Primary stage of socialism
This is not a general reference to the initial stage any country will go through when practicing socialism, but a term for the special stage that China has to undergo with backward productive forces and an underdeveloped commodity economy. The level of productive forces is the basic criterion for judging the primary stage of socialism.
The theory of the primary stage of socialism has two connotations: one, China already has a socialist society, which it must continue to develop and never abandon; two, China’s socialist society is still in the primary stage and will remain so for a long time to come, and it is a stage that must be recognized and cannot be skipped.
The report to the 13th CPC National Congress in 1987 predicted that it would take at least 100 years for China to progress from basically completing socialist transformation of private ownership of the means of production in the 1950s to basically realizing socialist modernization. This period was called “the primary stage of socialism.”
With China’s rapid development since reform and opening up, especially with the historic achievements and changes since the 18th CPC National Congress, Chinese socialism has reached a phase of new height. But the current productive forces are not yet fully developed to sustain modernization, and the features of this period are still features of the primary stage of socialism, not of any stage beyond, therefore, they cannot lead to a change of the judgment of China’s current stage of development.
社會主義初級階段
社會主義初級階段不是泛指任何國家進入社會主義都會經歷的起始階段，而是特指中國生產力落后、商品經濟不發達條件下建設社會主義必然要經歷的特定階段。生產力水平是判定社會主義初級階段的根本標準。社會主義初級階段的論斷包括兩層涵義：一是中國已經進入社會主義社會，必須堅持而不能離開社會主義；二是中國的社會主義社會正處于并將長期處于初級階段，必須正視而不能超越這個初級階段。1987年召開的黨的十三大報告指出：“我國從五十年代生產資料私有制的社會主義改造基本完成，到社會主義現代化的基本實現，至少需要上百年時間，都屬于社會主義初級階段。”經過改革開放40年以來的快速發展，特別是黨的十八大以來取得的歷史性成就和發生的歷史性變革，中國特色社會主義邁上一個新的大臺階，但當下生產力水平的躍進尚未達到實現現代化的水平，這一時期呈現出的發展階段性特征，仍是在社會主義初級階段這個大背景下的新特征，并不是超越了社會主義初級階段之后的特征，因而并不能改變對我國社會主義所處發展階段的判斷。
