We cannot just follow the beaten track traversed by other countries in the
development of technology and trail behind them at a snail’s pace. We must
break away from conventions and do our utmost to adopt advanced techniques
in order to make China a powerful modern socialist country in not too long
a historical period. This is what we mean by a giant stride forward. Is this
impossible of attainment? Is this boasting or bragging? Certainly not. It can be
done. It is neither boasting nor bragging. We need only review our history to
understand this. In our country haven’t we fundamentally overthrown imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, which were seemingly so strong? Starting as
we did from “poverty and blankness,” haven’t we scored considerable successes
161  This was a passage Mao Zedong added when he went over Premier Zhou Enlai’s Report
on the Work of the Government to the First Session of the Third National People’s Congress.

in all fields of socialist revolution and socialist construction after 15 years of
endeavor? Haven’t we too exploded an atom bomb? Haven’t we wiped out the
stigma of “the sick man of the East” imposed on us by westerners? Why can’t
the proletariat of the East accomplish what the bourgeoisie of the west has
been able to? Early this century Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the great Chinese revolutionary and our precursor, said that China would take a giant stride forward. His
prediction will certainly come true in the coming decades. This is an inevitable
trend no reactionary force can stop.