Xi calls for efforts to study Party history

Understanding theories, doing practical work, making new advances seen as vital

The Communist Party of China, the world's biggest Marxist ruling party, with over 91 million members, launched a campaign on Party history education among all of its members on Saturday.

Speaking at the campaign's launch meeting, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, called for efforts to study the Party's history, understand its theories, do practical work and make new advances.

Xi, who is also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, spoke of the need to embark on a new journey in high spirits to fully build a modern socialist China and welcome the Party's centenary with outstanding achievements.

Since its founding in 1921, the CPC has grown into the world's biggest Marxist ruling party. It has been in power for over 70 years in the world's largest socialist country, which has 1.4 billion people.

The Party has stood the test of time, reversing China's fate from the continuous decline since the first Opium War in the 1840s to steady progress toward prosperity.

Xi stressed the vital necessity of launching the campaign as the CPC stands at a critical juncture in which the time frames of its two centenary goals converge.

Xi urged Party committees at all levels to attentively implement the arrangements made by the CPC Central Committee for the campaign.

Zhu Qingping, 104, who is from an old revolutionary base in Jiangxi province, voiced his support for the campaign.

"Only by reviewing the Party's history can people living in peacetime truly understand why we chose to join the Red Army and then followed the Party wholeheartedly," said Zhu, who joined the Red Army in 1931.

"Our Party's history is a history of continuously adapting Marxism to the Chinese context," Xi said.

Xi called for educating and guiding the Party to learn from its "extraordinary" past so as to understand how Marxism has profoundly changed China and the world.