BEIJING - With the expulsion from the Communist Party last week of Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar and member of the Standing Committee (China's supreme political body), paramount leader Xi Jinping has officially brought an end to an era. Zhou's removal, meaning he will soon be openly tried in court, in fact has only one precedent: the capture of the notorious Gang of Four in 1976 and their trial in 1980.

The Communist Party has three governing bodies, from bottom to top: the Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Standing Committee.

Since then, top victims of inner-party struggle - starting with Zhao Ziyang, the former general secretary and Standing Committee member who lost his job for supporting the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989 - have been demoted and censored, but never publicly tried. In the mid-1990s, the Beijing party chief, Chen Xitong, a Politburo member, was sentenced by a court, but his higher-ranking ally in the Standing Committee was not even named. About a decade later, his Shanghai colleague Chen Liangyu, also Politburo member, followed the same course, but his mentor Huang Ju, in the Standing Committee, was spared the public ignominy of a trial and left to die of cancer.

For a while, it seemed that the same pattern would be followed with Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party chief and Politburo member. He was publicly displayed in court last year, but the fate of Zhou, his key mentor and again a Standing Committee member, still hung in the balance. Initially, it looked as if Xi would be content with just spreading the news of Zhou's misfortune and the disgrace heaped on his allies in the military: former PLA (People's Liberation Army) Commission vice chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong.

Now, for the first time, the news of Zhou's expulsion brings us back to the end of the Cultural Revolution. It is the end of an era, Xi is clearly stating, but there is an important difference between that end and the present. Then, the notorious four (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, either Standing Committee or Politburo members) were all arrested at once, by surprise, within a few minutes of one another in a famous coup de main organized and carried out by Mao's former head of security, Wang Dongxing.

This time the arrests have been carried out in slow motion, in a prolonged campaign over months and years that is continuing. This indicates that in 1976 the power of the Gang of Four was still very strong. An open confrontation with them in the party was deemed difficult, with uncertain results, and to get rid of them, Wang Dongxing's allies thought it necessary to strike fast. The same people eventually ended up bringing Deng Xiaoping back to power.

Xi, however, didn't control security (which was in the hands of Zhou) or the PLA (in the hands of Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong), so he had to proceed differently. He moved through the party machinery, which was in his hands, and advanced in a slow, systematic way, eliminating not a few heads but all people who didn't comply with the new course, thousands and thousands of people, as we have seen in the past couple of years.

The present law-and-order battle seems to be both the reason for and the result of this power struggle. It is the reason because without gearing up a complex theoretical and ideological set-up, the party (which like the Roman Catholic Church is moved by deep "theological"/idealistic goals) would not find enough reasons to get rid of these very powerful figures.

It is the result because a new method is being set up now, a system of rule of law (in Chinese yi fa zhi guo, to mark it is really the concept of "rule of law," as is also stressed by its English translation, and not the "rule by law," which the old ambiguous fa zhi might have entailed) in which even the mightiest party honchos are subject to the law.

This process - only the process, not much else - is similar to what Mao Zedong applied in 1942 in Yan'an, at the conference on ideology and literature. Mao then had to get rid of the overbearing power of Moscow - which sent money that was vital for the sheer survival of the beleaguered party - and the 28 Moscow-trained Chinese "Bolsheviks" to take full control of the party. Mao wanted to keep the money, get rid of the 28 Bolsheviks, take over the party, and open up to Chinese liberal intellectuals, who were growing hesitant in their support for the more and more conservative Nationalists (KMT).

Last but not least, Mao wanted to keep his options open with the United States, which was growing disaffected with the ever more corrupt KMT. To achieve his multi-pronged objectives, Mao had to establish a "cultural hegemony" (the term comes from Italian Communist Party chief Gramsci, who had independently developed the theory in the 1930s) over the party and the country. He then did that by affirming the principle of "Chinese characteristics" (zhongguo tese).

The idea, in very simplified terms, was that practical conditions in China could override ideological concerns. Therefore, a concrete accurate reading of reality on the ground - rural China, which Mao understood better than his urban-educated comrades - was to be the standard by which to gauge results and policies. Almost by definition, the 28 Moscow-trained comrades, fully acquainted with the USSR but out of touch with rustic China, were out of the game.

This time Xi is using different standards: not Chinese characteristics but the rule of law (yi fa zhi guo). He had plenty of reasons to relentlessly campaign for a new rule of law in a situation in which party officials and their clients pulled strings right and left, pushing laws and regulations aside at their convenience and shaping state institutions to fit their desires.

