Xie Chuntao, a history professor with the CPC Central Committee Party School, said the momentum of democracy in China is unstoppable but must proceed with emphasis on stability and order.

Li Junru, former vice president of the CPC Central Committee Party School and a member of the CPPCC National Committee, held that the combination of electoral democracy and consultative democracy is a significant feature of the democratic development in the country over the past decade.

Democracy is always pursued within the CPC. As of July this year, the leadership reshuffle of Party committees at the provincial, city, county, and village levels had been completed. Promoting democracy and ensuring Party members' rights have featured the process of the reshuffle.

In April 2011, the secretaries of CPC committees of Wuxi, Nantong and Suqian cities of Jiangsu Province were elected through multi-candidate competitive elections.

Electoral democracy is recognized in the electoral system of lawmakers, or deputies to people's congresses, as well.

In March 2010, the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament, adopted an amendment to the Electoral Law with landslide votes, which grants equal representation in legislative bodies to rural and urban people.

It requires "both rural and urban areas adopt the same ratio of deputies to the represented population in elections of people's congress deputies."

In Hu's report to the CPC congress, He stressed the rule of law, saying that no organization or individual has the privilege of overstepping the Constitution and laws, and no one in a position of power is allowed in any way to take one's own words as the law, place one's own authority above the law or abuse the law.

He also asked the CPC to tighten intra-Party, democratic and legal oversight as well as oversight through public opinion to ensure that the people oversee the exercise of power and that power is exercised in a transparent manner.

"Intra-Party democracy is the life of the Party. We should adhere to democratic centralism, improve institutions for intra-Party democracy, and promote people's democracy with intra-Party democracy," Hu said.

For China's late leader Deng Xiaoping, there are three important criteria for judging the soundness of a country's political system or structure and of its policies.

First, whether the country is politically stable; second, whether the system and policies help to strengthen unity among the people and to raise their living standards; and third, whether the productive forces keep developing.

The path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the system of theories of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the socialist system with Chinese characteristics are the fundamental accomplishments made by the Party and people in the course of arduous struggle over the past 90-plus years. These accomplishments should be upheld all the time and enriched continuously, Li Junru said.

China should draw on the political achievements of other societies during the process of promoting reform of the political structure, but it will never copy a Western political system, Li said.