On the Ten Major Relationships and the Eighth Party Congress

After socialist transformation was largely complete, the Communist Party began to explore a road of socialist construction suited to China's conditions. In February 1956 the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party met and Khrushchev denounced Stalin, exposing some flaws in the Soviet model. The Party Central Committee recognized that Soviet experience could not simply be copied, and that China should take the Soviet Union as a mirror and find its own way. In April 1956 Mao Zedong delivered On the Ten Major Relationships at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo, discussing ten questions such as the relationship of heavy industry to light industry and agriculture, and calling for mobilizing all positive factors to serve the cause of socialism. It marked a good beginning of the Party's exploration of China's own road of socialist construction. That year Mao also put forward the policies of "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend" and of "long-term coexistence and mutual supervision." In September 1956 the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party met in Beijing. It stated that the socialist system had largely been established in China, that the main contradiction at home was between the people's demand for an advanced industrial country and the reality of a backward agrarian one, and that the main task of the Party and the people was to concentrate on developing the productive forces and turn China as quickly as possible from a backward agrarian country into an advanced industrial one. It held to an economic construction policy of opposing both conservatism and rash advance and moving steadily forward in comprehensive balance, and stressed collective leadership, opposition to the personality cult and the development of inner-Party democracy. The line of the Eighth Congress was correct but was not well upheld afterward.