The Fourth Plenary Session of Nineteenth CPC Central Committee was held in Beijing on October 28-31, 2019. At the session, members of the CPC Central Committee discussed and adopted a decision on issues relating to the adherence and improvement of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and the modernization of the state governance system and capacity. Recently, Professor Li Lin, former director of CASS Law Institute, currently a member of CASS Academic Committee and a research fellow at the CASS Center for Studies of Xi Jinping’s Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in a New Era, was interviewed by the newspaper Guangming Daily on issues relating to the significance, the content, and the implementation of the Decision of the CPC Central Committee adopted at this session.

  With respect to the significance of the Decision, Professor Li Lin pointed out that the decision has set China on a new journey of state governance by adhering to the organic unity of the principles of the Party’s leadership, the people being the masters of the country and ruling the country by law, highlighting the leadership of the CPC – the most essential characteristic and the greatest advantage of socialism with Chinese characteristics, deeply grasping the historical logic, the practical logic and the theoretical logic of the establishment and development of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics by the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC, comprehensively summarizing the historical achievements made by the CPC in the construction of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, answering for the first time the major political questions of “what should China adhere to, strengthen, improve and develop” in state system and state governance, summing up for the first time the 13 prominent advantages of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and state governance system, expounding for the first time the fundamental systems, basic systems and important systems supporting socialism with Chinese characteristics, putting forward for the first time the overall requirements, overall objectives and 13 key tasks relating to the adherence to and improvement of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and the modernization of the state governance system and capacity, and as such, has become the political declaration, the action plan and the fundamental principle of the CPC in the process of leading the Chinese people in adhering and improving the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and modernizing the state governance system and capacity in a new era.

With respect to the overall goals established by the Decision, Professor Li pointed out that institutions are the basis of the Party and the state. In its Nineteenth National Congress, the CPC made a series of strategic arrangements for the realization of the goal of building China into a modernized socialist power. Among these arrangements, those for institutional and capacity building are as follows: to improve various institutions and realize the preliminary modernization of the state governance system and capacity by the year 2035 and to realize the complete modernization of the state governance system and capacity by the middle of this century. The report to the Third Plenary Session of the Nineteenth Central Committee of the CPC pointed out that the CPC, in order to lead the Chinese people to carry out great struggles, implement great projects, advance great causes, and realize great dreams, must speed up the modernization of state governance system and capacity, and endeavor to develop a mature and finalized socialist system with Chinese characteristics. Therefore state governance institutional and capacity building has always been a major strategic task of the CPC.

  With respect to the concrete implementation of the “thirteen adherences and improvements” put forward in the Decision, Professor Li pointed out that the CPC must take the construction of the socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics as the key link to develop a complete system of legal norms, a highly efficient law implementation system, a strict legal supervision system, a forceful legal safeguard system, as well as a comprehensive intra-Party regulation system, so as to continuously break new ground in ruling the country by law in a comprehensive way and in building state institutions.