The Dialectical Implications of the Chinese Communist Party’s Self-Revolution

The Chinese Communist Party is the largest Marxist ruling party in the world, with a total membership exceeding 100 million, more than the population of some countries. The reason the CCP has been able to remain in power for a long time while always retaining youthful vitality is not only that our Party has found the first answer to ensuring the Party does not change its nature, change its color, or change its flavor, namely popular supervision, but also that, on the basis of the first answer, it has discovered the second answer to the Party’s eternal vitality, namely the Party’s self-revolution. General Secretary Xi Jinping points out: “Courage in self-revolution is our Party’s most distinctive quality and greatest advantage.” On this, academia has launched broad and deep discussions. In the past two years, some scholars have put forward the view that “the mass historical perspective is the historical-theoretical foundation on which the Party consciously adheres to self-revolution,” indicating that academia has begun to pay attention to the philosophical basis of the Party’s self-revolution. “Dialectical materialism is the world outlook and methodology of Chinese Communists.” We should, based on the logical thought of dialectical materialism, further reveal the methodological implications of the Party’s self-revolution, displaying the application and development of materialist dialectics in the field of Party building.

I. What Is the Party’s Self-Revolution? — A Theoretical Consideration Based on Dialectical Logic

In advancing the great new project of Party building in the New Era, the Chinese Communist Party has accumulated rich practical experience and theoretical wisdom, gradually forming a regularized understanding of self-revolution.

First, the Party’s self-revolution is not a purely formalistic transformation, but an object-oriented revolution with real content. Marxism holds that dialectics has a clear revolutionary connotation and a strong spirit of struggle, which laid an important methodological foundation for the proletarian revolutionary movement. Marx clearly pointed out that the old materialism represented by Feuerbach adhered to a typical metaphysical mode of thinking, “did not comprehend human activity itself as objective [gegenständliche] activity … and for practice it only comprehended it in its dirty Jewish form of appearance.” [n1] Therefore, Marxist dialectics is materialist dialectics; it emphasizes starting from real objects rich in content, focusing on the substantive, concrete changes that occur in real things themselves, rather than external, purely spatiotemporal changes in form, thereby revealing the basic laws of world transformation.

The Chinese Communist Party is a steadfast Marxist, inheriting this object-oriented dialectics concerned with real content. It advocates carrying out revolution with substantive content and clear direction, and applies this methodology to its own construction, putting forward the major proposition of self-revolution. The Party’s self-revolution is not a purely formalistic transformation. Taking the collapse of the Soviet Communist Party as an example, General Secretary Xi Jinping points out: “The Soviet Communist Party seized state power when it had 200,000 members, defeated Hitler when it had 2 million members, but lost state power when it had nearly 20 million members.” [n2] This shows that no matter how enormous the change in external scale, it does not mean it is a decisive transformation.

The Party’s self-revolution is an object-oriented revolution with real content. General Secretary Xi Jinping clearly states: “Our Party, to always be the vanguard of the times, the backbone of the nation, and always be the Marxist ruling party, must itself always be rock-solid.” “What does it mean to be rock-solid? It means daring to carry out self-revolution, daring to turn the blade inward, daring to cut out the rot, daring to have a warrior break his own wrist.” [n3] It can be seen that the Party’s self-revolution is not a formalism that glosses over faults, but a genuine confrontation with real problems, resolving the risks of the times facing our Party itself. It is a thorough revolution of “self-purification, self-perfection, self-innovation, and self-improvement.” The Party’s self-revolution mainly concerns four aspects. First, it is a revolution to resolve the problem of some Party members having unstable ideals and convictions, a spiritual “calcium deficiency.” Ideals and convictions are the spiritual pillar and political soul of Communist Party members; further strengthening ideals and convictions is the fundamental intention of self-revolution. Second, it is a revolution to resolve the problem of some Party members disregarding political discipline and political rules. Strictly observing the Party’s political discipline and political rules is a concrete manifestation of a Party member’s firm ideals and convictions, and also the main breakthrough point for self-revolution. Third, it is a revolution to resolve the problem of some Party members suffering from a panic over skills and insufficient capability. Maintaining a Party member’s political true colors is not a political “lying flat”; [n4] it requires Party members to continuously improve their skills and capabilities for dealing with the various complex and changing difficulties of governing the country. Fourth, it is a revolution to resolve the problem of some Party members having conduct that does not pass muster or is not up to standard, damaging the Party’s image among the masses. Party members must not only have superb capabilities, but also possess high moral cultivation, strengthen their own character formation, and truly play the leading and exemplary role of the vanguard. These contents are all directed at the actual shortcomings existing within the Party itself when facing the “Four Tests” and “Four Dangers” [n5] in the New Era, and constitute substantive, object-oriented transformations.

