Page 5 - CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA

and links of the production relations and the superstructure that do not

conform to the development of the productive forces. We must uphold and
improve the basic economic system, with public ownership playing a
dominant role and diverse forms of ownership developing side by side as well

as the system of distribution under which distribution according to work is
dominant and a variety of modes of distribution coexist, encourage some areas

and some people to become rich first, gradually eliminate poverty and achieve
common prosperity, and continuously meet the people’s ever-growing material
and cultural needs on the basis of the growth of production and social wealth.

Development is our Party’s top priority in governing and rejuvenating the
country. The general starting point and criterion for judging all our work

should be how it benefits the development of the productive forces in our
socialist society, adds to the overall strength of our socialist country and
improves the people’s living standards. The beginning of the new century

marks China’s entry into the new stage of development of building a well-off
society in an all-round way and accelerating socialist modernization. The
strategic objectives of economic and social development at the new stage in

the new century are to consolidate and develop the well-off standard of living
initially attained, bring China into a well-off society of a higher level to the
benefit of well over one billion people by the time of the Party’s centenary and

bring the per capita GDP up to the level of moderately developed countries
and realize modernization in the main by the time of the centenary of the

People's Republic of China.
The basic line of the Communist Party of China at the primary stage of
socialism is to lead the people of all our ethnic groups in a concerted,

self-reliant and pioneering effort to turn China into a prosperous, strong,
democratic and culturally advanced modern socialist country by making

economic development our central task while adhering to the Four Cardinal
Principles and persevering in the reform and opening up.
In leading the cause of socialism, the Communist Party of China must

persist in taking economic development as the central task, making all other

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