BEIJING (AP) – Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the 88-million-strong Communist Party to embrace its Marxist roots on Friday as he delivered an emphatic call for ideological discipline and a vigorous defense of party rule.
The televised speech on the party’s 95th anniversary represented one of Xi’s most pointed and lengthy addresses laying out his orthodox ideology, and again repudiated the belief held among some observers four years ago that Xi’s ascent might usher in liberal political reform.
Xi said that history has proven correct the party’s leadership of 1.3 billion people and that its stewardship remains essential for China to realize its “great rejuvenation.”
“History tells us the Chinese people’s choice of the Communist Party to lead them toward the civilization’s great rejuvenation been correct, and that the party’s path of socialism with Chinese characteristics is also correct,” Xi told his audience of cadres gathered in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
“Marxism must be the basic fundamental, guiding principle,” he said, “or the party would lose its soul and direction.”