
Published:
"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:
- to increase the Party’s control over non-Party institutions,
- to reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies, and
- 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.