Education Campaign to Maintain the Advanced Nature of Communist Party Members

On November 7, 2004, the CPC Central Committee issued the "Opinions of the CPC Central Committee on the Education Campaign to Maintain the Advanced Nature of Communist Party Members with the Practice of the Important Thought of ‘Three Represents’ as the Main Content”. The education campaign began in January 2005 with the aim of further strengthening the Party's ruling capacity, comprehensively advancing the great project of Party building, ensuring that the Party is always at the forefront of the times and better shouldering its historical mission.

The “Opinions” put forward specific requirements in terms of importance and necessity, guiding ideology and goal requirements, guiding principles, overall arrangement, methods and steps, and organizational leadership. The campaign was carried out in three batches, each batch lasted about half a year. The first batch is Party and government organs above county level and some enterprises and institutions (January to June 2005); the second batch is urban grass-roots and township organs (July to December 2005); and the third batch is rural and some Party and government organs (January to June 2006). The campaign involved more than 7 million Party members and more than 3.5 million grass-roots organizations at that time. It was the largest education campaign in the Party since the founding of New China. They were also a great systematic project for the Party building. In the education campaign to maintain the advanced nature of Party members, the Party Central Committee has formulated the “Opinions on Strengthening the Regular Education of Party Members”, “Opinions on Doing a Good Job in Connecting Party Members and Serving the Masses”, “Opinions on Strengthening and Improving the Management of Mobile Party Members”, and “Opinions on Establishing and Improving the Responsibility System of Local Party Committees and Departmental Party Groups (Party committees) for Grassroots Party Building”. The implementation in the whole Party has further promoted the institutionalization and standardization of Party building work, which not only answered and solved some new problems faced in the current Party building work, but also provided an important institutional guarantee for consolidating and developing the achievements of advanced nature education campaign and further strengthened the Party's advanced nature building.

This campaign was an important measure to arm the whole Party with the developing Marxism under the new historical conditions, and a successful practice to strengthen the Party's ruling capacity and advanced nature building. On June 30, 2006, at the Congress celebrating the 85th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, Hu Jintao summarized the education campaign to maintain the advanced nature of the Communist Party, pointing out that the advanced nature is the essential attribute of a Marxist political Party and the vital force of a Marxist political Party. This advanced nature is fundamentally determined by the nature and purpose of the Communist Party of China, and is maintained and developed through unremitting self-construction. This advanced nature education campaign has achieved remarkable results. Firstly, the majority of Party members have received a profound Marxist education; Secondly, the creativity, cohesion and combat effectiveness of grass-roots Party organizations have been further improved; Thirdly, the Party organizations and Party members have become more conscious of their actions in serving the masses, and the style of Party members and cadres has been further improved; Fourthly, in accordance with the requirements of the “Scientific Outlook on Development”, all regions and departments have further sorted out the development ideas, worked hard to solve some major problems that affect the stability of reform and development and actively promoted rapid and sound economic and social development; Fifthly, Party organizations at all levels further promoted the construction of long-term mechanisms to maintain the advanced nature of the Communist Party; Sixthly, Party organizations at all levels have earnestly summarized the successful practice of the advanced nature education campaign and the historical experiences of the advanced nature building and deeply studied the laws of the Party's advanced nature building, enriching the theory of the Party's advanced nature building.