Comrades and Friends,

Looking back at China's development and progress over the past 90 years, we have naturally come to this basic conclusion: Success in China hinges on the Party.

A review of its 90 years of development shows that the following are essential for our Party to preserve and develop its advanced nature as a Marxist political party: The Party should free up the mind, seek truth from facts, advance with the times, take a scientific approach toward Marxism, use Marxism as an evolving theory to guide practice in new realities, uphold truth, correct mistakes, blaze new trails, and maintain the motivation that enables the Party to forge ahead in a pioneering spirit. It should serve the people, rely on them, work for their benefit with heart and soul, draw on their wisdom and strength, and always maintain close ties with them. The Party should appoint officials on their merits, attract as many talents as possible, use our cause to inspire, train, and cultivate high-caliber personnel, constantly absorb new blood, and maintain its vitality at all times. The Party should police itself and impose strict discipline on its members, face its own serious problems and resolve them in a timely manner and thus keep its soundness.

The entire Party must be keenly aware that at a time of profound changes in global, national and intra-Party conditions, we are now faced with many new developments, problems, and challenges in our effort to enhance the Party's leadership and governance and its ability to resist corruption and degeneration and to withstand risks, and strengthen its governance capacity and advanced nature. We are facing long-term, complicated and severe tests in governing the country, in implementing reform and opening up and in developing the market economy, as well as tests in the external environment. And the whole Party is confronted with growing danger of lacking in drive, incompetence, divorce from the people, lacking in initiative, and corruption. It has thus become even more important and urgent than ever before for the Party to police itself and impose strict discipline on its members.

We must recognize the new realities, continue to guide Party building with scientific theories, study and solve major theoretical and practical issues in Party building in a spirit of reform and innovation, focus on building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and accelerating socialist modernization, fully appreciate and apply the law governing the development of Marxist ruling parties, promote comprehensive progress in the great new undertaking of Party building, and make Party building more scientific.

To make Party building more scientific under the new historical conditions, we must continue to free up our minds, seek truth from facts, advance with the times, adapt Marxism both to China's conditions and to the current times, and make it known to the general public so as to raise the ideological and political awareness of the whole Party.

The Party's growth over the past 90 years shows that theoretical maturity is the basis for political conviction, advancing with the times theoretically is a prerequisite for forging ahead in action, and unity of thinking is an important guarantee for the whole Party to march in step. We Chinese Communists believe that the basic tenets of Marxism are an irrefutable truth and that Marxism must be constantly enriched and developed as practice changes, and we never take Marxism as an empty, rigid, and stereotyped dogma. For Marxism, practice is the source of its theory, the basis for its development, and the criterion for testing its truth. Any actions that stick to dogma, ignore practice, or overstep or lag behind real life will not succeed. We made mistakes and even suffered severe setbacks in some historical periods, and their root cause was that the guiding principles of the Party at the time were divorced from the real conditions in China. It was only by restoring and upholding the line of seeking truth from facts that the Party was able to correct its mistakes, overcome its setbacks and forge ahead triumphantly by relying on its own strengths and those of the people. The experiences and lessons our Party has learned in this regard are reviewed systematically in the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party and the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China. We must never forget these experiences and lessons.

The development of practice, cognition of the truth, and innovation of theories know no boundary. The practice of the Party and the people keeps progressing, so should the theories guiding it. The path of socialism with Chinese characteristics will definitely be expanded through the innovative practice of the Party and the people, and the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics will surely continue to improve as we deepen reform and open up wider. This process will certainly open up broad prospects for theoretical innovation. In upholding Marxism under the new historical conditions, it is important to promptly address new issues emerging in practice and thus provide scientific guidance for practice. We should have a correct understanding of the global development trend and China's basic condition of being in the primary stage of socialism, find out more about the features of China's development at the current stage, review the new experience gained in a timely manner by the people led by the Party, and create new theories with the focus on major issues concerning economic and social development, so as to ensure the vitality of scientific theories.

Every step forward in theoretical innovation should be accompanied by progress in arming Party members with such new theoretical innovation. This is an important experience the Party has gained in improving itself. To build a Marxist political party committed to learning, we must lose no time in studying all scientific, new ideas and new knowledge in human society. All Party members and cadres should take learning as an intellectual pursuit, study in an in-depth way and master Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as well as theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics, foster a worldview and methodology of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, and genuinely cultivate virtues, increase knowledge and enhance competence through learning. All the comrades in the Party, especially leading Party cadres at all levels, should constantly improve themselves both ideologically and politically, reinforce our ideals and convictions, and enhance our eagerness and resolve to tirelessly work for the cause of the Party and the people. We should be fully committed to doing so to ensure that we remain firm and faithful in our actions.