Strengthening Institutional Building, Top-Level Design and Overall Planning

A country's greatest strength lies in its system, and the most fundamental form of competition between nations is based on their respective systems. When systems are stable and robust, countries can stand firm and grow strong. The system of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a distillation of the major achievements and historical experiences created by our people under the Party's leadership. It encapsulates our Party's political ideals, objectives, and program, as well as its strategic and tactical approaches, and reflects the essential attributes of Chinese socialism. It is an advanced system defined by unique Chinese features, clear institutional strengths, and a tremendous capacity for self-improvement. This advanced system was not fully formed or flawless at the time of its inception. Rather, it has required continuous reform to become consolidated, refined, and developed.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, our Party has placed an emphasis on institution building as the main task of comprehensively deepening reform. On this basis, we have worked to accelerate the self-improvement and development of our socialist system, in order to further highlight its strengths and the effectiveness of our national governance.

In furthering comprehensive reform, we must continue to focus on institution building as our main task, working to reinforce foundations, harness strengths, and improve areas of weakness. We need to take steps to consolidate foundational systems, refine basic systems, and innovate important systems. The foundational systems we must uphold and consolidate are the Party's leadership system, the system of people's congresses, the system for ensuring the guiding role of Marxism in the ideological domain, and the system for ensuring the Party's absolute leadership over the people's armed forces. The basic systems we need to refine and develop in line with the times are the CPC-led system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation, the system of regional ethnic autonomy, the system of community-level self-governance, and the basic systems of the socialist economy. We also need to step up efforts to innovate important systems for meeting pressing needs in national governance and the people's new expectations for living a better life.

All these efforts must adhere to the objective laws underlying institution building. We must ensure that institutions are both comprehensive and well-integrated in nature and practicable in implementation. Combining the requirements of the central authorities and the expectations of the people with practical needs and new experiences, we should focus on making institutions instructive, targeted, and workable. This will ensure they have solid foundations, operate smoothly, and are truly effective. We should strive to develop a complete set of institutions that are well-conceived, procedure-based, and efficiently functioning. We also need to strengthen the enforcement of institutions and uphold their authority. This means reinforcing binding constraints to ensure everyone is treated equally under our institutions, with no privileges or exceptions tolerated in compliance and enforcement. By doing so, we will ensure that our institutions maintain their authority and perform effectively at all times and in all situations.

Editor: Yi Xiaowei