Two Establishes (两个确立)

The Two Establishes (两个确立, liǎng gè quèlì) is a doctrinal formulation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that codifies two interrelated political determinations: first, the establishment of Xi Jinping's position as the "core" (核心) of the Party Central Committee and of the Party as a whole; and second, the establishment of "Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" (习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想) as the Party's guiding ideology. The formula was adopted at the Sixth Plenum of the 19th CCP Central Committee in November 2021, in the third "Historical Resolution" issued by the Party — a document placing Xi alongside Mao Zedong (1945 resolution) and Deng Xiaoping (1981 resolution) as authors of canonical interpretations of Party history. The Two Establishes constitute, in formal Party language, the "decisive significance" (决定性意义) of the New Era.

Procedurally, the Two Establishes emerged from a sequence of escalating designations. Xi was named "core" of the leadership at the Sixth Plenum of the 18th Central Committee in October 2016, a status previously held by Mao, Deng, and Jiang Zemin but not by Hu Jintao. Xi Jinping Thought was written into the Party Constitution at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 and into the State Constitution in March 2018. The two propositions were then bundled into a single formula in the 2021 Historical Resolution, which directs all Party members, state organs, the People's Liberation Army, and mass organizations to "resolutely safeguard" (坚决维护) both establishes. Cadres are required to study the formula in regular political education sessions organized by Party committees and discipline inspection commissions.

The Two Establishes operate in tandem with a companion formula, the Two Safeguards (两个维护, liǎng gè wéihù), which obliges members to safeguard Xi's core status and to safeguard the centralized, unified leadership of the Party Central Committee. Together they form what Party theorists describe as the political foundation of the New Era. Failure to internalize the Two Establishes is treated as a political — not merely ideological — failing, and is enumerated as grounds for disciplinary action under regulations issued by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI). Party media, including Qiushi (求是), People's Daily, and Xuexi Shibao, publish near-continuous exegesis of the formula, and provincial Party schools incorporate it into mandatory curricula for rotating cadre training.

The doctrine has been operationalized across the Party-state apparatus since 2021. At the 20th Party Congress in October 2022, the Two Establishes were inscribed into the revised Party Constitution's general program and invoked by Xi in his work report to justify his third term as General Secretary. The Two Sessions (两会) of March 2023 saw Premier Li Qiang and other state leaders open their statements with ritual invocations of the formula. The Central Military Commission, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Wang Yi, and the Ministry of State Security have each issued internal guidance requiring subordinate units to use the phrase in opening political study sessions. Diplomatic cables and embassy political reports filed from Beijing now routinely log the frequency of the term's appearance as an indicator of intra-elite cohesion.

The Two Establishes should be distinguished from the adjacent but narrower concept of "core leader" status, which existed before 2021 and pertained only to an individual's position within the Politburo Standing Committee. The Two Establishes elevate that personal status by binding it to a doctrinal corpus, making loyalty to Xi inseparable from loyalty to a body of ideological writing. They are also distinct from the Four Consciousnesses (四个意识) — political, overall-situation, core, and alignment consciousness — promulgated in 2016, which describe cognitive dispositions rather than constitutional facts. Where the Four Consciousnesses describe how cadres should think, the Two Establishes describe what they must affirm as settled.

Controversies surrounding the doctrine are largely external, as open dissent within the Party is foreclosed by its very logic. Foreign analysts, including scholars at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) and the Asia Society Policy Institute, have read the Two Establishes as evidence of personalist consolidation comparable to the late Mao period, while others, such as researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), have emphasized continuity with Leninist organizational norms. A subtler debate concerns whether the absence of the phrase from particular speeches — for instance, certain provincial work reports in early 2024 — signals factional resistance or merely editorial variation; Sinologists generally caution against over-reading single omissions. The doctrine's durability beyond Xi's tenure remains an open question, as no precedent exists for retiring a "core" formulation while its author remains alive.

For the working practitioner, the Two Establishes function as a diagnostic and a constraint. Diplomats negotiating with Chinese counterparts encounter the formula as a non-negotiable political baseline: PRC officials cannot transact on matters that implicate, even tangentially, Xi's authority or doctrinal positions. Journalists and desk officers tracking Chinese elite politics use the frequency, prominence, and authorship of Two Establishes citations as a leading indicator of intra-Party alignment, watching for deviations in People's Daily front-page placement or in the speeches of Politburo members. Sanctions specialists and corporate counsel recognize that any foreign content perceived to challenge the formula — including academic publications or social media posts by employees — can trigger regulatory consequences under the Data Security Law (2021) and the Counter-Espionage Law (2023 revision). Understanding the Two Establishes is thus a prerequisite for reading the contemporary Chinese state.