Zheng Wentao: There is No Full Stop in the Building of Work Styles [1]
Strengthening Party conduct is always a journey with no rest [1]. The Party Central Committee has decided to launch an in-depth study and education campaign throughout the entire Party on implementing the spirit of the central Eight-Point Regulations. This is a key task of Party building this year, further releasing a strong signal that there will be no slackening or stopping in the promotion of rectifying conduct and disciplining the Party. We must profoundly understand the major significance and practical requirements of conducting this "study and education" on the in-depth implementation of the spirit of the Eight-Point Regulations. We must effectively enhance our political, ideological, and active consciousness to complete the tasks of this study and education with high quality. By promoting the deepening and solidification of conduct construction, we can use new achievements in Party conduct to maintain the Party’s advanced nature and purity, continuously winning the trust and support of the masses, and providing a powerful guarantee for further comprehensively deepening reform and advancing Chinese-path modernization.
1. The Central Eight-Point Regulations are a concentrated expression, continuation, and promotion of the Party's glorious traditions and fine conduct.
The Party’s conduct is its image; it determines whom the people support or oppose and relates to the very survival of the Party. Our Party has remained full of youthful vigor despite a century of history; it has grown from just over 50 members to a world-leading governing party with over 99 million members, leading a great nation of more than 1.4 billion people with significant global influence. A clear red line running through this history is the unremitting promotion of Party conduct construction to ensure the Party never changes its nature, its conviction, or its character [2].
As early as the period of revolutionary struggle in the Jinggang Mountains, Comrade Mao Zedong formulated the "Three Main Rules of Discipline and Six Points for Attention" [3] for the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army. This was both a requirement for strict discipline in the people's army under Party leadership and a clear mark of the Party's emphasis on strengthening its own construction through conduct. During the Yan'an Rectification Movement [4], Comrade Mao Zedong profoundly elucidated the meaning of "Party style" (conduct) and called on the entire Party to "oppose subjectivism to reform the style of study, oppose sectarianism to reform the style in Party relations, and oppose Party stereotypes to reform the style of writing." At the Seventh National Congress of the Party, Comrade Mao Zedong summarized the fine conduct formed by the Party over long-term struggle into the "Three Great Styles of Work": namely, the style of integrating theory with practice, the style of forging close links with the masses, and the style of self-criticism. During the Yan'an period, the Party proposed the "Ten Absences" [5], using the "Yan’an conduct" to defeat the "Xi’an conduct." At the Second Plenary Session of its Seventh Central Committee, Comrade Mao Zedong alerted the entire Party to withstand the test of governance after seizing national power, warning: "The comrades must be taught to remain modest, prudent and free from arrogance and rashness in their style of work. The comrades must be taught to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle" [6]. Following Comrade Mao Zedong’s proposal, this Plenum adopted six regulations to prevent bourgeois corrosion and oppose the glorification of individuals. After the founding of New China, Comrade Mao Zedong consistently required the entire Party to maintain high vigilance and focus on preventing Party members and cadres from becoming corrupt or degenerate. He resolutely punished corruption and launched successive rectification movements, along with the "Three-Anti" and "Five-Anti" campaigns [7], to eliminate bad conduct and maintain fine conduct, allowing the Party to continuously mature through repeated "revolutionary forging."
In the new period of reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, Comrade Deng Xiaoping proposed that "to improve the conduct of our Party, the army, and the people, the key is to improve the conduct of the Party," and that we must "restore and develop Comrade Mao Zedong’s theory on Party building and the Party’s entire set of conduct styles." The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee decided to improve the Party’s democratic centralism, perfect Party rules and regulations, and strictly enforce discipline. The 12th National Congress decided to devote three years, starting from the second half of 1983, to a comprehensive rectification of the Party’s conduct and organization. The "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Strengthening the Links Between the Party and the People," adopted at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee, emphasized that the masses are the source of our Party's strength and the foundation of victory, requiring the inheritance and promotion of the fine tradition of maintaining close ties with the masses. The Party Constitution of the 14th National Congress clearly made the major assertion that "the issue of Party conduct and the issue of the Party’s relationship with the masses are matters of life and death for the Party." The "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Strengthening and Improving the Construction of Party Conduct," adopted at the Sixth Plenary Session of the 15th Central Committee, pointed out clearly that "the conduct of the governing party relates to the Party’s image, the support or opposition of the people, and the survival of the Party and the state," and elaborated on the "Eight Persistent Efforts and Eight Oppositions" regarding Party conduct construction. The "Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Several Major Issues Regarding Strengthening and Improving Party Building Under the New Situation," adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee, proposed vigorously promoting the practice of maintaining close ties with the masses, seeking truth from facts, hard struggle, and criticism and self-criticism, so as to ensure Party conduct through strong Party spirit.