Second, the Party’s self-revolution is not a nihilism of wholesale negation, but an affirmative revolution that achieves its own growth through the negation of the negation. Materialist dialectics follows the transformative logic of the negation of the negation. However, some people, when grasping dialectics, equate the logic of the negation of the negation with nihilism. This practice not only fails to achieve the dialectical intention, but once again falls into metaphysical thinking. Hegel pointed out that “dialectics has an affirmative result, because it has determinate content.” [n6] On the basis of sublating Hegel’s speculative logic, Marx fully recognized the affirmative connotation of dialectics, pointing out that “dialectics includes in its positive understanding of what exists also the negative understanding of what exists.” [n7] If negation is grasped divorced from affirmation, the final result will be only abstract nothingness, and “from nothingness, nothing can be produced.” [n8] Materialist dialectics follows the basic law of the negation of the negation, and will reap affirmative results.

The Party’s self-revolution inherits the logical thought of materialist dialectics. It is not negation for the sake of negation, revolution for the sake of revolution, but insists on carrying out self-confirmation, self-growth, and self-realization in accordance with the dialectical logic of the negation of the negation. If this distinction cannot be made in theory, it will cause serious consequences in reality. The collapse of the Soviet Communist Party and the dissolution of the Soviet Union were major events of the late 20th century. General Secretary Xi Jinping points out, “Why did the Soviet Union dissolve? Why did the Soviet Communist Party collapse? An important reason was that the struggle in the ideological sphere was very intense, with wholesale negation of Soviet history and Soviet Communist Party history, negation of Lenin, negation of Stalin, engaging in historical nihilism.” [n9] This wholesale negation is completely different from the self-revolution advocated by our Party.

The Party’s self-revolution requires always preserving the true colors of the Marxist ruling party. At the ideological level, the Party’s self-revolution is not about diluting Marxist theory, but about, through self-improvement, further consolidating the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological sphere, strengthening Party members’ ideals and convictions, and using Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era to unify will and unify action. At the political level, the Party’s self-revolution is not about weakening the Party’s leadership, but about, through self-forging, further strengthening the centralized unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, ensuring that the entire Party maintains a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee in political stance, direction, principle, and path, ensuring the Party’s unity and solidarity, and continuously strengthening the “Four Consciousnesses,” firming up the “Four Confidences,” and achieving the “Two Upholds.” [n10] At the institutional level, the Party’s self-revolution is not about implementing a Western-style “separation of powers” democracy, but about, through self-optimization, further strengthening democratic centralism, perfecting the system of intra-Party regulations, enhancing the authority and enforcement of intra-Party regulations, continuously consolidating the status of the Party Constitution as the “Party’s fundamental law,” and forming a benign mechanism of upholding truth and correcting errors, discovering problems and rectifying deviations. These propositions manifest the implication that the negation of the negation contained in the Party’s self-revolution ultimately achieves self-affirmation.

Third, the Party’s self-revolution is not a short-term project that can be completed overnight, but a long-term cause that is persistent and always underway. Marx pointed out: “Dialectics does not worship anything; by its very nature it is critical and revolutionary.” Engels stressed that before dialectics “there is nothing final, absolute, sacred; it reveals the transitory nature of all things; before it, nothing exists except the unending process of becoming and passing away, the unending progression from the lower to the higher.” These statements profoundly indicate that the development of things is a process of continuously resolving contradictions, an infinite “upward spiral.”

