Formulation and Implementation of the First Five-Year Plan of China

The major step for the CPC to realize its general line in the transitional period; the sign of the beginning of China's large-scale and planned socialist construction. Starting from the spring of 1951, under the leadership of Zhou Enlai and Chen Yun, the Central Finance and Economic Commission proceeded to prepare the first Five-Year Plan for the development of China's national economy from 1953 to 1957 (also known as the "First Five-Year Plan").

In early 1953, the State Planning Committee of the USSR provided some useful suggestions on the draft outline of China's first Five-Year Plan. In April 1954, the CPC Central Committee set up a team to prepare the outline of the Five-Year Plan, with the participation of Chen Yun, Li Fuchun, Deng Xiaoping and Deng Zihui. After many revisions, Chen Yun made a report to the Central Committee wherein the outline for the First Five-Year Plan was roughly defined.

In March 1955, the National Congress of the CPC unanimously adopted the “Decision on the First Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the People's Republic of China”. In early July of the same year, Li Fuchun, Vice Premier of the State Council and Director of the State Planning Commission, made a “Report on the First Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy” to the Second Session of the First National People's Congress, which unanimously adopted by the Congress and then officially announced.

The guiding principles laid down in the “First Five-Year Plan” were: to concentrate on the development of heavy industry and to establish the preliminary ground for the national industrialization and the modernization of national defense; to develop transportation, light industry, agriculture and commerce accordingly; to cultivate construction talents accordingly; to promote the cooperative movement within the agriculture and handicraft industry step by step; to continue the transformation of capitalist industry and commerce; to ensure the steady growth of the proportion of socialist elements in the national economy, while correctly developing the role of individual agriculture, handicraft industry and capitalist industry and commerce; and to provide the gradual improvement of the people's material and cultural life on the basis of the development of production.