First Published: The Call, Vol. 6, No. 25, June 27, 1977.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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With tremendous enthusiasm, workers and peasants all across China are taking up the task of building their country into a modern socialist state by the end of the century.
Following the examples of the Tachai Commune and the Taching oil field, the Chinese people are working to apply Chairman Mao’s teachings on how to transform China from a relatively poor, mainly agricultural society into an advanced, industrialized country. Their struggle is targeting the reactionary line of the “gang of four,” whose activities were aimed at opposing China’s revolution and succeeded for a time in retarding China’s rate of economic development.
A key part of the current campaign is to implement guidelines set down in a recent national conference on “Learning from Taching in Industry.” At this conference, 7,000 delegates from all over China discussed plans for economic development, testified about the “gang’s” revisionist line and the results of their wrecking activities. They also studied the lessons learned by workers at Taching oil field in grasping revolution, promoting production and soundly defeating the attacks of the “gang.”
In an address to the conference, Communist Party Chairman Hua Kuo-feng recalled that it was Chairman Mao himself who first called on the Chinese people to modernize their country as quickly as possible. Chairman Hua pointed out that the “speed of construction is a political rather than a purely economic question.” A modern, advanced China is necessary to strengthen the rule of the working class, both within China and against the threat of foreign aggression. It shows the superiority of the socialist system and the need to move on toward communism.
But the “gang” opposed Chairman Mao’s line and the campaign to build a strong China. They slandered the workers and peasants who worked hard to build socialism, saying that they were “people with vested interests” who weren’t political. They opposed the rules and regulations which workers established to make production go smoothly, as “suppressing the workers.” The “gang” deliberately blurred the differences between socialist accumulation of funds and the capitalist line of profit in command. In creating this confusion they caused many factories to run at a loss.
In these and many other ways, the “gang of four” did their best to create anarchy in the socialist economy and confusion in people’s minds. This was all in line with their plans to seize power for themselves and restore capitalism.
Although China has accomplished a great deal in economic construction in its 28 years of socialism (for example, feeding over 20% of the world’s population with only 7% of the world’s cultivated land area) its growth has been hampered by activities of the “gang” and their predecessors, Liu Shao-chi and Lin Piao. Because of the interference of these saboteurs, explained Hua Kuo-feng, “construction achievements are not great enough and the tempo of growth has fallen short of what we once anticipated.”
Now that the roadblock of the “gang” has been removed the Chinese people can once again fully mobilize to meet their great goals. Chairman Hua pointed to the experiences of the Taching production brigade as “the most convincing proof” of China’s ability to meet these high goals. The opening up of Taching, today one of the world’s biggest oil fields, transformed China from a country once thought to be “oil poor” into a country self-sufficient in oil.
The experience of the Taching workers in accomplishing this feat carries such important lessons because it was, as Chairman Hua summed up, “industrialization under the command of revolutionization.”
Now workers in all corners of China are studying how to make their factories, mills and mines into Taching-type enterprises.
Economic reports from China show that already these discussions and plans are beginning to bear fruit. Last month, China’s average daily output of many industrial items exceeded previously-set targets. Daily output of crude oil, coal, electricity and chemical fertilizer is at an all-time high. Similar records are being set in agriculture in spite of a number of natural disasters.
Even in the areas of the economy seriously affected by the “gang,” things are moving ahead. “The railways,” says a report in Peking Review, “are no longer the mess the ’gang’ had made of them.” In the steel industry, where, because of the “gang,” output had hovered around the same level for several years and even dropped in some areas, production is now expanding steadily and rapidly.
As for the Taching oil workers, they topped their quotas for both April and May in several areas. The workers at Taching, not content with their accomplishments of the past, have already embarked on the first steps toward the new goal of building ten more oil fields in China as big as Taching
.