Chinese Communists, who take dialectical materialism as their worldview and methodology, fully recognize the universality and particularity of contradictions. They understand that if a political party is to endure for a long time, it must view the world with a changing and developing perspective, and actively adapt to the various contradictions that constantly arise in the course of historical transformation. Only in this way can the Party preserve its own youthful vitality. Therefore, “the Party’s self-revolution is always underway, and there must be no slackening off, resting on one’s oars, or fatigue and war-weariness; it is imperative to persist in comprehensive and strict governance of the Party and to advance the great new project of Party building in the New Era.”[n] In the history of world political parties, some parties have vanished like shooting stars, failing to produce a lasting impact. The reason may be that they did not discover the significance of self-revolution, or that they had the awareness of self-revolution but found it difficult to put it into practice. Today, the Chinese Communist Party has found the “second answer”[n] to long-term governance; the next step is to treat it as a cause requiring sustained effort, to pursue it steadfastly, and to consciously engage in continuous self-reflection and self-examination. In this regard, our Party has made unremitting efforts and achieved notable results, such as pushing forward in-depth inspection tours, promoting high-quality full coverage of inspections, and establishing a regularized system of inspection tours, thereby advancing the Party’s self-revolution from the two dimensions of grasping the routine and grasping the long-term.[n]

Third, the Party’s self-revolution is not a short-term project accomplished overnight, but a persistent, ever-ongoing long-term cause. Marx pointed out: “Dialectics does not worship anything; in its essence it is critical and revolutionary.” Engels emphasised that before dialectics “there is nothing final, absolute, sacred; it reveals the transitory nature of all things; before it, nothing exists except the unceasing process of becoming and passing away, the unending process of ascent from the lower to the higher.” These discussions profoundly demonstrate that the development of things is a process of continuously resolving contradictions, an infinite “spiral ascent.”

The Chinese Communists, who take dialectical materialism as their worldview and methodology, fully recognise the universality and particularity of contradictions. They make it clear that if a political party is to endure for a long time, it must view the world with a changing and developing perspective, and actively welcome the various contradictions that constantly arise in historical transformation with a proactive, adaptive attitude. Only in this way can the Party maintain its own youthful vitality. Therefore, “the Party’s self-revolution is always on the road; there can be no letting up, no resting on one’s laurels, no fatigue or war-weariness; it is necessary to persist in comprehensive and strict governance of the Party and to deepen the great new project of Party building in the New Era.” [n11] In the history of world political parties, some parties have flashed across the sky like meteors and vanished without a trace, failing to produce a lasting impact. The reason may be either that they did not discover the significance of self-revolution, or that they had the awareness of self-revolution but found it difficult to put it into action. Today, the Chinese Communist Party has found the “second answer” to long-term governance; the next step is to treat it as a long-term, persistent undertaking, to carry it out steadily and persistently, and to consciously engage in continuous self-reflection and self-examination. In this regard, our Party has made unremitting efforts and achieved notable results, such as pushing inspection work [n12] to greater depth, advancing high-quality comprehensive inspection coverage, establishing regularised inspection institutional arrangements, and promoting the Party’s self-revolution from the two levels of “grasping the routine” and “grasping the long term.”

II. Why Must the Chinese Communist Party Carry Out Self-Revolution? — A Historical Consideration Based on Dialectical Interconnections

The Party’s self-revolution is a long-term revolution with substantive content and self-affirmation. Such an implication not only conforms to the basic ideas of dialectical materialism but is also the necessary requirement of the multiple dialectical interconnections that dialectical materialism presents in historical practice.

First, the Party’s self-revolution is the necessary requirement of the dialectical unity of Party spirit and the people-nature.

