The Fourth Plenary Session of the Fourteenth Central Committee of the CPC

It was convened in Beijing from September 25 to 28, 1994. The Plenary Session focused on the issue of Party building and adopted the “Decision of the CPC Central Committee on some Major Issues Concerning the Strengthening and Improvement of Party Building”, which raised Party building to the height of “a new great undertaking” and clearly put forward the general goals and tasks of Party building.

The “Decision” pointed out that under the changing conditions of the contemporary world and due to the great changes that occurred with policies of reform, opening up and modernization in contemporary China, efforts should be made to build the Party into a Marxist Party armed with the theory of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, a Party serving the people wholeheartedly, which is fully consolidated ideologically, politically and organizationally, able to withstand all kinds of risks, which shall always be at the forefront of the times. Around this overall goal and task, the Plenary Session demanded focusing on three issues: Adhering to and improve the system of democratic centralism; strengthening and improving the construction of grass-roots Party organizations; train, cultivate and select leading cadres with both political integrity and expertise, especially from among the young cadres.

The Plenary Session advocated that the “Decision” is a major programmatic document for strengthening the Party building under the new situation, and would certainly have a significant and far-reaching impact in improving the Party's leadership quality and governing level, as well as for promoting reform, opening up and socialist modernization. The Plenary Session emphasized that the whole Party has made great efforts in the past two years to implement the task of strengthening the Party building and improving the Party's leadership as proposed in the 14th National Congress; underlined that democratic centralism is the fundamental organizational and leadership system of the Party, which is a scientific, rational and efficient system; that the Party's grass-roots organizations are the foundation and bastions of all the Party's work and demonstrate combat effectiveness of the Party, and bear the important responsibility of directly contacting the masses, publicizing Party policies to the masses, organizing and uniting them, and responsible to implement the Party's line, principles and policies at the grass-roots level. The plenary session also underlined that cultivating and selection of leading cadres with both expertise and political integrity is a major issue related to the overall situation of the Party cause.