Seventy Five Years of Socialist Economic Construction in the New China

Abstract

The New China’s economic construction in the seventy five years since 1949 has been a wave of continuous development towards prosperity and strength, which can be divided into three major phases. Phase 1: 1949–1978, the formation of a preliminarily rich and strong country before the reform and opening-up. Phase 2: 1978–2012, the formation of a secondarily and rich and strong country through the reform and opening-up. And phase 3: 2012 to the present, the new era of comprehensively deepening the reform and opening-up process and the formation of an intermediately rich and strong country as a quasi-center in the world’s economic system. The empirical data comparing the New to the Old China and to other countries at the same stage all prove that the New China’s great performance in its first 30 years laid a strong foundation for the reform and opening-up in terms of population, public land, state capital, science, education, industry, social security system, and international environment. An objective, scientific approach to China’s development requires a realistic analysis of the mistakes made during this process, rather than negating the performance of economic construction before and after the reform and opening-up, as seen in some one-sided opinions at home and abroad, which consciously or unconsciously base the necessity of the reform and opening-up and its great achievements on denying or belittling the achievements of the period of New China before the reform and opening-up. The economic construction before and after the reform and opening-up stand in a relationship of inheritance and development, both as forms of socialist construction in China, unfolding under the core framework of the socialist political and cultural system, and constituting indispensable stages of development necessary for China’s modernization, which is still to be fully realized as planned.