CPC 101: The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China

The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) was held in Beijing in October 2017, 2,338 delegates and specially invited delegates attended the Congress.

The Congress adopted an amendment to the CPC Constitution, established Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the guiding ideology that the Party must adhere to in the long term, and wrote it into the Party Constitution.

In the face of the people’s growing need for a better life, the 19th CPC National Congress proposed that the main contradiction in Chinese society had evolved to the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. The Congress put forward a series of goals and initiatives to improve people’s livelihood, including the need for every child to enjoy fair and quality education, and establish a comprehensive basic health care system with Chinese characteristics.

In order to achieve the goal of building a moderately prosperous society by 2020, the 19th CPC National Congress proposed to resolutely win the battle against poverty with a focus on ensuring that severely impoverished areas be lifted out of poverty. To achieve this goal, the government has implemented the strategy of rural revitalization to advance the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers help poor mountainous villages to have access to roads, water and electricity and improve transportation and living standards for the poor.

The government’s initiatives effectively helped the rural poor to achieve poverty eradication, and a full victory against poverty was realized in 2021.