Q: Economic reform has been carried out in China for more than 20 years, but people feel that reform of the political system lags behind. Is this true? What are the major tasks and objectives for China's reform of its political system? What about the progress?

A: There is a long-standing mistaken idea. In fact, as China advances its economic reform, it is also reforming its political system and has achieved some progress. As for people who feel that reform of the political system lags behind, it is because the reform is broad, dealing with many aspects and levels of government. Another reason is that, as of now, we have not yet eliminated the root cause of trouble in the political system, and therefore people feel that political reform lags behind.

It's important to note that reform of the Chinese political system is a kind of self-improvement and development of the socialist system. It will certainly learn from the history and experiences of world civilizations, but will not copy Western political systems. Our reform objectives are to further enlarge the socialist democracy, perfect the socialist legal system, administer state affairs according to law and establish a socialist country ruled by law.

For a comprehensive view of the more than two decades of reform and opening up, people can see that since 1980, when Deng Xiaoping put forward the reform of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and state leadership system, China has been devoting itself to reforming its political system comprehensively, at all levels, and has achieved progress to different extents. During this period, China established the retirement system of veteran officials and the system of fixed tenures for government officials, cancelled departments in the CPC that overlapped with those in government, improved the system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CPC and the people's congress system, carried out several reforms of government structure and administrative mechanisms, advanced reform of the judicial system and personnel system, and established mechanisms to combat corruption and build a clean government, as well as to administer state affairs according to law.

However, when reviewing the progress China has made in reforming its political system, we should also understand that the tasks in advancing reform of the political system are arduous. Presently, with all the progress in economic reform, the government feels that reform of the political system is necessary. Without reform of political system, economic reform will not further advance and the development of productivity and modernization will be impeded. With this understanding, reform of the political system will be speeded up.