The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee identified "adhering to the Party's overall leadership" as the primary principle that must be followed in economic and social development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. High-quality Party building is the fundamental guarantee for high-quality development, while high-quality development is an important yardstick for evaluating the effectiveness of Party building. Leading high-quality development with high-quality Party building means, at its core, continuously improving the quality of Party building and transforming the Party's political, organizational, and institutional advantages into national governance effectiveness and development quality benefits, thereby providing a fundamental guarantee for advancing Chinese-style modernization.
I. Why Lead? – The Demands of the Times
High-quality Party building provides direction, organizational support, and spiritual impetus for high-quality development, while high-quality development provides Party building with practical scenarios, testing standards, and innovation space. Together, they serve the grand goal of Chinese-style modernization.
The leadership of the Communist Party of China is the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The Party's leadership is not an abstract political principle, but rather something that must permeate all aspects of economic and social development, and its realization is embodied in high-quality Party building. Only by improving the quality of Party building can we ensure that the Party always maintains overall control and coordinates all parties, ensuring that high-quality development always advances along the socialist path.
Achieving Chinese-style modernization requires strong organizational capacity for overall coordination and consensus building. Only by forging the Party's strong leadership through high-quality Party building can the institutional advantages of "nationwide coordination" be transformed into development effectiveness, ensuring the steady and long-term progress of Chinese-style modernization.
The world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century, and domestic reforms have entered a critical phase. Development faces a complex environment characterized by "strategic opportunities and risks/challenges coexisting, with increasing uncertainties and unpredictable factors." The more complex the situation, the more crucial it is for Party building to play a stabilizing role. High-quality Party building strengthens theoretical grounding to bolster confidence in development, solidifies the foundation for development by building a robust organizational system, and optimizes the development environment by rectifying conduct, enforcing discipline, and combating corruption. This makes Party organizations the "backbone" in addressing risks and challenges and the "bridgehead" for overcoming difficulties.
II. What Does It Lead To – Core Connotation
High-quality Party building guides high-quality development by systematically integrating political guidance, organizational empowerment, and value orientation to solve the fundamental questions of "where to go, who to rely on, and for whom to seek benefits" in development, thereby achieving deep integration and mutual promotion between Party building and development.
(I) The Correctness of Guiding the Direction of Development. Direction is the lifeline of development, and high-quality Party building ensures that development stays on track by strengthening political construction. The core lies in integrating the "two safeguards" (safeguarding General Secretary Xi Jinping's core position in the Party Central Committee and the whole Party, and upholding the authority of the CPC Central Committee and its centralized, unified leadership) into all areas of development, ensuring that local practices resonate with the central government's plans. Party building always revolves around the "major national priorities" to calibrate the development coordinates, unifying thinking through theoretical armament, standardizing pathways through institutional design, and strengthening implementation through performance evaluation, ensuring that high-quality development not only conforms to economic laws but also embodies the essence of socialism, standing the test of history and the people.
(II) Activating the Sustainability of Development Momentum. Development momentum stems from innovation, creativity, and united struggle. High-quality Party building injects endogenous momentum into development by strengthening the organizational system and forging a backbone team. At the organizational level, by "building Party organizations on the innovation chain and setting up vanguard posts on the front lines of tackling key challenges," Party organizations are deeply integrated with industrial development, project construction, and technological innovation. At the team level, by focusing on cadres as the decisive factor, adhering to the correct personnel selection orientation, selecting and appointing outstanding leaders, and building a cadre team with strong Party spirit, broad vision, innovative abilities, and a pragmatic work ethic. At the mass level, by strengthening the sense of purpose of Party organizations and Party members, the collective efforts of the whole society to participate in development are consolidated, forming a vibrant situation of "one nation, one plan" to promote high-quality development.
(III) Upholding the People-Centered Nature of Development Values. High-quality Party building always adheres to the people-centered development philosophy, taking the improvement of people's well-being as the starting point and end goal of development. This is achieved by rectifying misconduct and corruption affecting the people, optimizing the business environment and public services; by using mechanisms such as "Party members linking with enterprises" and "assistance services," addressing the urgent needs and concerns of enterprises and the actual needs of the people; and by promoting the organic integration of high-quality development and a high-quality life, ensuring that the fruits of development benefit all people more extensively and equitably.
III. How to Lead – Practical Path
The key to leading and promoting high-quality development with high-quality Party building lies in building a systematic mechanism that "strengthens the direction through political guidance, consolidates the foundation through organization, optimizes the environment through work style, and promotes practical results through integration and innovation," so as to transform the advantages of Party building into development effectiveness.
First, strengthen political building and firmly grasp the "guiding star" of development. We must deepen theoretical armament to solidify the Party's spirit and build consensus, adhering to the principle of taking the study and implementation of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the primary political task. This will help Party members and cadres deeply grasp the core essence of the new development philosophy and improve their ability to guide practice and promote development using the Party's innovative theories. We must strictly enforce political discipline to calibrate the direction, refining the Party Central Committee's decisions and plans on high-quality development into specific tasks and incorporating them into the Party building assessment and performance evaluation system to ensure the smooth flow of orders and strict adherence to prohibitions. We must enhance political capabilities to serve the overall situation, guiding Party organizations at all levels to establish correct orientations in selecting and appointing personnel, selecting cadres who are politically sound and adept at development, and encouraging cadres to boldly undertake tasks and innovate while abiding by rules and regulations. We must strengthen the fighting fortress of grassroots Party branches, encouraging them to focus on tackling development challenges and ensuring the Party flag flies high on the front lines of development.
Second, we must deepen the rectification of conduct and discipline, and optimize the "ecological environment" for development. We must continue to combat formalism to reduce the burden on grassroots levels, allowing cadres more time and energy to implement policies and promote development. We must advance the rectification of conduct, discipline, and anti-corruption efforts in an integrated manner, adhering to the principle of simultaneously addressing Party spirit, Party conduct, and Party discipline, improving the mechanism for restricting and supervising the exercise of power, continuously rectifying corruption and malpractices affecting the people, and fostering a clean and healthy relationship between government and business. We must promote a pragmatic work style to stimulate initiative, establish a mechanism of "tolerance for mistakes and corrections + positive incentives," and encourage Party members and cadres to be courageous in reform and innovation and to dare to take responsibility.
Third, innovate and integrate platforms to activate the "driving force" of development. Establish a joint Party building mechanism to integrate policy, technology, and talent resources, and address bottlenecks in development such as industrial chain collaboration and industry-academia-research integration. Create distinctive Party building service brands to precisely meet the needs of enterprises, providing services such as policy consultation, resource guarantees, and market expansion. Promote the deep integration of Party building with improving people's livelihoods, focusing on areas such as education, healthcare, and elderly care, solving urgent and pressing problems for the people, and using the effectiveness of improving people's livelihoods to test the effectiveness of Party building, thereby consolidating the synergy for development.
(The authors are, respectively, professor at the China Executive Leadership Academy Pudong, specially appointed researcher at the Shanghai Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, member of the Shanghai Lecture Group on Studying and Implementing the Spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, and doctoral candidate at the School of Marxism, Shanghai University.)
