No, they're essentially just a list of vague rules that are at the sweet spot of "vague enough that I can make anything you write fit into it" and "vague enough that you can't point to it and definitely say that somebody else does it to you". It's basically a very rough outline of laws, with everything in between to be filled out by a judge on a case by case basis, without precedents or abstraction.
They are an instrument to strengthen the power of whoever is enforcing those rules. There was a fun read some time ago where Chinese princelings were showing off their riches, dollar bundles, rolexes, cars etc, one-upping each other. The person who won just posted a badge of attendance at a conference of the party's committee tasked with enforcing the party's moral standards (or something similar, Google is shit, I can't find it again). That's power, not being an editor with a thousand articles.