context: Launching the Party history education campaign, Xi Jinping insisted that looking at the Party’s past successes is essential to build its future. The following commentary identifies just what some of these past successes might have been and gives us a glimpse of perceived problems in the Party and the shape of things to come.
Nine ‘invariable’ principles have characterised Party building over the past century, insists Zhang Zhiming 张志明 Central Party School Party Building Research Department head in a Study Times commentary published on 19 May 2021. These encompass
- strong Party leadership guiding past great achievements
- freeing the Chinese people from oppression and slavery
- uniting the country and opening up the socialist road to wealth and power
- upholding the correct political line
- unifying thought and action across the Party
- guaranteeing Party building always served socio-economic development
- defining political construction as the essence of Party building following the 18th National Party Congress (CP note: i.e. when Xi Jinping took over as General Party Secretary)
- stressing ideology and further Sinicising Marxism
- developed theory and practice with Chinese characteristics
- buttressing national ideological confidence
- buttressing the Party organisation
- consolidating the Party's capacity for mobilisation
- enhancing its grassroots network
- maintaining close relations with the masses
- pursuing 'mass line' efforts
- managing the Party through iron discipline
- ensuring the more complex the task, the stricter the discipline
- standardising disciplinary measures and stressed cadre awareness
- holding high the banner of anti-corruption
- maintaining the Party’s 'advanced and upright qualities'
- promoting institutional mechanisms to lead cadres 'to not want to be corrupt'
- preserving the fundamental role of the Party Constitution
- standardising intra-Party relations and life
- enhancing 'democratic centralism'
- keeping the revolutionary spirit alive
- undertaking recurrent ‘self-revolution’
- e.g. Zunyi Conference (1935), Yan’an Rectification Campaign (1942-4), Third Plenum of the 11th CCP Central Committee (1978) (CP note: the former two buttressed Mao Zedong’s grip on power, the latter launched Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening Up) and 18th National Party Congress
- daring to ‘turn the blade inward’ when necessary to pare away 'nefarious elements' in the Party
- undertaking recurrent ‘self-revolution’