The Party's General Line for the Transitional Period

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of The Party's General Line for the Transitional Period has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: The Party's General Line for the Transition Period, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, First English Edition, Vol. 5, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1977.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is a comment written by Comrade Mao Zedong on the draft of Zhou Enlai's concluding speech at the National Conference on Financial and Economic Work before the 12th of August, 1953. It was first published in the Renmin Ribao (10th of November, 1953).

The National Conference on Economic and Financial Work was convened by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, China between the 14th of June and 12th of August, 1953.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#THE PARTY'S GENERAL LINE FOR THE TRANSITIONAL PERIOD

#COMMENT ON ZHOU ENLAI'S CONCLUDING SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC WORK

#Mao Zedong

#Before the 12th of August, 1953

#★

The time between the founding of the People's Republic of China and the fundamental completion of socialist transformation is a period of transition. The Party's general line or general task for the transitional period is fundamentally to accomplish the country's industrialization and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce over a fairly long period of time. This general line should be the beacon illuminating all our work, and wherever we deviate from it, we shall make Right-wing or «Left-wing» mistakes.

Many policies under this general line were already put forward and decided upon in principle in the resolution adopted at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee held in March 1949. Nevertheless, many comrades were not inclined to work in accordance with the decisions of the Second Plenary Session and on some matters preferred to go their own way contrary to the session's decisions or even openly violated its principles.