Four Modernizations
4개 현대화
The national goal of modernising agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology. First set out by Zhou Enlai at the National People’s Congress in 1964 and raised again in 1975, it was buried by radical opposition until the Third Plenum of 1978 moved the party’s central task from class struggle to the four modernisations, making it the official aim of reform and opening. Wei Jingsheng’s demand for democracy as the “fifth modernisation” answered the slogan, and Deng Xiaoping drew its political limits with the “four cardinal principles”.
In depth
Zhou Enlai’s government work report of December 1964 set the goal of “a socialist power with modern agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology within this century”. Lost in the Cultural Revolution, the idea was raised again by Zhou at the Fourth National People’s Congress in 1975 and backed by Deng Xiaoping’s “consolidation”, but soon ran into the campaign to criticise Deng.
In 1978 Hua Guofeng too proclaimed the four modernisations and pushed a large programme of equipment imports, and the Third Plenum confirmed them as the party’s central task. In March 1979 Deng said that realising them required the “four cardinal principles” — the socialist road, the dictatorship of the proletariat, party leadership, and Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought — reining in the Democracy Wall movement.
The Thirteenth Congress of 1987 set a timetable for modernisation to the middle of the twenty-first century with the “three steps” strategy. The four modernisations excluded reform of the political system, which distinguished them from Soviet perestroika, and that difference became a point of argument in explaining the two systems’ divergent paths after 1989.