Reform of the cadres’ personnel system is an important task that the 17^th National Congress initiated. It was specifically explained and planned in the fourth plenary session (of the 17^th Congress) “Resolution,” which demonstrated that further advancing reform is an extremely important and pressing task for us to strengthen the foundation of the Party’s rule and accomplish the Party’s mission as the ruling party. …

As our country gets more involved in globalization, we not only must face intense competition in the economy, science, and technology, but we also must face intense competition in ideology, the system, and politics. The competitiveness of the cadre personnel system is the key element in the competiveness of a country’s political system. To win over the preemptive stance in international competition in politics, we must further advance the reform of the personnel system, so as to provide a system that guarantees a high quality of cadres and leaders. …

Based on the guiding spirit of the 17^th National Congress of the CCP and the fourth plenary session of the 17^th National Congress, to carry out the reform of the personnel system, we must stick to the principle of the “Party taking control of the cadres.” It cannot be changed at any event. The authority to appoint personnel is one of the most important authorities for a ruling party. During the reform, giving up this principle of the “Party taking control of cadres” is equivalent to giving up the ruling authority and the ruling position of the Party. …

The “Resolution” of the fourth plenary session asked us to further advance the personnel system reform from five aspects. … There are tasks in eight areas. The first one is to establish and perfect a system to select, appoint, and nominate cadres. The second is to perfect the evaluation system. The third is to select cadres openly and encourage candidates to assume certain positions to be able to compete with one another. The fourth is to advance the reform of cadre training and education. The fifth is to perfect the selection system for young cadres and future-generation cadres, and establish a training and selection chain for the Party leaders from the grass roots level. The sixth is to develop a system of management which embodies both discipline and warm care. The seventh is to enhance communication among the cadres. The eighth is to improve morality in selecting candidates, and improve the credibility of the selection process.

Continuing to train cadres and improve their quality is another important task required by the 17^th National Congress. … First, we must enhance the training in ideology, arm the cadres with the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics, strengthen education in the Party’s principles, and remain firm in our ideology. Second, we must improve the training in capabilities, especially competence in strategic planning, handling mass work and public service, and in maintaining social stability. Put emphasis on improving the ability to handle urgent issues, the ability to guide public opinion and use new types of media, and to conduct work with minority and religious groups. Third, we must establish the concept of training cadres based on our needs. … Fourth, we must continue to foster open competition, making the Party academy and administrative schools the main channel, and main battlefield in the training; at the same time, we must make higher institutions such as universities an important place to train cadres. Fifth, we must treat the cadre’s moral training as an urgent task.

Looking at the status quo of our cadre teams and the requirements for future development, we must do well in three areas. The first is to strengthen the nurturing of Party culture and train cadres through practice. … Second is to do well in the development of future cadre teams. Put emphasis on educating and nurturing them, and assigning them specific tasks as well, particularly training in and the practice of the Party’s principles. We must do well in the development of future cadre teams for important positions. We must do better in selecting and training female cadres, minority cadres and cadres from outside the Party. … Third is to explore and establish a system wherein the upper level Party organization selects cadres from lower levels, and establishes a selection and training chain starting from the base level [the lowest level]. It is our emphasis to guide the base level cadres in the right direction, and we should establish and perfect the method of selecting cadres for townships from the village level, selecting cadres for the county level from the township level, and increase the percentage of public officers from lower levels. When there is a vacancy in the local Party and the politics division at the county level or above, those cadres who have had experience at the base level will be the first group of candidates. We should select and appoint college graduates to be village cadres, and make sure they are willing to stay, and can do well at their job.

For the Party to take control of the Party, the key is to take good control of the Party cadres. For the Party to be strict in administration, the first thing is to strictly manage the Party cadres. …

According to the “Resolution,” we must do well in four areas in the exchanges among Party cadres. First, we must center on scientific development, and greatly promote the exchanges between different areas, and between the local level and the central organizations. We must continue to select good cadres and talented young cadres who have worked in the eastern developed regions to serve in the western regions, and send those good, or promising cadres working in the mid-west to work in the eastern developed regions to train them. We must continue to select good cadres from central organizations to take positions at local levels. We must do well in the exchange in issues like exploring the west, reviving the old industrial districts such as the northeastern regions, developing the central region, the development of key projects and the backbone industries of our country, and supporting Tibet and Xinjiang, etc. Second, we must promote exchanges among cadres and leaders holding key positions. During the past several years, we have had exchanges among the Party and politics division, the secretary of the discipline division, the directors of organization departments, directors of the people’s court, directors of the procuratorate, and directors of the police department. Next, we should establish a system to appoint cadres to a place that is not their hometown, especially for those key positions. Third, we must promote exchange and rotation among intermediate level cadres. Cadres should rotate in those positions that mange human resources, finance, discipline and legislation. … Fourth, the exchange channel between administrative organizations and enterprises should be refined. We must do research to come up with a method to accomplish this kind of exchange.

Endnote:
[1] Study Times, November 30, 2009
http://www.studytimes.com.cn/WebPage/ny1.aspx?act=0&id=3087&bid=1