The Campaign to Maintain the Advanced Nature of Communist Party Members (Chinese: 保持共产党员先进性教育活动) is a political rectification campaign launched under the leadership of Hu Jintao. The campaign aims to educate Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members on Marxist ideological orthodoxy, improve "inner-party democracy," and combat corruption and other "social contradictions" that threaten the viability of continued CCP rule.[1] In the years following the launch of the campaign, millions of CCP members have been made to attend compulsory political education and self-criticism sessions.[2]
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The Campaign to Maintain the Advanced Nature of Communist Party Members had been alluded to during the Fourth Plenum of the Communist Party leadership in September 2004, but was formally launched in January 2005 with the publication of editorials in the People's Daily and Xinhua News Agency.[3][4]
The campaign has been classified as a "rectification campaign" by observers, which would make it the third such campaign since the death of Mao Zedong (the previous two being launched in 1983 and 1998). In a 2005 press conferenced, however, the Communist Party's Organization Department asserted that the campaign was not a "rectification campaign," but rather an education campaign.[5]