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

It was convened in Beijing from September 15 to 18, 2009. The Plenary Session studied a number of major issues to strengthen and improve the Party's construction under the new situation, listened to and discussed Hu Jintao's Work Report entrusted by the Central Political Bureau, and considered and adopted the “Decision of the Central Committee of the CPC on Several Major Issues Concerning Strengthening and Improving Party Construction under the New Circumstances”.

The Plenary Session held that strengthening and improving the Party building under the new situation is an imperative requirement to fully implement the spirit of the 17th Party Congress. The “Decision” emphasized that the Party's advanced character and its ruling position are not permanent and immutable, the implementation of the Party spirit to control the Party, the task of strict governance of the Party than at any time in the past are more important and urgent. The Party must fully implement the overall plan of the 17th Party Congress on Party building, in accordance with the requirements of the Party’s Constitution, focusing on continuing to emancipate the mind, adhering to Reform and Opening-up, promoting scientific development and social harmony, focusing on improving the Party's capacity to govern, maintaining and developing the Party's advanced character , focusing on enhancing the Party's sense of mission and responsibility for the Party and the people's cause, focusing on maintaining the flesh-and-blood relationship between the Party and the masses, highlighting the key points, overcoming the challanges, comprehensively promoting the ideological building, organizational building, working style building, institutional building and anti-corruption and integrity building, enhancing the scientific level of Party construction, further building the Party into a Marxist ruling Party which was founded for the people, ruling for the people, pragmatic, innovative, hard work, integrity and honesty, dynamic, unity and harmony, to ensure that the Party is always the vanguard of the Chinese working class, and at the same time it is the vanguard of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation.

The Plenary Session emphasized the need to build a Marxist learning Party and improve the ideological and political level of the Party. To this end, it is necessary to promote the Sinicization, modernization and popularization of Marxism, and adhere to Marxism as the fundamental guiding ideology of the Party and the country. The primary task of building a Marxist learning Party is to vigorously promote theoretical innovation, to test the truth and develop the truth in practice, and to employ the developing Marxism for guiding new practices; building a Marxist learning Party is to arm the Party with the theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and to firmly establish the world view and methodology of dialectical materialism and historical materialism; the primary task of building a Marxist learning Party is to carry out learning and education on the core socialist value system and to make education on ideals and beliefs the top priority of the whole Party in learning and practicing the core socialist value system. The “Decision” stresses the need to consciously draw the line between Marxism and anti-Marxism, between the basic economic system at the primary stage of socialism and privatization and unitary public ownership, between socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics and Western capitalist democracy, and between socialist ideology and culture and the corrupt ideology and culture of feudalism and capitalism, and resolutely resist the influence of various erroneous trends of thought.

The “Decision” also recommended to adhere to and improve the democratic centralism, and actively develop intra-Party democracy, to deepen the reform of the personnel system of cadres, to build a high-quality cadres good at promoting scientific development and social harmony, to do a good job of grasping the grassroots and consolidate the organizational basis of the Party rule; to carry forward the Party's fine style, to maintain the flesh and blood ties between the Party and the people; to accelerate the building of the system of punishment and prevention of corruption, and carry out a thorough struggle against corruption. The Plenary Session also underlined that the Party should further study and deploy the spirit of reform and innovation to promote the Party's new great project, indicating the determination and confidence of the Party in the new situation to seize a new victory in building a moderately prosperous society, to create a new situation in the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.