Promote Good, Oppose Evil: Knowing China Through the Classics

The upcoming fifth plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee will review a document on promoting full and rigorous Party self-governance.

On January 12, 2016, President Xi Jinping quoted these two lines by Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu at a plenary session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection. Explaining his point he said, "If we do not eradicate evil, if it seizes the earliest opportunity to make its comeback, our political environment will falter, and our Party members and the people will lose their faith in us. It has been said that if corruption makes a return this time the people will lose heart. This is why our pledges were not idle; we must live up to our words." 

Origin of the Classic Quote

Du Fu, known as the "Poet Sage", is considered China's greatest realist poet and one of the most influential figures in the country's literary history. His poetry bears witness to the sufferings of ordinary people during a catastrophic period in the Tang Dynasty. "Young pines should grow a thousand feet high, while poisoning bamboos should be cut down one by one." These lines express the poet's desire to uphold virtue and his condemnation of evil, his hope for the emergence of talented individuals, and his determination to root out corruption.