People's Daily:

Why was the overall leadership of the Party and the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee emphasized so much at the fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee? Thank you.

Xu Lin:

Mr. Jiang Jinquan will answer this question.

Jiang Jinquan:

Thank you for the question. The fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee has emphasized upholding the overall leadership of the Party and strengthening the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee, and placed it as the primary principle that must be followed in promoting national economic and social development in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period, because the principle provides the most important guarantee for achieving the goals of economic and social development set during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. As you all know, the CPC leadership is the key to China's success in running its affairs and it is the choice of history and the people for the Communist Party of China to lead the national rejuvenation. This is well-grounded in history, theory, and reality.

Since its founding 100 years ago, the Party has upheld its founding mission to pursue happiness for the Chinese people, sought national rejuvenation, led all ethnic groups to continue their struggle, and achieved great victories in revolution, construction, and reform. The Chinese nation ushered in a historic leap starting from standing up and getting rich to becoming strong. The CPC won the heartfelt support of all people throughout the country. A recent poll conducted by an authoritative international organization shows that the support rate of the Party and the Chinese government stands as high as 95%, ranking top in the world. This year, China took the lead both in curbing the COVID-19 epidemic and in reversing the economic downturn into positive growth, highlighting once again the strong leadership of the Party and the remarkable advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Party's leadership is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the greatest strength of the system, and the fundamental national condition in boosting China's economic and social development. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period and beyond, China's economic and social development will be confronted with an extremely complex international situation. We will have to solve many difficult problems and face a series of risks and challenges. The more problems we face, the more we will be inseparable from the Party who serves as the compass for guiding our direction, the backbone for gathering strength, and the bedrock for keeping social stability. Therefore, we must uphold and strengthen the overall leadership of the Party. That's why the principle of upholding the overall leadership of the Party has been given top priority and must be followed in terms of economic and social development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.

The highest principle for upholding the overall leadership of the Party is to strengthen the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee. As we all know, a good choir needs a strong conductor. Only by strengthening the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee can the Party provide overall leadership and coordinate the efforts of all involved to create strong synergy and promote economic and social development. Only with the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee and with General Secretary Xi Jinping at the helm, the ship of socialism with Chinese characteristics can ride the wind and waves and go steadily forward. This requires the entire Party to strengthen our consciousness of the need to maintain political integrity, think in big-picture terms, follow the leadership core, and keep in alignment with the central Party leadership. We must also stay confident in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics and uphold General Secretary Xi Jinping's core position on the CPC Central Committee and in the Party as a whole as well as uphold the Central Committee's authority and its centralized, unified leadership. By aligning ourselves with Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era and using it to guide practice and advance work we can closely follow the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core in terms of thinking, political stand, and action as well as continue to improve organizational systems that effectively coordinate between upper and lower levels and provide steadfast enforcement, give play to the Party's strong political, ideological, and organizational advantages as well as the political and organizational functions of primary party organizations to effectively implement the decisions and plans of the CPC Central Committee.

General Secretary Xi Jinping often says that "it takes a good blacksmith to make good steel." To uphold the CPC's leadership, we must strengthen Party building. We must implement the general guidance for Party development in the new era, and follow the Party's organizational lines, take enhancing the Party's political foundation building as the overarching principle, and make comprehensive efforts to ensure that the Party's political work is stressed, ideology is strengthened, organizations are consolidated, conduct is improved, discipline is maintained, institutional development is always emphasized, and the fight against corruption continues. We must also ensure the effective fulfillment of responsibilities of the main actor and supervisor for strict Party self-governance. We will stay true to the Party's founding mission to inspire the inexhaustible impetus of concerted efforts in the whole Party. We will encourage officials at all levels to do their job and the public to work with the right atmosphere for the selection and appointment of Party cadres. We will pool the strength of the broadest masses of the people by applying a realistic and pragmatic approach, striving to do solid work and maintain integrity. 

Party building is in turn a means to develop the leadership for the sake of the Party and the country. The fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee stresses that the 14th Five-Year Plan period must focus on promoting high-quality development. Only high-quality Party building can lead to and promote high-quality development.

Thank you.