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With every passing meeting of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a chart of China's future, designed by the nation's top leaders, unfolds. Deepening reform, advancing rule of law, and building an all-round moderately prosperous society were the focus of the third, fourth and fifth plenary sessions of the 18th CPC Central Committee. Strict Party governance is the focus of the sixth plenary session, which started Monday. This focus, known as one part of the "Four Comprehensives," is widely viewed as the strategic outline and key governance thought of the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping as general secretary. Tasked with studying and implementing the top-level designs for strict Party governance, the sixth plenary session will take the strategic vision of the "Four Comprehensives" to new heights. Yet, strict Party governance is not new. Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, the CPC leadership has pledged to unswervingly implement comprehensive and strict Party governance. This included an "eight-point" guideline against bureaucracy and extravagance, and a "mass line" campaign to bring officials closer to the public. The leadership has also taken great pains to address corruption, which it believes could threaten the very survival of the Party and the state. It is natural that people may wonder why Party governance has been elevated to such a height that it is an integral part of the overall strategy. For the CPC - with more than 88 million members, larger than Germany's population - staying true to its mission and keeping constantly invigorated is a tough challenge. To many observers, the CPC is Asia and even the world's most vigorous political Party. This can be attributed to a serious and meticulous approach to political life taken by the 95-year-old CPC, a fine tradition and political advantage of the CPC. Strict governance must begin within the Party itself. Over the years, the CPC has formulated basic norms of intra-Party political life, featuring principles such as to "seek truth from facts," linking theory with reality and maintaining close links to the people. Historical lessons from the former Soviet Union and the CPC's own history highlight the importance of intra-Party political life. Paralysis through bureaucracy, abandoning democratic centralism and no longer following Marxism as its guiding theory, brought the communist party in the Soviet Union to its end. Abnormal intra-Party political life also led to political mistakes in the CPC's history, such as the Cultural Revolution. New circumstances call for new criteria in the political life of the Party. By the end of 2015, CPC membership exceeded 88 million, and over 70 percent members had joined after the reform and opening up. Drastic and profound social transition subjected CPC members to negative influences such as money worshipping, hedonism and extreme individualism. The sixth plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee seeks to stipulate norms for intra-Party political life under new circumstances, revise documents on intra-Party supervision and solidify the political foundations of strict Party governance. Designing the overall strategy, the meeting will consolidate the CPC's leadership, upgrade the CPC's governance capacity, and lay the institutional foundations to complete the overall tasks, blueprints and objectives set at the 18th National Congress of the CPC. |
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