Truth criterion debate (1978)
진리 표준 토론 (1978)
The nationwide ideological debate that began with “Practice Is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth”, published in Guangming Daily on 11 May 1978. Its argument that theory must be tested by social practice brought down the “Two Whatevers” and laid the intellectual ground for Deng Xiaoping’s displacement of Hua Guofeng and the launch of reform and opening at the Third Plenum.
In depth
The article was Hu Fuming’s manuscript, sent to Guangming Daily in September 1977 and revised by many hands; vetted by Hu Yaobang as head of the Organization Department, it appeared first on 10 May in the Central Party School’s internal Theoretical Trends. The next day Guangming Daily ran it on the front page under the name of a “special commentator” and Xinhua relayed it; People’s Daily and the PLA Daily reprinted it on the 12th and several provincial papers on the 13th. Over seven thousand characters long, it argued that the unity of theory and practice was one of the most basic principles of Marxism and that every theory must be tested continuously by practice. Hua Guofeng was visiting North Korea.
Deng endorsed it at the All-Army Political Work Conference in June and provincial and military-region leaders declared their support one after another. The debate led on to Hua’s self-criticism at the November work conference and the “seek truth from facts” line of the December plenum, and was also the starting point of a decade-long “New Enlightenment” movement for democracy and humanism. The article was included in the senior high-school Chinese textbook in 2019.