Adhere to the "Two Musts"

At the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong put forward the conclusion that: "Our comrades must be taught to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work."

“We should imbue the Party members with lofty ideals of communism.” That is why Mao Zedong said at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the CPC: "To win countrywide victory is only the first step in a long march of thousands kilometres. Even if this step is worthy of pride, it is comparatively tiny; what will be more worthy of pride is yet to come. After several decades, the victory of the Chinese people's democratic revolution, viewed in retrospect, will seem like only a brief prologue to a long drama. A drama begins with a prologue, but the prologue is not the climax. The Chinese revolution is great, but the road after the revolution will be longer, the work greater and more arduous. ”

In the history, before the emergence of proletarian revolutionaries, when China’s dynasties were overthrown one after the other there were only few revolutionaries who did not succumb to corruption or degeneration after the victory and success of their undertakings. For us, the communists, this must not be the case. Because they have lofty social ideals, they should always be able to maintain their pure proletarian revolutionary quality, and do not follow the mistakes made by the revolutionaries of past Chinese dynasties after they achieved victory. It is based on this consideration that Mao Zedong warned the whole party: With victory, certain negative moods may grow within the Party—arrogance, the airs of a self-styled hero, inertia and unwillingness to make progress, love of pleasure and distaste for continued hard living. With victory, the people will be grateful to us and the bourgeoisie will come forward to flatter us. At the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he warned: "The comrades must be taught to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work. The comrades must be taught to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle.” After the meeting, in March 1949, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China left Xibaipo and moved to Beijing. Mao Zedong once compared this trip to "rushing to Beijing for a new exam" and said that "we must do well in this exam of becoming the ruling party.”

The idea of "two musts" is a profound and prudent reflection on the perpetual need to make progress and the need to maintain the purity of the victorious working class political parties. It answers the question of how to achieve long-term social stability and solidarity and have a good governance and a united people and the question of how to respond to the risk of shrinking public support, if a party is a ruling party for a long period of time. And, Mao Zedong’s “ideas of forging close ties with the masses” is also profound. He answered a political activist who doubted about the degeneration of the Party after its rule began: We have found a new path; we can break free of the past historical cycle. The path is called democracy. As long as the people have oversight of the government then government will not slacken in its efforts, which also has a long-term warning value for the Party. The idea of "two musts" gives a scientific answer to the issue of good governance for the interests of the people, and the protection of the party and the people's regime.