Establishment of Four Modernizations

The four modernizations are the goals of China’s socialist construction.

On September 15, 1954, Zhou Enlai reported on the work of the government at the First Session of the National People's Congress and put forward: "China's economy used to be very backward. If we don't build a strong modern industry, modern agriculture, modern transportation and modern national defense, we can't overcome backwardness and poverty, and our revolution can't achieve its goal.” This was the first time that Zhou Enlai put forward the idea of four modernizations on behalf of the Party Central Committee.

In 1957, Mao Zedong mentioned twice in his "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People" and "Speech at the Communist Party of China’s National Conference on Publicity Work" that “we should build a socialist country with modern industry, modern agriculture, and modern science and culture.” Here, "modern science and culture" is included in the overall conception of realizing China's modernization.

In 1958, the Second Session of the Eighth National Congress of the CPC adopted this formulation. Later, in the course of reading the Political Economics Textbook of the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong proposed that “the modernization of national defense should be added to the content of national modernization.” He said: "To build socialism, in addition to modernizing industry and agriculture, science and culture, we have to modernize national defense.”

In February 1962, Zhou Enlai changed "modernization of science and culture" to "modernization of science and technology" in his speech reading the Political Economics Textbook of the Soviet Union. In this way, the basic contents of the four modernizations were put forward completely.

On December 21, 1964, Zhou Enlai pointed out in the government work report of the First Session of the Third National People's Congress: "the major task for developing our national economy in the years to come is, in brief, to turn China into a powerful socialist state with modern agriculture, modern industry, modern national defence and modern science and technology in not too long a period, catching up with and surpassing the countries that are advanced in these respects.” “To accomplish this historic task, we may envisage the development of our economy in two stages beginning with the Third Five-Year Plan: “The first stage is to build an independent and relatively comprehensive industrial and economic structure; the second stage is to accomplish the overall modernization of agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology, so that our economy will be among the front ranks of world economies.” This not only puts forward the strategic goal of "four modernizations", but also puts forward the two-step assumption of realizing this strategic goal.

At the First Session of the Fourth National People's Congress held in 1975, Zhou Enlai reiterated the four strategic objectives of modernization and the "two-step" idea of realizing the strategic goal in his report on government work. The proposition of the four modernization goals pointed out the direction for uniting the people of all nationalities in building socialism.