The China Academy of Translation has analyzed prevailing terms concerning the reform and opening-up policy and translated them into a number of foreign languages. The research institute is affiliated with the China International Publishing Group, the country's leading international publisher. In each issue,

Beijing Review presents a selection of these keywords to help readers more deeply understand this program.

The Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee

The 11th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee convened its third plenary session in Beijing between December 18 and 22, 1978. Discussions centered on the issue of shifting the Party's focus to socialist modernization. During the session, important decisions were made on such issues as economic adjustment, economic governance reform, promoting agricultural development and improving the people's well-being. The session also reaffirmed the Party's commitment to Marxist ideological as well as political and organizational guidelines.

The event had far-reaching significance. It marked a major turning point in the CPC's history since the establishment of the People's Republic of China, an end to the long dominance of leftist dogmatism that placed China in the shackles of blind adherence to the instructions of Mao Zedong. It also set guidelines for moving forward with unity, emphasizing the need to break free from rigid ideological constraints and seek truth from fact. Since then, reform and opening up has been high on the agenda of the CPC Central Committee.

The Four Cardinal Principles

At the beginning of reform and opening up, some trends emerged in China, both among CPC members and in wider society. There was still a tendency to rigid thinking, while a handful of people expressed opposition to socialism, the CPC's leadership and the guidance of Mao Zedong Thought—preaching anarchy and bourgeois liberalization as an alternative. This caused ideological confusion and had a direct impact on social stability and the orientation of reform and opening up. Against this backdrop, a forum on the principles for the Party's theoretical work was held, and Deng Xiaoping was entrusted by the Central Committee to deliver a speech entitled Upholding the Four Cardinal Principles on March 30, 1979.

The Four Cardinal Principles are:

-Keeping to the path of socialism

-Upholding the people's democratic dictatorship

-Upholding the leadership of the Communist Party of China

-Upholding Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought

At the 13th CPC National Congress in October 1987 the Four Cardinal Principles were identified as an important element of the Party's basic line at the primary stage of socialism.

Deng Xiaoping's South Tour Talks

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, China stood at a crossroads of reform and opening up and its growth model. If the country did not make the right choice, the theoretical, organizational and political guidelines the Party had established after the Third Plenary Session of its 11th Central Committee, the basic principle established at the Party's 13th National Congress for the primary stage of socialism, socialist reform and opening up, and Chinese socialism itself might all go to sidetracks.

At this critical moment, Deng Xiaoping—the chief architect of reform and opening up—who had retired from the core post of the Party's second generation leadership, made an inspection tour of south China, visiting Wuchang, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shanghai between January 18 and February 21, 1992. The 88-year-old Deng gave some important talks, collectively known as the South Tour Talks. He expressed a deep hope for the cause of the Party and the people, displayed a strong sense of political and strategic issues, and demonstrated an acute awareness of potential dangers.

Targeting the misgivings among the people, Deng reviewed the experiences and lessons from China's reform and opening up over the previous 14 years and stressed the importance of deeper reform and faster development. He also put forth new ideas and new approaches regarding major theoretical and practical issues and answered a number of questions that had troubled officials and the general public for quite some time. His talks were deemed of great political value to both the Party and the nation.