Principle of People’s Democracy and Principle of Socialism in the Constitution of 1954

On June 14, 1954, Mao Zedong's speech at the Thirtieth Meeting of the Central People's Government Committee clarified the basic ideas of the first (draft) constitution of the new China.

He pointed out: "A group must have a constitution, and a country must also have a constitution, and the constitution is a general constitution, a fundamental law.”

The draft constitution was a summary of China's historical experience; it belongs to the socialist type, but it is not yet a full socialist constitution, but a constitution for the transitional period, for the struggle to achieve socialism. The content of the Constitution reflects a combination of principled and flexible nature, "the principles are basically two: the principle of democracy and the principle of socialism."

He said that China’s democracy is not bourgeois democracy, but people's democracy, which is the people's democratic dictatorship led by the proletariat and based on the alliance of workers and peasants. The principle of people's democracy is threaded throughout China’s Constitution. The other is the principle of socialism. Today, there is socialism in China. It is stated in the Constitution that the socialist transformation must be completed and the socialist industrialization of the country must be achieved. This is the principled nature. To implement the principle of socialism, is it necessary to implement socialism in the whole country one day and in the morning for everything? This is formally revolutionary, but without flexible nature, it will not work, it will be opposed, and it will fail. Therefore, what cannot be done for a while must be allowed to be done gradually.

Mao Zedong was confident that the draft constitution, after its publication, would be unanimously supported by the whole country and would increase the enthusiasm of the people. By “fixing the principles of people's democracy and socialism in the form of such a fundamental law as the Constitution, so that the whole country will have a clear track to follow and the whole country will feel that there is a clear, definite and correct path to follow, we can increase the enthusiasm of the whole country."