More than 26 million Communist Party of China (CPC) members in some 800,000 grass-roots units, mainly at village levels, will go through a self-improvement educational drive from the end of November 2005 through June 2006,according to a CPC document.

It constitutes the third stage, also the last stage, of the CPC's drive to improve the vanguard character of CPC members.

"CPC village organizations are the basis of the entire CPC work and combat power in the rural areas," says a document of guidelines on the third-stage drive issued by a leading group of the CPC for the drive to improve the vanguard character of CPC members.

It says CPC village organizations and members are fine on the whole. However, there are also some problems with them that do no conform with the new situation, new tasks and the vanguard character of CPC members.

It says carrying out the drive in the rural areas successfully is of great significance in many ways, which will be conducive to building harmony in the countryside and promoting construction of "socialist new villages".

The document says instructions made by General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Hu Jintao on this stage of the educational drive are important guidelines.

In his instructions, Hu ordered CPC village organizations to tackle outstanding problems with the organizations and their members, address major problems that affect reform, development and stability and care for major concerns of the masses with the theme of "building socialist new villages" in mind. They must strive to achieve concrete results in all these aspects.

Building the "new villages", a task raised at the fifth plenary session of the 16th CPC Central Committee in October, involves progress in production, quality of life, civilized ways of living, improvement of environment and democratic administration.

As in the first two stages, the leading group will continue to send itinerant inspection groups around the country to supervise and guide the third-stage of the drive.

During the drive, all 69.6 million CPC members are asked to study important documents of the Party to consolidate their political faith, identify shortcomings in themselves and other members around them and take steps to address these shortcomings.

(Xinhua News Agency November 30, 2005)