CCDI restored

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (中央纪律检查委员会, Zhongyang Jilü Jiancha Weiyuanhui), abbreviated CCDI, is the highest internal control body of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), charged with enforcing Party discipline, investigating violations of the Party Constitution, and combating corruption among the roughly 99 million Party members. Originally created in 1949 as the Central Discipline Inspection Commission, the organ was dismantled during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) when Party institutions collapsed under Maoist mass mobilization. The phrase "CCDI restored" refers to its formal re-establishment at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978, the same landmark plenum at which Deng Xiaoping consolidated power and launched the "reform and opening" (gaige kaifang) program. Chen Yun became its first restored First Secretary, signalling the leadership's intent to rebuild institutional discipline after a decade of factional chaos.

Structurally, the CCDI is elected by and nominally accountable to the National Party Congress, with a Standing Committee and Secretary directing day-to-day operations between Congresses. It operates a vertically integrated hierarchy of discipline inspection commissions at provincial, municipal, and county levels, and embeds inspection groups (xunshi zu) within ministries, state-owned enterprises, and universities. Its signature investigative procedure was shuanggui (双规) — extralegal detention of Party members "at a designated place and time" — which operated outside the criminal justice system. The CCDI's disciplinary findings traditionally precede and trigger any formal prosecution by the procuratorate, embodying the principle that the Party polices itself before the state acts. In March 2018 the shuanggui system was superseded by the National Supervisory Commission (NSC) and its liuzhi (留置) detention power under the new Supervision Law, with the CCDI and NSC operating as "one institution, two nameplates" (yi ge jigou, liang kuai paizi).

Under Xi Jinping, who became General Secretary in November 2012, the CCDI was transformed into the principal instrument of an unprecedented anti-corruption campaign. Led first by Wang Qishan (2012–2017) and then Zhao Leji (2017–2022) and Li Xi (from 2022), the campaign pursued both "tigers and flies" — senior officials such as former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang (expelled and sentenced 2015) and military leaders Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, alongside lower-ranking cadres. By the early 2020s the campaign had disciplined well over a million officials. The 20th CCDI, convened after the October 2022 Party Congress, continued the drive into 2025–2026, extending into the financial sector and the People's Liberation Army.

For the China Governance & Policy paper, the CCDI is essential for understanding the Party-state's self-disciplining architecture and the primacy of Party organs over formal state law. Examiners typically test the 1978 restoration as a marker of post-Mao institutional rebuilding, the distinction between shuanggui and post-2018 liuzhi, the CCDI–NSC merger, and the political function of anti-corruption campaigns in elite power consolidation. Candidates should be able to contrast the CCDI's intra-Party reach with the constitutionally grounded supervisory powers of the NSC.