Reform & opening up (Deng Xiaoping)

The Decisive Turn of December 1978

The Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), convened 18-22 December 1978, is the conventional starting point of the reform and opening up (改革开放, gaige kaifang) era. The Plenum repudiated the 'two whatevers' (两个凡是) doctrine associated with Hua Guofeng—that the Party must uphold whatever Mao decided—and endorsed the slogan 'seek truth from facts' (实事求是). It shifted the Party's central task from class struggle to socialist modernization, ratifying the 'Four Modernizations' (agriculture, industry, national defense, science and technology) that Zhou Enlai had announced at the Fourth National People's Congress in January 1975 and that Deng had championed.

Deng Xiaoping, twice purged during the Mao era and rehabilitated in 1977, emerged as the paramount leader though he never held the post of Party General Secretary or PRC President. His preparatory speech of 13 December 1978, 'Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth from Facts and Unite as One in Looking to the Future,' is treated as the era's founding text. The 'Practice is the Sole Criterion for Testing Truth' essay, published in Guangming Daily on 11 May 1978, supplied the ideological solvent that dissolved Maoist dogma.

The Boluan Fanzheng and Reassessing Mao

The period of 'setting things right' (拨乱反正, boluan fanzheng) reversed verdicts on millions persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and rehabilitated figures such as Liu Shaoqi (posthumously, in 1980). The CCP's 'Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People's Republic of China,' adopted at the Sixth Plenum on 27 June 1981, delivered the official verdict on Mao Zedong: his contributions were 'primary' and his errors 'secondary,' a formulation popularly rendered as 70 percent right, 30 percent wrong. This Resolution remains the authoritative Party line and is high-yield for the Guokao.

Deng simultaneously articulated the boundaries of reform. In March 1979 he enunciated the 'Four Cardinal Principles' (四项基本原则): upholding the socialist road, the people's democratic dictatorship, the leadership of the CCP, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. These principles signaled that economic liberalization would not extend to political pluralism—a limit dramatized by the suppression of the Democracy Wall movement and the arrest of Wei Jingsheng in 1979, and reaffirmed in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. Candidates must grasp this dual structure: economic opening bounded by political orthodoxy, the defining tension of the entire era.

Rural Reform: The Household Responsibility System

The earliest and most consequential reform began in agriculture. In late 1978, eighteen households in Xiaogang village, Fengyang County, Anhui Province, secretly signed a contract dividing collective land for household farming—an act then illegal under commune rules. Their success, protected politically by provincial leaders Wan Li (Anhui) and Zhao Ziyang (Sichuan), spread nationwide as the Household Responsibility System (家庭联产承包责任制). By 1983 the people's communes were formally dismantled and township governments restored. Grain output and rural incomes rose sharply, generating the popular saying 'Want grain, find Wan Li; want rice, find Ziyang.'

Opening to the World: Special Economic Zones

The 'opening' half of the policy began in 1980 with four Special Economic Zones (经济特区)—Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou in Guangdong, and Xiamen in Fujian—authorized to offer tax incentives and attract foreign capital. Shenzhen, a fishing town adjacent to Hong Kong, became the showcase. In 1984 fourteen coastal cities including Shanghai, Tianjin and Dalian were opened, and Hainan became a province and the largest SEZ in 1988. Foreign direct investment, the Sino-foreign joint-venture law of 1979, and export-led manufacturing transformed the coastal economy.

Urban and Enterprise Reform

Urban reform proved harder. The Third Plenum of the 12th Central Committee in October 1984 adopted the 'Decision on Reform of the Economic Structure,' extending reform to state-owned enterprises through the 'dual-track price system,' enterprise autonomy and the contract responsibility system. Deng's signature formulation was the 'socialist market economy'—markets harnessed under Party direction—encapsulated in pragmatic aphorisms: 'It doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice,' and 'crossing the river by feeling for the stones' (摸着石头过河).

The Southern Tour and Consolidation

Reform stalled after the 4 June 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, as conservatives blamed liberalization. Deng broke the impasse with his Southern Tour (南巡) of January-February 1992, visiting Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai and declaring that 'development is the absolute principle' (发展才是硬道理) and warning against 'leftism.' The 14th Party Congress in October 1992 formally adopted the goal of a 'socialist market economy.' Deng Xiaoping Theory was enshrined in the Party Constitution in 1997 and the PRC Constitution in 1999. The reforms lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and made China the workshop of the world—facts the Guokao expects candidates to marshal with precision.

Why This Matters for the Exam

The Guokao tests Modern Chinese History through the Public Subject Test (公共科目) objective questions on common knowledge (常识判断) and, decisively, through the Shenlun (申论) essay, where reform and opening up functions as the master narrative legitimizing the contemporary Party-state. No era is more heavily weighted, because the CCP's own ideological self-presentation runs through it: 2018 marked the 40th anniversary of reform, commemorated by Xi Jinping's 18 December 2018 speech, and the policy is invoked in nearly every official document on 'high-quality development' and 'new era' socialism.

How It Is Tested

Objective questions favor precise, datable facts: the 1978 Third Plenum as the starting point; the four original SEZs (Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou, Xiamen); the 1981 Resolution's verdict on Mao; the Four Cardinal Principles; the 1992 Southern Tour; the 14th Congress and the term 'socialist market economy.' Confusing the SEZ list, or attributing reform to the wrong plenum, is the classic trap. Memorize the sequence: rural first (1978-83), SEZs (1980), coastal cities (1984), urban/SOE reform (1984), Southern Tour and the market-economy formulation (1992).

The Shenlun Angle

The Shenlun rewards candidates who can deploy reform as an analytical frame: gradualism ('crossing the river by feeling for the stones'), pragmatism ('seek truth from facts'), and the balance between reform, development and stability (改革、发展、稳定). A strong essay links Deng's pragmatism to current policy—rural revitalization, the Greater Bay Area, common prosperity (共同富裕)—demonstrating continuity rather than rupture. The PYQ pattern shows the examiner prizes the ability to quote Deng's aphorisms accurately and to situate a current reform within the 1978 lineage. Retain the three official 'historical resolutions' (1945 under Mao, 1981 under Deng, 2021 under Xi) as the spine of Party historiography; the 2021 Resolution explicitly reaffirms reform and opening as a 'great awakening.'