[Original] Zhang Wenlong and Zhang Lijuan: Uphold the Party's Overall Leadership over the Xinjiang Practice of Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform
The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee adopted the Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese-path Modernization (hereinafter referred to as the Decision). This document systematically and comprehensively summarizes the valuable experience of comprehensively deepening reform since the start of reform and opening up, and particularly in the New Era. The very first principle listed is "upholding the Party’s comprehensive leadership." The Resolution of the 12th Plenary Session of the 10th Regional Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region emphasized: "We must uphold and strengthen the Party's leadership over further comprehensively deepening reform, resolutely shoulder the political responsibility of grasping reform, and promote the implementation and effectiveness of various reform tasks." It can be said that this not only provides theoretical guidance and practical direction for advancing the comprehensive deepening of reform in the New Era, but also sketches the path and blueprint for us to completely, accurately, and comprehensively implement the Party’s strategy for governing Xinjiang [1] in the New Era, and to compose a Xinjiang chapter of comprehensively deepening reform. This requires our profound understanding and scientific grasp.
Only because of its difficulty is it great; only because of its difficulty does it show more glory. The clarion call for further comprehensively deepening reform in the New Era has already sounded. The writing of history often opens new chapters amidst transformation. For Xinjiang, this represents both an opportunity and a challenge. To solidly advance and achieve practical results in the modernization practice of further comprehensively deepening reform in Xinjiang, upholding the Party's comprehensive leadership is the core and the key. This bears upon Xinjiang's social stability, economic prosperity, ethnic unity, and long-term peace and stability [2]. It helps in composing the Xinjiang chapter of comprehensively deepening reform on the new journey of building a strong country and achieving national rejuvenation.
I. Further comprehensively deepening reform must uphold the Party's comprehensive leadership, as determined by the Party's original aspiration and founding mission.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Our Party's original aspiration and founding mission are to seek happiness for the Chinese people, including the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang, and to seek rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, including all ethnic groups in Xinjiang." Comprehensively deepening reform is not a purposeless, caricature-like random sketch; rather, it has a distinct goal orientation and value direction. The Resolution of the 12th Plenary Session of the 10th Regional Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region emphasized: "Deeply understand the essential question of 'for whom we reform,' persist in taking the people as the center, and plan and advance reform starting from the overall interests, fundamental interests, and long-term interests of the masses." We must anchor our sights on the "bullseye" of the most concerned, direct, and realistic interest issues for the people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang—such as education, employment, medical care, and housing.
In further comprehensively deepening reform, we must coordinate the reform of institutional mechanisms for education, science and technology, and talent. We must deepen comprehensive educational reform, continuously increase investment in educational resources, accelerate the implementation of actions to expand the quality and quantity of basic education, and allow more families and children to enjoy high-quality educational resources. We must persist in an employment-oriented approach to economic development, using the deepening of employment institutional reform as a driver. We should implement a series of policies such as "reductions, refunds, subsidies, and expansions" [3] that facilitate reducing burdens, stabilizing posts, expanding employment, and ensuring people's livelihoods. We must highlight and grasp the employment of surplus labor in urban and rural areas, college graduates, demobilized military personnel, and groups in difficulty. We must promote the "dynamic clearing" [4] of zero-employment families in cities and towns, improve entrepreneurship support policies, further optimize the entrepreneurial environment, and strive to create more sufficient and higher-quality employment.
With the goal of building a "Healthy Xinjiang," we must push high-quality medical resources down to the primary level. A medical and health service network covering both urban and rural areas has been basically established. We must make every effort to improve the level of public medical services, continuously strengthen the supply and balanced regional layout of high-quality medical resources, and provide the people with more and better health services. We should optimize real estate policies and systems according to local and city-specific conditions, taking measures such as converting non-residential housing into subsidized housing and purchasing commercial housing for use as subsidized housing. We must increase the supply of subsidized housing to meet the rigid housing needs of wage-earning groups, striving to build a happy home for the masses of all ethnic groups.
