The great rejuvenation of China

Section 4: Persist in using scientific methods to promote reform and opening up

For a country and a nation, reform and opening up is a profound social change and a complex system project, and we must adhere to scientific methods. Looking around the world, some countries have fallen into civil war and turmoil due to poor decision-making and improper methods on the issue of reform and opening up, and there are many examples of people living in poverty and national division. A very important reason for the success of China’s reform and opening up is that it has adhered to the world outlook and methodology of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, and accurately grasped the internal laws of reform and opening up. Both positive and negative experiences show that reform and opening up do not necessarily bring success; Successful reform and opening up must adhere to scientific methods. Whether it is summing up the historical experience of reform and opening up for more than 40 years or deploying a new era to comprehensively deepen reform, Comrade Xi Jinping attaches great importance to and repeatedly emphasizes the importance of adhering to scientific methods.

1. Persist in combining strengthening the party’s leadership with respecting the people’s initiative

The party’s leadership is the key and fundamental to the success of reform and opening up. It is precisely by always adhering to the party’s centralized and unified leadership that we can achieve a great historical turning point and open a new period of reform and opening up. In the process of reform and opening up for more than 40 years, the Party has adhered to the correct direction of reform, maintained the determination of reform, and ensured that no subversive mistakes occurred on fundamental issues; the Party proceeded from the overall situation, carefully deployed reform tasks, and accurately promoted opening up. Let reform and opening up promote and complement each other, and inject strong impetus into China’s economic and social development; the Party focuses on the prominent contradictions and problems facing development, conducts in-depth investigation and research, and encourages bold exploration at the grassroots level. Adhere to the connection between reform decision-making and legislative decision-making, and continuously improve the scientific nature of reform decision-making, so as to promote the continuous success of reform and opening up. Looking at the present, comprehensively deepening reform in the new era is a complex system project, and the correlation and coupling requirements between various reform measures are very high, and it is necessary to gather forces from all aspects and levels in order to advance as a whole. Moreover, every step of reform and opening up is not easy, and the future will inevitably face such risks and challenges, and even unimaginable stormy waves. To continue to promote the comprehensive deepening of reform, we must give full play to the party’s role as the core of leadership in controlling the overall situation and coordinating all parties, continuously improve the party’s ability and determination to set the direction, seek the overall situation, formulate policies, and promote reform, and ensure that the ship of reform and opening up always moves forward along the correct course and breaks the waves.

Reform and opening up is the cause of hundreds of millions of people, and there is endless wisdom among the masses of the people. Every breakthrough and development in the understanding and practice of reform and opening up, the emergence and development of every new thing in reform and opening up, and the creation and accumulation of experience in every aspect of reform and opening up all come from the practice and wisdom of hundreds of millions of people. To comprehensively deepen reform and opening up in the new era, we must still closely rely on the people, attach importance to giving play to the initiative of localities, grassroots units and the masses, give full play to the subjective initiative of the masses, and gather majestic people’s hearts and people’s strength for reform and opening up.

The party’s leadership provides a strong political guarantee and a correct direction for reform and opening up, and the people’s initiative provides a steady stream of wisdom and strength for reform and opening up. In the whole process of reform and opening up, we must always pay attention to combining upholding the party’s leadership with respecting the people’s initiative. As Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out:

“Sum up the fresh experience created by the masses in a timely manner, fully mobilize the enthusiasm, initiative and creativity of the masses to promote reform, pool the wisdom and strength of the broadest masses of the people on reform, and work with the people to push reform forward.“1

2. adhere to the combination of “crossing the river by feeling the stones” and the top-level design

