In July 1952 the Central Committee of the Party transferred Deng Xiaoping to the central organs. This transfer marked the beginning of another important period in his revolutionary career.
He served first as both executive Vice-Premier of the Government Administration Council (which was to become the State Council in 1954) and Vice-Chairman of the Financial and Economic Commission, and was soon appointed Director of the Office of Communications and Minister of Finance as well. In 1954, retaining only the position of Vice-Premier, he became in addition Secretary-General of the Party Central Committee, Director of the Organization Department and Vice-Chairman of the National Defense Commission. In 1955, at the Fifth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, he was elected to the Committee's Political Bureau. In 1956, at the Party's Eighth National Congress, it was Deng who made the report on the revision of the Party Constitution, and at the First Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee he was elected member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and General Secretary of the Central Committee. Thus, at the age of 52 he became one of the chief leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, together with Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De and Chen Yun. For the next ten years Deng Xiaoping was General Secretary, directing the routine work of the Secretariat. Referring to this time, he said later, "It was the busiest period in my life."
The decade from September 1956 to May 1966 was a period in which China began to build socialism in an all-round way. Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the whole nation worked for socialist economic and cultural development and scored great achievements. During this time the Party accumulated important experience and also made some serious mistakes. As General Secretary assisting the Chairman and Vice-Chairmen of the Party in managing the day-to-day work of the Central Committee, Deng Xiaoping participated in the policy decisions of the Party and the state. He put forward valuable proposals on many subjects- strengthening Party building, consolidating industrial enterprises, improving their management, introducing the system of workers' conferences and so on.
In his report to the Party's Eighth National Congress in1956, Deng offered a penetrating discussion on how to strengthen the Party now that it was in power, explaining that it was confronted by new tests and must constantly guard against the danger of divorcing itself from reality and from the mass line and practice democratic centralism and that Party organizations at all levels improve collective leadership, so as to prevent individuals from acting arbitrarily and making decisions on important issues alone.
In 1957, after the Party's Eighth Congress had called for concentrated efforts to develop the productive forces, gratifying results were achieved in economic work. From this point of view, it was one of the best years since the founding of the People's Republic. But in 1958, during the Great Leap Forward and movement to establish people's communes, "Left: errors began to spread. There followed three years of great hardship. In order to analyze experience and correct mistakes, Deng Xiaoping and many other leading members of the Central Committee went on inspection tours and formulated regulations for different fields of work. Deng also directed investigations in the rural areas and suggested ways to rectify such mistakes as the institution of compulsory communal canteens and the system under which the commune was supposed to distribute necessities to all. He emphasized that in correcting past mistakes it was essential to abide by the principle of seeking truth from facts. He pointed out in1962 that the relations of production to be introduced should be of the type that would be most readily accepted by the masses and most conductive to the quick restitution and development of production. He also presided over the drafting of two important documents: the Draft Regulations on the management of State Industrial Enterprises and the Draft Provisional Regulations for Work in Institutions of Higher Learning Directly Under the Ministry of Education.
In 1962 the Central Committee convened a central working conference attended by 7,000 persons, addressing this conference, Deng Xiaoping, in light of the lessons learned from the previous years, stressed the need to adhere to democratic centralism and to carry on the Party's fine traditions. He proposed that all the cases of cadres who might have been wrongly treated in past political movements should be re-examined and the cadres rehabilitated as appropriate. On behalf of the Secretariat of the Central Committee, Deng made an earnest self-criticism in this connection at the conference.
In his tenure of office as the Party's General Secretary, Deng Xiaoping had extensive contacts with leaders of other Parties in the international communist movement. On several occasions he headed delegations to Moscow to have talks with N.Khtyshchov and other Soviet leaders and always took a principled, independent stand.
(Deng Xiaoping Pictorial)
