Thirty Years of Turbulence - Chinese Enterprises

作者：admin  点击次数：19  发布时间：2025-03-04

On May 11, Guangming Daily published a special commentator article entitled "Practice is the only criterion for testing truth." On the same day, Xinhua News Agency reposted the article, and the next day the People's Daily reprinted the full text. This can be regarded as the most important political declaration in China that year. At the end of the article, the author bravely declared: "Wherever there is a 'forbidden zone' that transcends practice and regards itself as absolute, there is no science, no real Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, but only obscurantism, idealism, and cultural authoritarianism." The publication of the article caused a huge response in the dull and suffocating Chinese society at that time. In the more conservative Northeast and Shanghai and other places, voices of condemnation such as "cutting down the flag" and "violating the spirit of the Central Committee and opposing Mao Zedong Thought" were everywhere. After reading the newspaper, Hu Fuming went home and said to his wife: "I am mentally prepared to go to jail." His wife said: "I will either go to jail with you or bring you food every day until you are released from jail."

On May 19, Deng Xiaoping talked about this article when meeting with the head of the core leading group of the Ministry of Culture. He believed that the article was in line with Marxism-Leninism. Later, he used this article as the title again at the All-Army Political Work Conference, severely criticized dogmatism, called for "breaking the spiritual shackles and liberating our minds", and pointed out that the discussion on the issue of practice being the only criterion for testing truth is very necessary.