# Central Party School

The Central Party School is a higher education institution that trains Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres. It is located in Haidian, Beijing, close to Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace.
The current president is Chen Xi, a former member of the CCP Politburo.

## History

The school was established as the CCP Central Committee's Marx School of Communism (simplified Chinese: 中共中央马克思共产主义学校; traditional Chinese: 中共中央馬克思共產主義學校; pinyin: Zhōnggòng Zhōngyāng Mǎkèsī Gòngchǎnzhǔyì Xuéxiào) in Ruijin, Jiangxi, in 1933. It folded when the Chinese Red Army left on the Long March and was revived once the CCP leadership had arrived and settled in Shaanxi, northwest China, in the winter of 1936. It was then renamed the Central Party School. The school was suspended in 1947 when the CCP retreated from Yan'an. It was re-opened in 1948 in a village in Pingshan County, Hebei, before being moved to Beijing after the CCP captured the city in 1949.
In 1955, the school was re-organized so that it came directly under the jurisdiction of the CCP Central Committee. The school was abolished in 1966 during the Cultural Revolution, before being restored in March 1977. Since 1989, the school has been headed by the top-ranked Secretary of the Secretariat, who is concurrently a member of the Politburo Standing Committee. The day-to-day affairs of the school are in practice managed by the executive vice president, who is generally regarded to have the same ranking as a cabinet minister.
In 2008, a group of researchers at the school issued a blueprint for political reform, including freedom of the press. In November 2013, Liu Yunshan announced that the Central Party School would begin a training program on "General Secretary Xi Jinping's series of important remarks."$^{:21–22}$ Within a year, 2,300 cadres had completed the program.$^{:22}$ The program was part of the effort to begin formalizing Xi Jinping Thought.$^{:21–22}$
The school is now officially referred to as the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China.
Under a reorganization of party and state institutions by the Xi Jinping administration, the National Academy of Governance was merged into the Central Party School in March 2018. The name of the academy was retained by the Central Party School as a one institution with two names arrangement.
The Central Party School provided US$40 million to build and operate the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Leadership School, which opened in February 2022 in Tanzania. The school was jointly established with the support of the six ruling parties of Tanzania, South Africa, Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe.

## Functions

The Central Party School is responsible for training the cadres of the CCP. It is the highest party school among a network of approximately 2,700 party schools. It provides training courses in CCP ideology, governance, and social sciences, and also provides master's and doctoral degrees in the humanities and social sciences. It trains leading cadres at the provincial-ministerial level, department-bureau level, young and middle-aged cadres and ethnic minority cadres, leaders of top state-owned enterprises and centrally managed universities, CCP county secretaries, civil servants from Hong Kong and Macau, and to cadres who specialize in ideology, propaganda and education.
The Party School holds seminars on ideological and political issues, and also employs professors which provide research and consulting services to the central CCP leadership. It also leads and guides the operations, staff and basic text material of the Party Schools at the provincial and county level. The Central Party School publishes the Study Times (学习时报; Xuéxí Shíbào), which provides an explanation of the relationships between the CCP Central Committee's directives and the underlying political theory and ideology.

## Presidents

The President of the Central Party School also leads the three training centers for Party cadres; the China Executive Leadership Academy in Pudong, the China Executive Leadership Academy in Yan'an, and the China Executive Leadership Academy in Jinggangshan.
* Li Weihan (李维汉): 1933–1935
* Dong Biwu (董必武): 1935–1937
* Li Weihan (李维汉): 1937–1938
* Kang Sheng (康生): 1938–1939
* Deng Fa (邓发): 1939–1942
* Mao Zedong (毛泽东): 1942–1947
* Liu Shaoqi (刘少奇): 1948–1953
* Kai Feng (凯丰): 1953–1954
* Li Zhuoran (李卓然): 1954–1955
* Yang Xianzhen (杨献珍): 1955–1961
* Wang Congwu (王从吾): 1961–1963
* Lin Feng (林枫): 1963–1966
* Hua Guofeng (华国锋): 1977–1982
* Wang Zhen (王震): 1982–1987
* Gao Yang (高扬): 1987–1989
* Qiao Shi (乔石): 1989–1993
* Hu Jintao (胡锦涛): 1993–2002
* Zeng Qinghong (曾庆红): 2002–2007
* Xi Jinping (习近平): 2007–2013
* Liu Yunshan (刘云山): 2013–2017
* Chen Xi (陈希): 2017–present