Apply the Guiding Principles of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee

Apply the Guiding Principles of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee*

July 18, 2024

Understand the Guiding Principles of the Third Plenary Session

First, we must understand the theme of deeper comprehensive reform. Planning and advancing reform around the Party’s central task is the key to our success. Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, driven by the need for deeper all-round reform, we have won the battle against poverty through unprecedented determination and effort, achieved moderate prosperity in all respects throughout the country, secured an overwhelming victory in the fight against corruption, and consolidated our achievements, thereby winning wholehearted support from the people. But how do we gather greater strength and support on the new journey ahead? The answer is through Chinese modernization.

The 20th CPC National Congress in 2022 made strategic plans for advancing Chinese modernization on all fronts. Deeper all-round reform must always serve this purpose. We will aim for the overarching goal of developing and improving the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and modernizing China’s system and capacity for governance. We will make our reforms more integrated, focused and effective. We will make targeted, concerted and sustained efforts to remove institutional obstacles, in order to unleash and develop productive forces and stimulate and boost social vitality. We will effectively forestall major risks and resolve challenges on the journey ahead, and provide strong impetus and an institutional guarantee for Chinese modernization.

Second, we must understand the major principles for deeper comprehensive reform. The Resolution of the CPC Central Committee on Driving Deeper Comprehensive Reform to Advance Chinese Modernization has outlined Six Principles as spelled out below. These represent a rational review of the valuable experience we have accumulated since the launch of reform and opening up — particularly in the new era — and encapsulate our Party’s deeper understanding of the reform process. They provide clear guidance towards a more sound, forward-looking, proactive and innovative approach to deeper comprehensive reform, and towards secure, steady and sustained progress.

- Upholding the Party’s overall leadership. This is our greatest political strength and the fundamental guarantee for the success of reform and opening up. We must ensure that Party leadership is exercised in every aspect of reform and throughout the entire process, so that reform always advances in the right political direction.

- Adhering to a people-centered approach. We must respect the principal position and creative inspiration of the people, and ensure that our reform measures remain highly responsive to the call of the people. We must pool their wisdom and support and deliver greater benefits to all in a fair manner.

- Upholding fundamental principles and breaking new ground. We should remain committed to our ideal and path, uphold the Four Cardinal Principles, and maintain our confidence in the path, theory, system and culture of Chinese socialism. At the same time, we should have the courage to pursue innovation and overcome difficulties as we make new breakthroughs in advancing reform.

- Strengthening institutions as our main task. This means reinforcing top-level design and overall planning, giving equal weight to abolishing the old and establishing the new, and ensuring that new systems are already in place before old ones are retired. Achieving this requires us to consolidate fundamental systems, refine basic systems, and innovate important systems.

- Remaining committed to law-based governance across the board. This means employing law-based thinking and methodologies to address issues arising in the course of reform and consolidate the achievements we have secured. It is essential to guarantee coherence between reform and the rule of law. This will ensure that all significant reforms have a sound legal footing, and that the fruits of reform are promptly enshrined in law.

- Applying systems thinking. A coordinated and dialectical approach is required when formulating and implementing policies. We must properly handle the major relationships between economic and social development, between the government and the market, between efficiency and fairness, between vitality and order, and between development and security, thus pursuing reform in a more systematic, holistic and coordinated manner.

These principles must be firmly upheld, developed and enriched throughout the reform process.

Third, we must understand the key measures for deeper comprehensive reform. The Resolution prioritizes economic growth and the people’s wellbeing, dedicating seven sections to these objectives: building a high-standard socialist market economy, promoting high-quality economic development, supporting all-round innovation, improving macroeconomic governance, promoting integrated urban-rural development, pursuing high-standard opening up, and ensuring and improving the people’s wellbeing.

These seven sections present key reform measures addressing the following major issues:
• consolidating and developing the public sector and at the same time encouraging, supporting and guiding the development of the non-public sector;
• building a unified national market;
• refining the systems underpinning the market economy;
• improving the institutions and mechanisms for fostering new quality productive forces in line with local conditions;
• improving the systems for increasing the resilience and reinforcing the security of industrial and supply chains;
• integrating reform of institutions and mechanisms pertaining to education, science and technology, and talent;
• improving the national strategic planning system and policy coordination mechanisms;
• deepening reform of the fiscal, taxation and financial systems;
• improving mechanisms for implementing the coordinated regional development strategy;
• improving the institutions and mechanisms for advancing new urbanization;
• improving support systems to strengthen agriculture, benefit rural residents, and enrich rural areas;
• improving the income distribution system, the employment-first policy, and the social security system.

The Resolution also outlines other key reform measures, targeting salient problems within the institutional framework. These measures focus on strategic tasks, such as improving the systems of whole-process people’s democracy and socialist rule of law with Chinese characteristics, expanding reform in the cultural sector and in eco-civilization, modernizing China’s national security system and capacity, and deepening national defense and military reform. Covering every dimension of Chinese modernization, these initiatives constitute a blueprint for deeper all-round reform.

As goal-oriented and problem-oriented approaches, they are designed to fulfill the long-term needs of Chinese modernization by meeting public and societal expectations and removing the institutional obstacles that currently hinder its progress. All CPC members should understand the intention and focus of these measures from an overall strategic perspective, while resolutely promoting reform.

