The Fourth Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) opened Thursday in Beijing.

During the four-day plenum, the CPC central committee will hear a work report of the committee's Political Bureau while deliberating on issues concerning the improvement of the Party's ruling capacity.

It is the first time for a CPC Central Committee plenum to put the building of the Party's ruling capacity on the top of the agenda, analysts said.

The analysts expected that the Party's ruling capacity building will focus on issues such as how to pursue the policy of governing the country according to law, how to better handle the relations between the Party and the government, and how to improve its governance in line with the development of market economy.

The plenum was convened according to a decision made at a July meeting of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau. The meeting held that enhancing the Party's ruling capacity is a major issue of strategic importance to the fate of both the building of socialism and the Chinese nation.

(Xinhua News Agency September 16, 2004)