Evolution of Principal ContradictionFacing Chinese Society and the CPCLeadership over Economic Work

摘要

Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the CommunistParty of China (CPC) has separated China’s evolving principal social contradictions intofour different stages. Based on the assessment of principal social contradictions at differentpoints in time, the CPC enacted different economic policies. During 1949-1956, based onthe recognition of class struggle as China’s principal social contradiction, the Party focusedits economic policies on socialist transformation and established the foundation for thepublic sector of the economy. During 1956-1978, amid flip-flops in the Party’s assessmentof whether class struggle or backward productive forces were the principal contradiction,China’s economic development suffered some setbacks, but the vision for building anindustrial country remained unchanged, and resources were focused on developing majornational industrial projects. During 1978-2019, the Party focused on economic developmentand reform and opening up in pursuit of the realization of grand economic developmentgoals based on the assessment that China’s principal social contradiction was betweenpeople’s ever-growing material and cultural needs and China’s relatively backwardsocial productive forces. In 2017, the 19th CPC National Congress made the importantpolitical assessment that China’s principal social contradiction had transformed into thecontradiction between people’s ever-growing need for a better life and China’s unbalancedand inadequate development, and proposed new development concepts to lead the Chinesepeople on a new journey towards the second centennial goal. The most important experienceof the CPC’s economic work is analyzing and solving problems based on Marxist ideologyand methodology.