Continue to Fully Mobilize the Party's Unique Strengths

Fourthly, we must mobilize the Party's institutional strength. Most importantly, we must continue to practice centralism based on democracy and democracy guided by centralism. We must preserve Party unity while strengthening the Party's creative energy, maintain and develop the Party's advanced nature and purity in institutional terms.

Democratic centralism is our Party's fundamental organizational principle. It sets the standards for inner Party political life, defines the norms of inner Party relationship and reflects the interests and aspirations of our Party comrades and our country's citizens. It is a scientific, rational system that guarantees the correct formulation and execution of Party policy. For this reason it is our Party's greatest institutional strength. We must integrate and fully exploit this institutional strength in the context of today's reality, promote inner-Party harmony, uphold discipline, reinforce the organic unity of the Party, while mobilizing the creativity and enthusiasm of the broad ranks of Party members and Party organizations at all levels. We must work tirelessly to create a vigorous inner Party political environment that is at once centralized and democratic, combines discipline with freedom, in which members unite around a common purpose while retaining their individual points of view.

Inner Party democracy is the life of the Party. In essence it means the equality of all Party members in the internal life of the Party, and their common participation in discussions and the management of internal affairs in accordance with the Party constitution. Party organizations at all levels must diligently carry out the provisions of the Party constitution and regulations regarding Party members' democratic rights, including the right to information, to participate in decision making, voting and supervision. Only in this way can we ensure that the broad ranks of Party members genuinely take the leading role in the life of the Party. We must create a healthy and relaxed atmosphere inside the Party - an environment that encourages democratic debate and allows Party members to speak their mind, ensures they are properly informed and allows them to pool their wisdom through the free play of ideas and reach a common understanding through democratic debate.

Centralization and unity are the guarantees of the Party's cohesion and ability to act in concert. China is a developing country with a vast territory and a huge population and our Party must carry out the huge and complex tasks of reform and development while maintaining stability. In these circumstances, maintaining the unity of the Party and the country is of the utmost importance. Our country is becoming ever more diverse in terms of social and economic structure, organizational forms, employment patterns, interest relationships and distribution patterns. Only by defining a centralized direction on a democratic basis, formulating correct policies and making correct decisions on major issues, can we maintain the unity and common purpose of the Party, strengthen the Party's creativity, cohesion and fighting capacity, maintain national unity, keep the different nationalities united, preserve social stability and ensure the smooth progress of reform and opening up and socialist modernization. Party organizations at all levels and the entire Party membership must strictly observe Party discipline - particularly political discipline - and consciously maintain the highest degree of unanimity with the Central Committee of the CPC in ideology, politics and action. All Party organizations must uphold the authority of the Central Committee, ensure its decrees are not impeded, and strictly enforce orders and prohibitions.

A stable, enduring and all-encompassing institutional structure is fundamental to building and managing a huge Party with tens of millions of members. Using the Party constitution as the base and democratic centralism as the core, we must improve our leadership system and style and our systems of governance, enhance the Party congress system, internal Party elections and the mechanisms of inner Party democracy to combat arbitrary or slack behavior and other phenomena that violate the principles of democratic centralism. We need to establish mechanisms for strengthening the leaderships of local Party committees, to ensure that they pull together, cooperate, and act efficiently to discover and deal with problems in a timely fashion.

Fifthly, we must make full use of our Party's close links with the masses. Most importantly, we must stick to the Party's fundamental aims and the mass line, and direct all our effort towards benefiting the people, carrying out their will and fulfilling their demands, so that from the point of view of our work style, we maintain and develop the advanced nature and purity of the Party.

Our Party grew powerful by maintaining intimate links with the masses. The people are the source of the Party's strength and the foundation of its victories. Without the support of the people the Party would not have existed or developed and would have accomplished nothing. Because of this, our Party's intimate links with the masses are its most fundamental strength. If we ever weakened or lost these links, all our efforts would amount to nothing, we would be like a river without a source or a tree without roots and would experience only setbacks and defeats.

After our Party came to power, we were in a position to serve the people better and stay even closer to the masses, but changes in society and in our Party's historical position mean there is a risk of becoming separated from the masses. We must take this danger very seriously. Comrade Hu Jintao pointed out in his speech at the commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the Party: "The tests of governing, of reform and opening up, building a market economy and managing our foreign relations are long term, complicated and challenging. The dangers of slackening our efforts, lacking the ability to carry out our tasks, separating ourselves from the masses, of passivity and corruption, confront the whole Party." All comrades, especially leading cadres at all levels, must maintain a sober outlook, strengthen their political consciousness and general awareness, cultivate a sense of duty and concern, improve and purify themselves, refine their abilities, cultivate close links with the masses, undergo the "four tests", and wholeheartedly devote themselves to the cause of the Party and the people.

Continuously and wholeheartedly making it our fundamental aim to serve the people is the basic reason the people support and respect the Party, and is crucial to maintaining and making full use of the Party's close links with the masses. We must put the interests of the people first at all times; make realizing, developing and defending the interests of the people our starting point and our ending point and earnestly and sincerely work for benefit of the masses. While pushing forward reform and opening up and the development of a socialist market economy, Communist Party members must stick to the principles that collective interests take precedence over individual interests, the general interest takes precedence over sectional interests, and long term interests take precedence over short term interests. We must continue to put the interests of the people above all other considerations, respect the leading role of the people, value the creativity and pioneering spirit of the masses, feel their anxieties and problems, work for their needs, take what the people see as the most immediate, practical needs and problems as our starting point, help the people out of difficulties and work to improve their lot, and incorporate the Party's aims in all our work.

The Party's mass line is our fundamental approach to implementing our ideological line, political line and our organizational principles, and must permeate the entire work of the Party. Leading cadres at all levels must shift the center of gravity of their work towards the people, immerse themselves in day-to-day reality, go down to the grassroots, mix with the people, listen attentively to the voice of the masses, genuinely reflect their hopes and aspirations, show genuine concern for their hardships, respect the masses as their teacher, consult the masses and draw inspiration from their practice. Only in this way can cadres improve their knowledge and their ability to carry out mass work in the new situation.

The Chinese Communist Party has completed an epic historical journey of 91 years. We look forward to the 100th anniversary of our Party, by which time we will have achieved a yet higher standard of living for more than one billion people in a moderately well off society, and to the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China when we will have constructed a prosperous, democratic, civilized, harmonious, modern socialist country. Looking to the past, we can feel justifiably proud of our achievements; looking to the future, the prospects are bright and we have unbounded confidence.

Let us rally around Comrade Hu Jintao, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, uphold the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics, Deng Xiaoping theory and the Three Represents important thought, fully implement the scientific concept of development, comprehensively carry out the Party's major new projects, fully mobilize all of the Party's strengths in the great cause of building socialism with Chinese characteristics and constructing a moderately well of society, exert all our efforts in the struggle to accomplish the great revival of the Chinese nation, and greet the Party's 18th congress with outstanding achievements!

The author of this article, Xi Jinping, is Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, vice president of PRC and president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

(This article is the full text of his speech delivered at a rally honoring the grassroots Party organizations, outstanding Party members, and Party committees that have taken the lead in the Striving for Excellence campaign, on June 28, 2012. The article was first published in Chinese in Qiushi semimonthly's 15th issue of 2012.）