'Four Comprehensives' a road to prosperity

Top leader Xi Jinping's strategy for governing China and charting its development is known as the "Four Comprehensives", which comprise comprehensively building an overall moderately well-off society, comprehensively deepening reform, comprehensively governing the country in accordance with the law, and comprehensively supervising the Communist Party of China. The strategy represents the basic direction of building a modern socialist society.[Special coverage]

Comprehensively building an overall well-off society is the key goal of China's modernization process, which is aimed at solving people's livelihood problems. At the launch of reform and opening-up in 1978, Deng Xiaoping emphasized the importance of raising people's living standards.

Thanks to the reform and opening-up, China has succeeded in the primary stage of building a moderately well-off society by the beginning of this century. Now its goal is to comprehensively build an overall moderately prosperous society by 2020.

To achieve that goal, the Party and the government have to propel social and economic development in order to improve people's livelihoods. Also, China's goal makes it clear that its modernization drive is not to pursue high GDP or global hegemony. Instead, it is to improve the lives of the Chinese people, which is exactly what Xi's governing philosophy is all about.

China has reached a crucial stage in its effort to comprehensively build an overall moderately well-off society, so have its reform and opening-up. The main problem facing China at this stage is that the deep systematic obstacles hindering its development are yet to be removed. And only comprehensively deepening reform can remove these obstacles.

The Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee in 2013 released a road map and timetable for comprehensively deepening reform. More importantly, the general objective of comprehensively deepening reform has been established, which is modernization of State governance. This objective is also part of Xi's strategy, which shows China's understanding of modernization has reached a new level: The modernization China pursues is not only social and economic in nature, but also the building of a sound and mature modern state.

The rule of law is the basic characteristic of a modern state and a prerequisite for guaranteeing democracy and fairness. Governing the country in accordance with the law will be determined by the overall goal of comprehensively deepening reform, which is the basic foundation of reform in every aspect.

Xi has been reiterating the importance of governing the country in accordance with the law, saying that governance should be according to the Constitution and we should jointly promote integrated construction of the country, government and society with the rule of law. The Fourth Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee has systematically laid out the tasks of comprehensively strengthening the rule of the law in 2014.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the leadership has stressed the need for supervising the Party. The Party has issued "eight rules" to improve its working style, and has started an intensive anti-corruption campaign to re-establish a healthy political environment. In this sense, comprehensively supervising the Party will strengthen social morality.

Therefore, the "Four Comprehensives" are parts of an indivisible whole, forming a complete and competent strategy to build a modern socialist society.

The author Zhou Weimin is a political researcher with Party School of the Central Committee of CPC.