Xi stresses study of Party’s history

CPC gears up for centenary with learning campaign for 91 million members

BEIJING: The Communist Party of China (CPC), the world’s biggest Marxist ruling party with over 91 million members, launched a campaign on Party history learning and education among all of its members.

Speaking at the campaign’s launch meeting on Saturday, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, called for efforts to study the Party’s history, understand its theories, do practical work and make new advances.

Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, spoke of the need to embark on a new journey in high spirit to fully build a modern socialist China and welcome the Party’s centenary with outstanding achievements.

Founded in 1921, the CPC has grown into the world’s biggest Marxist ruling party in a century. It has been in power for over 70 years in the world’s largest socialist country with 1.4 billion population.

The Party has stood the test of time, reversing China’s fate from the continuous decline since the Opium War in the 1840s to steady progress toward prosperity.

Xi stressed the vital necessity of launching the campaign as the CPC stands at a critical juncture where the time frames of its two centenary goals converge.

Xi urged Party committees at all levels to attentively implement the arrangements made by the CPC

Central Committee.

Zhu Qingping, a 104-year-old from the old revolutionary base in east China’s Jiangxi province, voiced his support for the campaign.

“Only by reviewing history can people living in peacetime truly understand why we chose to join the Red Army and then followed the Party wholeheartedly,” said Zhu, who joined the Red Army in 1931.

“Our Party’s history is a history of continuously adapting Marxism to the Chinese context,” Xi said, calling for educating and guiding the whole Party to learn from its “extraordinary” past so as to understand how Marxism has profoundly changed

China and the world.

He called for efforts to equip the whole Party with the latest achievements in its theoretical innovation, and to use the theories to guide its practice and advance its work.

Over its 100-year history, the CPC has been of one mind with the people, breathed the same breath as the people, and shared weal and woe with the people, said Xi.

With people’s support, the CPC is invincible in the face of any obstacles, Xi said, adding that it is the duty of the Party to cement the unity of 1.4 billion Chinese people to push forward the rejuvenation of the nation. — Xinhua