How does the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule China? While a good deal of external analysis and media coverage centres on the view from Beijing, it is in China’s towns, cities, and villages that the real governing action occurs. And this is where most Chinese citizens encounter the CCP as an organization. While Xi Jinping may be the most well-known CCP member, it is the local Party secretary who instantiates the Communist Party.

In order to better understand Chinese local-level governance, this report provides translation of an official notice by the town’s CCP committee on the eve of the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2019. The lengthy document comprehensively catalogues various economic, political, and security risks, many of them understandable, while others seem more fanciful or remote. Interestingly, a large portion of the document is focused on protecting Niangziguan from so-called “hostile forces,” including overseas elements of the Catholic church and pro-democracy activists. While it is possible that Niangziguan officials truly believe that the town must actively guard against “color revolutions” (as the document declares), it is more likely that Xi Jinping’s relentless campaign to snuff out any and all threats to the CCP has infused small-town governance. Regardless, the document is a revealing window into the concerns of the CCP in the first half of the twenty-first century.