Cadre training comes into focus

By Wu Jiao (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-10-17 07:18

A new training program for cadres will be launched after the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to improve the quality of Party officials, a senior CPC official said.

"One of the most important reasons for the Party's successes in advancing the transformations of the country's economic growth mode, social administration mode and Party governance mode is efficient cadre training, which has made leading cadres at various levels change their ways of thinking and working by keeping pace with times," Zeng Qinghong, a member of the standing committee of the CPC Central Committee, said.

In accordance with the guidelines for cadre training, the country will be organizing about 110,000 CPC officials, including 500 ministerial cadres, into study camps each year until 2010.

Cadre training has been high on the Party's agenda since the 16th National Congress in 2002. Three cadre training centers have been set up since then and trained about 20,000 officials.

Party officials and experts said the training on offer will be more oriented to the current economic and social conditions as well as toward fixing the incumbent problems of the new generation of leaders.

Zhao Changmao, deputy head of the organization section at the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said innovative achievements in the CPC's theories should be the core part of the new training program.

Zhao said the leadership since the 16th Party congress had made innovative breakthroughs in inheriting and enriching Marxism and putting forward the important strategies of the Scientific Outlook on Development and formulating a harmonious socialist society.

"The Party needs to orientate the thoughts of all the members toward the new theories, especially during major transitional periods, and make its members fully understand the tasks and aims they face," Zhao said.

"Innovative theories will help the Party members break through their confinement and put the new theories into practice," Zhao said.

The current leadership, with Hu Jintao as the CPC Central Committee general secretary, has called for a more sustainable and coordinated form of social development to curb social and economic problems such as the country's huge consumption of energy to support its economic development and its inadequate social welfare system.

Zhao also said legal training is key for government and Party leaders in the new era, some of the characteristics of which include the rule of law and a regulated market economy.

Zhao said the training in this field had been lagging behind demand and called for more courses to be set up for the cadres.

Experts said the current young leaders should learn more about conditions in the country and the hardships in the country's revolutionary past.

CPC cadres are getting younger and younger. Many of them were born in the 1950s or 1960s and joined the ranks of government employees in the 1970s and 1980s, Li Xiaoshan, vice-president of the China Executive Leadership Academy at Jinggangshan, said.

"These people are intelligent and well-educated, but some have never undertaken a systematic study of the CPC's history and fail to fully understand the strong bond between the Party and the broad masses," Xia Xuanluan, a sociologist with Peking University, said.

"They should be better informed about conditions in the country, especially the uneven development between different regions and urban and rural areas."

The authorities have developed a systematic training system for Party-member government leaders since 2002, when the central leadership made it a key goal to strengthen its leadership capacity and maintain the quality of Party members.

Liu Chun, an official with the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said the central government-level training system now consists of the Party School, the National School of Administration, three executive leadership academies and the senior managers training school in Dalian.

The Party school system targeting high- and mid-level leaders is aimed at acquainting them with the guidelines and blueprints of the Party and Party theories.

The National School of Administration is aimed at training government staff members to improve their administrative capacities.

The three executive leadership academies (in Pudong, Jinggangshan and Yan'an) educate CPC officials through experience-based courses and motivate them by educating them more about the history of China, especially those parts involving the Communist Party of China; teaching them to perform their duties as civil servants and helping prevent corruption; and restoring humility within the ranks of the CPC cadres.

Pudong is regarded as a vanguard of China's economic development, while Jinggangshan and Yan'an were both important revolutionary strongholds.

The Pudong-based academy runs courses on international affairs, and helps trainees keep pace with developments and become more open. The other two academies give officials the opportunity to learn more about revolutionary traditions and about conditions in the country. Training is carried out in the form of lectures, discussions and field studies.

The recently inaugurated National School for Senior Managers in Dalian has started training leaders of major State-funded enterprises to improve their ability to lead in a modern economy.

Other organizations and sectors at various levels have also set up centers of their own, or entrusted universities to help train CPC leading cadres at lower levels and even ordinary CPC members.

(China Daily 10/17/2007 page8)