The fundamental purpose of the Chinese Communist Party is to serve the people wholeheartedly. If one cannot thoroughly grasp the connotation of “the people,” it is difficult to clarify whom the Party actually serves. Externally, the people appear as every living individual, but in essence, behind the people lies the complex political relationship between rulers and ordinary citizens. Examined from a historical perspective, feudal society mostly described the relationship between rulers and ordinary people as one of dependency, such as “Under the whole wide sky, there is no land that is not the king’s land; along the borders of the sea, there is no one who is not the king’s subject” [n13] — a relationship of subjects. In feudal society, all subjects under heaven were the property and part of the possessions of the ruling class, and had to submit unconditionally to the ruling class. In capitalist countries, civil society gradually grew out of the soil of capitalist private property. Citizens replaced the former subjects, establishing a political relationship of “external necessity” with the ruling class. In order to better maintain their own rule, the bourgeoisie constantly propagated ideas of freedom, equality, democracy, and so on, but these ideas remained only in words and on paper, the opposite of reality.

Marx and Engels advocated establishing and developing a proletarian party, a party that “has no interests different from the interests of the entire proletariat,” an organisation truly capable of representing the universal interests of the people. In the political power won under the leadership of the Communist Party and the new political system established, the ruling party and the people have established a substantive political relationship. The ruling party will genuinely reflect and realise the broadest interests and demands of the people, maintaining flesh-and-blood ties with the people. Flesh and blood are not external, optional formal ties, but substantive ties in which each is embedded in the other. Only at this point can the connotation of “the people” be truly embodied, and only then can we dare to declare that our government is called the people’s government, our country is called the People’s Republic of China, and various organs can bear the word “people.”

However, in recent years, as various ideological currents have collided and various real-world forces have clashed, some Party members have begun to deviate in their thinking, splitting Party spirit and the people-nature apart or even setting them in opposition. Some believe that since the Party leads the people, Party spirit must be greater than the people-nature; therefore, the people must be submissive and obediently follow the Party’s organisational arrangements. But in reality, these people only want to ride roughshod over the people, which is both a typical bureaucratic style and an extremely corrupt hedonism and extravagance. Others believe that the Party is the people’s Party, so the people-nature is naturally superior to Party spirit. Consequently, these people are determined to abandon the Communist Party’s governing ideology, political principles, and policy platform, advocating in practice the adoption of Western liberalism, anarchism, populism, and the like. On the surface, these people appear to stand on the people’s side, working for the people’s interests, but in reality they have ulterior motives. The catastrophic consequences of Gorbachev’s “democratic reform” [n14] are still fresh in our memory, fully demonstrating that such ideas and practices mislead the Party, mislead the country, and mislead the people. Therefore, General Secretary Xi Jinping has clearly stated: “Party spirit and the people-nature have always been consistent and unified.” One cannot use metaphysical thinking to separate the two. In order to truly and thoroughly eliminate such erroneous words and deeds from within the Party in reality, and to maintain the high unity of Party spirit and the people-nature, our Party needs to take the initiative to summon the courage and perseverance to turn the knife inward and perform “scraping the bone to remove the poison” [n15] — that is, to carry out self-revolution.

Second, the Party’s self-revolution is the necessary requirement of the dialectical unity of long-term governance and the consolidation of popular consensus.

Mao Zedong pointed out: “We Communists are like seeds, and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people there, take root and blossom among them.” But how can unity with the people be achieved? This requires going among the people, understanding what they think and want, what they need and seek, and reaching the most comprehensive and sincere consensus through deep communication with them, so that minds are set on the same goal, efforts are directed in the same direction, and all are twisted into a single rope. Only by rallying popular sentiment and reaching consensus can the Chinese Communist Party continuously win the people’s full support, sustain its unique advantage of concentrating resources to accomplish major tasks, and demonstrate the Party’s powerful vitality. This reflects the dialectical unity inherent in the Party’s long-term governance and its consolidation of popular consensus. As socialism with Chinese characteristics enters a New Era, the Chinese Communist Party, while achieving new and great historical accomplishments, also faces many new risks and tests. Some Party members have become detached from the masses, neither conducting meticulous investigation and research nor seeking the opinions of grassroots people; relying on subjective fantasies, they engage in “vanity projects” (政绩工程) that waste resources and burden the people, arousing widespread popular resentment and even damaging the image of the Party and government. If such Party members multiply, they will undermine the trust and consensus between the Party and the people, affecting the Party’s long-term governance. To purify the political ecology within the Party, the Party must consciously engage in self-examination and deepen its self-revolution.

