Abstract: Theoretical innovation is the key to ensuring the enduring vitality of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and serves as an important guarantee for the Party to unite and lead the people in continuously achieving success in their endeavors. Over the past century and more, the CPC has adhered to the principle of integrating the fundamental tenets of Marxism with China’s specific realities and fine traditional Chinese culture. In the process of continuously advancing theoretical innovation, the Party has cultivated distinctive characteristics that embody the unity of inheritance and innovation, the interplay of truth and practicality, the continuity of historicity and contemporaneity and the integration of national identity and global vision. It has continuously forged new paths through upholding and inheriting tradition, sought truth and wisdom through practical refinement, grasped the tide of the times through historical logic, and merged global perspectives through national endowments, thereby steadily opening up new frontiers in theoretical development. An in-depth grasp of these distinctive characteristics of theoretical innovation of the CPC is of great and far-reaching significance for continuing to advance theoretical exploration of the Party and for guiding the steady and sustained progress of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics on the new journey in the new era.

Key words: the Communist Party of China (CPC), theoretical innovation, cinicization and modernization of Marxism, distinctive characteristic, Two Combinations