Q: Economic reform has been carried out in China for
more than 20 years, but people feel that reform of the political
system lags behind. Is this true? What are the major tasks and
objectives for China's reform of its political system? What about
the progress?
A: There is a long-standing mistaken idea. In fact, as China
advances its economic reform, it is also reforming its political
system and has achieved some progress. As for people who feel that
reform of the political system lags behind, it is because the
reform is broad, dealing with many aspects and levels of
government. Another reason is that, as of now, we have not yet
eliminated the root cause of trouble in the political system, and
therefore people feel that political reform lags behind.
It's important to note that reform of the Chinese political
system is a kind of self-improvement and development of the
socialist system. It will certainly learn from the history and
experiences of world civilizations, but will not copy Western
political systems. Our reform objectives are to further enlarge the
socialist democracy, perfect the socialist legal system, administer
state affairs according to law and establish a socialist country
ruled by law.
For a comprehensive view of the more than two decades of reform
and opening up, people can see that since 1980, when Deng Xiaoping
put forward the reform of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and
state leadership system, China has been devoting itself to
reforming its political system comprehensively, at all levels, and
has achieved progress to different extents. During this period,
China established the retirement system of veteran officials and
the system of fixed tenures for government officials, cancelled
departments in the CPC that overlapped with those in government,
improved the system of multi-party cooperation and political
consultation under the leadership of the CPC and the people's
congress system, carried out several reforms of government
structure and administrative mechanisms, advanced reform of the
judicial system and personnel system, and established mechanisms to
combat corruption and build a clean government, as well as to
administer state affairs according to law.
However, when reviewing the progress China has made in reforming
its political system, we should also understand that the tasks in
advancing reform of the political system are arduous. Presently,
with all the progress in economic reform, the government feels that
reform of the political system is necessary. Without reform of
political system, economic reform will not further advance and the
development of productivity and modernization will be impeded. With
this understanding, reform of the political system will be speeded
up.