General Line for the Transition Period

Formulation and confirmation

On 15 June 1953 Mao Zedong set out the general line and general task for the transition period in relatively complete form for the first time, at an enlarged meeting of the CCP Central Politburo. He said the general line was a beacon illuminating all work and that deviation from it produced 'Left' or Right errors, and he criticised the view that the order of New Democracy should be established. The Party Centre confirmed the full wording in December 1953, and it passed through the Fourth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee in February 1954 and the First Session of the First National People's Congress in September 1954 into the Constitution of the People's Republic of China, becoming the unified will of the whole state.

The content: one transformation, three reforms

The line is summarised as the 'one transformation, three reforms'. The one transformation was socialist industrialization, to be accomplished gradually; the three reforms were the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce. Another phrasing, 'one body, two wings', made socialist industrialization the body and the three transformations its two wings. The core objective was to make socialist ownership the sole economic foundation of the nation.

Socialist transformation took concrete form as the Three Great Transformations of 1953 to 1956. In agriculture, collectivization modelled on the USSR moved through three stages, from mutual aid groups to elementary and then advanced cooperatives; the transformation of handicrafts began in November 1953; and that of capitalist industry and commerce became full-scale from 1954 through 'peaceful redemption' and state capitalism. By the end of 1956, 96.3 percent of peasant households had joined cooperatives and more than 90 percent of handicraftsmen had done so, and the socialist system was basically established in its economic aspect.

Timetable and disputes

The transition period carried no fixed end year. Mao's formulation was 'ten to fifteen years or a bit more' to basically complete industrialization and socialist transformation, and he stated that the intent was gradual: 'basically completing socialist transformation is to use a gradual method, not suddenly confiscating capitalist industry and commerce in the sixteenth year.' In practice China basically completed the Three Great Transformations in about four years from 1952-53, and the transition was proclaimed complete in 1956, well ahead of the announced timetable.

The Party had originally expected the New Democracy period to last ten to fifteen years, or even twenty to thirty, but in the autumn of 1952 Mao shifted to beginning the transition immediately.

In mid-1955 a divergence emerged within the Party over whether to slow or accelerate cooperativization; Mao's line of acceleration prevailed, and the period from the second half of 1955 to the end of 1956 became the fastest phase of agricultural collectivization. One analysis cited in the event's account (Lin Yifu) describes a movement from voluntary participation to acceleration and, by 1958, to compulsion.

Assessment

Assessments are contested. Official Party historiography, the 1981 Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party and the 2011 History of the Chinese Communist Party (vol. 2), affirms the general line as reflecting historical inevitability, as 'completely correct', and as a turning point. Some scholars interpret Mao's shift of 1952-53 as a strategic pivot from an 'indirect transition' that allowed capitalism to develop to a 'direct transition' abolishing private ownership immediately, and historians still dispute whether New Democracy was meant to last or was tactical.