Twentieth Collective Study of the Political Bureau of the Eighteenth CPC Central Committee

On January 23, 2015, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee conducted the 20th collective study on the basic principles and methodology of dialectical materialism. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the study and delivered a speech. He pointed out: dialectical materialism is the worldview and methodology of the Chinese Communists, if our Party seeks to unite and lead the people in moving forward the construction of a moderately prosperous society, the comprehensive deepening of reform, comprehensively governing the country according to the law, comprehensively strictly govern the Party, realized the “Two Centuries” struggle objective, and realize the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, it must incessantly receive the nourishment of Marxist philosophical wisdom, ever more consciously persist in and use the worldview and methodology of dialectical materialism, strengthen its ability for dialectical thinking and strategic thinking, and strive to raise its skill in resolving the fundamental problems in our country’s reform and development. He stressed that we must study and grasp the tenet that the world is united in matter and that matter decides consciousness and persist in starting from objective reality in formulating policies and pushing work forward. The greatest objective reality in present-day China is that our country still is, and for a long time will remain, in the primary stage of Socialism, this is the objective basic point for us to understand the present, plan for the future, formulate policies and move our undertaking forward, we cannot relinquish this basic point.

We must both notice that the basic national circumstances of the primary stage of Socialism have not changed, and must be aware that every stage in our country’s economic and social development presents new characteristics. We must study and grasp the basic tenets of the movement of material contradictions, incessantly strengthen our consciousness of problems, and vigorously face and analyse contradictions we meet during our progress. Problems are the forms in which material contradictions manifest themselves, when we stress that we must strengthen our consciousness of problems and persist in a problem-guided orientation, this is to recognize the universality and objectivity of contradictions, and means that we must be good at making understanding and dissolving contradictions into a breakthrough point for beginning our work. Our Party had led the people in the revolution, construction and reform, and has always done so in order to solve China’s real problems. The correct attitude for dealing with contradictions should be to directly fact contradictions and use the complementary elements in contradictions to move material development forward through the process of resolving contradictions.

Xi Jinping stressed that we must study and grasp the basic methods of dialectical materialism, incessantly strengthen our ability for dialectical thinking, and raise our skill in mastering complex situation and dealing with complex problems. The more our undertaking develops in depth and breadth, the more we must incessantly strengthen our ability for dialectical thinking.

We must strengthen surveys and research, persist in observing matters in a developing rather than a static manner, in a comprehensive manner rather than a biased manner, in a systematic rather than a scattered manner, and in a universally integrated rather than isolated or fragmented matter, we must correctly grasp objective reality, truly grasp laws, and appropriately deal with all kinds of major relationships.

We should study and master the dialectical connection between cognition and practice, persist in the viewpoint of practice first and incessantly move theoretical innovation forward on a basis of practice. When we move forward work in all areas, we must rely on practice to find true knowledge. Theory must be united with reality. We must give high regard to the role of theory, strengthen our self-confidence about theory and our strategic orientation, we must firmly persist in correct theories that have been obtained through repeated practice and comparison. We must, on the basis of the changes of the times and the development of practice, incessantly deepen understanding, incessantly summarize experiences, incessantly realize a benign mutual interaction between theoretical innovation and practical innovation, and develop the 21st Century Chinese Marxism through this unity and interaction. The members of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee have participated the study and had a discussion on relevant issues.