Reform of the System of Party and State Leadership

Speech delivered by Deng Xiaoping at the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC on August 18, 1980. Contained in Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping Vol. 2. This article summarizes the profound lessons of the "Cultural Revolution", analyzes the main drawbacks, causes and hazards of the current political system in China, points out that the main drawbacks of the Party and the state's leadership system and cadre system are bureaucratism, over-concentration of power, the phenomenon of patriarchal system, influence of feudal autocracy, life-long cadre leadership system and various other privileges. It is true that the errors we made in the past were partly attributable to the way of thinking and style of work of some leaders. But they were even more attributable to the problems in our organizational and working systems, if we do not resolutely reform the shortcomings in the current system, some serious problems in the past may reappear today and in the future. These remarks made by Deng Xiaoping emphasizes the question of eliminating the influence of feudalism and bourgeois thinking, discusses the purpose, significance, main contents and principles of political system reform in China, forms a relatively complete basic thought of political system reform, and thus becomes a guiding text for China's political system reform.