Society

Members urged to read their way to top

By Zhao Lei (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-24 07:53

BEIJING - Members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) are spending more time reading and researching these days as the Party's leadership puts a greater emphasis on building an organization that promotes learning, said a senior publicity official.

"Through learning, a lot of problems that had long encumbered the country's reform and development have been resolved," said Wang Xiaohui, vice-minister of the publicity department for the CPC Central Committee, at a news conference on Thursday.

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The CPC Central Committee launched the campaign to build a learning-featured Party at its annual session in September 2009, prioritizing it as an "important strategic task".

To promote the campaign, the publicity and organization departments of the CPC Central Committee have jointly recommended 25 categories of books to Party members, according to Wang.

The Party's top leadership has also paid great attention to learning, he said, noting that the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee had organized more than 70 lectures since the 16th National Congress of the CPC that featured distinguished Chinese scholars talking about the latest developments in their fields and discussing issues with top Party leaders.

Departments under the CPC Central Committee have carried out various activities to facilitate their workers' learning efforts, said Zhao Kai, a senior official in charge of overseeing Party affairs in the departments.

He mentioned the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee as a successful example. The department set up a cooperative program with top education providers, including Peking University and Tsinghua University. The program is aimed at enabling high-ranking officials to attend training courses when they need them.

"Some local Party committees have included performance in learning and researching into the evaluation of Party officials, and whether they can be promoted will be partly determined by the evaluation result," Wang said.

Wang also took time to talk about the resurgence of so-called red songs.

The new-found popularity of the ideological songs have nothing to do with the direction of the country, he said in response to a question about whether red songs springing up nationwide indicated an ideological return to the past.

Wang explained that it is a long-held tradition among Chinese people to sing red songs and this year it is very "meaningful" for people to get together and sing the songs to express their affection for the CPC and hope for a better life as it marks its 90th year.

"Today, people's cultural lives are very rich and diverse," he said. "Some like red songs, some like pop songs and some like rock and roll. The popularity of red songs has noting to do with a so-called turn left or right."