Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Reform of the Economic Structure

Important document adopted by the Third Plenary Session of the 12th CPC Central Committee on October 20, 1984. It preliminarily put forward and clarified a series of important theoretical and practical questions of the reform of the economic structure. Included in the Selection of Important Documents since the 12th National Congress (Vol. 2).

The main contents of the “Decision” include ten aspects: (1) Reform is a pressing necessity in the current development in China; (2) Reform is aimed at establishing a dynamic socialist economic structure; (3) Invigorating enterprises is the key to restructuring the national economy; (4) Establishing a planning system under which the law of value is consciously applied for developing a socialist commodity economy; (5) Establishing a rational price system and paying full attention to economic levers; (6) Separating government from enterprise functions so that government organs can properly perform their function of managing the economy; (7) Establishing various forms of economic responsibility systems and conscientiously implementing the principle of distribution according to work; (8) Working to develop diverse economic forms and continue to expand foreign and domestic technological exchanges; (9) Promoting a new generation of cadres and creating a mighty contingent of managerial personnel for the socialist economy; (10) Strengthening Party leadership to ensure the success of reforms.

The “Decision” points out that the fundamental task of socialism is to develop the social productive forces and continuously meet the growing material and cultural needs of the people. In the process of reform, the main criterion for testing the success or failure of all reforms should be whether they are conducive to the development of the social productive forces. The major theoretical contribution of the “Decision” is that it breaks through the traditional concept of opposing a planned economy with a commodity economy and proposes that China's socialist planned economy is a "planned commodity economy based on public ownership"; it breaks through the traditional concept of confusing universal ownership with direct operation of enterprises by state institutions and proposes that "ownership and management can be duly separated". This is a brand-new understanding that the Party has arrived at in the relationship between planning and market. The “Decision” made deployments on a series of major questions such as growing the vitality of enterprises, developing a socialist commodity economy, paying attention to the role of economic levers, implementing the separation of government and enterprises, and expanding economic and technological exchanges.

“The Decision” is a programmatic document guiding the reform of economic system of China.