The fifth plenary session solemnly proclaims to the whole Party and to the people throughout the country: The action to rehabilitate Comrade Liu Shaoqi demonstrates that the Communist Party of China is a serious, earnest, open and aboveboard Marxist revolutionary Party that seeks truth from facts and corrects its mistakes whenever they are found. It demonstrates that the Party's determination to restore the true qualities of Mao Zedong Thought is not an empty slogan but an unswerving principled position that pervades all the activities of the Party. The counter-revolutionary conspirators Lin Biao, the gang of four and company used this grave and grievous mistake made by the Party during the Cultural Revolution, bringing disastrous consequences without precedent in the Party's history. Following the downfall of the gang of four, the Party Central Committee exposed and criticized the counterrevolutionary crimes of Lin Biao and the gang of four, corrected the grave mistakes committed during the Cultural Revolution and, at the same time, redressed one by one a series of framed-up, false and wrong cases created by Lin Biao, the gang of four and company. The fifth plenary session rehabilitates Comrade Liu Shao-qi not only for his own sake, but in order that the Party and the people will for ever remember this bitter lesson and make every effort to safeguard, consolidate and perfect socialist democracy and the socialist legal system, so that frame-ups such as befell Comrade Liu Shaoqi and many other comrades inside and outside the Party shall never happen again and that our Party and country will never change colour.

In accordance with the views of the broad masses inside and outside the Party, the fifth plenary session decided to approve the requests to resign made by Comrades Wang Dongxing, Ji Dengkui, Wu De and Chen Xilian and decided to remove and propose to remove them from their leading Party and state posts.

The rehabilitation of Comrade Liu Shaoqi and the serious but appropriate handling of the cases of comrades who made grave mistakes reflect the wishes of all Party comrades and the people throughout the country. The plenary session asks Party organizations at all levels to take active and conscientious measures in the same spirit to continue to settle similar issues that await solution or full solution and to educate the Party members and the masses in the need to unite closely, strengthen their sense of organization and discipline and work with diligence and devotion for the great future of socialist modernization under the leadership of the Party Central Committee.

The plenary session holds that it is our Party's unswerving policy to carry forward socialist democracy and perfect the socialist legal system and to guarantee that the masses have the full right and opportunity to express their views on state affairs and raise suggestions to and criticize Party and government leaders. But experience shows that the practices of "speaking out freely, airing views fully, holding great debates and writing big-character posters" are not a good way to achieve this. These practices, taken as a whole, never played a positive role in safeguarding the people's democratic rights but, on the contrary, hampered the people in the normal exercise of their democratic rights. To help eliminate factors causing instability, the plenary session decides to propose to the National People's Congress that the stipulation in Article 45 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China that citizens "have the right to 'speak out freely, air their views fully, hold great debates and write big-character posters' " be deleted [1].

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee is an important meeting following the Third and Fourth Plenary Sessions of the 11th Central Committee. The keynote of the session is the upholding and improving of Party leadership and the enhancing of the Party's fighting capacity, which constitute the most important guarantees for a smooth advance in socialist modernization. The session did not take up economic work as a topic since the 1980 national economic plan had already been worked out at a national planning conference held between November and December last year under the leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council and, following Comrade Deng Xiaoping's report on the current situation and tasks on January 16 of this year, Comrade Li Xiannian made a report on current economic problems on February 10. The central task now facing the nation's economic front is to strive to fulfil or overfulfil this year's national economic plan in line with the policies formulated by the Party Central Committee. It is clear that the Party will have extremely arduous tasks on all fronts in 1980. Their completion will play an enormous role in successfully convening the 12th National Party Congress. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee calls on the whole Party, along with the people throughout the country, to rally closely round the Party Central Committee, and make great concerted efforts to greet the convening of the Party's 12th National Congress with outstanding achievements on every front.

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[1]

This refers to the practice of "exposing" and "criticizing" others by writing big-character posters without any scruple, which reached its climax in the years of the Cultural Revolution, but it does not refer to the freedom of speech enjoyed by Chinese citizens. If this proposal is adopted, Article 45 of the Constitution will still read: "Citizens enjoy freedom of speech, correspondence, the press, assembly, association, procession, demonstration and the freedom to strike." - Tr.

(NO. 10 MARCH 10, 1980)