A spokesperson for the Party History Research Center of the CPC Central Committee, which compiled the volume, said that Volume I of the book deals with the history of China's New Democratic Revolution led by the CPC from 1921-1949 with a number of new findings.

Based on the first part of a book with the same title published by the center in 1991, the latest publication contains about 740,000 Chinese characters, with better presentation and scientific comments on many major issues concerning the Party's history.

One example, according to the spokesperson, is the inclusion of the history of the Opium War in 1840 as part of the background of the Party's founding in 1921.

Previous history books on the CPC started with the Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution of 1911 as background.

The compilation of the book published in 1991 was based on material updated in 1980s, but many important addresses on CPC history have been delivered during the past decade by Deng Xiaoping, the late veteran Chinese leader and architect of the country's reform and opening to the outside world, and current Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin, noted the spokesperson.

In addition, the surfacing of a huge amount of records and archives both in China and overseas in the past decade prompted the research circle on Party history to update their conclusions on many issues with new findings.

The new book is, therefore, very helpful for improving Party building and promoting socialist ethics and cultural development, and it would be served as a guide book to leading officials, teachers and researchers as well as the masses of Party members in learning and studying the history of the CPC.

(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2002)