A Great Turning Point in History

25. The victory won in overthrowing the counter-revolutionary Jiang Qing clique in October 1976 saved the Party and the revolution from disaster and enabled our country to enter a new historical period of development. In the two years from October 1976 to December 1978 when the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Party was convened, large numbers of cadres and other people most enthusiastically devoted themselves to all kinds of revolutionary work and the task of construction. Notable results were achieved in exposing and repudiating the crimes of the counter-revolutionary Jiang Qing clique and uncovering their factional setup. The consolidation of Party and state organizations and the redress of wrongs suffered by those who were unjustly, falsely and wrongly charged began in some places. Industrial and agricultural production was fairly swiftly restored. Work in education, science and culture began to return to normal. Comrades inside and outside the Party demanded more and more strongly that the errors of the "cultural revolution" be corrected, but such demands met with serious resistance. This, of course, was partly due to the fact that the political and ideological confusion created in the decade-long "cultural revolution" could not be eliminated overnight, but it was also due to the "Left" errors in the guiding ideology that Comrade Hua Guofeng continued to commit in his capacity as Chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. On the proposal of Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Hua Guofeng had become First Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Party and concurrently Premier of the State Council during the "movement to criticize Deng Xiaoping" in 1976. He contributed to the struggle to overthrow the counter-revolutionary Jiang Qing clique and did useful work after that. But he promoted the erroneous "two-whatever's" policy, that is. "we firmly uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made. and we unswervingly adhere to whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave. and he took a long time to rectify the error. He tried to suppress the discussions on the criterion of truth unfolded in the country in 1978, which were very significant in setting things right. He procrastinated and obstructed the work of reinstating veteran cadres in their posts and redressing the injustices left over from the past (including the case of the "Tian An Men Incident" of 1976). He accepted and fostered the personality cult around himself while continuing the personality cult of the past. The 11th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party convened in August 1977 played a positive role in exposing and repudiating the gang of four and mobilizing the whole Party for building China into a powerful modern socialist state. However, owing to the limitations imposed by the historical conditions then and the influence of Comrade Hua Guofeng's mistakes, it reaffirmed the erroneous theories, policies and slogans of the "cultural revolution" instead of correcting them. He also had his share of responsibility for impetuously seeking quick results in economic work and for continuing certain other "Left" policies. Obviously, under his leadership it is impossible to correct "Left" errors within the Party, and all the more impossible to restore the Party's fine traditions.

26. The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978 marked a crucial turning point of far-reaching significance in the history of our Party since the birth of the People's Republic. It put an end to the situation in which the Party had been advancing haltingly in its work since October 1976 and began to correct conscientiously and comprehensively the "Left" errors of the "cultural revolution" and earlier. The plenary session resolutely criticized the erroneous "two-whatever's" policy and fully affirmed the need to grasp Mao Zedong Thought comprehensively and accurately as a scientific system. It highly evaluated the forum on the criterion of truth and decided on the guiding principle of emancipating the mind, using our brains, seeking truth from facts and uniting as one in looking forward to the future. It firmly discarded the slogan "Take class struggle as the key link," which had become unsuitable in a socialist society, and made the strategic decision to shift the focus of work to socialist modernization. It declared that attention should be paid to solving the problem of serious imbalances between the major branches of the economy and drafted decisions on the acceleration of agricultural development. It stressed the task of strengthening socialist democracy and the socialist legal system. It examined and redressed a number of major unjust, false and wrong cases in the history of the Party and settled the controversy on the merits and demerits, the rights and wrongs, of some prominent leaders. The plenary session also elected additional members to the Party's central leading organs. These momentous changes in the work of leadership signified that the Party re-established the correct line of Marxism ideologically, politically and organizationally. Since then, it has gained the initiative in setting things right and has been able to solve step by step many problems left over since the founding of the People's Republic and the new problems cropping up in the course of practice and carry out the heavy tasks of construction and reform, so that things are going very well in both the economic and political sphere.

1) In response to the call of the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Party for emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts, large numbers of cadres and other people have freed themselves from the spiritual shackles of the personality cult and the dogmatism that prevailed in the past. This has stimulated thinking inside and outside the Party, giving rise to a lively situation where people try their best to study new things and seek solutions to new problems. To carry out the principle of emancipating the mind properly, the Party reiterated in good time the four fundamental principles of upholding the socialist road, the people's democratic dictatorship (i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat), the leadership of the Communist Party, and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. It reaffirmed the principle that neither democracy nor centralism can be practised at each other's expense and pointed out the basic fact that, although the exploiters had been eliminated as classes, class struggle continues to exist within certain limits. In his speech at the meeting in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, which was approved by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Party, Comrade Ye Jianying fully affirmed the gigantic achievements of the Party and people since the inauguration of the People's Republic while making self-criticism on behalf of the Party for errors in its work and outlined our country's bright prospects. This helped to unify the thinking of the whole Party and people. At its meeting in August 1980, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee set the historic task of combating corrosion by bourgeois ideology and eradicating the evil influence of feudalism in the political and ideological fields which is still present. A work conference convened by the Central Committee in December of the same year resolved to strengthen the Party's ideological and political work. make greater efforts to build a socialist civilization, criticize the erroneous ideological trends running counter to the four fundamental principles and strike at the counter-revolutionary activities disrupting the cause of socialism. This exerted a most salutary countrywide influence in fostering a political situation characterized by stability, unity and liveliness.