Economic Construction Is Science, We Should Study It Honestly

The excerpt of Mao Zedong's talk with Peru's parliamentary group on June 11, 1959 mainly involves the understanding of China's national conditions and economic construction. It was included in the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 8.

Regarding China's national conditions, Mao Zedong stressed that China is an economically underdeveloped country with low level of industry and agriculture, and many people are illiterate. We are actively organizing our own economy, actively improving the people's cultural level, developing our industry and equipping agriculture with machinery. Now the work is just beginning, it is just the beginning.

With regard to economic construction, Mao Zedong said: it was only in August 1958 that we really began to do economic work seriously. Before that, it was mainly not construction, but revolution. In the struggle against nature, our first teacher is the Soviet Union, and so is the United States. The cause of revolution is not easy, it is science, and so is economic construction, economic construction is a new problem, so we should study it in earnest.