Since the 18th National Congress, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has carried forward the Party’s glorious traditions and fine conduct. Starting with the formulation and implementation of the Eight-Point Regulations, they have persisted in a "top-down" approach where the higher levels lead by example. This solved the problems of where to start, what to grasp, and how to grasp Party conduct construction under new circumstances. General Secretary Xi Jinping stated with resounding force: "Our responsibility is to work with all comrades in the Party to uphold the principle that the Party must supervise its own conduct and run itself with strict discipline, effectively solve prominent internal problems, earnestly improve work conduct, and maintain close ties with the people, so that our Party will always remain the strong leadership core for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics." This not only fully demonstrates the clear stance of carrying the Party's self-revolution through to the end, but also points out that Party building must remain problem-oriented and consistently use conduct construction to drive comprehensively and strictly governing the Party in depth. From improving investigation and research to streamlining meetings, and from refining documents to standardizing foreign visits and practicing economy, the Eight-Point Regulations are concise yet clear, covering all aspects. The entire Party acted swiftly to implement the spirit of the Eight-Point Regulations, resolutely checking unhealthy tendencies and reshaping the political ecosystem. Today, the conduct of the Party and government has taken on a new look, and social and folk customs continue to improve. The Eight-Point Regulations have used a "small aperture" to leverage a great transformation [8], profoundly changing the way of thinking, working, and living for the entire Party and society. It is a profound change in conduct that has "changed China." The spirit of the Eight-Point Regulations has become deeply rooted in the hearts of the Party and the people. A 2024 National Bureau of Statistics survey showed that 94.9% of the surveyed public affirmed the effectiveness of the implementation of the Eight-Point Regulations. Our Party has won the trust and support of the masses through a new atmosphere and new results in conduct construction, and the "golden business card" of the Eight-Point Regulations continues to shine brighter.
2. Implementing the spirit of the central Eight-Point Regulations unremittingly with the sobriety and firmness required to solve the unique challenges of a large party.
In the report to the 20th National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping solemnly warned the entire Party that we "must always maintain sobriety and firmness in solving the unique challenges of a large party." Addressing these unique challenges centered around the "Six How-Tos" [9] is a systemic project. Fundamentally, it focuses on the major contemporary question of what kind of long-term governing Marxist party to build and how to build it, deeply advancing the new great project of Party building in the New Era. Utilizing concentrated education to drive the entire Party to solve prominent problems in Party building through the spirit of self-revolution is an important historical lesson. Since the 20th National Congress, our Party has successively carried out thematic education on studying and implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (hereinafter "thematic education") and study and education on Party discipline. Thematic education emphasized strengthening the Party's political and ideological construction, while the study of Party discipline focused on the Party's disciplinary construction. The study and education campaign deployed this year highlights the construction of Party conduct. Carrying out this study and education is intended to further consolidate the results of previous campaigns, unremittingly implement the Eight-Point Regulations, and drive comprehensively and strictly governing the Party toward greater depth, continuously enhancing the Party’s creativity, cohesion, and combat effectiveness.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Problems of conduct are stubborn and repetitive; forming fine conduct cannot be done once and for all, and overcoming bad conduct cannot be achieved overnight." We must clearly see that the "Four Winds" are highly mutable and infectious. Instances of Party members and cadres violating the spirit of the Eight-Point Regulations and their implementation rules still occur frequently. Formalism and bureaucratism remain prominent, while hedonism and extravagance occasionally resurface, and "invisible" variations of these behaviors are growing quietly. Solving conduct problems must persist over the long term; they must be implemented concretely rather than abstractly, and earnestly rather than perfunctorily. This study and education emphasizes being problem-oriented: solving whatever problems exist and rectifying whatever problems are prominent. It requires listing issues and formulating rectification measures item by item. We must accurately grasp the laws, characteristics, and requirements of fighting the "Four Winds" under the new situation, integrating "learning, inspecting, and reforming." We must work on persistence and longevity, strictness and pragmatism, and depth and detail. We must maintain the people's standpoint, solve problems affecting the immediate interests of the masses, and ensure the people truly feel the changes. We must also investigate deep-seated causes, inhibiting unhealthy tendencies through ideology, working procedures, and institutional mechanisms to achieve the normalization and long-term effectiveness of conduct construction.
To whatever stage the cause of the Party and the people develops, the construction of Party conduct must advance to that same stage. Advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese-path modernization is the central task of our Party in the New Era and on the new journey. Currently, the adverse effects of changes in the external environment are deepening, and China's economic operation still faces many difficulties. Advancing Chinese-path modernization steadily requires even greater effort. The more severe the situation and the more heavy the tasks, the more we need to promote the "spirit of the nail" [10] in strengthening Party conduct. Recently, during inspections in Guizhou and Yunnan, General Secretary Xi Jinping required that the study and education campaign be organized with a focus on the theme, remaining simple and pragmatic. He noted: "An important aspect of seeing whether the level of Party leadership and Party building in a region is high is to see if the political ecosystem is good." Party organizations at all levels must enhance their sense of political responsibility and urgency, linking the campaign to the new tasks of comprehensively and strictly governing the Party. We must persist in connecting the rectification of conduct, the enforcement of discipline, and the fight against corruption, strictly punishing the interlocking issues of conduct and corruption.
General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "The Eight-Point Regulations are not a rule for five or ten years, but a long-term effective iron rule and hard benchmark." On the new journey, the entire Party must be determined with the confidence that "the greater the danger, the further we move forward," and maintain the perseverance of "clutching the green mountain and never letting go" [11]. We must be vigilant, self-reflective, and consistent from beginning to end, upholding the fundamentals and breaking new ground. We must consistently use the spirit of reform and strict standards to govern the Party, building a dam to implement the Eight-Point Regulations and their implementation rules. We must win the protracted war and the war of attrition in conduct construction, ensuring that the century-old Party continues to radiate vigorous vitality through self-revolution, leading the people of the whole country to write an even more brilliant chapter of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the New Era!