Fourth, we must understand the fundamental guarantee for deeper comprehensive reform. We must drive deeper reform under the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee, in order to guarantee that reform will always follow the right political direction. Forging ahead with reform will introduce many new challenges, as more sectors become involved and more vested interests are encountered. This places greater expectations on Party organizations at all levels to assess the situation, make sound plans, mobilize the public, and implement reform measures. Party members and officials are required to be more proactive, open-minded, competent and disciplined. To this end, we must always engage in self-reform on our own initiative before leading social transformation. We must exercise strict governance over the Party with an enterprising spirit and consistently improve our Party’s leadership capabilities.

To boost the whole Party’s drive, initiative and creativity in reform and development, the Resolution specifies plans for deepening institutional reform to improve internal Party governance. They encompass: firmly following the right approach to selecting and appointing officials, and prioritizing outstanding performers who are politically committed, highly responsible, determined to pursue reform, and honest and clean; guiding officials to develop a clear understanding of good performance, applying the “three distinctions”, spurring them on to make progress with a pioneering spirit and demonstrate enterprise in their work, and addressing the problems of officials acting arbitrarily or lacking the will, courage or ability to fulfill their duties; investigating and addressing the challenges faced by grassroots Party organizations in Party development, and building up their overall political and organizational capabilities; and eradicating the breeding grounds of corruption by strengthening the mechanisms for applying checks over the allocation and exercise of power, as part of a comprehensive effort to ensure that officials dare not, cannot, and will not engage in corruption.

We must have a thorough understanding of these measures as they aim to further improve the political environment for upcoming reform and provide an important guarantee for success in all sectors.

Fully Implement Reform Measures in the Resolution

First, we must reinforce organization and leadership. We must make meticulous arrangements, conduct overall coordination, formulate the task lists, timetables, and priorities for reform in a well-designed manner, and clearly define the entities responsible for implementing specific reforms together with their duties. The CPC Central Committee will exercise leadership over the overall design, coordination and implementation of reform. Central Party and government departments and the people’s armed forces should assume the main responsibilities, focus on major roadmaps, important tasks, and key endeavors, work hard and show initiative, and conduct in-depth research to implement effective reform within their respective departments, units and sectors. Local Party committees and governments should guarantee the enforcement of reform measures within their jurisdiction. Principal Party and government officials should assume leadership over reform, engage in major decisions, formulate important plans, provide coordination when addressing key challenges, and keep track of results.

Second, we must act in synergy to make overall advances. As reform measures are closely interlinked and require careful coordination between multiple departments, we should neither act alone nor attempt to tackle too many issues all at once. We must adopt the new before breaking the old, and never break the old until the new is in place. We should have a keen understanding of strategic priorities and launch reform measures in order of importance. The timing of these launches should be meticulously planned to ensure that we progress steadily and complete our tasks precisely as scheduled, neither prematurely nor belatedly. Urgent efforts are needed to address the most immediate concerns and the most pressing issues that call for the most decisive actions, while a gradual approach should be followed in addressing problems that necessitate sustained endeavors. We should strengthen coordination among different departments to keep the orientation of our reforms consistent. We must resolutely guard against and overcome the silo mentality driven by departmental or local interests that could hinder the overall progress of reform. To ensure the continuity of our work, we should follow through existing reforms, execute them as scheduled, and work out a detailed and concrete action program for implementing newly decided reforms.

Third, we must encourage exploration and innovation. The plans outlined in the Resolution are strategic and forward-looking, setting the direction for the future. Their implementation requires an elaborate and feasible action program. Local authorities and central departments should consider the overall national interests and act accordingly. They should make every effort to faithfully apply the principles set by the Central Committee, and implement the measures and requirements. They should also take the initiative to identify the principal challenges and the key dimensions of these challenges in their own work, and formulate corresponding action plans suited to their own local conditions, rather than mechanically following the instructions of senior authorities. In the sectors where we must make breakthroughs but still lack hands-on experience, we should explore pilot reform and build up experience until we can roll it out where conditions permit. Concerning new problems encountered in our new endeavors or in new fields, we should fully respect the pioneering spirit of grassroots officials and the people, encouraging them to innovate in a spirit of enterprise, and create and accumulate new experience that can be replicated and scaled up.

Fourth, we must make sure to achieve solid results. We should establish a sound mechanism to advance reform that defines the responsibilities of all relevant parties, encompasses the entire reform process, and guarantees coordination among all departments. The reform action program should be well-designed and well-organized to facilitate execution and troubleshooting. We must guard against the tendency of putting a lot of work into drawing up documents but overlooking the effort of implementation. We should guide Party members and officials to heighten their sense of responsibility and mission and ensure that they fully understand that in the reform process, there will be no hanging back from the fray and no spectators on the sidelines. As participants, they should be mobilized to break down and refine reform tasks with concrete actions. We should strengthen scrutiny over reform actions and keep track of results. This will help us detect existing problems and the causes behind them, so that we can address them in a timely manner. We should include the implementation of major reform tasks in oversight and discipline inspection, and evaluate individual reforms based on evidence of solid achievements and public satisfaction. Our goal is to ensure that our people will have a greater sense of gain, fulfillment and security.

* Part of the speech at the second full assembly of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee.

(Not to be republished for any commercial or other purposes.)