Policy of Learning from Foreign Countries

When China began to build socialism in an all-round way in 1956, Mao Zedong clearly put forward the slogan of "learning from foreign countries". He said: "Our policy is to learn the strong points of all nations and countries, and to learn all really good things in politics, economy, science, technology, literature and art.” In his view, in building up the country, “we are confronted with arduous tasks and our experience is far from adequate. So, we must be good at learning.”

Mao Zedong pointed out: “There are two different attitudes towards learning from others. One is the dogmatic attitude of copying, transplanting everything, whether or not it is suited to our conditions. This is no good. The other attitude is to use our heads and learn those things which suit our conditions, that is, to absorb whatever experience is useful to us. That is the attitude we should adopt.” We "must study analytically and critically, not blindly, not mechanically." We should make "foreign countries serve China." Learning from foreign countries requires not only a world vision and open-minded attitude, but we should not slavishly bow our head in front of foreigners and lose national self-confidence.

Mao Zedong said that learning from foreign countries includes not only learning from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, but also learning from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan and other developed capitalist countries, as well as other countries such as developing countries. Mao Zedong said, "We must resolutely resist and criticize all corrupt systems and ideological styles of the foreign bourgeoisie. However, this should not prevent us from learning the advanced science and technology of capitalist countries and the scientific aspects of enterprise management methods.”

Mao Zedong believed that fundamentally, “China's problems can only be solved by the people of China.” He said: "We should focus on self-reliance, strive for foreign aid as a supplement, get rid of superstition, independently carry out industrial, agricultural, technological and “Cultural Revolution”, overthrow slave ideology, bury dogmatism, seriously learn from foreign good experiences, and certainly study foreign bad experiences—take a warning, and this is our line.”