To those looking at the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China for hints about direction change, the message from the report CPC General Secretary Hu Jintao delivered on behalf of the 17th CPC Central Committee was loud and clear: the Party will stride ahead, in full confidence, on the path of "socialism with Chinese characteristics".

That is what the CPC has learnt from history. That is what it has prescribed for the future.

Hu's report, in the first place, is a fitting summary of what the CPC has been through and learned during the current leadership's 10 years in office, the more than 30 years of reform and opening-up, and the Party's more than 60 years at the helm.