Study On The Inaugural Oath Of CPC Members And Officials

Oath of Office is an important political ritual of the modern country,signifying the development of national legal and democratically political system.Throughout the development process of human society in this regard,oath of office has been a political phenomenon evolved along with the intellectual life of human beings,which marks the commitment and responsibility of the oath taker and also reflects deep integration among moral beliefs,legal beliefs and political beliefs.The initial oath of office of the Communist Party of China(CPC)members was essentially joining the Party and this ritual laid a foundation for the oath of office among Party members.Recent years have witnessed more and more oath-taking activities among public servants in many regions for great progress made in the Party,in China,and around the world.This practice,which emerged from various agencies of the Party and government and grass-root organizations,has gradually been accepted by people.As General Secretary Xi Jinping once pointed out: “Among the 193 member states of the United Nations,public officials shall take an oath of allegiance to the Constitution when they take office according to the constitution of 177 states.” The system of oath of office has been an international practice and a political consensus.Because before the founding of the People's Republic of China,due to the extremely difficult revolutionary conditions,especially under extreme white terror-fear caused by white banners of government forces killing revolutionaries,many Party members were sworn into the party in secret.Due to the social pressure,it was impossible to publicly take the oath of office.Article 27 from The Amendment to the the Constitution of the People‘s Republic of China,adding that "State officials shall take a public oath to office in accordance with the law ",was passed at the first Session of the 13 th National People‘s Congress of the Communist Party of China in March2018 in order to meet the development needs of the socialist political system with Chinese characteristics and deliver the ambitious goal of governing the country based on rule of law.This legislation fully demonstrates that the Party Central Committee with General Secretary Xi Jinping at the core attaches great importance to the oath-taking among Party members and elevates this practice to the constitutional level,which reflects the authority of Constitution whose ultimate purpose is to better motivate and educate public servants to remain loyal to the constitution and to increase their sense of responsibility and mission in performing their duties.Therefore,the oath-taking on a constitutional level is the highest form of the oath of office.As the highest leadership of the Communist Party of China is the Party‘s National Congress and its Central Committee,the Party‘s local leadership at all levels is the Party‘s local congress and its committees.As concluded by the Party Central Committee,the crux whether China can be built into a socialist country based on rule of law lies in the "key minority",which is composed of the majority of Party members and officials.In addition,most public officials in the country are Party members.Therefore,the oath-taking of state officials is essentially one practiced by Party officials.Since the 18 th National Congress of the CPC,the Party has faced severe challenges,including "four major tests" and "four major dangers".Nearly one hundred intra-Party laws and regulations have been continuously formulated and revised which improved the legal system within the Party by the Party Central Committee with General Secratary Xi Jinping at the core with adherence of Party Charter.Therefore,the oath-taking of Party members and Party officials can deliver an organic combination of fully governing of country by law and governing the party over regulations.The rule-of-law governance system consisting of comprehensive legal system and sound intra-Party legal system could be set up and the development between governing the country by law,by the Party,and by the people and running the country,government,and society by rule of law could go hand in hand through theoath-taking of Party members.Oath-takers come from all kinds of groups,organizations,and institutions from central government to grass-root levels for CPC is the world's largest party whose members are spread across various industries and sectors,including national Party and government agencies,universities,and enterprises.In addition,oath-takers are more diverse than Western counterparts.However,as this ritual is still new in China,it can be said that it is still in the continuous development and improvement stage.Now a great number of problems remain unsolved,such as weakness of legal awareness among oath-takers,unclarity of oath object,irregularity of the procedures of the oath-taking,and incompleteness of the supporting mechanism in oath-taking ritual and the like.Sound oath-taking system and supporting mechanism need to be in place so as to better implement this practice,which will have extremely important strategic significance for advancing the socialist democratic political process with Chinese characteristics in the new era and the modernization of national governance.This paper makes an analysis of oath of office of CPC members and officials in terms of its origin,fundamental