The 13th CCP Congress and the Theory of the Primary Stage of Socialism

Background: Preparations after Hu Yaobang's Resignation

In January 1987, after the student protests of late 1986, Hu Yaobang resigned as CCP General Secretary. Zhao Ziyang became acting General Secretary while remaining Premier, and took charge of preparations for the 13th Congress. Amid the campaign "against bourgeois liberalization," the central problem in drafting the report was how to answer criticism of liberalization within the Party while still providing a theoretical basis for continued reform. In March 1987 the officials in charge of drafting reported to Deng Xiaoping their plan to build the report on the concept of the "primary stage of socialism"; Deng wrote back: "This design is good."

The Primary Stage of Socialism and the Basic Line

The 13th National Congress of the CCP met in Beijing from 25 October to 1 November 1987, attended by 1,936 delegates and 61 specially invited delegates representing more than 46 million Party members. On behalf of the 12th Central Committee, Zhao Ziyang delivered the report "Advance Along the Road of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics." It systematically set out the theory of the primary stage of socialism, stating that "from the basic completion of the socialist transformation of private ownership of the means of production in the 1950s to the basic realization of socialist modernization will take at least a hundred years, all of which belongs to the primary stage of socialism." On that basis it laid down the Party's basic line for this stage: "to lead and unite the people of all nationalities, take economic construction as the central task, adhere to the Four Cardinal Principles, persist in reform and opening, be self-reliant and work hard, in order to build China into a prosperous, democratic and culturally advanced modern socialist country" — commonly summarized as "one central task, two basic points."

The Three-Step Strategy and Political Reform

The report set out a "three-step" strategy for modernization: first, double GNP from its 1980 level and provide the population with adequate food and clothing; second, double it again by the end of the 20th century so that people's living standards reach a "moderately well-off" (xiaokang) level; third, by the middle of the 21st century, raise per-capita GNP to the level of moderately developed countries. The report also devoted a section to political reform, whose long-term goal was "a socialist political system with a high degree of democracy, a complete legal system, efficiency and vitality," with its first element being "separation of Party and government — that is, separating the functions of the Party from those of the government."

Competitive Elections and Leadership Turnover

For the first time, the congress elected the Central Committee by a competitive method with more candidates than seats, choosing 175 full and 110 alternate members, along with a 200-member Central Advisory Commission and a 69-member Central Commission for Discipline Inspection; 46.3 percent of the new Central Committee members were under 55. In the competitive vote, former Propaganda Department head Deng Liqun failed to win a Central Committee seat, and Hu Qiaomu, previously a Politburo member, did not return to the new Politburo. On 2 November the First Plenum of the 13th Central Committee elected Zhao Ziyang General Secretary, with Zhao, Li Peng, Qiao Shi, Hu Qili and Yao Yilin as the Politburo Standing Committee; Deng Xiaoping remained Chairman of the Central Military Commission, with Zhao as First Vice-Chairman and Yang Shangkun as Executive Vice-Chairman, and Chen Yun became Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission. Deng, Chen Yun, Li Xiannian and other veterans left the Politburo Standing Committee, while Hu Yaobang was re-elected to the Politburo.

Aftermath and Assessments

Less than two years after the congress, Zhao Ziyang was stripped of all his posts during the political upheaval of 1989, and the political reforms the report had proposed, such as the separation of Party and government, were then largely shelved. The theory of the primary stage of socialism and the basic line of "one central task, two basic points," however, were carried forward by every subsequent Party congress and became foundational formulations of official CCP ideology. In his taped memoirs, Zhao later explained that the formulation's advantage was that it affirmed the decades of socialism already practiced, while — because it was only a "primary stage" — it left the Party "entirely free of the constraints of so-called traditional socialist principles," allowing it to boldly adjust relations of production that had run ahead of China's actual stage of development.