We Must Tell Our Young People About China’s History
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WE MUST TELL OUR YOUNG PEOPLE ABOUT CHINA’S HISTORY February 18, 1987   Recently the college and university students created some disturbances. It is not the students themselves who are …

"Recently the college and university students created some disturbances. It is not the students themselves who are to blame for it but a small number of persons with ulterior motives, mainly higher intellectuals inside the Party who incited them to action. We have dealt with the matter sternly. But the struggle against bourgeois liberalization has not ended. Some people are still not clear what we are doing now in China. Everyone says that the modernization programme is a good thing, but some people have an understanding of it that is different from ours. By modernization we mean socialist modernization, but what those people advocate is modernization without socialism. This shows that they have forgotten the essence of the matter and that they have departed from the road China must take in its development.

“This question is vital: here we can make no concessions. We shall continue to struggle against bourgeois liberalization throughout the process of modernization, not only in this century but in the next. However, precisely because this will be a long-term struggle, instead of launching a political movement we shall use mainly the method of education. Education and persuasion are also a form of struggle. But only our achievements in economic development can eventually convince those who do not believe in socialism. If we can become comparatively prosperous by the end of this century, they will be partly convinced, and when we have turned China into a moderately developed socialist country by the middle of the next century they will be completely convinced. By that time most of them will have recognized their mistake. I think it will be possible for us to reach that magnificent goal.”

This instantly reminded me of China’s goal of building socialism by 2050. It’s beautiful to see how coherent China has been in practice, considering this was written almost 40 years ago!
Long live marxism-leninism, the scientific conception of the world!

  • Dreadful Wraith
    1•3 years ago

    Didn’t the Deng era do a bunch of historical revisionism against Mao and the Maoist era? Like massively inflated claims of cannibalism during the Great Leap Forward, for instance.

    Edit: I’d appreciate a response over a downvote so I can improve if I’m wrong.

    • Camarada ForteOPA
      3•3 years ago

      There was a lot of struggle after Mao’s death. And in fact, there were some ultra-leftists inside the party who advocated for not developing China’s economy and maintaining things like they were. They were, in the end, arrested and they became forgotten. The people hated them.

      Didn’t the Deng era do a bunch of historical revisionism against Mao and the Maoist era? Like massively inflated claims of cannibalism during the Great Leap Forward, for instance.

      Do you really think the communist party could easily change history in front of a billion people who witnessed those events? The Deng era made a scientific reassessment of those events, and to learn from the mistakes that happened in the past.

      Deng Xiaoping comments on these subjects:
      About the ultra-leftist maoists:

      We must make a clear distinction between the nature of Chairman Mao’s mistakes and the crimes of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four. For most of his life, Chairman Mao did very good things. Many times he saved the Party and the state from crises. Without him the Chinese people would, at the very least, have spent much more time groping in the dark. Chairman Mao’s greatest contribution was that he applied the principles of Marxism-Leninism to the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution, pointing the way to victory. It should be said that before the sixties or the late fifties many of his ideas brought us victories, and the fundamental principles he advanced were quite correct. He creatively applied Marxism-Leninism to every aspect of the Chinese revolution, and he had creative views on philosophy, political science, military science, literature and art, and so on.

      Unfortunately, in the evening of his life, particularly during the “Cultural Revolution”, he made mistakes — and they were not minor ones — which brought many misfortunes upon our Party, our state and our people. As you know, during the Yan’an days our Party summed up Chairman Mao’s thinking in various fields as Mao Zedong Thought, and we made it our guiding ideology. We won great victories for the revolution precisely because we adhered to Mao Zedong Thought. Of course, Mao Zedong Thought was not created by Comrade Mao alone — other revolutionaries of the older generation played a part in forming and developing it — but primarily it embodies Comrade Mao’s thinking.

      Nevertheless, victory made him less prudent, so that in his later years some unsound features and unsound ideas, chiefly “Left” ones, began to emerge. In quite a number of instances he went counter to his own ideas, counter to the fine and correct propositions he had previously put forward, and counter to the style of work he himself had advocated. At this time he increasingly lost touch with reality. He didn’t maintain a good style of work. He did not consistently practise democratic centralism and the mass line, for instance, and he failed to institutionalize them during his lifetime.

      This was not the fault of Comrade Mao Zedong alone. Other revolutionaries of the older generation, including me, should also be held responsible. Some abnormalities appeared in the political life of our Party and state — patriarchal ways or styles of work developed, and glorification of the individual was rife; political life in general wasn’t too healthy. Eventually these things led to the “Cultural Revolution”, which was a mistake.

      About the historical events of China:

      We will make an objective assessment of Chairman Mao’s contributions and his mistakes. We will reaffirm that his contributions are primary and his mistakes secondary. We will adopt a realistic approach towards the mistakes he made late in life. We will continue to adhere to Mao Zedong Thought, which represents the correct part of Chairman Mao’s life. Not only did Mao Zedong Thought lead us to victory in the revolution in the past; it is — and will continue to be — a treasured possession of the Chinese Communist Party and of our country.

      That is why we will forever keep Chairman Mao’s portrait on Tiananmen Gate as a symbol of our country, and we will always remember him as a founder of our Party and state. Moreover, we will adhere to Mao Zedong Thought. We will not do to Chairman Mao what Khrushchov did to Stalin.

      Source: https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/answers-to-the-italian-journalist-oriana-fallaci/