Businessman with two faces

"One Team, Two Nameplates"

Study on Chinese institutions with dual identities
Businessman with two faces
Image: AdobeStock, bearbeitet durch ChinaKooP

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"One Team, Two Nameplates": A Study on Chinese Institutions with dual Identities

Why do Chinese institutions have two nameplates – often appearing both as organs of the Chinese Communist Party and as government agencies, with different names but the same leadership team? This subtle yet far-reaching phenomenon has been examined by Zhang and Carothers in a study based on an original dataset from China.

The authors argue that this institutional duplication serves three main purposes:

  1. to increase the Party’s control over non-Party institutions,
  2. to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies, and
  3. to present the institutions differently to foreign audiences.

The study has been published in English as an Open Access article in the Journal of Current Chinese Affairs:

Zhang, Z.; Carothers, C. (2025): One Team, Two Nameplates: Why China’s Ruling Institutions Are Increasingly Taking on Dual Identities, published in: Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, OnlineFirst, 13 April 2025, Open Access, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/18681026251331116External link, published under the Creative Commons licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/External link.