China Emerging_ 1978-2008 - Xiao-bo , Wu [2]
The situation could scarcely continue. Prospects for the country were extremely grim. In 1978, a tiny giant, Deng Xiaoping, stepped onto the world stage for the second time. He began to guide China’s reconstruction and set the pace as he steered the country in the direction of wholesale change. He had astonishing determination,extremepoliticalastuteness, and absolute decisiveness.
Deng Xiaoping was elected chairman of the CPPCC or
The Yongdingmen train station, Beijing 1981.
A newlywed couple return home with their furniture one day in the summer of 1980. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, young couples would receive a voucher to purchase furniture when they registered to get married. With this in hand, they had to queue up all night in order to buy a piece of furniture.
Deng Xiaoping is made chairman of the CPPCC in March 1978.
A certificate of merit issued by the National Science Conference.
Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, in March 1978 at the first meeting of its fifth session. Shortly afterwards, he convened a national science conference at which 6,000 attendees were astonished and delighted to hear him say that “science and technology are the primary productive force,” and that “intellectuals too are part of the workers’ class.” This was unheard of in a country where, two years earlier, intellectuals were still being persecuted. At this meeting, the leaders of the country acknowledged that China was fifteen to twenty years behind the rest of the world in many areas.
They then proposed a heartstirring plan for the development of science—by the end of the twentieth century, Chinese science should catch up with and overtake the level of science in the rest of the world. This goal was not realized; however, it served the purpose of arousing the entire country. The Chinese people now heard the unmistakable sounds of the winds of change.
Any major change in history must be preceded by a change in people’s mentality. Ten years of the Cultural Revolution had destroyed the normal functioning of the country, including people’s ability to think creatively and clearly. People’s minds were in the rigid grip of what was called “extreme leftist thinking.” For many years,
The trial of the Gang of Four on November 20, 1980. From left: Zhang Chun-qiao, Wang Hong-weng, Yao Wen-yuan, and Jiang Qing.
the country had been closed to outside information or “locked up,” and this had affected the psychological makeup of its population. This began to change, as official indications of a shift in policy appeared in newspapers. On May 11, the Guangming Daily published a “special editorial” entitled, “Practice Is the Only Standard for
Judging Truth.” This was then picked up and republished by the government’s XinhuaNewsAgency.Onthe following day, theofficialCommunist Partyorgan,thePeople’sDaily,publishedtheentiretext.Theauthorofthepiece statedthat“anytheorythatsupersedesrealityanddeclaresitselftobeinviolable and not open to questioning is not scientific, and is not truly Marxism-Leninism, or Maoist Thought. Instead, it is obscurantism, blind idealism, and cultural authoritarianism.” The article became a national sensation. Several days later, Deng Xiaoping officially confirmed the new line, saying that this thinkingwasinlinewithMarxismandLeninism.Hecalleduponeveryoneto “cast off the shackles that bind our spirits,” and said, “We need to bring about great emancipation in our way of thinking.”
This new approach to the standard by which one evaluates truth permeated the entire course of China’s reform. It obliterated the old political principle known