This was objectively driving China into the Soviet trap of the Brezhnev era, in the 1970s, when powerful industries (in the case of China, the State-Owned Enterprises, or SOEs) were carving up the state, corrupting it, and making the country a hollow shell moved by the interests of a few oligarchs. Private enterprises, the dynamos of growth since the late 1970s, were being pushed aside by all-encompassing SOEs, keen on devouring all competition - at the cost of making the overall economy less efficient and slowing down China's development.

The idea of rule of law has brought back the standard of efficiency and development - and it has placed in a new light even the concept of Chinese characteristics, something that was invoked right and left to justify particular behaviors, which in fact were not-so-special corrupt practices.

The consequences of the new rule of law are multifold. Now, it is almost like a magic wand in Xi's hands, but it has compulsory consequences. If the rule of law is to be applied, then the people who brought the country to the brink of collapse - and are incidentally enemies to Xi - have to be eliminated, in accordance to the new laws of the country.

Zhou and his cohorts are to be publicly tried; not to be made into examples, but to show the people inside China - and also outside, since the country is growing in stature in the world - the new system and to firmly cement the principle that will rule China in the future.

In fact, it will take years and a great amount of dexterity and wisdom to fully apply the principle of the rule of law in a country accustomed for decades to the naked exercise of power. The same was true with Mao's pragmatic "Chinese characteristics". They had to cut through decades of very ideological divisions and a dogmatic nationalism that had become grafted into a defense of the imperial system, all of which defended the status quo and old vested interests against the need for deep and dramatic modifications.

The rebuilding and reshaping of the party in the early and mid-1940s, the victory in the civil war in the late 1940s, and then the early years of communist power in the 1950s saw a massive effort to root out (sometimes dramatically) old habits and vested interests.

The next years might witness a similar push, although this time the effort could be limited to within the party and not extended to the whole society. In fact, this time Chinese society and Chinese private enterprises have mostly enthusiastically embraced change and reforms that although launched and guided by the party, were also opposed by some sectors of the party.

Yet, once standards are set, they live their own lives independent of the people who shaped them in the first place. The need to face practical results and realities came back to bite Mao in the case of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. Mao's friends and supporters went to him saying that his wonderful idea of fast development through people's mobilization was not working; it was making people starve to death, not wealthier.

Mao's first response to these criticisms could not be to deny the theory of checking the reality on the ground (the ideological backbone of his power) but had to be to deny the truthfulness of the messengers in order to deny the message. When the message became totally undeniable, he had to relinquish power in the early 1960s.

He did so grudgingly, suspecting dishonesty and disloyalty and thus unleashing the Cultural Revolution on his former friends in the mid-1960s. The movement denied any practicality of the Chinese characteristics and moved China into a new theoretical realm, with little or no touch with reality. Mao then did establish a new cultural hegemony, but this time it was based only on his crude use of power and cruel abuse of human emotions and not on actual needs and necessities - and therefore, it failed miserably after a short spell.

Deng's return to power and his focus on "Chinese characteristics" was a political and ideological statement of return to the original 1942 Maoism and against the later, crazy Maoism of the Cultural Revolution. He did that by forcing Mao's former pragmatism even further and stressing the paramount necessity of looking at results ("it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as he catches mice", as Deng's saying went) and not empty dogmatic principles.

Now Xi's theory of the rule of law similarly is a dramatic effort that uses Mao's spirit of 1942, absorbing it and going well beyond Mao. Xi wants to establish a new logic, a new theology that goes beyond the party-building theories that have dominated since that year's conference. It is a gigantic effort to infuse new and different life into the party. However, as the Chinese principle of yin and yang teaches, nothing is all black or all white: the rule of law's genie, when out of the bottle (like the former call to pragmatic reality checks), has its own life and logic.

Xi will have to try to guide the application of this theory with calm and wisdom, but if one day he tries to go against its logic for whatever reason, he might face challenges similar to those Mao met when the Great Leap Forward was failing. Of this, apparently, he is personally aware, subjecting himself to the same rules he asks of his fellow comrades.

Most importantly this could have momentous consequences for the future of China as practical checks and the rule of law may in time demand dramatic changes in the internal political structure.

Francesco Sisci is a Senior Researcher associated with the Center for European Studies at the People's University in Beijing. The opinions expressed are his own and do not represent in any way those of the Center.

