Every rectification movement, in addition to rectifying the party's grass-roots organizations, generally includes rectifying the ideological style of leading organs. The main content of the rectification movement is to oppose and correct the main erroneous ideological tendencies existing in the Party at that time, correct unhealthy tendencies and improve the Party's Marxist level. The principle of the rectification movement is "learn lessons and save lives" and "unity-criticism-unity", that is, starting from the desire for unity, we can achieve new unity on a new basis through criticism and self-criticism. The method of rectification is to carry out criticism and self-criticism on the basis of studying documents, sum up and examine ideas and work practice, correct wrong ideological tendencies and work style, improve ideas and correct work style.
The rectification movement often goes through three stages. The first stage is the serious study stage. The second stage is the stage of criticism and self-criticism. The third stage is the stage of rectification and upgrading.
Yan 'an Rectification Movement established the guiding position of Mao Zedong Thought, which combined Marxism-Leninism theory with China's revolutionary practice, improved the ideological and theoretical level of the whole party, and achieved unprecedented ideological, political and organizational unity of the whole party. Subsequent rectification has also played a positive role in strengthening party style construction. However, the rectification movement after 1957 failed to achieve the expected purpose of the rectification movement due to the "left" wrong tendency within the party, and fell into the quagmire of class struggle, which caused serious adverse consequences in the party life. Under the new situation of developing the socialist market economy, due to the negative effects of the market economy and the decadent ideas of the exploiting classes, all kinds of unhealthy tendencies and negative corruption will inevitably appear in the inner-party life. Therefore, according to the requirements of the new situation and new tasks, we should strengthen ideological education within the party and correct all kinds of wrong ideological tendencies with the spirit of rectification. It is to meet this requirement that the "three stresses" education activities of "stressing study, politics and righteousness" have been widely carried out among party and government leading bodies and leading cadres at or above the county level since 1999. In 2005, the education activities to maintain the advanced nature of party member were carried out throughout the Party.
On the basis of summing up the previous experience of rectification, these two activities actively explored new ways to solve outstanding problems within the party and improve the ideological and political quality of leading cadres in the spirit of rectification, and achieved good results, creating and accumulating some important experiences for strengthening party building, especially the ideological and political construction of leading cadres under the new situation of reform and opening up.