Abstract: The Communist Party of China’s pursuit of modernization can be traced back to before the founding of the People's Republic of China, but China didn’t get on the right track of modernization until after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee when Deng Xiaoping gave modernization the Chinese style connotation. After a historical review of “style”, “Chinese style”, and “modernization”, Deng Xiaoping timely introduced “modernization” and “Chinese style” simultaneously into the political discourse, which levered the economic development and preluded the trend of the times, enabling the economic base and superstructure interact in a positive manner. The connotation of “Chinese style” modernization has evolved into a complete and stable theoretical core in the discourse of basic standards, strategic steps, and value objectives, and thereby expanding the theoretical space of “Chinese style” modernization connotation and extending the theoretical life. The connotation demonstrates the nature of independence of China’s modernization path, clarifies the openness of China’s modernization path to the outside world, highlights the diverse choices of national modernization paths, and provides new strategies for other underdeveloped countries to achieve modernization.

Key words: modernization, connotation of “Chinese style”, Deng Xiaoping, the Communist Party of China, logic and theory