Editor’s Note: On December 13, 2022, we updated this page with an embedded PDF version of our summary of the 2018 State Council reorganization plan, approved on March 17, 2018. We have made no substantive change to our original summary. We also removed introductions to the various types of State Council bodies, which are now available on this page, along with the State Council’s current organizational chart. This page before the update was archived here.

Details of the eighth round of State Council reorganization in the “Reform and Opening up” era were revealed to the delegates attending the ongoing 1^st Session of the 13^th NPC on Tuesday. Previous rounds took place in 1982, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008, and 2013. In this post, we present our own summary of the 2018 State Council Institutional Reform Plan (国务院机构改革方案). The Communist Party on March 21 released the Plan to Deepen Reform of Party and State Institutions, the section of which concerning the State Council is summarized below. While some other parts of the plan also made changes to the State Council’s organizational structure, these changes are NOT reflected in the summary.