The United Front and the Tasks of the CPPCC (Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) in the New Period

Opening speech delivered by Deng Xiaoping, then Chairman of the CPPCC National Committee made at the Second Session of the Fifth CPPCC National Committee, on June 15, 1979. Later Contained in Vol. 2 of Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping. The speech made a comprehensive exposition on the nature and tasks of the United Front and the People's Political Consultative Conference in the new period. It pointed out: “Currently our country has entered a new historical period in which the central task is to achieve the four modernizations. Our revolutionary united front has likewise entered a new historical period in its development.” This speech mainly elaborates on two aspects:

Firstly, it emphatically expounds the changes brought about by the fundamental changes in class relations — in our country — to several aspects of the United Front policy and United Front work. He said that in the 30 years since the founding of New China, “fundamental changes have taken place in China's social class situation.” “During these three decades, the class situation in Chinese society has changed fundamentally.” The position of our working class has been enormously strengthened, and our peasants have been members of collectives for more than 20 years. The worker-peasant alliance will be further consolidated and developed on the new basis of socialist modernization construction. Chinese intellectuals, including the overwhelming majority of the old intellectuals from pre-Liberation society, have become part of the working class and now serve the cause of socialism consciously and actively. “Through democratic reform and socialist transformation, all fraternal nationalities in China one after another have long since taken the socialist path, and they have formed a new, socialist type of relationship among themselves — a relationship of unity, fraternity, mutual assistance and co-operation.” “China’s patriots, whatever their nationality and religion, have made considerable progress along this path, and the overwhelming majority of the capitalists with the capacity to work have transformed themselves into working people who earn their own living in our socialist society.” All democratic parties in our country have become political alliances of those socialist working people and those patriots supporting socialism with whom these parties are respectively linked. All are political forces that serve socialism under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

Secondly, the speech expounds the nature, scope and tasks of the patriotic united front in the new period. He said: “All these changes demonstrate that China’s united front has become a broad alliance of socialist working people and patriots supporting socialism, led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance.” The tasks of the united front and of the CPPCC in the new period are to mobilize all positive forces, strive to transform all negative forces into positive ones, and unite with all the forces that can be united so that all can work in harmony to maintain and strengthen political stability and unity in China and make it a modern, powerful socialist country. Deng Xiaoping's speech fundamentally solved the major theoretical and policy problems concerning the united front work of the Party that people were concerned about and pondered over. It has not only rectified the confusion and mistakes in the theory and policy in the United front work, cleared up the sources of such confusion, brought the Party's united front theory and policies back to the correct track of Marxism, but also further developed the theory of the socialist United front and this speech provided a guidance to the united front work in the new era.