Preparing to hold its key Congress, China's ruling Communist Party (CPC) is reflecting on the collapse of the Soviet Union to avert a similar fate, state media reports said.
The CPC is set to hold its once in a five year, Congress from October 18 which was expected to confirm a second term for it most powerful leader, Xi Jinping who heads the party, Presidency and the military.
The 19th Congress of 96-year-old party is also expected to formulate a new Constitution with sweeping reforms of its functioning after a five-year massive anti-corruption campaign by Xi in which thousands of officials have been purged.
On the 100th anniversary of the Bolshevik-led October Revolution has prompted the CPC to reflect on the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 and triggered a surge of "red tours" to Russia to study the reasons, state run Global Times reported.
The great October Revolution in 1917 has spurred Communist movements worldwide, including inspiring leaders like Mao Zedong, the founder of the CPC which came to power in 1949 after a bloody revolution which was aided and abetted by the then Soviet Union.
Mao and the CPC later parted company from the Soviet Communist Party and after his death in 1976, the CPC opted for massive economic reforms under the reformist leader Deng Xiaoping, emerging as the second largest economy of the world in the last four decades.
Beset with economic slowdown and weighed down by rising expectations of the people, the CPC, which is the world's longest Communist Party in power since 1949 has made the collapse of the Soviet Union as a major lesson in all its party schools.
At the "October Revolution and Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" workshop held in Beijing last Tuesday, Liu Qibao, a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC and head of the Party's Publicity Department virtually ruled his party meeting the same fate.
The Soviet failure from socialist path has multiple reasons including conservativeness and rigidity, but the most fundamental reason is the deviation from the path of Marxism- Leninism and the socialist path started by the October Revolution, Liu said.
The failure of the Soviet economy was caused by its conservative political system which refused to reform and distributed too many resources to the military.
"When problems could not be hidden in the 1980s, it started to reform without adhering to the Party's principles. But it was too late and this directly caused the collapse," Su Wei, a professor at the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee's Party School told the daily.
A 100 year ago China was a weak, poor, easily bullied and invaded country, he said but now China has "more confidence and capability than at any stage in our history to achieve this goal," he said.
The root cause of this huge change was that though the CPC chose the path of the October Revolution, it discovered a path suitable for China's national conditions that lead to the "great rejuvenation in China", Liu said.
The daily said in view of the significance of Soviet collapse Chinas tourism authorities are planning and preparing for "red-themed" tours for the Chinese tourists to visit Russia to get first experience.
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