Xi urges further "mass line" efforts

BEIJING, Jan. 20 -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday called for further efforts to implement the "mass line" campaign designed to strengthen ties between the people and the Communist Party of China (CPC).

In a videophone conference on plans for the second phase of the campaign, Xi urged the Party to capitalize on its learnings from the first phase, solving problems concerning people's immediate interests and improving work styles in the grassroots so as to benefit the people.

The "mass line" initiative was launched in June 2013, with the aim of making government more accessible to the general population, while cleaning up four undesirable work styles -- formalism, bureaucracy, hedonism and extravagance.

The first batch involved in the campaign included provincial-level departments, and now the campaign goes to the second batch of lower-level departments and leaderships, such as those of city and county-level as well as grassroot units.

Xi said the first phase achieved important results, helping Party members and cadres to strengthen their communist ideology and contain the spread of undesirable work styles. It also led to improvements in social morality.

After the campaign was launched, the CPC issued a series of detailed policies to regulate government spending and officials' personal behavior in various fields. Those efforts have been endorsed by the people and praised by those inside and outside of the Party.

Xi said the "mass line" campaign is like a CPC "hereditary treasure" that can keep its vitality, while he called for a focus on both education and practice in its tenets so as to establish the mass viewpoint of Marxism deeply into Party members' minds and their actions.

"Ideology and faith are like calcium for communists' minds. We must strengthen ideological and political construction, and establish a correct world view, view of life and value set, which can act as a master switch," added the president.

Xi said the second phase of the "mass line" campaign is an extension and deepening of the first phase. He called for efforts to solve all problems that undermine the people's interests, and to safeguard their legitimate rights, and that all these should be made the focus of the second phase of the campaign.

He warned against any restoration of undesirable work styles, saying that although the campaign will run for a limited time, implementing the mass line is an everlasting mission.

Xi also emphasized the importance of exerting people's enthusiasm during phase two, calling for social monitoring, participation and evaluation at every step of officials' work. The campaign should be orientated around solving problems, according to the president.

Each member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee will choose a county as a point of contact to guide the "mass line" campaign.

Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli also attended the conference, which was presided over by Liu Yunshan.