Party’s General Line for the Transition Period

The basic guidelines of the Party's general tasks in the transitional period. On September 25, 1953, the People's Daily published the mottos so as to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and announced the general line of the transitional period to the people of the whole country. Consequently, publicity and education campaigns on the general line were launched and carried out throughout the country. In February 1954, the Fourth Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee approved this general line, which was approved by the National People's Congress held in September of the same year and incorporated into the constitution as the general tasks of the country in the transitional period.

Three years after the founding of New China, by the end of 1952, the situation of national development was as follows: land reform was about to be basically completed; on the Korean War a basic truce agreement with the United States was reached on the main issues of peace talks, which was expected to end soon; and the work of restoring the national economy had achieved the expected goals and conditions for carrying out economic construction in a planned way had become ripe.

In accordance with Mao Zedong's proposal, the CPC Central Committee, proceeding from China's reality and based on Lenin's theory for the transitional period, put forward and defined the general line of the Party in the transitional period, as follows: transitional period covers the period from the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the basic completion of socialist transformation; the party's general line and tasks within the transitional period was to gradually realize the socialist industrialization of the country and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts plus the transformation of capitalist industry and commerce within a fairly long period of time. The general line embodied two simultaneous tasks of promoting socialist industrialization and realizing socialist transformation.

The Second Plenary Session of the Seventh CPC Central Committee, held in 1949, stipulated the principles and policies as follows: “In practice we should ensure that China is heading towards a socialist future.” After the founding of New China, with the consolidation of the people's democratic regime led by the working class and with the continuous growth of the state-owned economy and cooperative economy, the decisive role of socialist elements in the socio-economic life had increasingly grown and strengthened. This marked the beginning of China's transition to socialism. On the basis of the new practice, the Party believed that it was necessary to change the previous estimation for the transitional period, decided not to employ a long-term preparation period before launching the socialist transformation, but instead adopted the policy of "gradual transition to socialism from now on". History has proved that the Party's general line for the transitional period reflected the inevitability of China's historical development and was completely correct.