Adapt Marxism to China’s Realities and Keep It Up-to-Date

Adapt Marxism to China’s Realities and Keep It Up-to-Date*

January 11, 2022

The Party Central Committee has organized this study session focusing on the resolution adopted at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee. The session is designed to help you study the resolution and understand its guiding principles. This will serve as an opportunity to further review, study and disseminate Party history, to better draw on the experience of our Party over the past hundred years, and to carry forward the great spirit of our forerunners in creating the CPC. With more confidence in our history, with greater unity and solidarity, and with a renewed fighting spirit, the whole Party and all the Chinese people will press ahead firmly and fearlessly towards our Second Centenary Goal.

To stay at the forefront of the times, a nation must always be guided by the right theories and thoughts. How does the CPC succeed? Why does Chinese socialism work? Because Marxism works. Because Marxism is adapted by the CPC to the Chinese context, kept up-to-date, and employed to guide our cause.

In the resolution, we have a comprehensive review of how the Party has adapted Marxism to China’s realities and kept it fresh over a period of 100 years, which is the main thrust of the resolution and which we must study earnestly and understand fully.

Marxism points the way for advancing human society. It is a powerful theoretical weapon for us to understand the world and its underlying trends, seek the truth, and change the world. Marxism is not a set of rigid dogmas, but a guide to action that must evolve as the situation changes. Whether Marxism can serve its guiding role depends on whether its basic tenets are adapted to the conditions in China and the features of the times. In a fast-changing world and a fast-growing country, we cannot be fettered to old conventions and rigid thinking, and we must be bold enough to update our theory. If we cannot answer questions concerning the present and future of China and its people and the wider world, we will lose momentum in advancing the cause of the Party and the country, Marxism will wither, and people will lose faith in it.

What contemporary China is experiencing is an innovative social transformation unique in history. In this context, the magnitude of our tasks to advance reform and development and to maintain stability, the multitude of problems, risks, and challenges we face, and the difficulties involved in the governance of the country are all unprecedented. As the world experiences change on a scale unseen in a century, a plethora of questions need to be answered in theory and in practice. We need to gain a keen appreciation of the underlying trends of the times, and stand boldly at the forefront of human development. We should listen to the people, respond to their needs, continue to free our minds, seek truth from facts, and maintain the right political direction and break new ground. We should develop Marxism while upholding its basic tenets, combine them with the best of our traditional culture, and apply them in China’s context, so that Marxism can continue to work in solving problems in China in the new era.

The Party’s history over the past century tells us that for the cause of the Party and the people to progress, we must have a thorough understanding of the principal challenge facing our society and properly identify our central task. Only when this is done can the cause of the Party and the people progress smoothly. Otherwise our cause will suffer setbacks.

The resolution presents a full analysis of the Party’s strengths in focusing on China’s principal challenge and central task when advancing work on all fronts. An important theme of the resolution is the review of how the Party has studied and understood the principal challenge and central task over the past century. We should pay particular attention to this when we study the resolution to ensure that we understand it fully. When dealing with complex situations and difficult problems, or tasked with a demanding workload, no one will do well by trying to attend to major and minor issues at one and the same time. We should have a good knowledge of the overall situation, and know full well what challenges we face. Then we will focus on the principal challenge and the central task, and address the main aspects of the principal challenge first, hence laying the groundwork for the solution of other problems. By making breakthroughs in key areas we will drive overall economic development and social progress to a new level, and come closer to the goal of developing China into a great modern socialist country in all respects.

Strategic issues are fundamental to a political party and a country. Accurate judgment and sensible planning help us gain the strategic initiative crucial to the success of the cause of the Party and the people. At every critical moment over the past hundred years the Party has responded to crucial issues of historical significance from a strategic perspective, making sound assessments and defining political strategies accordingly. This has ensured our success in dealing with numerous risks and challenges along the way.

The resolution summarizes how the Party has always attached great importance to strategies and tactics, and how it has conceived sound strategies and tactics in the century since its founding. It is an important part of the resolution that we must study earnestly; we must ensure we understand it fully.

