'Mass line' campaign to consolidate CPC's rule

BEIJING - About two weeks prior to the 92nd anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the world's biggest ruling Party has reaffirmed its "mass line" - an important guideline defining Party-people relations.

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, said Tuesday that the Party's upcoming year-long campaign will be a "thorough cleanup" of undesirable work styles such as formalism, bureaucratism, hedonism and extravagance.

The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee decided at a conference in April to launch the campaign to boost ties between Party members and the public from the latter half of this year.

The move will focus on officials at or above county level, who are required to reflect on their own practices and correct any misbehavior.

"Winning or losing public support is an issue that concerns the CPC's survival or extinction," Xi stressed.

The mass line requires the Party to give top priority to the interests of the people, share weal and woe with them, maintain the closest possible ties with them and persist in exercising power for them, showing concern for them and working for their interests.

It also means that the CPC does everything for the people, relies on people in every task and carries out the principle of "from the masses, to the masses."

The Constitution of the CPC says that "the Party has no special interests of its own apart from the interests of the working class and the broadest masses of the people."