The Road to Socialism With Chinese Characteristics

Research and interpretation of the Chinese Road to Socialism should not be confined to the successful development and persistence in expansion in over three decades of reform and opening up, but based on the struggle of 60 years since the foundation of the new China and 90 years of the CPC.

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As the world’s most populous country, China has an Oriental civilization for thousands of years. In the past two thousand years of human development, China has been in a leading position in the world for a long time. However, since modern times, the brutal invasion of the great powers in the industrial civilization has disrupted the progress of China which was still in the agricultural civilization. Since then, China plunged into misery of lagging behind and vulnerable to attacks. How to get rid of invaders and pillagers, to achieve national independence and liberation becomes the main problem that all Chinese are seeking for an answer, in particular, the far-sighted.The process of realizing national independence and national liberation is also a process of exploring China’s development path and achieving national modernization. More than one hundred years ago, to Chinese, there was only one way to the industrial civilization or modernization in the world, namely the Western capitalism modernization developed by western European countries. At the beginning of 20th Century, dynastic politics collapsed, some far-sighted have tried to implement the capitalist mode of production and parliamentary elections, multiparty political systems originating from developed countries in the West, thereby achieving a wealthy and strong country, but the political romanticism practice soon failed since it was not in conformity with the situation.Since then China entered a brief period of warlords, and the road of modernization has been overshadowed. The founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 1921, the spread of Marxism and the rise of the workers and peasants’ movement provided powerful organization and ideological basis for China to explore a new road to modernization. Relying on the mass movement and military struggles featured by strong ideals and beliefs, strict discipline and extensiveness, the CPC with Mao Zedong as the representative successfully opened a revolutionary road with Chinese characteristics and reclaimed the national power. From 1949 to 1976, after the socialism revolution, they paid great efforts to explore the road of socialism construction. At this stage, China’s modernization has made great achievements, but also experienced some serious twists and turns. The experiences and lessons of the hard exploration provided the most valuable political, material and ideological resources for the future development.Since the reform and opening up, great efforts have been made by the CPC and the people of the whole country to open up the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics with striking achievements in economic and social development. The right to speak on development road, seized by the Western developed countries always, now has been shared by China since it has successfully found a different modernization road from the Western countries and the Soviet Union. In this sense, the Chinese Road has a worldwide historical significance.Through an investigation on the historical development of China and the Chinese people, this book argues that in the vertical context of modern and contemporary Chinese history, the scientific exploration of the Chinese Road should date back to 1921. In the past century, this road has undergone three stages or three forms of the Chinese democratic revolution, the socialism revolution and construction, and the socialism with Chinese characteristics. Research and interpretation of the Chinese Road shall not be confined to the successful development and persistence in expansion in over 3 decades’ reform and opening up, but based on the struggle history in 60 years since the foundation of the new China and 90 years of the CPC. Arguably, without the development of the Chinese democratic revolutionary road, there will be no socialism revolution and construction and the development of socialism with Chinese characteristics. History is continuous, so is the road.