15th Party Congress and Deng Xiaoping Theory

Deng Xiaoping died in Beijing in February 1997. He was the chief architect of China’s socialist reform, opening-up and modernization. Deng Xiaoping Theory took shape under the conditions of peace and development as the themes of the age, and answered basic questions such as what socialism is and how to build it. In September 1997 the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing. Jiang Zemin delivered a report titled “Hold High the Great Banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory for an All-Round Advancement of the Cause of Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics into the 21st Century.” The Congress established Deng Xiaoping Theory as the Party’s guiding ideology and wrote it into the Party constitution. It set out the Party’s basic program for the primary stage of socialism, held that public ownership as the mainstay with diverse forms of ownership developing together is the basic economic system of that stage, and put forward the basic strategy of governing the country by law and building a socialist country under the rule of law. It also set cross-century goals: to double GNP by 2010 compared with 2000, to develop the national economy further by the Party’s centenary, and to basically achieve modernization by the centenary of the People’s Republic. In 1999 the second session of the Ninth National People’s Congress passed a constitutional amendment writing the guiding role of Deng Xiaoping Theory and the strategy of governing by law into the Constitution. Held at the turn of the century, the Congress charted the course for socialism with Chinese characteristics as it entered the new century.