A Great Advance Towards National Rejuvenation

A Great Advance Towards National Rejuvenation*

October 29, 2020

Entering the new development stage marks a great advance towards our national rejuvenation. I have said that national rejuvenation has been the greatest dream of the Chinese people since China’s modern era began in 1840. Due to foreign invasion and corrupt feudal rule, China missed the opportunity for an industrial revolution, and fell far behind the times. Our nation suffered unprecedented misery.

After the Opium Wars, championed by people of lofty ideals, the Chinese people searched painstakingly for a road to modernization. The Plan for National Reconstruction written by Dr Sun Yat-sen in the late 1910s was China’s first blueprint for modernization, but the drive ended in failure as it was simply impossible to modernize a semicolonial and semi-feudal society.

Over the past hundred years since the founding of the Communist Party of China, all the efforts made by the CPC and by the Chinese people under its leadership have served just one purpose – building China into a strong modern country and realizing national rejuvenation. After the founding of the PRC in 1949, our Party led the people in exploring all possible paths to China’s modernization. In his Report on the Work of the Government delivered at the First Session of the First National People’s Congress in 1954, Zhou Enlai pointed out, “Unless we establish powerful, modern industry, modern agriculture, modern communications and transport and a modern national defense, we shall neither shake off backwardness and poverty nor attain our revolutionary goals.” In 1956, Mao Zedong said, “Our people should have an ambitious plan and strive to reverse backwardness in the economy, science and culture within decades and quickly reach the world’s advanced level.” He also warned that if we failed to achieve this we should be “scoured from the earth”. In December 1964, in his Report on the Work of the Government to the First Session of the Third National People’s Congress, Zhou proposed a further plan: “We may envisage the development of our economy in two stages beginning with the Third Five-Year Plan. The first stage is to build an independent and relatively comprehensive industrial and economic structure; the second stage is to accomplish the overall modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense and science and technology, so that our economy will be among the front ranks of world economies.” Although the plan did not come to full fruition due to the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, from 1949 to 1978 our Party on the whole succeeded in leading the people in establishing from scratch an independent and relatively complete industrial and economic structure and in safeguarding national sovereignty and security. China made substantial progress in its socialist construction.

After we launched reform and opening up in 1978, Deng Xiaoping proposed a three-step strategic plan for modernization: ensuring that the people would have adequate food and clothing by the end of the 1980s; giving them a moderately prosperous life by the end of the 20th century; increasing the per capita GNP level to that of moderately developed countries and realizing basic modernization by the middle of the 21st century. By the turn of the 21st century, moderate prosperity had largely been achieved. We then introduced the goals of achieving moderate prosperity at a higher level for all by the centenary of the Party in 2021, and in approximately three more decades, achieving basic modernization and turning China into a modern socialist country by the centenary of the PRC in 2049.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and the Chinese nation has stood up, become better off, and grown in strength. On this foundation, our Party drew up a plan at its 19th National Congress in 2017 to attain the Second Centenary Goal in two stages: realizing basic socialist modernization by 2035, and developing China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by the middle of the 21st century.

Turning China into a modern socialist country has been the theme of all 14 five-year plans. Our determination and our resolve to reach this goal have never wavered, despite occasionally straying from our path, and in the face of many unexpected difficulties and setbacks. We have expanded our understanding of this grand program, improved our strategies, and broadened our experience. All of this has paved the way for China’s drive to modernization, and laid practical, theoretical and institutional foundations for fully building a modern socialist country in this new development stage.

* Part of the speech at the second full assembly of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

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