theories,development,necessity,status quo,promotion path and so forth through various methods,such as literature research,historical comparison,interdisciplinary study,empirical analysis,and so on mainly based on different theories including political science,sociology,history,law,and Marxist Party building theory and others.This paper centers upon the problems existing in the practice of oath of office in the past 40 years of reform and opening up.Promotion paths of oath of office have been fully discussed by the means of establishing mechanisms regarding learning,supervision,accountability,and guarantee for Party members and officials in a bid to build a long-term mechanism.Generally speaking,the paper is mainly divided into six chapters:Chapter One is the introduction which mainly introduces the background and research significance of the topic,the research status quo of scholars at home andabroad,the research methods and train of thoughts,and the shortcomings and innovations in the process of paper writing.Chapter One lays an important foundation for the development of the whole paper.Chapter Two is an overview of the theory of the oath-taking of Party members and officials of the CPC.This part is mainly based on the connotation and origin of the oath of office,and respectively makes a definition of the connotation and its development.It also explores the theoretical basis of the members of the CPC to take oath of office from different perspectives,such as the Marxist theory of people's sovereignty,the theory of officials team building,political participation,system building of the rule of law,the idea of governing a country by people in the west,constitutional thought,the theory of political legitimacy.Chapter Three discusses the necessity of taking oath of office for Party members and officials of the CPC.This part mainly explains that our country's oath of office embodies the unity of law-based governance of the country and rule-based governance over the Party.The oath of office can reshape the political beliefs and responsibilities of Party members and officials,and inherit a healthy political culture,and create a clean political ecology.At the same time,taking oath of office can comprehensively upgrade the Party's political environment,which incorporates all-round development in politics,Party discipline,work practice,ideology,organization and institution so that the Party's great project to secure a comprehensive governing of the Party strictly can be pushed further,and ultimately it is conducive to the modernization of national governance and democratic political development process.Chapter Four mainly discusses the development of the oath of office of Party members and officials of the CPC.Through the study of the development process of Party members and officials to take oath of office,which evolves from swearing-in for joining the Party to swearing-in by Constitution,in the period of the New Democratic Revolution,the swearing-in of the Party is the initial stage of the oath of office.Duringthe period of socialist revolution,the ritual of swearing-in of Party has been in a slow yet progressive stage of development.As the country enters the new period of reform and opening-up,the ritual of taking the oath of office continues to develop.Especially in the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics,the constitutional oath is the highest form of expression of the oath of office.On this basis,the thesis deeply explores inheritance,diversity and other features of the CPC members and officials swearing in the oath of office.Chapter Five makes an analysis of the status quo of the oath of office of Party members and officials of the CPC.Combined with the status quo of the oath of office in central state organs,provinces and cities,autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government,local grass-roots organizations,institutions of higher learning and Party members and officials in all walks of life,this paper makes an in-depth exploration of the current problems,including weak legal awareness of Party members and officials among oath-takers,and the unclear object of the oath of office,the over-macro oath-taking system,the irregularity of the oath of office procedure,the failure of oath-taking and oath-breaking mechanism,and the imperfection of the supporting mechanism and the reasons.Chapter Six illustrates the promotion path of the members and officials of the CPC to take oath of office.This part sets clear standards for and comes up with a clear promotion path for the object,subject,and procedure in oath of office via referring to and learning from foreign experience.Specific measures are as follows: by creating an atmosphere to promote the swearing-in of Party members and officials,building a learning mechanism for Party members and officials online and offline and putting in place Party Members and Officials Work Regulations to set up the learning mechanism;by inspection and supervision at the national level,intra-party supervision and disciplinary inspection at the grass-roots level,mass supervision and media supervision at the social level to improve the supervision mechanism;by formulatingassessment and evaluation regulations of oath of office,implementing oath-taking and oath-breaking accountability to build the accountability mechanism;by Five Major Systems and Four Major mechanisms to improve the supporting mechanism of oath of office.