Analysis on the Root of the ＂four winds＂ Problem and Its Solution
As early as the Yan ‘an rectification period, Comrade Mao Zedong severely pointed out all kinds of unhealthy tendencies in the Party, and successfully purified the whole Party through the rectification movement, which not only provided spiritual support for the victory of the revolution, but also created a generation of party style, political style, military style and folk customs in the early days of his administration, and created the great spirit of the times represented by Lei Feng spirit, Jiao Yulu spirit, Daqing spirit, Dazhai spirit and two bombs and one satellite spirit.
With the long time in power, the Communist Party of China (CPC) people, represented by Mao Zedong, have made great determination, spent a lot of thoughts and thought of many ways to constantly eliminate the accumulated bad atmosphere within the party. Especially from the rectification movement in 1956, to the later "four clean-ups", and then to the "Cultural Revolution", the political revolution was almost used to ensure that the Party would not deteriorate and that it would always maintain its revolutionary fine style and true colors. Later, it was proved that the method of eliminating the bad atmosphere in the party by mass movement was unsuccessful, and the cost was too great to pay for it.
Therefore, after the reform and opening up, it is correct to resolutely give up the decision to rectify the party and rectification by mass movement. But the question is, what’s a new and better way? The existing problems have to be solved. We can’t say that Mao Zedong’s "Cultural Revolution" in 1966 was much ado about nothing, right? We can’t say that the rectification movement in 1956 was groundless, can we? What’s more, it can’t be said that when Mr. Huang Yanpei confronted Mao Zedong in 1945, he warned the Communist Party of China (CPC) not to repeat the mistakes of the historical periodic law. The methods and practices of the "Cultural Revolution" were wrong, but many problems that Mao Zedong wanted to solve through the "Cultural Revolution" were objective, and the original intention of paying close attention to them and trying to solve them thoroughly was also worthy of recognition. In 1956, when the rectification movement was mobilized, Mao Zedong expressed such concern. After seven years in the city, the army lived in barracks and the cadres lived in high-rise buildings. Our party has become less good, and many of our cadres have begun to break away from the people. This rectification movement is to let the people give our party advice and find faults with our cadres, so as to rectify our party again.
Instead of the old method of movement, the new and better method is to rely on the system, democracy and the rule of law. Orientation is certainly good, but the question is what kind of system? What kind of democracy and rule of law? How to build and how to operate? Who depends on to design, build and operate? How to ensure that this institutional approach does not need to pay the price of mass movement, and can effectively solve the problems that Mao Zedong wants to solve but has not solved? If this series of questions are not effectively answered and solved, the party’s work style construction will face a very embarrassing situation: the old method can’t be used, the new method can’t be thought of, or the so-called new method doesn’t work.
History tells us that ending the past only means ending the past and does not necessarily mean opening up the future; It is easy to criticize past mistakes, but it is difficult to surpass them.
The party consolidation we experienced in the early 1980s did not engage in mass movements, but the effect of improving the party style was not satisfactory. Including some "activities" later, are far from achieving the expected purpose. At present, there are four dangers in our party, namely "mental slack, lack of ability, alienation from the masses, passive corruption" and the unhealthy atmosphere of "formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance", which are directly related to the fact that our party has not got rid of this embarrassing situation for more than 30 years, and to the fact that it has not really found a scientific and effective system to effectively promote the party’s work style construction. Moreover, the longer the time goes by, the more problems the Party’s work style will accumulate, and even some small problems will turn into big problems, some local problems will turn into global problems, and the bad habits of individual cadres will turn into big trends. In other words, the root cause of the serious "four winds" problem in the Party at present is mainly the long-term accumulation of party style problems in recent 30 years, but no effective measures have been found to effectively curb it.
Of course, some events at home and abroad during this period have catalyzed the expansion of the "four winds" issue. First, the drastic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe brought collective belief anxiety to the whole party at that time. For example, is communism still a goal worth fighting for? If so many leaders of the CPSU in communist party no longer believe, should we continue to believe? Does the failure of the CPSU mean the failure of communism? Wait a minute. If this anxiety of faith is not cured in time, it is not surprising that some party cadres have problems later. Now it seems that the lasting impact of this crisis of faith has not disappeared. Second, the impact of value pluralism on mainstream ideology after the reform and opening up, especially when we encounter some problems in our development, such as social differences, unfair distribution, environmental deterioration, food safety, and the double lack of government and social integrity, etc., if we can’t treat them rationally, some people will be shaken in the fundamental issue of faith. Third, misreading and misleading the market economy provides a basis for hedonism and extravagance. It seems that the market economy must be materialistic, and people must be selfish and bohemian. Some experts even claim that corruption is the lubricant of the market economy, and they flaunt the flag for corruption with confidence. They strongly advocate that the greatest progress in China is to replace the injustice of privilege with equality before money, and that everything with money is much more civilized than everything with power. These words have stunned all the countries that originated the market economy. I don’t know that the operation of modern market economy needs not only the protection of the rule of law, but also the necessary value spirit of market players.This spirit is not only the indulgence of selfish desires and material desires, but also the diligence and frugality of Christians, which is a high degree of self-restraint and social responsibility. Fourth, the extreme exaggeration of some major corruption cases in the online media has made people demonize the owners of public rights. It seems that all officials are as virtuous as the arrested corrupt elements. All these factors directly or indirectly have a negative impact on the beliefs of some party cadres. Once the faith is lost, the line of defense will be broken. For a big party like us, which has always attached importance to ideological party building, a weak ideological defense line will have a greater impact on the style of work.
