Trajectory to New Era The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee charters China’s path forward
In the past more than 40 years that China has pushed reform and opening up, the world took notice because of the unprecedented development that has proven not only sustainable, but also inclusive. The inclusiveness is illustrated by the feat of lifting over 800 million people out of poverty, in the shortest period of time in human history.
This feat was actually the concentrated expression of a focused determination of the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the epochal and historic Third
Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in December 1978, which concluded that the challenge of China’s then backward production capacity had to be urgently resolved by unfettering the productive forces. From this conclusion, the Party and the Central Government took economic modernization as the core of its work, providing the rationale for the policy framework of reform and opening up. In this context, the CPC plenums, especially for the unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee, are a platform of the
Party central leadership to take stock and update itself on the theoretical understanding of the existing conditions of the country and get to grips with the policy implications of driving reforms and opening up to new levels.
The Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, held in Beijing on October 28-31, 2019, was attended by 202 CPC Central Committee members and 169 alternate members. The session focused on major issues concerning how to uphold and improve the system of socialism with