Address To Officers At The Rank Of General And Above In Command Of The Troops Enforcıng Martial Law In Beijıng

Contained in in Vol. 3 of Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping On June 9, 1989, Deng Xiaoping, Chairman of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the CPC, made an important speech when he met cadres above the military level of the capital martial law enforcement forces. The speech pointed out that this disturbance would have occurred sooner or later. It was determined by both the international environment and the domestic environment. It was bound to occur, whether one wished it or not; the only question was the time and the scale. The outbreak of this incident has given us much food for thought, impelling us to reflect soberly on the past and the future. Perhaps this bad thing will enable us to progress more steadily and even faster than before in carrying out the policies of reform and opening to the outside world, to correct our errors more quickly and give better play to our advantages. Today I can’t elaborate on a wide range of topics, but I should like to put forward some questions to be discussed. The first question is whether the line, principles and policies formulated at the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, and our “three-stage” development strategy are correct. We should not say that we have set a wrong strategic goal merely because of the recent incident. The second question is whether the “one central task, two basic points” proposition set forth at the Party’s 13th National Congress is correct. It is not wrong to keep to the Four Cardinal Principles. If we have made a mistake, it is that we have not kept to them consistently enough and inculcated them as basic ideas in the people, the students and all cadres and Party members. The recent incident was in the nature of a conflict between bourgeois liberalization and adherence to the Four Cardinal Principles. The mistake was not in the principles themselves, but in the failure to keep to them consistently enough and to do a good job in education and in ideological and political work. What about the other basic point, keeping to the policies of reform and opening to the outside world? Is that wrong or not? It is not wrong. How could we have achieved the success we have today without the reform and the open policy? During the last ten years living standards have been raised considerably, or in other words, our economy has been raised to a new stage. Although there have been inflation and other problems, we must not underestimate our achievements in the past decade. Naturally, in the process of carrying out these policies many bad influences from the West are making themselves felt in China. We have never underestimated this trend.

In addition, we must continue to combine economic planning with regulation by market forces. This should never be changed. In our practical work during the period of readjustment we have more planning, while under other circumstances we can have more market regulation and more flexibility. The combination of planning and market regulation will be continued. The important thing is that we must never turn China back into a country that keeps its doors closed. This is a summary of our work over the last ten years. Our basic ideas, from the development strategy to the principles and policies, including the policies of reform and opening to the outside, are correct. If our efforts have fallen short in any respect, it is that we have not done enough to implement those polices. What should we do from now on? In my opinion, we should continue to follow unswervingly the basic line, principles and policies we have formulated. There should be no changes in them except for a few changes of wording, if necessary. We should unswervingly carry out the line, principles and policies formulated since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee. We should carefully review our experience, keep on doing what is right, correct what is wrong and make up for what is inadequate. In short, we should learn from the past and look to the future. See “The Political Turmoil of 1989” on pageXXXX.