Because a vice chairman must first be appointed as a CPPCC member, Li’s absence from the membership list effectively prevents him from joining its leadership.

Meanwhile, Shi—now head of the Organization Department—has retained his position as a vice chairman of the CPPCC.

That means the official currently overseeing the Party’s influential personnel apparatus still holds a senior role within the advisory body, while the official responsible for the United Front does not.

“This year’s CPPCC standing committee meeting did not add Li Ganjie as a member,” Zhou, a Beijing-based journalist who covers the political meetings annually, told the publication.

“That means he still won’t enter the CPPCC leadership during this session.

“The fact that the United Front minister is not even a CPPCC member is quite rare in recent years.

“What we see now is that the Organization Department chief is simultaneously a CPPCC vice chairman, while the United Front minister has not entered the CPPCC system,” a Beijing-based independent political analyst told The Epoch Times.

“That clearly breaks with the CCP’s conventions that have existed for decades.”

In China’s highly centralized political structure, the analyst said, personnel decisions often depend less on institutional rules than on the leadership’s internal balance of trust and influence.

“Whoever holds political trust controls key positions,” the analyst said. “If that trust declines, officials can quickly find themselves sidelined.”

From that perspective, the analyst added, the absence of the current United Front minister from the CPPCC leadership may signal adjustments underway within the Party’s internal power structure.

“On the surface, it looks like a technical personnel arrangement,” the analyst said. “But behind it may lie a broader process of power redistribution at the top.”

As Beijing’s annual “Two Sessions” meetings continue this week, the CCP’s leadership signals are often scrutinized for clues about internal dynamics.

With the Organization Department and United Front system now configured differently from past practice, analysts say the unusual personnel arrangement at the CPPCC may indicate ongoing adjustments within the Party’s upper ranks.