12th and 13th Party Congresses

After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping led the Communist Party in making a series of major decisions that pushed reform, opening-up and socialist modernization forward. In September 1982 the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing. In his opening speech Deng said: “Integrate the universal truth of Marxism with the concrete realities of China, find our own path and build socialism with Chinese characteristics: this is the basic conclusion we have drawn from long historical experience.” The Congress set the strategic goal of quadrupling the gross annual output value of industry and agriculture by the end of the 20th century. In October 1987 the 13th National Congress was held. It systematically set out the theory of the primary stage of socialism, holding that China was then in that stage. It laid down the Party’s basic line for that stage: to lead and unite the people of all ethnic groups in focusing on economic development, upholding the Four Cardinal Principles and persisting in reform and opening-up, striving to build China into a prosperous, democratic and culturally advanced modern socialist country, summed up as “one central task, two basic points.” It also put forward a “three-step” strategy for economic development: meet basic needs, reach a moderately prosperous level, and basically achieve modernization by the middle of the 21st century. The two Congresses charted the course for building socialism with Chinese characteristics, and Deng Xiaoping Theory gradually took shape; in 1997 the 15th Congress established it as the Party’s guiding ideology.