In short, reform only has meaning if it is for the people; reform only has momentum if it relies on the people. The masses are the subjects of comprehensively deepening reform, the fundamental driving force of social development, and the source of power and "coordinate system" for the Party’s comprehensive deepening of reform. The Autonomous Region Party Committee has deeply rooted "people's livelihood sentiments" in its development concept. Party members and leading cadres at all levels in Xinjiang persist in ensuring the pulse of reform resonates at the same frequency as the people's yearning for a better life. They transform the "list of problems" concerning the masses' urgent anxieties and expectations into a "responsibility list" and a "task list." Each practical deed that benefits, warms, and satisfies the people vividly interprets the warm vow that "letting the people live a happy life is the 'greater good of the nation'" [5]. Across the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, a vivid picture of people's livelihoods is being painted, where the sense of gain, happiness, and security of all ethnic groups is more substantial, guaranteed, and sustainable. Only in this way can comprehensively deepening reform achieve great things, thereby consolidating and expanding the mass base for the overall goal of social stability and long-term peace and stability in Xinjiang.
II. Upholding the Party's comprehensive leadership is determined by the situation and tasks faced by comprehensively deepening reform.
Problems are the voice of the times and the motivation for reform. Comprehensively deepening reform itself is aimed at solving the most prominent and thorny problems. Currently, Xinjiang’s reform and development are standing at a new historical starting point. Realizing social stability and long-term peace and stability in Xinjiang remains an arduous task with a long way to go, requiring the continuous improvement of the modernization of Xinjiang’s governance system and governance capacity through further comprehensively deepening reform. As an underdeveloped region in the west and a frontier ethnic region, the problems encountered in Xinjiang's development have both universality and particularity. There are still many "hard bones" [6] to gnaw on in Xinjiang's comprehensive deepening of reform. We need the courage to take responsibility and act to push reform forward, solving thorny problems that must be solved but have remained unsolved for a long time.
The Decision of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Regional Committee of the Communist Party of China on Deeply Implementing the Spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform, and Advancing the Xinjiang Practice of Chinese-path Modernization, deliberated and adopted by the 12th Plenary Session of the 10th Regional Party Committee, stays close to the reality of Xinjiang, permeates the systematic concept, and clarifies the "task book" for Xinjiang's further comprehensive deepening of reform. It focuses on problems such as the high difficulty and great challenges of achieving high-quality development in Xinjiang, the relative lag in comprehensively deepening reform work, the prominent shortcomings in the unbalanced development of Northern and Southern Xinjiang [7], and the fact that the government governance system and capacity cannot yet fully adapt to new situations and requirements.
We must improve the institutional mechanisms for promoting high-quality economic development, persist in taking reform in the fields of energy and resources as a breakthrough point, and strive to build a modernized industrial system that reflects Xinjiang's characteristics and advantages. Party members and cadres must liberate their minds, transform their work style, and enhance their capabilities, using reform ideas and measures to activate the "strategically decisive move" [8] of Southern Xinjiang. We must improve the mechanism for coordinating regional development, refine the work mechanism for high-quality development in Southern Xinjiang, improve the support policy system, strengthen Southern Xinjiang’s characteristic and advantageous industries, and crack the prominent problems restricting Southern Xinjiang's development. We must firmly establish the concept that the XPCC [9] and the local government are "one chessboard" and "one family," promoting breakthrough progress in the integrated development of the XPCC and the local authorities. We must accelerate the reform of public institutions and the construction of digital government to continuously improve administrative efficiency. We must persist in comprehensively and strictly governing the Party and improve the fair and just mechanism for selecting and appointing personnel.