Third, the Party’s self-revolution is an inevitable requirement of the dialectical unity between upholding fundamentals (守正) and innovation (创新).

General Secretary Xi Jinping points out: “Upholding fundamentals while pursuing innovation is an important ideological method for our Party’s governance in the New Era.” Upholding fundamentals requires, on the one hand, adherence to what is constant and unchanged, while innovation, on the other hand, pursues change and transformation. If one follows a metaphysical, either-or mode of thinking, it is difficult to truly grasp the meaning of upholding fundamentals while pursuing innovation. But if one proceeds from dialectical thinking, it is easy to understand why governance requires both upholding fundamentals, i.e., constancy, and innovation, i.e., change. From the perspective of dialectical materialism, the change and development of things follow the law of the unity of opposites. It is like an apple seed: it must go through the life process of taking root, sprouting, growing vigorously, flowering, and bearing fruit. At every stage of this life process, the apple’s attributes and inner core are stable — this is the principle of “you reap what you sow.” But in this process, the apple’s form and content are constantly changing. Thus, according to dialectical logic, upholding fundamentals necessarily implies innovation, and innovation necessarily contains upholding fundamentals; the two have a dialectically unified relationship.

General Secretary Xi Jinping points out: “What we are engaged in is a great undertaking without precedent; upholding fundamentals ensures we do not lose our direction or commit catastrophic errors, while innovation enables us to grasp the times and lead the era.” The Marxist worldview and methodology are the indelible life genes of our Party. Once this basic stance and principle is lost, the Party would also lose the distinctive marker that sets it apart from other parties, and would no longer be an advanced party fighting to the end for the cause of communism. Of course, adhering to Marxism does not mean mechanically clinging to dogma. Marxism contains an inherent intention and mission of innovation; “emancipating the mind, seeking truth from facts, and keeping pace with the times are the living soul of Marxism.” Innovation must have norms; it must follow objective laws, act according to circumstances and go with the flow, and must not indulge in wild imaginings or reckless action. This is the vivid manifestation of the fundamental requirement and practical principle of upholding fundamentals within innovation. In recent years, some Party members have forgotten their original aspiration and founding mission and have abandoned their ideals and convictions; others have become complacent, falling into habitual thinking and behavioral inertia. Such people find it difficult to uphold fundamentals while pursuing innovation, seriously hampering the Party’s effort to advance Chinese-path modernization and comprehensively promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and national development. For this reason, in Party building, it is necessary to resolve firmly, muster courage, and boldly carry out self-revolution. Through self-revolution, on the one hand, the correct direction of development is ensured, thereby removing disease and healing wounds, purging the foul and exalting the pure; on the other hand, it helps improve the ability and skill of Party members to dare to struggle and be adept at struggle, so as to respond to complex and changing future situations with a scientific attitude and method. Therefore, to achieve upholding fundamentals while pursuing innovation, it is necessary to treat the Party’s self-revolution as an endless historical task and to carry it out continuously.

III. How Does the Chinese Communist Party Advance Self-Revolution? — Practical Considerations Based on a Dialectical Strategy

Self-revolution is the Chinese Communist Party’s inevitable choice in the face of the tests of the times and historical challenges, a scientific conclusion drawn in accordance with the dialectical laws of social development. Therefore, in practice, advancing the Party’s self-revolution requires flexibly applying a dialectically unified mode of thinking, organically linking the multiple elements of Party management and governance to form a combined force, and achieving significant results in the Party’s self-revolution.

First, the main direction of attack must be combined with strategic objectives.