BEIJING - With the expulsion from the Communist Party last week of Zhou Yongkang, the former security czar and member of the Standing Committee (China's supreme political body), paramount leader Xi Jinping has officially brought an end to an era. Zhou's removal, meaning he will soon be openly tried in court, in fact has only one precedent: the capture of the notorious Gang of Four in 1976 and their trial in 1980.

The Communist Party has three governing bodies, from bottom to top: the Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Standing Committee.

Since then, top victims of inner-party struggle - starting with Zhao Ziyang, the former general secretary and Standing Committee member who lost his job for supporting the student demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989 - have been demoted and censored, but never publicly tried. In the mid-1990s, the Beijing party chief, Chen Xitong, a Politburo member, was sentenced by a court, but his higher-ranking ally in the Standing Committee was not even named. About a decade later, his Shanghai colleague Chen Liangyu, also Politburo member, followed the same course, but his mentor Huang Ju, in the Standing Committee, was spared the public ignominy of a trial and left to die of cancer.

 For a while, it seemed that the same pattern would be followed with Bo Xilai, the former Chongqing party chief and Politburo member. He was publicly displayed in court last year, but the fate of Zhou, his key mentor and again a Standing Committee member, still hung in the balance. Initially, it looked as if Xi would be content with just spreading the news of Zhou's misfortune and the disgrace heaped on his allies in the military: former PLA (People's Liberation Army) Commission vice chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong.

Now, for the first time, the news of Zhou's expulsion brings us back to the end of the Cultural Revolution. It is the end of an era, Xi is clearly stating, but there is an important difference between that end and the present. Then, the notorious four (Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen, either Standing Committee or Politburo members) were all arrested at once, by surprise, within a few minutes of one another in a famous coup de main organized and carried out by Mao's former head of security, Wang Dongxing.

This time the arrests have been carried out in slow motion, in a prolonged campaign over months and years that is continuing. This indicates that in 1976 the power of the Gang of Four was still very strong. An open confrontation with them in the party was deemed difficult, with uncertain results, and to get rid of them, Wang Dongxing's allies thought it necessary to strike fast. The same people eventually ended up bringing Deng Xiaoping back to power.

 Xi, however, didn't control security (which was in the hands of Zhou) or the PLA (in the hands of Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong), so he had to proceed differently. He moved through the party machinery, which was in his hands, and advanced in a slow, systematic way, eliminating not a few heads but all people who didn't comply with the new course, thousands and thousands of people, as we have seen in the past couple of years.

 The present law-and-order battle seems to be both the reason for and the result of this power struggle. It is the reason because without gearing up a complex theoretical and ideological set-up, the party (which like the Roman Catholic Church is moved by deep "theological"/idealistic goals) would not find enough reasons to get rid of these very powerful figures.

It is the result because a new method is being set up now, a system of rule of law (in Chinese yi fa zhi guo, to mark it is really the concept of "rule of law," as is also stressed by its English translation, and not the "rule by law," which the old ambiguous fa zhi might have entailed) in which even the mightiest party honchos are subject to the law.

This process - only the process, not much else - is similar to what Mao Zedong applied in 1942 in Yan'an, at the conference on ideology and literature. Mao then had to get rid of the overbearing power of Moscow - which sent money that was vital for the sheer survival of the beleaguered party - and the 28 Moscow-trained Chinese "Bolsheviks" to take full control of the party. Mao wanted to keep the money, get rid of the 28 Bolsheviks, take over the party, and open up to Chinese liberal intellectuals, who were growing hesitant in their support for the more and more conservative Nationalists (KMT).

Last but not least, Mao wanted to keep his options open with the United States, which was growing disaffected with the ever more corrupt KMT. To achieve his multi-pronged objectives, Mao had to establish a "cultural hegemony" (the term comes from Italian Communist Party chief Gramsci, who had independently developed the theory in the 1930s) over the party and the country. He then did that by affirming the principle of "Chinese characteristics" (zhongguo tese).

The idea, in very simplified terms, was that practical conditions in China could override ideological concerns. Therefore, a concrete accurate reading of reality on the ground - rural China, which Mao understood better than his urban-educated comrades - was to be the standard by which to gauge results and policies. Almost by definition, the 28 Moscow-trained comrades, fully acquainted with the USSR but out of touch with rustic China, were out of the game.

 This time Xi is using different standards: not Chinese characteristics but the rule of law (yi fa zhi guo). He had plenty of reasons to relentlessly campaign for a new rule of law in a situation in which party officials and their clients pulled strings right and left, pushing laws and regulations aside at their convenience and shaping state institutions to fit their desires.

