Original source: Xinhua

The Communist Party of China (CPC) will intensify its efforts to combat corruption, which is crucial in gaining popular support for the Party and ensuring its very survival,  President Hu Jintao said Friday.

The Party is soberly aware of the gravity and danger of corruption, Hu said at a grand gathering marking the 90th founding anniversary of the CPC in the Great Hall of the People in downtown Beijing.

Alienation from people greatest risk for CPC

Hu warned that alienation from the people poses the greatest risk to the CPC after it has gained political power.

“Therefore, we must always place the people’s interests before everything else,” Hu said.

All Party members should protect the people’s economic, political, cultural and social rights and interests in accordance with the law, he said.

Party and government offices at all levels and their officials should stay close with the people and address their concerns, Hu said.

All people equal before law

All the CPC comrades should bear in mind that all people are equal before the law, Hu added.

No one has the privilege to overstep institutions and that no exception should be made in enforcing institutional safeguards, he said.

To make Party building more scientific under the new historical conditions, we must place power, Party affairs, and Party members under institutional safeguards, improve democratic centralism, and promote Party building in an institutionalized and standardized way and through due process, said Hu, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

The Party should develop intra-Party democracy, promote transparency in Party affairs in an active yet prudent manner, ensure the principal status and democratic rights of Party members, improve the system of Party congresses and the intra-Party electoral system, and improve the mechanism for democratic decision making in the Party, he said.

In March, China’s top legislator Wu Bangguo announced the country has established a socialist system of laws with Chinese characteristics, hailing it as a “major milestone” in the history of the development of the country’s socialist democratic legal system.

The number of lawyers in China surpassed 150,000 in 2010 from about 3,000 in 1978. That indicates the CPC is striving to eliminate the stubbornest social problem in China: rule by men, said observers.

CPC accomplishes three major events

President Hu added that the CPC, chosen by history and the people, has accomplished three major events since its formation 90 years ago.

The first is that the CPC, relying on the people, completed the new-democratic revolution, winning national independence and liberation of the people, Hu said at a grand gathering marking the 90th founding anniversary of the CPC.

The second is that the CPC completed the socialist revolution and established the basic socialist system, he said.

The third is that the Party carried out a great new revolution of reform and opening up, creating, upholding, and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics, he said.

“These three major events reshaped the future and destiny of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation,” Hu said.

China must continue reform, opening up

China has developed rapidly in the past 30 plus years thanks to reform and opening up, and the country must promote its future development by continuing to carry out reform and opening up, Hu Jintao said.

“They are what we must pursue in upholding and building socialism with Chinese characteristics and achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” Hu said.

Noting that China suffers from a serious lack of balance, coordination, and sustainability in its development and there are institutional obstacles to scientific development, Hu said these problems must be resolved in the course of deepening reform.

“We should identify areas where breakthroughs can be made, set priorities in deepening reform and opening up, advance reform in important areas and key links when opportunities are ripe and continue to reform the economic, political, cultural and social systems in an innovative way,” he said.

China still largest developing country in world

China’s international status as the largest developing country in the world has not changed and development is still the key to solving all the problems in the country, Hu said.

The country’s basic condition has not changed as well, he said.

China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time to come, and the principal issue in society remains how to meet the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people while upgrading backward social production, said Hu.