Dialectical materialism emphasizes that “priority must be given to resolving the principal contradiction and the principal aspect of the contradiction.” Advancing the Party’s self-revolution cannot be a matter of grabbing at everything at once; rather, amid a thousand threads and countless ends, it is necessary to identify the main problems, find the breakthrough point, and set the main direction of attack. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasizes that the Party’s self-revolution must “take solving the unique difficulties of a major party as the main direction of attack.” The Chinese Communist Party, having developed to its present state, has become the world’s largest and most influential Marxist ruling party, whether in terms of organizational scale or capability. Precisely at such a time, new problems will keep emerging. Focusing on the idea that “a big party must look like a big party, and at the same time, a big party has its own difficulties,” General Secretary Xi Jinping, from a perspective that unifies history and reality, has summarized the “six how-to-always” (六个如何始终) unique difficulties of a major party: how to always remain true to the original aspiration and founding mission; how to always unify thought, will, and action; how to always possess strong governing capacity and leadership; how to always maintain an enterprising and pioneering spirit; how to always be able to promptly discover and resolve one’s own problems; and how to always preserve a clean and upright political ecology.[n] These are the focal points for the comprehensive and coordinated application of measures in the Party’s self-revolution. Only by solving the key problems can the resolution of other problems be driven forward.

Solving problems is aimed at achieving the established strategic objectives. Therefore, while adhering to a problem-oriented approach, it is necessary to establish a goal-oriented approach, organically combining the two to solve problems effectively and practically. Solving the unique difficulties of a major party is directed toward the goal of breaking out of the historical cycle of rise and fall (历史周期率) and achieving the Chinese Communist Party’s long-term governance, which anchors the Party’s work priorities.[n] Concretely, achieving the Party’s long-term governance means, on the one hand, that the Party’s self-revolution must take adherence to the centralized unified leadership of the Party Central Committee as its fundamental guarantee, ensuring that the self-revolution does not deviate or change course as it advances; on the other hand, it means that the Party’s self-revolution must have scientific ideological guidance. At the new historical juncture, the Party has established the guiding status of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. This thought contains a scientific worldview and methodology; it is the fundamental basis for the Party’s self-revolution and leads a profound social revolution.

Second, intra-Party supervision must be combined with popular supervision.

In 1945, in a cave dwelling in Yan’an, Mao Zedong proposed the first answer for breaking out of the historical cycle of rise and fall: “Only when the people are allowed to supervise the government will the government not dare to slack off. Only when everyone takes responsibility will there be no collapse of the state.” In the New Era, the Chinese Communist Party, on the basis of actively exploring the laws of Party building, has found a second answer for breaking out of the historical cycle of rise and fall: the Party’s self-revolution. The Party’s self-revolution emphasizes the building of the “four self-capabilities” (四自能力) — self-purification, self-perfection, self-innovation, and self-improvement — focusing on self-examination and self-supervision.[n] It must be clearly stated that advancing the Party’s self-revolution does not mean abandoning or denying popular supervision. According to dialectical materialism, the development of things is influenced by internal and external causes; internal causes are the basis of change, external causes are the conditions of change, and external causes must function through internal causes. Over more than a century, the Chinese Communist Party, having been tempered a thousand times and remaining vigorous, has done so because “externally it relies on developing people’s democracy and accepting popular supervision, and internally it relies on comprehensive and strict governance of the Party and advancing self-revolution.” Therefore, “it is necessary to rely on strengthening the Party’s self-supervision and popular supervision to advance the Party’s self-revolution.”

In the area of self-supervision, it is necessary to continuously improve the supervisory system, strengthen intra-Party self-discipline, implement democratic centralism, and build a complete system of intra-Party regulations and an effective enforcement mechanism. On this basis, in accordance with supervisory procedures, correctly apply the “four forms” of supervision and discipline enforcement [n25] to form an effective accountability mechanism. In the area of popular supervision, it is necessary to actively broaden channels for popular supervision, encourage, support and guide the people to actively participate in political life, and enhance the public’s supervisory awareness and capacity; it is necessary to improve the mechanism for sharing supervisory information, so that the processes and results of intra-Party supervision become more transparent, allowing ordinary citizens to also understand and participate in supervisory work and actively contribute their wisdom and strength; it is necessary to continuously optimize supervisory procedures, broaden supervisory pathways, make good use of intelligent means, and enhance the timeliness and precision of popular supervision.

