A total of 89 experts and scholars have given lectures at 44 collective study sessions at the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee held since the convocation of the Party's 16 National Congress five years ago. They have lectured on such special subjects as economics, politics, laws, culture, science and technology, history, military affairs and Party building. On the eve of the imminent the 17th CPC National Congress, reporters have interviewed some of those who had given lectures at the CPC headquarters in Zhongnanhai and a few specialists on Party building.
The CPC Central Committee with Hu Jintao as general secretary proposes vital task for building study-type Party
The 16th CPC National Congress set forth a grand task for the construction of a better-off society, which was quite inspiring but its course, nevertheless, full of distress and hardships. In the past five years, the Chinese people under the leadership of the Party Central Committee with Hu Jintao as its general secretary have, apart from overcoming SARS and other natural adversities, stepped up macro-economic control and maintained a relatively fast economic growth and responded soberly to complex and volatile international situation.
Practice in the past five years eloquently proves that the collective study meetings of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee have become a long-term system for policy makers from central authorities, who are indeed taking the lead in beefing up a study endeavor among CPC members throughout the Party.
At each collective study session, Hu Jintao and other members of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee listen attentively and take down notes carefully and confer with lecturers enthusiastically on a couple of vital prevailing issues. Such study sessions have kept on without interruption, averaging one for approximately 40 days.
"The CPC's birth, growth and development have been closely integrated with theoretical studies," said Prof. Zhou Bingcheng from the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, who had once partaken in research topics on the construction of the study-type Party. "The course of expanding the Party's ranks has been precisely the course of studying Marxism and applying it to resolving practical issues in China and leading its people to continuously advance revolution, construction and reform.
The founder of the CPC, Mao Zedong, who had particularly been fond of reading during his lifetime, set forth a series of vital, important propositions, including a famous motto that "reading is learning, and applying what you have read is also learning and more important learning."
When the CPC Central Committee decided to shift the focus of the Party work to economic development in December 1978, late senior leader Deng Xiaoping explicitly called on the CPC to re-launch the Party-wide study. Moreover, he then reminded that the entire Party "to do a good job in learning and to conscientiously work out the system for study".
After the Fourth Plenum of the 13th CPC Central Committee, Jiang Zemin, the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee at the time, repeatedly underscored that the issue of study should be placed at a prominent position. Upon his proposal, an intensive education in the need to "stress study, political awareness and integrity" was unfolded in a concentrated way among the Party and government leading bodies and their officials at or above the country level.
Furthermore, after the 16th CPC National Congress held in late 2002, the Party Central Committee with Hu Jintao as the general secretary unequivocally proposed for building a study-type Party and put the study issue on a still more protruding height.
Numerous experts who have given lectures at collective study sessions at the Political Bureau hold that doing a good job with study among leading officials, and advancing the Party-wide study to turn the CPC into a study-type Party constitutes a vital strategic decision in enhancing or raising its leading capability and governing capability, which is of major practical importance and far-reaching historical significance to the great cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics and the new great project for Party building.
Collective study sessions firmly keep up with "major, hot and knotty' issues in enhancing capability of governing Party and government affairs
Taking an overall view of the 44 study sessions, acknowledge Party building experts, each and every session has proceeded from the specific, actual needs of wielding power, invigorating the nation and seeking development and hence, it facilitate spurring the actual work and exploring the objective reality with a very distinct purpose.
Prof. Qin Yaqing, vice-president of the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing, was one of key speakers enunciating on the topic of global multi-polar structure and China's security environment. He recalled with a sense of pride that they had begun their four-month preparations for lecture texts, and he and his co-speaker Zhang Yuyan, a research fellow from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, each gave a 45 minute lecture at the collective study meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on February 23, 2004.
Reading history is for enlightening whereas learning from the past can serve as a precaution for the present. A number of study sessions have invoked related contents in history, from recollections of the world-renowned Nanchang uprising on August 1, 1927 and the establishment of a revolutionary base area in the Jinggang Mountains to the victory of the Red Army's epic Long March of 1934-35, the world anti-fascist war and the development histories of major global powers following the 15th century.
Promoting the CPC's spirit of learning to steadily enhancing capability of governing Party and state affairs
It has always been the fine Marxist type of learning initiated by the CPC to proceed from reality and adhere to the integration of theory with practices. Those attending the 44 study sessions of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee have done utmost to learn vividly and effectively and in a penetrating way.
Despite piles of state affairs amassed ahead daily for them to attend, central leading officials still persevere in participating in the study sessions, and they have indeed set a very good example for others," noted quite a few experts who have given lectures at the collective study sessions.
Meanwhile, in carrying on the ongoing massive study, local Party organizations have created a lot of good forms to make such sessions full of vigor and creativity and with a distinct aim. However, "the sea of learning is boundless and infinite," as the popular Chinese saying goes. So "the task involved is arduous and the road ahead is long" with respect to the construction of a study-type Party and study-type society.
People around China are now fully convinced that the CPC's leading and power-governing capacity is sure to upgrade continuously and the socialist road with Chinese characteristics bound to turn increasingly broader and promising through an incessant learning drive throughout the Party by means of applying into practice the latest outcome that has been scored in the sinification of Marxism under the guidance of the Party Central Committee with Hu Jintao as the general secretary.
By People's Daily Online |
