This paper investigates the power landscapes within Chinese universities, against the larger backdrop of China's attempt to build modern university governance systems for developing world-class universities. Drawing upon Fairclough's three-dimensional conceptions of discourse and informed by Pierre Bourdieu's key conceptual notions of field and capital, the paper provides a critical discourse analysis of statutes of 10 top Chinese universities in terms of their texts, discursive practices and social practices and thus analyses existing power relations. The statute texts construct a hierarchical field of power by wording the 'core' stakeholder Party Committee as the leadership, using content sequence as a measure of power ranking, and including only limited stakeholders in the joint governance mechanism. Regarding discursive practices, faculty members' participation in the formulation and distribution of university statutes is insufficient. The social practices identify with statute texts in terms of power relationships between Party Committee members, administrators and academics.