ABSTRACT
One of the last acts of Premier Zhou Enlai 周恩来 (1898-1976) was the reiteration of the policy of Four Modernizations (of agriculture, industry, national defence and science) at the National People’s Congress of 1975. The Four Modernizations had been first proclaimed in 1963, but were completely sidelined by the Cultural Revolution. Zhou Enlai and his deputy, Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 (1904-97), raised them again in the mid-1970s as a more pressing issue, with a newly articulated goal to make China a ‘modern socialist country’ by the end of the twentieth century. The Four Modernizations then became a defining theme of Deng Xiaoping’s final victory in the power struggle at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in December 1978.
