CONFIDENTIAL
3.
A glance back at the documents of the previous NPC Session in February and March 1978 conveys strikingly how far China has travelled in the intervening period. Although it was at that meeting that Zhou Enlai's call in 1964 for the Four Modernisations (of industry, agriculture, defence and science and technology). was again taken up as a major task for the nation, the accent in Hua Guofeng's "state of the nation" report in 1978 was nonetheless
Economic firmly placed on political and ideological problems. aspirations were reduced to a handful of over-optimistic targets, supported by generalised exhortation. There were rapid changes in Chinese policies throughout 1978 in pursuit of modernisation, but in formal terms it was only at the end of 1978, at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party, that modernisation was given virtually absolute priority. That meeting, which confirmed the ascendance of Deng Xiaoping and saw the return to influence of several veteran administrators of the 1950s, gave Party authority to the themes which have since come to dominate Chinese life - the subordination of political upheavals and the class struggle to the objective of economic growth, expanding contacts with the advanced industrial countries of the West, the strengthening of "socialist democracy" and the rule of law, a genuine concern for the material well-being of the people.
4.
In following the course laid down by the Third Plenum, China's leaders have encountered plenty of squalls. The military intervention in Vietnam was an act of political brinkmanship which could have led to a major diversion of scarce economic resources had the Chinese not been able to withdraw in good order after being able to claim success. The "democracy movement" among young people which Deng had encouraged in late 1978 threatened to turn into wider indiscipline and a profounder challenge to the basis of the State. It had to be nipped in the
CONFIDENTIAL
2.
/bud,