Initial Stage: Marketization Reform, 1979–1984

The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in December 1978 reiterated the Marxist commitment to seeking truth from facts, focusing on socialist modernization, reforming the economic management system, and actively developing economic cooperation with other countries in the world on an equal and mutually beneficial basis. In order to implement the guidelines of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the CPC, the Central Working Conference held in April 1979 put forward the policy of adjustment, reform, rectification and improvement. The 12th Party Congress in September 1982 emphasized that during the Sixth Five-Year Plan period, we should continue to firmly implement the policy of adjustment, reform, rectification and improvement, and all economic work should be focused on improving economic efficiency. In terms of reform, the following important principles were put forward: insisting on the dominant position of the state economy and developing various forms of economy; correctly implementing the principle of taking planned economy as the mainstay and market regulation as a supporting tool; insisting on self-reliance and expanding foreign economic and technological exchanges. In this way, in 1979 the economic reform was launched and the period till 1984 could be regarded as the initial stage China’s economic reform.