Abstract
“Born for changes, not for ages.” Sharing the theoretical theme of constitutional failure, this article addresses the case of contemporary China and its 1982 “reforming” constitution, inquiring into the consequences of 2018 amending of that constitution in a realistic context. The 2018 amendment, together with the unprecedented institutional reforms it aims to archive, has altered the reforming identity of the 1982 Constitution in its original sense. During the New Era, there have been two seemingly opposite trends in the latest constitutional developments in China: the consolidation of the authority of the 1982 Constitution over political actors, and the simultaneous recentralization of the post-1978 party-state structure. Since the 1982 Constitution is designed to accommodate changes in its nature, even fundamental changes that were not expected at the time of the 1982 Constitution’s birth are still formally compatible with the reforming identity. Such a paradox indicates that the reforming identity of the 1982 Constitution lacks a normative bound, leaving only fluidity within the 1982 Constitution in both theory and practice. In China’s case, this unbounded constitutional fluidity renders the bounds of the reforms political and institutional, rather than normative. Such a potential model of ‘reforming’ constitutions invites constitutional lawyers to reconsider the inherent vulnerability of national constitutions that are made in the reform or transitional era and to extend this research question in historical and comparative directions.