Xi urges Chinese Communist Party to embrace Marxist roots

"History tells us the Chinese people's choice of the Communist Party to lead them toward the civilization's great rejuvenation been correct, and that the party's path of socialism with Chinese characteristics is also correct," Xi told his audience of cadres gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People.

Challenged by a slowing economy, Xi has made increasingly frequent appeals for ideological unity, a throwback approach that contrasts with recent Chinese leaders who emphasized delivering economic growth as continued justification for Communist rule.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has repeatedly called on the party rank-and-file, from officials to academics to journalists, to study Marxism while urging universities to stave off the infiltration of harmful foreign ideas, such as Western liberal democracy.

Victor Shih, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego, said the speech underscored the dyed-in-the-wool politics of the Xi administration compared to his technocrat predecessors who more often dressed up economic reforms in Marxist language.