(August 1953)

* This is an important instruction written by Comrade Mao Zedong when reviewing Comrade Zhou Enlai’s conclusions at the 1953 Summer National Conference on Financial and Economic Work.

The period from the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the basic completion of socialist transformation is a transition period. The Party’s general line and general task for this transition period are to basically accomplish national 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; wherever our work deviates from it, we shall commit Rightist or “Leftist” errors.

Many of the principles and policies of this general line were already put forward in the resolution of the Second Plenary Session of the Party in March 1949, and were resolved in principle. Yet many comrades are unwilling to work in accordance with the stipulations of the Second Plenary Session, preferring to devise something different on certain issues that does not conform to the stipulations of the Second Plenary Session, and even openly violating the principles of the Second Plenary Session.

(Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. V, People’s Publishing House, 1st edition, April 1977, p. 89)