The Ministry of Xi Jinping Thought Research Conducts Collective Study of the "Outline for the Study of Xi Jinping's Economic Thought"
The "Study Outline for Xi Jinping's Economic Thought" (hereafter referred to as the "Outline") provides a concentrated display of the successful experience and intellectual wisdom accumulated by the Communist Party of China in the field of economic construction; it is an authoritative text for studying political economy with Chinese characteristics. To deeply study and grasp the essence and core meanings of Xi Jinping's economic thought, the Department of Research on Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era held its 10th study report meeting of the year on the morning of September 7, 2022, hearing specialized reports from teachers Heng Lin and Zeng Xiankui.
Based on a careful interpretation of important documents—such as General Secretary Xi Jinping's important speech at the 2017 Central Economic Work Conference [1] and his speech during the 28th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee—Teacher Heng Lin combed through and compared the Party Central Committee's new concepts, goals, and measures regarding economic work from the perspectives of theoretical terminology, framework structure, and thematic content. He emphasized the core content of Xi Jinping's economic thought. The "Outline" unfolds according to several levels—the new stage, new concepts, new pattern, and new strategies—presenting a progressive logical structure centered on high-quality development. Within this, the goal of high-quality development is to be people-centered, emphasizing the fundamental political stance that development is for the people and relies on the people. The prerequisite for high-quality development is the transformation of the principal contradiction in society [2], emphasizing the need to adapt to the higher-level staged goals of the people’s longing for a better life. The condition for high-quality development is a higher level of technological content, emphasizing a reliance on innovation-driven growth rather than mere resource input, and achieving this under environmentally friendly conditions rather than at the cost of the environment. In short, it requires a fundamental transformation of the mode of production.
Teacher Zeng Xiankui systematically explained the content system and internal structure of the "Outline," emphasizing that the "Outline" is a systematized summation of Xi Jinping's economic thought. In the general introduction, the "Outline" clarifies the guiding status of Xi Jinping's economic thought. Xi Jinping's economic thought is the product of integrating the basic principles of Marxist political economy with China's reality and the characteristics of the times. It is the fundamental compliance and guide to action for doing economic work well in the New Era, and a theoretical achievement produced against the background of adapting to new situations, solving new problems, and responding to new challenges. Its theoretical innovations can be summarized into eight points, namely the "eight creative proposals" mentioned in the text. The book is divided into thirteen chapters, each expounding on thirteen aspects of Xi Jinping's economic thought. The first two chapters of the book emphasize the Party’s overall leadership over economic work and the people-centered philosophy of development, providing a summary discourse on the essential characteristics of economic work as the central content of socialist construction. Chapters three to five study the historical coordinates, guiding principles, and development paths of economic work from the perspectives of the new stage of development, the new development philosophy, and the new development pattern. Chapters six to eleven analyze the components of Xi Jinping's economic thought from different angles, including high-quality development, the basic socialist economic system, major national development strategies, innovation-driven development, manufacturing and the real economy, and the comprehensive expansion of reform and opening up. Chapter twelve mainly discusses the coordination of development and security, which is an important new element of China's economic development under the new development pattern. Chapter thirteen persists in correct work strategies and methods, summarizing Comrade Xi Jinping's relevant discourses, which also constitutes an important part of Xi Jinping's economic thought. Every part of the "Outline" is rich in content, and the different parts are closely interconnected.
Participating teachers engaged in a heated discussion around the specialized explanations of the two keynote speakers, focusing on issues such as China's development strategy and technological bottlenecks [3] under the situation of strategic competition between China and the United States. Researcher Chen Zhigang, Director of the Department of Research on Xi Jinping Thought, fully affirmed the content of the two reports, noting that the two teachers spoke from the perspectives of developmental lineage and content structure respectively, providing vivid, rich, and highly enlightening insights.
(Contribution by Liu Yan)