Less than a week after the conclusion of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, led the newly elected top leadership on a visit to Yan'an, an old revolutionary base in Northwest China's Shaanxi province.
They were there to pay tribute to the sacred land of the Chinese revolution, and to manifest the conviction of the new leadership to carry forward the Party's revolutionary legacy and deliver results on the journey ahead.
During the tour, they visited the former residences of Mao Zedong and other revolutionaries of the older generation in the revolutionary site of Yangjialing, where the well-known "cave-dwelling conversation" occurred between Mao and acclaimed patriot and educationist Huang Yanpei.
When asked about how to escape the historical cycle of rise and fall, and how political power can maintain long-lasting governance, Mao offered the first answer to the question: placing the government under the supervision of the people.
With the practice of full and rigorous Party self-governance since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party has provided its second answer: self-reform.
Over the past decade, the CPC has boosted its ability to purify, improve, renew and excel itself, maintaining the people's support in a country with a population of 1.4 billion.
As it leads efforts to build China into a great modern socialist country, the CPC has pledged to continue strict self-governance and to steer broader social transformation through its self-reform.
STRENGTHENING OVERSIGHT
At the Party's national congress in October, Xi said that over the past decade, it has been made clear that the CPC is the highest force of political leadership, and that upholding the centralized, unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee is the highest political principle.
The importance of concrete, targeted and regular political oversight was underlined at the Party congress.
This aims to ensure that the central leadership's key plans and arrangements spanning economic, political, cultural, social and ecological spheres, among others, are fully and precisely implemented by its 4.9 million grassroots-level Party organizations and over 96 million members.
In the country's unprecedented fight against poverty over the past 10 years, these closely-knit organizations have played a key role in helping nearly 100 million rural residents shake off poverty.
In the tourist city of Guilin in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, political inspections have served as a powerful tool in the conservation of the picturesque landscape. A task force has been established to supervise the protection of the Lijiang River, which flows through the city.
Accountability mechanisms have real teeth in Guilin. During the first nine months of 2022, the city's discipline watchdog investigated 53 cases of corruption and misconduct in environmental protection work, and initiated disciplinary action against 80 individuals.
In the city of Huzhou, Zhejiang Province, issues that are important to people's lives are overseen to ensure that people's basic needs are fulfilled.
Supervisors have been targeting project construction and the use of funds related to rural old-age care and child care services to ensure that the residents can enjoy quality services as the city strives for common prosperity, said Wang Yong, deputy secretary of the Huzhou Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC.
FIGHTING CORRUPTION
"Corruption is a cancer to the vitality and ability of the Party, and fighting corruption is the most thorough kind of self-reform there is," Xi said in the report to the 20th CPC National Congress.
Amid a sweeping anti-corruption battle since 2012, over 500 officials registered at and supervised by the CPC Central Committee have been investigated, along with more than 25,000 officials at the department and bureau level and over 182,000 at the county and division level.
An overwhelming victory has been achieved and the gains in the fight against corruption have been fully consolidated, Xi said in the report, pledging intensified efforts to uproot corruption in sectors with a high concentration of power, funds and resources.
"Clear requirements were set for our anti-corruption work," said Pan Feng, a member of the standing committee of the Qinghai Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC.
The province has launched a campaign to combat graft in the grain purchasing and sales sector. So far, a total of 82 individuals have been placed under investigation, with 22.4 million yuan (3.2 million U.S. dollars) of illicit funds recovered.
The Party's anti-graft drive has won widespread support from the people. According to a survey by the National Bureau of Statistics, 97.4 percent of the Chinese people are satisfied with the efforts to strengthen Party self-governance, improve conduct, build integrity and combat corruption over the past five years.
While maintaining a tough stance on corruption, the CPC has committed itself to improving conduct. Significant advances have been made since the central Party leadership's eight-point decision on improving conduct was unveiled in 2012. Undesirable conduct such as indulgence in extravagance and ostentation has been curbed across the whole Party.
"Good conduct is critical to the survival of a governing party," Xi said, vowing to continue to tackle pointless formalities, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance, and root out privilege-seeking mindsets and behavior.
Tenzin Dondrup, vice general manager of a construction materials company in the Tibet Autonomous Region, said the fight against corruption and misconduct has exposed low-ranking corrupt officials who directly affect people's livelihoods, and the fight has consolidated broad public support for the Party.
IMPROVING SYSTEMS, REGULATIONS
Xi highlighted the importance of running the Party through systems and regulations.
Since 2012, the Party has attached great importance to developing intra-Party regulations. Consequently, a sound system of Party regulations has taken shape, with approximately 4,000 intra-Party regulations currently in effect, of which over 70 percent have been enacted or revised in the past decade.
The vitality of the system lies in its implementation, said Qiao Beihua, a judge with the Second Intermediate People's Court of Shanghai and a delegate to the 20th CPC National Congress, adding that priority should be given to the enforcement of intra-Party regulations to give full play to their efficiency.
Regulation-based self-governance has been implemented at the primary level. In the city of Siping, Jilin Province, a team of experts and grassroots officials has been commissioned to visit 144 villages and speak directly with farmers to learn about the conservation of black soil, which is largely found in northeast China and produces about a quarter of the country's total grain output.
After two months of hard work, an oversight plan for black-soil conservation was formulated, providing a strong institutional basis for local supervisory authorities to carry out their work.
"Going forward, we will continue implementing effective ways to handle cases, and strictly punish those violating black-soil protection regulations," said Wang Yandong, secretary of the Siping Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC.