The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the combination of Marxism and excellent traditional Chinese culture, and since then, Party and state leaders have repeatedly mentioned this proposition on different occasions. How to recognize and understand this combination? What is its theoretical orientation? Some researchers have expressed profound theoretical insights from macro perspective of cultural thought, but they have overlooked the specific space-time scenarios in which this proposition was proposed, resulting in a deviation from the essence and characteristics of the combination of the two thoughts. In fact, combining Marxism with excellent traditional Chinese culture is a cultural policy of China in the new era,and its theory aim is sinicization and modernization of Marxism, and its theoretical orientation is Xi Jinping Thought on Culture.This is the result of the CPC’s response to the theoretical needs of the times in the new era. In competition with Western theories, the competitiveness of Chinese cultural theory is not strong enough to meet the development needs of socialist modernization with Chinese characteristics. Therefore, the contradiction between supply and demand in Chinese cultural theory is a dilemma in the current development of Chinese social culture. This dilemma is attached great importance to by Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core,and it has stimulated the ideological power that the Communist Party of China planned to develop Chinese cultural theory.So the Communist Party of China made cultural policy and plans,through the theoretical method of combining Marxism with excellent traditional Chinese culture,summarized experience of Chinese history and practise,and then Xi Jinping Thought on Culture has come out.Xi Jinping Thought on Culture is an open theoretical system that is advance with the times,including the cultural problem domain,subjectivity, methodology, epistemology, functionalism and other systematic cultural theories of the new era.It not only provides a development roadmap for the modern civilization of the Chinese nation, nurtures new cultural life forms for China, but also lays a cultural theoretical foundation for the spiritual independence of the Chinese nation and the enhancement of its cohesion. So the combination of Marxism and excellent traditional Chinese culture is a theoretical method of Xi Jinping Thought on Culture,and it is a key clue of understanding Xi Jinping Thought on Culture of Marxism position and theoretical innovation.