Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party (2021)

The Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century (中共中央关于党的百年奋斗重大成就和历史经验的决议) was adopted by the Sixth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on 11 November 2021, in Beijing. It is the third such resolution in the Party's history, following Mao Zedong's 1945 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party, passed on the eve of the Seventh Congress, and Deng Xiaoping's 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China, which formally repudiated the Cultural Revolution while preserving Mao's overall stature. The 2021 text was promulgated under Article 19 of the CCP Constitution governing the authority of the Central Committee, and its drafting was personally chaired by General Secretary Xi Jinping, with Wang Huning serving as deputy head of the drafting group.

Procedurally, the resolution emerged from a closed drafting process initiated in March 2021 by a Politburo decision. A drafting committee circulated successive versions to roughly 547 Party cadres, retired senior officials, and democratic party representatives for consultation, a mechanism mirroring the consultative practice used for the 1981 text. The Sixth Plenum, convened from 8–11 November 2021 with approximately 348 full and alternate Central Committee members in attendance, deliberated the draft over four days. Following adoption, the full text was released by Xinhua on 16 November 2021, and a condensed communiqué was issued immediately upon the plenum's close. Provincial Party committees were instructed within days to organise study sessions, and the Central Propaganda Department issued accompanying study outlines.

The document is organised into seven sections covering four historical periods: the New Democratic Revolution (1921–1949), Socialist Revolution and Construction (1949–1978), Reform and Opening Up (1978–2012), and the New Era (2012–present). Approximately half of the roughly 36,000-character text is devoted to the New Era under Xi's leadership, a marked structural departure from the 1981 resolution, which devoted the bulk of its analysis to Mao-era errors. The 2021 text identifies thirteen domains of New Era achievement, codifies Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era as the "Marxism of contemporary China and of the 21st century," and articulates the "Two Establishes" (两个确立): establishing Xi's core position in the Central Committee and the Party, and establishing the guiding role of his Thought.

The resolution functioned as the ideological foundation for Xi's norm-breaking third term, secured at the 20th Party Congress in October 2022. Foreign ministries in Washington, Tokyo, Canberra, and Brussels read the text as a signal of continuity and consolidation; the U.S. State Department's policy planning staff and Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs China Division both produced internal assessments treating the resolution as a formal end to the post-Deng collective-leadership paradigm. The text also reframes the Tiananmen events of June 1989 as a successful defence against "political turmoil," reiterates the centrality of the "One Country, Two Systems" framework for Hong Kong following the 2020 National Security Law, and explicitly endorses the "overall strategy" for resolving the Taiwan question without renouncing force.

The 2021 resolution should be distinguished from a Party Congress political report (政治报告), which is delivered every five years and sets forward-looking policy; the historical resolution is a backward-looking doctrinal text issued only at moments of consolidation. It is also distinct from the Decision (决定) format used by plenums for sectoral policy frameworks, such as the 2013 Third Plenum Decision on Comprehensively Deepening Reform. Whereas Deng's 1981 resolution was corrective—adjudicating Mao's errors and rehabilitating purged cadres—the 2021 text is consolidative, presenting a continuous arc of success rather than a rupture, and explicitly stating that the Party "must not negate" any of its historical periods.

Controversy attached to several omissions and reformulations. The Great Leap Forward famine of 1959–1961 receives only oblique mention, and the Cultural Revolution is treated more briefly than in 1981. Scholars including Joseph Torigian and Frank Pieke have noted that the text removes the 1981 resolution's prohibition on "personality cults," though that prohibition remains nominally in the Party Constitution. The resolution's release was followed in 2022 by a Communiqué operationalising the Two Establishes for cadre discipline, and by amendments to the Party Constitution at the 20th Congress incorporating the "Two Affirmations" and the "Two Safeguards." Sinologists at the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute issued analyses in late 2021 characterising the document as the most significant ideological event since 1981.

For the working practitioner, the 2021 resolution is the authoritative reference text for interpreting CCP intent across foreign-policy, economic, and security domains through at least the 20th Central Committee term. Demarches, white papers, and bilateral readouts issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after November 2021 routinely invoke its formulations, particularly on "national rejuvenation," "common prosperity," and "a community with a shared future for mankind." Desk officers handling China files are expected to be conversant with its periodisation and its thirteen domains; misreading its signalling—particularly the elevation of Xi's personal authority—has direct implications for assessing decision-making concentration, succession risk, and the durability of policy lines such as Taiwan reunification timelines and technology self-reliance.