Of course, in the final analysis, the most fundamental factor leading to the "four winds" problem is power, which is that our party has not successfully solved the problem of how to grant, take, manage, use and change power in the system after it came to power. If this fundamental subject can’t be solved, the embarrassing dilemma of party style construction can’t be solved. And once this difficult topic has the hope of solving, the whole party will ignite more and more hopes of faith and belief, and ignite more and more hopes of renewing the party style. Now it’s time to make great determination to solve this problem. This is also the reason why the new central collective leadership with the supreme leader as the general secretary has inspired and trusted the whole party most since the 18th National Congress. From the eight regulations to the party’s mass line education and practice activities, the whole party has once again seen the determination and confidence to reorganize the discipline and party style.
How to give, take, manage, make good use of, and exchange good rights for the people at the specific operational institutional mechanism level, so that the ruling power entrusted by the people to our party can do the best for the people without making or making fewer mistakes. Once an inevitable mistake is made, it can be solved in time in the party’s leadership system and the error correction mechanism of the national political system. This is the key to solve the dilemma of style construction, and it is also the key to improve the style of work beyond the sports mode and relying on the system. Therefore, as far as the specific mechanisms and methods are concerned, the core issue lies in how to realize the organic unity of the party’s management of cadres and the development of democracy. And whether the specific mechanism to realize this unification should first be broken through from the following three aspects.
First, through the interaction between the inner-party democratic election system and the people’s democratic election system, the mechanism of the relationship between power granting and receiving is straightened out. Specifically, first of all, through the improvement of the party congress system and the inner-party democratic election system, we should ensure that through the real inner-party democratic system arrangement, we can elect candidates who are in charge of state public power at all levels, and then through the constitutional and legal system procedures that meet the requirements of democratic politics, submit these candidates as personnel bills to the people’s congresses at all levels for election and resolution, so as to enter the state power institutions reasonably and legally, and give them clear and sufficient power to take good power.
The second is to straighten out the mechanism of power operation relationship through the interaction between the inner-party supervision system and the state supervision system. With the improvement of the inner-party democratic supervision system, the People’s Congress also needs to establish and improve the political accountability system according to the Supervision Law. Moreover, with the increasing efforts to govern the country according to law, it is necessary to further establish the no-confidence voting system, the impeachment and recall system of the People’s Congress, and the resignation system of the main responsible person, so as to enhance the accountability means and intensity of the supervision of the People’s Congress, so as to achieve the expectation of managing power well and really put the power holders in the cage of the system. On this basis, it is necessary to create a political ecological environment conducive to improving the executive power and ruling efficiency for the state power executive organs, so that they can fully display their administrative talents and potential, so as to achieve the purpose of making good use of power.
The third is to straighten out the mechanism of power self-renewal through the interaction between the rational metabolism mechanism of power within the party and the rational metabolism mechanism of state power. Efforts should be made to establish and improve the rational political metabolism mechanism within the Party, so as to realize the expectation of "not changing the Party and replacing the people", not through the "once-in-seven-eight-year great democracy" or the past political line struggle, but through the real democratic elections within the Party, the election of the National People’s Congress and the strict term system, so as to fundamentally get out of the strange circle of "ruling chaos" in China politics. Fundamentally get out of the irrational political metabolism mechanism of choosing successors by leaders or in disguised form, and truly realize the party’s "putting aside the old and absorbing the new" and "upgrading" from the scientific institutional arrangement, and realize the long-term stability of the party and the state system.
From the analysis of the root cause of the "four winds" problem and the solution to it, we can see that the solution of the "four winds" problem is not only a problem of party style construction, but also a problem of party style system construction, accompanied by the scientific process of party building and national system construction, the benign interaction between inner-party democratic development and national political development, and the follow-up problem of the organic unity of party leadership, people being masters of the country and governing the country according to law. The logical development and prospect of this great process are no longer just the containment and solution of the "four winds" problem and the normal governance of party style construction, but more and more solid confidence in Socialism with Chinese characteristics’s theory, road and system, and more and more clear Chinese strength, China spirit and China miracle.
(The author is the deputy director, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Party Construction Department of the Central Party School)
(ZiguanggemagazineAuthorized People’s Daily Online-the Communist Party of China (CPC) Press Release, please do not reprint.)
