[7] Xue's suggestions were abandoned at the 6th Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee held in June 1981 because they failed to solve the problems facing agriculture.
[12]Su and Feng opposed the party line that the main contradiction in Chinese society was between the "advanced social system" and the "backward production forces".
Su found it problematic because it meant that the superstructure could be more advanced than the level of the productive forces—a statement that was not in line with classical Marxism.
Some responded positively and called for a retreat from socialist practices and a return to the policies of New Democracy—a period that lasted until 1956 when China had a mixed economy.
[17] After consulting with Deng Xiaoping, the theory of a primary stage of socialism was used as the theoretical basis of the Political Report to the 13th National Congress held in 1987.
[19] Su and Zhang Xiangyang said the primary stage of socialism in China began in the 1950s when the CPC put an end to the policies of New Democracy and would last an estimated 100 years.
The primary task of socialism is to develop production forces and to elevate the standard of the material and cultural life of the people.
[21]By this point, Deng had equated upholding socialism with developing the level of the productive forces; the ideal of common equality was postponed until an unspecified time.
[21] Su and Zhang reached similar conclusions, saying that Marx had two goals when he wrote about the socialist future: a social system in which the productive forces developed and the individual would be granted a great chance of self-development.
[23] Chen Junsheng, the Secretary General of the State Council, wrote a similar article that stressed the need to uphold the Four Cardinal Principles and reform during the primary stage of socialism.
[23] General Secretary Jiang Zemin further elaborated on the concept, first during a speech to the CCP Central Party School on 29 May 1997 and again in his report to the 15th National Congress on 12 September.
[25] The third point—building socialist culture with Chinese characteristics—meant turning Marxism into the guide to train the people so as to give them "high ideals, moral integrity, a good education, and a strong sense of discipline, and developing a national scientific, and popular socialist culture geared to the needs of modernization, of the world, and of the future".
[25] When asked how long the primary stage of socialism would last, Zhao replied "[i]t will be at least 100 years [...] [before] socialist modernization will have been in the main accomplished".
[30] This theory had formed the basis of Chinese foreign policy well into the 1970s, but was not officially rebuked until Zhao's report to the 13th National Congress.
[30] At the congress, Zhao re-used a 1985 statement by Deng Xiaoping, in which he said, "[t]he major themes of the contemporary world are peace and development".
[30] By saying that the task of socialist countries was maintaining "peace and development" rather than "war and revolution", Deng was upbraiding Lenin's theory.
[31] Xu concluded that capitalism had proved a more successful system than Chinese socialism, which was based on feudal ideology and institutions.
[31] On this basis, the proponents of convergence theory called on people to stop asking whether a certain technique was capitalist or socialist because it did not matter anymore.
[31] At the 13th National Congress, Zhao concluded that the common rightist error when analyzing Chinese development was to question the legitimacy of the revolution and socialist superstructural elements established in its aftermath and that the common leftist error was to believe that you could skip over the primary stage of socialism directly to advanced socialism, a view that Zhao designated as utopian.
[32] According to Su and Zhang, instead of viewing one factor—economy—as dominant, as was previously done, one should analyze how all factors interact with each other, especially the effects of the superstructure on the rest of society.
[32] According to Hong Yingsan, the notion of a primary stage of socialism was difficult because it entailed that China was simultaneously pre-capitalist and post-capitalist.
[32] Su and Zhang said the most pressing problem for CPC theorists to answer was, "do people have freedom to choose a particular set of production relations?".
[34] Some rightists argued against the mode of productions envisioned by Marx, stating that all changes in human history were subjective and were not guided by universal laws.
[34] While the CPC pursued non-orthodox economic policies, it believed the party would be able to safeguard China's goal of socialist development by transforming Marxism into a dominant value system.
[31] This was reflected by the introduction of the term "socialist spiritual civilization", a concept introduced in 1981 and mentioned in the Political Report to the 13th National Congress.
[31] The main function of socialist spiritual civilization was to check against the dangers of ideological retreat in the party's effort to progress toward socialism.