Practice has fully proven that to do a good job in Xinjiang, we must utilize the "key move" and "important treasure" [10] of comprehensively deepening reform. The more contradictions and difficulties there are, the more we must work on and find a way out through reform. This inherently requires Party members and leading cadres at all levels in Xinjiang to consciously place reform in a more prominent position and continuously coordinate stability maintenance forces with reform measures to ensure that further comprehensively deepening reform proceeds smoothly in a stable social environment. We must continuously enhance our consciousness and initiative in planning reform, improve the scientific nature and effectiveness of promoting reform, implement comprehensive measures, and achieve breakthroughs at key points. Through comprehensively deepening reform, we will continuously explore effective methods for completely, accurately, and comprehensively implementing the Party’s strategy for governing Xinjiang in the New Era. We will focus on solving fundamental, foundational, and long-term problems concerning Xinjiang's long-term peace and stability, effectively transforming the strategic deployment of further comprehensively deepening reform into a powerful force for advancing the Xinjiang practice of Chinese-path modernization.
III. Further comprehensively deepening reform must uphold the Party's comprehensive leadership, as determined by the New Great Project of Party Building in the New Era.
A great cause requires a strong leadership core. History and practice have proven, and will continue to prove, that upholding the Party's comprehensive leadership is the foundation and prerequisite for the smooth implementation of various deployments and measures for comprehensively deepening reform. For reforms at all levels to proceed in an orderly manner, the Party's leadership must be strengthened and improved. The Decision made specific arrangements for improving the Party's leadership level in further comprehensively deepening reform and advancing Chinese-path modernization. It made detailed and thorough deployments regarding "upholding the CPC Central Committee’s centralized and unified leadership over further comprehensively deepening reform," "deepening the reform of the Party building system," and "furthering the improvement of Party conduct, build clean government, and the anti-corruption struggle." These strict requirements reflect our Party's sense of responsibility and mission-consciousness in leading a great social revolution with the courage of self-revolution.
The Resolution of the 12th Plenary Session of the 10th Regional Committee of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region emphasized: resolutely uphold the CPC Central Committee’s centralized and unified leadership over further comprehensively deepening reform, and ensure that Xinjiang’s reform always advances along the correct political direction. As Party members and leading cadres at all levels in Xinjiang, it is even more necessary to improve political standing and ideological understanding. We must establish a clear orientation of taking responsibility and overcoming difficulties, improve mechanisms for allowing and correcting errors [11], respect the pioneering spirit of the grassroots and the masses, and create a strong atmosphere of being brave in reform and daring in innovation, so as to avoid the "mental procrastination" of "non-action" (bu zuowei).
We must uphold the fundamentals and break new ground, handle the relationship between "breaking" and "establishing" [12], persist in seeking progress while maintaining stability, and handle the relationship between "being bold" and "taking steady steps." We must resolutely abandon inertial thinking and path dependency, and overcome the "timid anxiety" of "not daring to act." Leading cadres at all levels, especially the main responsible comrades of the Party and government, must further liberate their minds, broaden their perspectives and horizons, and persist in the unity of principle and flexibility. While performing "prescribed actions" well, they should also innovate "self-selected actions" [13], continuously improving their ability to analyze and solve problems to eliminate the "capability panic" of "not being good at acting." We must establish and practice a correct view of political achievements, persist in proceeding from reality, work hard with practical results, and persist over the long term. We must eliminate the "thirst for political achievements" manifested in "reckless action," and grasp the implementation of reform with the "spirit of driving nails" [14]. With the confidence and courage to "open roads through mountains and build bridges over water," we will make new and greater contributions to writing the Xinjiang chapter of Chinese-path modernization.
The tide of the times is surging, and the pace of reform never stops. Upholding the Party's comprehensive leadership over the practice of further comprehensively deepening reform in Xinjiang is the fundamental guarantee for Xinjiang to achieve social stability, economic development, ethnic unity, and long-term peace and stability in the New Era. Under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, Xinjiang will surely continue to reform and innovate in economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological fields. It will break through development bottlenecks, solve development puzzles, and release development potential. In the New Era, Xinjiang will surely radiate even more brilliant splendor and become a bridgehead for China's westward opening-up and the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt.