China under the Leadership of Mao Zedong

Comrade Chen Yun held that plan targets should be realistic, that the scale of construction should correspond to national capability, considerations should be given to both the people's livelihood and the needs of state construction, and that the material, financial and credit balances should be maintained in drawing up plans. 

Comrade Deng Xiaoping held that industrial enterprises should be consolidated and their management improved and strengthened, and that the system of workers' conferences should be introduced.

 Comrade Zhu De stressed the need to pay attention to the development of handicrafts and of diverse undertakings in agriculture. Deng Zihui and other comrades pointed out that a system of production responsibility should be introduced in agriculture. 

All these views were not only of vital significance then, but have remained so ever since. In the course of economic readjustment, the Central Committee drew up draft rules governing the work of the rural people's communes and work in industry, commerce, education, science and literature and art. 

These rules which were a more or less systematic summation of the experience in socialist construction and embodied specific policies suited to the prevailing conditions remain important as a source of reference to this very day.

In short, the material and technical basis for modernizing China was largely established during that period. It was also largely in the same period that the core personnel for the work in the economic, cultural and other spheres were trained and that they gained their experience. This was the principal aspect of the Party's work in that period.

In the course of this decade, there were serious faults and errors in the guidelines of the Party's work, which developed through twists and turns.

1957 was one of the years that saw the best results in economic work since the founding of the People's Republic owing to the conscientious implementation of the correct line formulated at the Eighth National Congress of the Party. 

To start a rectification campaign throughout the Party in that year and urge the masses to offer criticisms and suggestions were normal steps in developing socialist democracy. 

In the rectification campaign a handful of bourgeois Rightists seized the opportunity to advocate what they called "speaking out and airing views in a big way" and to mount a wild attack against the Party and the nascent socialist system in an attempt to replace the leadership of the Communist Party. 

It was therefore entirely correct and necessary to launch a resolute counterattack. But the scope of this struggle was made far too broad and a number of intellectuals, patriotic people and Party cadres were unjustifiably labelled "Rightists, " with unfortunate consequences.

In 1958, the Second Plenum of the Eighth National Congress of the Party adopted the general line for socialist construction. 

The line and its fundamental aspects were correct in that it reflected the masses' pressing demand for a change in the economic and cultural backwardness of our country.