“Crossing the river by feeling the stones” is a reform method rich in Chinese wisdom and in line with China’s national conditions, and it is also a scientific method that conforms to Marxist epistemology and practical theory. “Crossing the river by feeling the stones” means feeling the law and the law of reform and opening up. To carry out reform and opening up and develop the socialist market economy, the ancestors did not talk about it, and other socialist countries did not do it, but we can only gain true knowledge from practice through repeated exploration through practice, understanding, re-practice, and re-understanding. China’s reform and opening up has come about in this way, which is a process of continuous accumulation of experiments, then summing up, and then popularization, and a process of continuous deepening from rural to urban, from coastal to inland, and from part to whole. This kind of gradual reform has avoided social unrest caused by unclear circumstances and improper measures, and has provided a guarantee for steadily advancing reform and smoothly achieving its goals. Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out: “Crossing the river by feeling the stones is in line with the process of people’s understanding of objective laws and the dialectic of things changing from quantity to quality.” It cannot be said that in the early days of reform and opening up, we had to cross the river by feeling the stones, and now we cannot mention crossing the river by feeling the stones. “2 To comprehensively deepen reform and open up, we also need to cross the river by feeling the stones. “Of course, there are rules for crossing the river by feeling the stones, and it is necessary to do it according to the laws that have been recognized, and then deepen the understanding of the laws in practice, rather than stepping on the watermelon skin and sliding where it counts.“3

Reform and opening up has entered a period of tackling tough problems and deep waters, and has reached the stage of gnawing hard bones, the relevance and interaction have been significantly enhanced, and it is difficult to rely only on reforms in a single field and a single level to be effective, we must strengthen top-level design and overall planning, make overall design for the economic system, political system, cultural system, social system, ecological civilization system, etc., strengthen the study and judgment of the correlation of various reforms, and strive to achieve overall and local coordination, the combination of root cause and symptom treatment, and gradual and breakthrough promotion.

“Crossing the river by feeling the stones” and top-level design are both important methods to promote reform and opening up, and the dialectical unity between the two. Promoting partial phased reform and opening up should be carried out on the premise of strengthening the top-level design, and strengthening the top-level design should be planned on the basis of partial phased reform and opening up. It is necessary to strengthen macro-control and top-level design, pay more attention to the systematic, holistic and coordinated nature of reform, and continue to encourage bold experimentation and breakthroughs, and constantly deepen reform and opening up.

3. adhere to the unity of problem-oriented and goal-oriented

The CPC’s efforts in revolution, construction, and reform have always been aimed at solving China’s practical problems. Reform and opening up is caused by the reversal of problems, and it has been deepened in the continuous solution of problems. In the process of deploying and promoting reform and opening up, the Party Central Committee has always upheld a strong sense of problems, whether it is formulating plans, or deploying to promote and supervise implementation, and has taken practical solutions to problems as the goal. Comrade Xi Jinping pointed out: “We must have a strong sense of problems, be guided by major issues, grasp key issues for further research and thinking, and focus on promoting the resolution of a series of prominent contradictions and problems facing our country’s development.“1 Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, the Party has led the people of the whole country to work as one, open roads in every mountain, build bridges when encountering water, and constantly solve problems in the process of advancing. Old problems are solved, and new problems arise. We must carry forward the spirit of struggle, dare to face problems head-on, improve our ruling skills, be good at solving problems, and promote the continuous advancement of reform and opening up.

Adhering to goal orientation is an important method to promote reform and opening up, and it is also an important experience of the Communist Party of China in leading reform and opening up. Scientific and reasonable goals guide the direction of efforts and provide spiritual inspiration. On the basis of the “four modernizations” put forward by the party in the fifties and sixties of the 20th century, in the 80s it proposed to achieve moderate prosperity and “build a prosperous, strong, democratic, and civilized modern socialist country,” and in the 90s it proposed “two hundred years.” In the new century, the goal of struggle is to “build a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way,” “build a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way,” and build a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and beautiful modern socialist country. Realize new goals such as the Chinese dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

These beautiful goals inspire the Chinese people to unite and firmly march towards a better life, injecting strong spiritual power into reform and opening up. Looking back at the process of reform and opening up, we can find that the goal is a concentrated embodiment of the problem, and the problem should be solved in the process of accomplishing the goal. The process of solving problems is the process of achieving goals, and the process of achieving goals is also the process of solving problems, and the two are unified in the great practice of reform and opening up. After arduous exploration in the early stage of reform and opening up, the party overcame the old concept of opposing the market and planning in the reform and opening up, and clarified the economic reform goal of establishing a socialist market economic system, which is a model for adhering to the unity of goal orientation and problem orientation in reform and opening up. In comprehensively deepening reform and opening up in the new era, it is all the more necessary to unify goal-oriented and problem-oriented enemies, and achieve the set goals in the process of solving problems.