Third, it is necessary to combine organizational impetus with individual initiative.

The “self” in the Party’s self-revolution contains both the “greater self” and the “lesser self”; it is both the collective forging of the Party organization and the enhancement of the individual Party member’s qualities, and the “lesser self” must always be unified with the “greater self.” Therefore, advancing the Party’s self-revolution requires the organic combination of strong organizational impetus with conscious individual initiative. In the process of the Party’s self-revolution, organizational impetus is the prerequisite. Marxist parties attach importance to Party building, believing that a strong organization means strong fighting capacity, and that through powerful organizational strength, difficult problems can be better resolved. Individual initiative is the key. Every Party member is part of the organization; if each Party member, with the attitude of “the gentleman examines himself, often as if he had faults” [n26], consciously inspects himself and enhances his political immunity, then the Party organization will surely be unshakable.

Specifically, on the one hand, the Party organization must fulfill its main responsibility for self-revolution. For the Party’s self-revolution to achieve tangible results, the Party organization must clearly assign responsibilities, ensuring they are quantified to the post, precise to the person, and detailed to the task, forming a clear task list of rights and responsibilities, and coordinating Party building work and professional work from an overall perspective. In this process, the Party organization must also set higher standards and requirements for leading cadres, especially senior cadres, the “critical minority.” On the other hand, individual Party members must become active practitioners of self-revolution. Party members are both the subjects of change and the objects of change. The Party’s self-revolution can be said to be a process of re-education and re-enhancement for Party members, which requires each Party member to strengthen their own learning, studying the Party’s history, guiding ideology, organizational principles, and intra-Party regulations. Party members must be methodical in their learning, comparing themselves against the new expectations of the people, against the specific provisions of the Party organization, against advanced models, and against past experiences and lessons, confronting their own shortcomings and problems, and learning in a targeted manner, thereby continuously strengthening their Party spirit and improving their work ability, so as to achieve the goals and tasks of self-revolution.

Fourth, it is necessary to combine strict discipline with generous care.

Whether in family education or in Party building, strict discipline and generous care are a pair of opposites that are unified and complementary. In the concrete practice of advancing the Party’s self-revolution, one must know how to combine hard and strict disciplinary rules with broad and benevolent encouragement and guidance, blending hardness and softness, and applying comprehensive treatment. “Men are not saints; who can be without fault?” [n27] It is common for Party cadres and members to make mistakes in their actual work. It is necessary to seek truth from facts in comprehensively analyzing the evidence, motives, purposes, etc., of the errors, and to accurately distinguish between errors for private gain and those for public service, between intentional and negligent acts. For those political problems that clearly violate the Party’s purpose, such as the “seven have-its” [n28], no matter when or where, they must be investigated and dealt with in a clear-cut, firm, and resolute manner, thoroughly eliminating from the Party ranks those who are disaffected from the Party and endanger national security and ethnic unity. At the same time, we must also clearly see that the formation of errors also has a process; therefore, strictness must be applied daily and consistently, achieving “grasp early, grasp small” and “prevent trouble before it happens,” achieving “punish the very few” and “control the majority,” so as to achieve the goal of caring for more Party cadres and members through strict demands.

Of course, comprehensive and strict governance of the Party does not mean managing Party members into a state of lifelessness, timidity, and hesitation. Our Party has always upheld the principle of “learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones” and “curing the disease to save the patient” [n29], doing everything possible to help Party members who have fallen into difficulty to revive themselves. In this process, it is necessary to be adept at using the method of heart-to-heart talks, with a “one-on-one” communication plan, to thoroughly discuss thoughts and untie emotional knots in a targeted manner, to genuinely help Party members with ideological perplexities dispel their concerns and boost their confidence, enabling some Party members to actively transform from “being in error” to “being effective,” and to re-devote themselves to the Party’s cause of development.