Continue to Fully Mobilize the Party's Unique Strengths

The Central Committee convened this meeting in the run-up to the 91st anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China to honor grassroots Party organizations, outstanding Party members, and Party committees that have taken the lead in the Striving for Excellence campaign. It is crucial that the broad ranks of Party members and Party organizations at all levels learn from these advanced units and outstanding individuals how to advance in the battle to build a moderately well-off society.

Over the last two years, the Striving for Excellence campaign has focused on scientific development, promoting social harmony, serving the broad mass of the people and strengthening grassroots organizations, and has achieved remarkable success in Party organizations around the country.

The advanced units and individuals being honored here today were chosen following exhaustive all-round consultations carried by their nominating work units. Individuals were also voted for in public Internet polls and have the solid support of the masses.

When Comrade Hu Jintao met just now with representatives of those being honored, it demonstrated the Central Committee's close interest in the Striving for Excellence campaign, and its concern for grassroots Party organizations and rank-and-file Party members. I would like to add my warm congratulations to the organizations and individuals being honored here today, and send my greetings to all Party members nationwide.

The aim of our 91-year-old Party in leading the Chinese people through the New Democratic Revolution, the socialist revolution, socialist construction, and reform and opening up, was to transform poor, weak, semi-colonial, semi-feudal China into flourishing socialist China, secure national independence and liberate the people, build a rich and powerful country, raise the people's standard of living and revive the Chinese nation. This was an unprecedented, world-shaking historical enterprise that entailed huge sacrifices and won the wholehearted support of all China's peoples.

History has repeatedly demonstrated that no matter what risks, crises, difficulties and obstacles we face, our Party can overcome them and lead the people from victory to victory. This is because ours is a Marxist Party that by consistently fighting for the truth, wholeheartedly serving the people and maintaining close links with the masses, has developed its own unique strengths. These unique strengths are of decisive importance and are the secret of our Party's advanced nature and purity.

Looking back on our Party's history, we can see that throughout our long struggle we displayed all-round strengths in terms of our theory, politics, organization, institutions, and close relationship with the masses. These strengths ensured that we continually armed ourselves with Marxist theory enriched with Chinese insights, maintained our independence, and continually made progress through our own efforts. They ensured that our Party always integrated our long term ideals with a program for the concrete historical period; always stood at the forefront of the epoch, leading Chinese society in the correct direction. They ensured that our Party was able to unite the Chinese working class with the Chinese people and advanced elements from all nationalities, and assemble people of ability and integrity from all walks of life to play a vanguard role among the masses. They ensured that our Party was able to build a tightly disciplined organization on the basis of democratic centralism, firmly united on the twin pillars of democracy and centralism and, therefore, possessed formidable combat effectiveness. These all-round strengths made it possible for our Party to grow from small to big, weak to strong, to inspire all China's peoples to write the glorious chapters of the revolution, construction and reform and, in the process, to fundamentally change the fate of the Chinese nation. We must thoroughly cherish our unique strengths and fully mobilize them to complete the project of building socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Firstly, we must mobilize our Party's theoretical strengths. Most importantly, we must stick to Marxism, while constantly modernizing, enriching and popularizing it with Chinese insights. We must constantly improve the theoretical level of rank and file Party members and cadres so that, from a theoretical perspective, we maintain and develop the Party's advanced nature and purity.

When we founded our Party, we clearly inscribed Marxism on our banner as our guiding principle. It was precisely because we adopted Marxism and adapted its basic principles to Chinese reality that we were able to grasp the objective laws of development of Chinese society, overcome all sorts of mistaken tendencies and develop the correct political line to successfully navigate our path through revolution, construction and reform and open up the road to saving and rejuvenating our country. Because we used the scientific theory to arm our members and educate the people, we were able to inspire the Party to rally and lead the people in the struggle to build a strong and prosperous country and revitalize our nation. Throughout the entire process of revolution, construction and reform, our Party used Marxism as a guide to understanding and transforming the world. Taking China's concrete circumstances as our starting point, we enhanced Marxism with Chinese insights and made important theoretical and practical gains.

Historical experience has taught us that, to mobilize our Party's theoretical strength, we must link theory with reality, combine theory and practice and the study of theory with its practical application. We must understand the situation of our country and the overall trend of world development, grasp the particular features of the development of our Party and country in different historical periods, review our experience of the problems we faced and solved in the different periods of revolution, construction and reform and preserve the vitality of our guiding ideology by continually enriching and developing our theory with new generalizations. As a Marxist political Party committed to theoretical study, we must make sure that the broad ranks of Party members and cadres thoroughly study Marxism Leninism, Mao Zedong thought, Deng Xiaoping theory, the Three Represents important thought, the scientific concept of development, and other strategic ideas within the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. We must establish a solid foundation based on a dialectical materialist, historical materialist world view and methodology, so that Party members and cadres consciously use scientific theory as a guide to changing objective and subjective reality, maintain a sober outlook when faced with decisive questions, maintain the correct standpoint when faced with crises, and continually strengthen the principled, systematic, farsighted and creative nature of our work.