 This was objectively driving China into the Soviet trap of the Brezhnev era, in the 1970s, when powerful industries (in the case of China, the State-Owned Enterprises, or SOEs) were carving up the state, corrupting it, and making the country a hollow shell moved by the interests of a few oligarchs. Private enterprises, the dynamos of growth since the late 1970s, were being pushed aside by all-encompassing SOEs, keen on devouring all competition - at the cost of making the overall economy less efficient and slowing down China's development.

The idea of rule of law has brought back the standard of efficiency and development - and it has placed in a new light even the concept of Chinese characteristics, something that was invoked right and left to justify particular behaviors, which in fact were not-so-special corrupt practices.

The consequences of the new rule of law are multifold. Now, it is almost like a magic wand in Xi's hands, but it has compulsory consequences. If the rule of law is to be applied, then the people who brought the country to the brink of collapse - and are incidentally enemies to Xi - have to be eliminated, in accordance to the new laws of the country.

Zhou and his cohorts are to be publicly tried; not to be made into examples, but to show the people inside China - and also outside, since the country is growing in stature in the world - the new system and to firmly cement the principle that will rule China in the future.

In fact, it will take years and a great amount of dexterity and wisdom to fully apply the principle of the rule of law in a country accustomed for decades to the naked exercise of power. The same was true with Mao's pragmatic "Chinese characteristics". They had to cut through decades of very ideological divisions and a dogmatic nationalism that had become grafted into a defense of the imperial system, all of which defended the status quo and old vested interests against the need for deep and dramatic modifications.

 The rebuilding and reshaping of the party in the early and mid-1940s, the victory in the civil war in the late 1940s, and then the early years of communist power in the 1950s saw a massive effort to root out (sometimes dramatically) old habits and vested interests.

 The next years might witness a similar push, although this time the effort could be limited to within the party and not extended to the whole society. In fact, this time Chinese society and Chinese private enterprises have mostly enthusiastically embraced change and reforms that although launched and guided by the party, were also opposed by some sectors of the party.

Yet, once standards are set, they live their own lives independent of the people who shaped them in the first place. The need to face practical results and realities came back to bite Mao in the case of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s. Mao's friends and supporters went to him saying that his wonderful idea of fast development through people's mobilization was not working; it was making people starve to death, not wealthier.

Mao's first response to these criticisms could not be to deny the theory of checking the reality on the ground (the ideological backbone of his power) but had to be to deny the truthfulness of the messengers in order to deny the message. When the message became totally undeniable, he had to relinquish power in the early 1960s.

He did so grudgingly, suspecting dishonesty and disloyalty and thus unleashing the Cultural Revolution on his former friends in the mid-1960s. The movement denied any practicality of the Chinese characteristics and moved China into a new theoretical realm, with little or no touch with reality. Mao then did establish a new cultural hegemony, but this time it was based only on his crude use of power and cruel abuse of human emotions and not on actual needs and necessities - and therefore, it failed miserably after a short spell.

 Deng's return to power and his focus on "Chinese characteristics" was a political and ideological statement of return to the original 1942 Maoism and against the later, crazy Maoism of the Cultural Revolution. He did that by forcing Mao's former pragmatism even further and stressing the paramount necessity of looking at results ("it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white, as long as he catches mice", as Deng's saying went) and not empty dogmatic principles.

Now Xi's theory of the rule of law similarly is a dramatic effort that uses Mao's spirit of 1942, absorbing it and going well beyond Mao. Xi wants to establish a new logic, a new theology that goes beyond the party-building theories that have dominated since that year's conference. It is a gigantic effort to infuse new and different life into the party. However, as the Chinese principle of yin and yang teaches, nothing is all black or all white: the rule of law's genie, when out of the bottle (like the former call to pragmatic reality checks), has its own life and logic.

Xi will have to try to guide the application of this theory with calm and wisdom, but if one day he tries to go against its logic for whatever reason, he might face challenges similar to those Mao met when the Great Leap Forward was failing. Of this, apparently, he is personally aware, subjecting himself to the same rules he asks of his fellow comrades.

Most importantly this could have momentous consequences for the future of China as practical checks and the rule of law may in time demand dramatic changes in the internal political structure.

Francesco Sisci is a Senior Researcher associated with the Center for European Studies at the People's University in Beijing. The opinions expressed are his own and do not represent in any way those of the Center.

 (Copyright 2014 Francesco Sisci.)