Strategic thinking is all about judgment and decision-making. It requires us to take into consideration the overall situation, long-term interests and underlying trends. Ours is a major political party governing a large country and working for a great cause. We must be able to think strategically and plan accordingly. A sound strategy is to be executed through proper tactics, which are dictated by the former and serve the former. They are in a dialectical relationship, in which the strategy stays consistent while the tactics can be flexible. In planning their work and devising policy measures, local authorities and government departments should make sure that their work plans, arrangements and policy decisions conform with the Party’s theories, guidelines, principles and policies, and they must correct any deviation as soon as it appears. Strategic decisions made by the Party Central Committee must be enforced fully, faithfully and unconditionally.

Over the past hundred years, our Party has led the people to victory after victory, and its vigor and vitality have never been diluted by hardships or obstacles. It has won the people’s support because it faces its own shortcomings squarely, has the courage to correct itself, and always maintains its progressive and wholesome nature. In increasing its creativity, cohesiveness and capabilities, the CPC has preserved its character as a Marxist political party. The resolution gives a full review of the Party’s experience in self-governance and self-reform, to which the Party has paid great attention and in which it has made steady progress over the past hundred years. This is an important thread going through the resolution that we must study earnestly to ensure we understand it fully.

To maintain our nature as a Marxist political party under new circumstances, we must be self-driven, know clearly for whom we exercise governance and power and for whose interests we work, and take a firm stance on these fundamental issues. All Party members must have political integrity, observe the code of conduct in public office, and apply high moral standards in their private lives. They should be clean and honest in office and in private life, work selflessly and diligently for the public, live frugally to cultivate morality, and maintain political integrity.

The key to self-reform is to have the will to admit our own shortcomings and the courage to redress them. Now, our fight against corruption has secured an overwhelming victory on strong foundations, but we cannot allow ourselves any respite. We must remain committed to self-reform, and persevere in the never-ending journey of full and rigorous governance of the Party. We must continue to improve Party conduct, build clean government, and fight corruption to the end in the spirit of “leaving our mark in the steel we grasp and our print on the stone we tread”. Not for one minute will we let our guard drop in this prolonged, uphill battle. There will be zero tolerance for anyone who violates Party discipline and the law.

In the resolution, there is a full review of the education campaign on CPC history, which calls on the whole Party to uphold a materialist approach to history and adopt a correct outlook on our Party’s history. We should learn from our history to know why we succeeded in the past, and see how we can continue to succeed in the future. This will help strengthen our resolve in fulfilling our founding mission, and in upholding and developing Chinese socialism in the new era.

The education campaign on CPC history is an important political initiative launched at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, and should be implemented in full. The Party’s third resolution on its history reflects new perspectives on our understanding. We should pay special attention to them while studying the resolution, in order to have a better understanding of the Party’s achievements and experience over the past hundred years. The education campaign has been a success. We must take stock of the successful experience gained from the campaign and turn it into a regular and institutionalized practice so that the results can be consolidated and extended.

The whole Party should focus on studying and implementing the guiding principles of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, and drive the education campaign on CPC history to new heights, so as to have a better understanding of our cause, firmer commitment to our ideals, higher standards of integrity, and greater determination to turn what has been gained from studying history into concrete actions. All Party members should study Party history, reflect on our guiding principles, do solid work, and break new ground. They should arm themselves with the Party’s new theories and enforce the Central Committee’s decisions and plans.

We should study the resolution in earnest, so as to understand the Party’s glorious history, its perseverance in fulfilling its founding mission, the significance and experience of its hundred-year struggle, and the importance of building a better future by drawing on history. Through study sessions of the theory study groups in Party committees and Party leadership groups, officials should take the lead in studying history on a regular basis. We should also leverage training institutions for officials to promote the study of Party history. Party history should be made a compulsory course for Party schools (academies of governance) and executive leadership academies for every semester. Party history should also be made available as part of school courses on moral and political education for young students to learn in classrooms, so that students can learn sound values and ethics. We should take advantage of our revolutionary heritage, strengthen education on our traditions and on patriotism to cultivate moral integrity in young people, and inspire society to love the Party and the country. Through the mechanisms established in the campaign “I do solid work for the people”, Party organizations and members should continue to help solve problems that concern the people most, and carry our Party’s mass line into the new era.

* Main points of the speech at the opening ceremony of a study session on implementing the decisions of the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, attended by principal officials at the provincial and ministerial level.

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