Chinese Socialist Construction Should "Have Its Own Features”

In August 1956, Mao Zedong put forward the important thought when revising the political report of the Eighth National Congress of the CPC.

When revising the political report of the Eighth National Congress of the CPC, Mao Zedong wrote a long paragraph to expound this point of view. He wrote: "The so-called specific law is the difference between each country, that is to say, the specific way for the proletariat to win the ruling position, the state form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the one-party system or the multi-party system under the leadership of the revolutionary Party of the working class, the method of transforming the old production relations and the socialist construction. Speed and the time needed for the transition, and so on, this is because different countries have different political and economic conditions. Such differences exist in any different nation, and there may be more differences in some other nations. But it would be wrong to deny commonalities, on the pretext that there are differences; it is also wrong to deny differences on the pretext that there will be commonalities. It is impossible to imagine that the specific development process and manifestations of the socialist system in various countries will only have a uniform format. China is not only an oriental country, but also a big country. Therefore, our country not only has its own characteristics in the process of democratic revolution, but also has its own characteristics in the process of socialist transformation and socialist construction and will continue to have its own characteristics after building a socialist society in the future.” This laid the theoretical foundation for China to independently explore the China’s path of socialist economic construction.

Lenin said long ago that that all nations will move towards socialism, but each nation will have to follow its own unique path when doing that. After summing up the experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union and China, Mao Zedong developed Lenin's thought, which in fact became the initial level of thinking for exploring and blazing a path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.