Professor, Teaching and Research Department of Scientific Socialism, Xu Haoran Central Party School (National School of Administration)
The concept of system is a complex thinking to understand and transform the objective world. Adhering to the concept of system is to understand and transform the world from the universal connection and movement changes of things in time and space. The system concept emphasizes holism, and the grasp of the overall picture of the world mainly focuses on the emergent properties (the trend and result of nonlinear interaction between parts in the whole) that "the whole is greater than the sum of parts". Looking back on the history of the Party in the past century, in the arduous struggle of socialist modernization, adhering to the concept of system has gradually become a set of basic thoughts and working methods of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
In 1956, the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China announced that China society had entered socialism. Socialism — — As an ideal hope, the past came so quickly! So that many people at that time still lacked sufficient mental preparation. How socialism works, in fact, everyone is not clear! Mao Zedong later recalled: "After liberation, during the three-year recovery period, we were ignorant about construction. Then I worked on the first five-year plan, and I was still ignorant of the construction. I could only basically copy the Soviet Union’s methods, but I always felt dissatisfied and uncomfortable. "
What is socialism? The founders of Marxism put forward some basic ideas, but they did not and could not give more specific answers. At that time, in the world, only the Soviet Union built socialism independently, and there were no other ready-made examples. So, at the beginning of construction, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China called for "learning from the Soviet Union". In society, there was a popular saying at that time: "Today in the Soviet Union is our tomorrow". However, the disadvantages of the Soviet model in the 1950s have begun to be exposed, such as: one-sided development of heavy industry, neglect of agriculture and light industry; One-sided expansion of accumulation and neglect of improving people’s lives; The economic management system is too centralized and too dead, and so on. So, what should we do about modernization? On January 25, 1956, Mao Zedong put forward at the Supreme State Council that "we should strive to change China’s backward situation in economy and science and culture within a few decades and quickly reach the advanced level in the world."
Under such a guiding ideology, Mao Zedong, after in-depth and meticulous investigation and study, formed On Ten Major Relationships, which is of overall significance to socialist modernization. Specifically, the ten major relationships mainly involve: 1. The relationship between heavy industry, light industry and agriculture; 2. The relationship between coastal industries and inland industries; 3. The relationship between economic construction and national defense construction; 4. The relationship between the state, production units and individual producers; 5. The relationship between the central and local governments; 6. The relationship between Han nationality and ethnic minorities; 7. The relationship between the Party and non-Party; 8 the relationship between revolution and counter-revolution; 9. Right-wrong relationship; 10. Relations between China and foreign countries. The beauty of Mao Zedong’s analysis of the ten major relationships is that he applied materialist dialectics flexibly. Mao Zedong said: "These ten relationships are all contradictions. The world is made up of contradictions. There is no world without contradiction. Our task is to correctly handle these contradictions. "
Economic and social system is a dynamic system, which is always in the process of movement, change and development. Before socialism appeared as an institutional form, Engels put forward from the perspective of materialist dialectics: the so-called "socialist society" is not a static thing, and it should be regarded as a society that changes and reforms frequently like any other social system. "This is a typical system dynamics thinking.
Today, Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and the systematic concept of "On Ten Relationships" in the past needs a new presentation. Adhering to the systematic concept has gradually formed a specific connotation to adapt to the new era. The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee deliberated and adopted the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development, and proposed that the economic and social development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period must follow the principle of adhering to the concept of system. In the new stage of development, the main contradiction in our society has been transformed into the contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and the unbalanced development, such as the inability to innovate to meet the requirements of high-quality development, the large gap between urban and rural regional development and income distribution.
At present, adhering to the system concept requires us to strengthen forward-looking thinking, overall planning, strategic layout, and overall promotion, coordinate the two overall situations at home and abroad, do well the two major events of development and security, adhere to a national chess game, give full play to the enthusiasm of the central, local and all parties, focus on consolidating the foundation, promoting advantages, supplementing shortcomings and strengths, and pay attention to preventing and resolving major risk challenges, so as to achieve the unity of development quality, structure, scale, speed, efficiency and security. In a word, we should analyze and solve problems from the overall perspective of the system, and understand and grasp the all-round construction of a socialist modern country from a development perspective.