Four Cardinal Principles
4항 기본원칙
The four principles proclaimed by Deng Xiaoping at the theoretical work conference on 30 March 1979: upholding the socialist road, the dictatorship of the proletariat (later the people’s democratic dictatorship), the leadership of the Communist Party, and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought. They became the political limits that could not be debated; with reform and opening they form the party’s “two basic points”, and they were written into the 1982 constitution.
In depth
Deng put forward the principles at the height of the Democracy Wall movement. Criticism of the ultra-Left thinking of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four would continue, he said, but what needed emphasis now was scepticism and opposition from the Right. The four principles open in the speech as follows:
First, we must keep to the socialist road. … Second, we must uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat. … Third, we must uphold the leadership of the Communist Party. … Fourth, we must uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
Wei Jingsheng was arrested the next day and Democracy Wall was closed in December. The principles were emphasised in the 1981 Resolution, written into the 1982 constitution and invoked in the campaigns against spiritual pollution in 1983 and against bourgeois liberalisation in 1987. Because they implied that only these four topics were beyond question, while other political ideas and the interpretation of the principles could be debated, some judge that they actually relaxed ideological control. They allowed the Cultural Revolution to be reassessed while preserving the party’s legitimacy and ideological stability.