To describe the new landscape of Party authority in China, a new term is required beyond economic descriptivism: that concept is the sinthome. Despite reference to China’s slowdown – a growth rate below 5%, deflationary pressures, collapsing development, and record youth unemployment – the system has withstood fragmentation. The reason is structural: the CCP operates as China’s sinthome, the stabilising knot that allows incompatible logics such as capitalist markets, socialis