Cohesive force

Yang praised the Party for its high disciplinary standards, saying that the Party's disciplines not only target corruption for clean governance, "but also focus on the Party's organization and working style".

He said that the Party's disciplinary requirements have been continuously strengthened over the years to provide a strong cohesive force within the CPC.

"Such cohesion has helped the Party overcome various challenges over the years. If we don't have such a cohesive force, the Party, which now has more than 90 million members from all walks of life, would fragment. Without this cohesion, the Party would not have been able to meet and overcome the many unexpected internal and external situations or crises it has faced over the last century," he said.

He pointed to the country's overall measures against the novel coronavirus outbreak as an example, saying that the country's "quick control of the outbreak, swift resumption of business activities and positive economic growth can be attributed to the highly disciplined Party and its unified actions".

"If there were no disciplines, it would have been hard to gather the strength of the Party members from different walks of life and concentrate their efforts on the epidemic prevention and control work so quickly, let alone win the difficult battle against the virus nationwide," he said.

Gao Liwei, vice-president of the Marxism School at Shanghai University, agreed and said the Party's cohesive force consolidates its governing capabilities.

Gao pointed out that the Party has paid close attention to disciplines since its founding, saying that "being highly disciplined has always been a priority for the CPC".

Yang Zhengjun, an associate professor at Guizhou University, highlighted the emphasis the Party has placed on discipline from the very early days in a recently published paper.

Yang's paper, which was published in Wuhan University Journal of Philosophy and Social Science in March, paints a very clear picture of the CPC as a highly disciplined Marxist Party that has been actively promoting its self-discipline with determination and a strong self-revolutionary spirit from its founding to now.

In 1921, for instance, the founders of the CPC declared that "being highly disciplined" was a must for those who wanted to be Party members, and the basic rules the members and organizations at each level should abide by were first stipulated in 1922.

"That's to say, our high disciplinary requirements were not raised by the top leadership overnight or in just the past few years," said Yang Weidong, the professor from China University of Political Science and Law.

"Instead, they're constantly updated and further improved in line with the fast development of society and the new demands for the Party's self-governance."

In his view, the disciplinary construction has been comprehensively and deeply strengthened since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, as the Party is facing more complex situations and risks both at home and abroad.

"The internal and external challenges have raised new, more and higher requirements for the Party and its members, so we have to promote greater self-discipline," he said.

Yang Weidong said that the Party must ceaselessly press forward in improving its working style, boosting clean governance and fighting against graft if it is to preserve vitality and realize the goals set out in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) for National Economic and Social Development.