Than the four-decade long project... is being dismantled

"I don’t think there is any other way to read it other than the four-decade long project that Deng Xiaoping initiated to set hard term limits on power to make sure that a Mao figure never came back is being dismantled." (The Guardian.)

Is the four-decade long project that Deng Xiaoping initiated to set hard term limits on power to make sure that a Mao figure never came back a noun phrase and a subject in the subordinate clause than the four-decade long project that Deng Xiaoping initiated to set hard term limits on power to make sure that a Mao figure never came back is being dismantled?