2.1 The choice of socialism
Socialism is a political trend with world influence in the 20th century. To achieve socialism in China is the goal set by the Communist Party of China at its founding. In its revolutionary strategy, the first step is to launch the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic revolution and complete the task of making the nation independent and liberating the people; the second step is to launch the revolution of socialism and set up socialist system on the basis of public ownership. In October 1949, the People's Republic of China was founded, providing a necessary prerequisite for the realization of the socialist ideal.
Having experienced internal and external troubles for over a century, new China where everything waited to be done found it uneasy to take the road of socialism. New China was built on the economic foundation of a traditional agrarian society after long-term revolutions and war. Those can test the governance capabilities of the Communist Party of China included not only restoring the economy, consolidating the power and soothing people's mind, but also breaking through the blockade of the Western powers. Against the international environment of the Cold War between the East and the West after World War II, the Communist Party of China, based on the historical experience of “learning from Russia” and to meet its real needs in dealing with domestic and foreign affairs, declared to “lean to one side”, i.e., to the Soviet Union, and joined the socialist camp, setting its mind to take the same socialist road as that taken by the Soviet Union.
In the initial construction of new China, the Communist Party of China mobilized the vast people and carried out a series of political and social movements which rapidly healed the trauma brought about by long-term wars, restored the national economy, and consolidated the new-born power, bringing a new look of the society: through suppression of the bandits and counterrevolutionaries, the reactionary forces that threatened the new power were cleaned up, the banditry left behind in history was eliminated, and social order was stabilized; by stabilizing prices, unifying the fiscal economy, and adjusting the democratic reforms in industry, commerce and enterprises, it soon restored economic order and industrial production; the nationwide land reform destroyed the feudal economic system, greatly liberated the rural productive forces, and promoted the rapid restoration and development of the agrarian production; the enactment of the marriage law advanced the anti-feudalism war in which the fundamental spirit was to promote gender equality; the crackdown of “pornography, gambling and drug abuse and trafficking” put an end to the ugly social phenomena which had been existing for long and created a fresh and new social atmosphere; through the war to resist U.S. aggression and aid North Korea, it protected national security and improved its international prestige. All these efforts won the young ruling party supports from the national people.
After three years of motoring along, the Communist Party of China held that the new born republic had seen the real possibility of transiting to socialism till the second half of 1952. Domestically socialist factors in political and economic life kept increasing, the main manifestations of which involved the state-owned enterprises established by taking over the financial, traffic, industrial and mine enterprises from the Kuomintang and the government had controlled national economic lifelines. The private capitalist enterprises had established economic associations of all kinds with the government or state-owned enterprises because, in the transitional period of the state and society, most of them had to rely on the state or state-owned enterprises with orders for processing customers' materials, unified purchase and sale, etc. to pass operational difficulties. Such capitalist enterprises had stopped being privately-run enterprises in the general sense, but in the form of state capitalism. In the vast countryside, mutual-aid teams and the producers' co-operatives appeared.
Joint state-private
All these were viewed by the Communist Party of China as crucial socialist factors in the economic life. More importantly, with three years of efforts, the new-born power had been established universally and firmly top down. Besides, there was top-down systematic and rigorous cooperation between the party and people's organizations behind and centering the new-born power. An unprecedented effective social management and control appeared in Chinese history. In the meanwhile, the Communist Party of China's triumph over superior forces and the fact that it brought to the state and society earthshaking and amazing changes within a short term of 3 years had soon helped establish its reputation among the Chinese people who then believed that they would surely live a better life if following the Communist Party of China. The above political and psychological factors serve as the background against which the Communist Party of China led China to socialism, and they are not to be ignored. In addition, international factors had to be reckoned with, too. International communist movements developed rapidly for a time after World War Ⅰ, leading to a socialist camp led by the Soviet Union and composed of several Eastern European countries. The communist parties in the capitalist countries also had important political impacts domestically and internationally; many governors in developing countries showed interest in socialism, even set the goal clearly to pursue socialism. In particular, the industrial achievements and great national strength of the Soviet Union fascinated the leaders of the Communist Party of China which had been seeking national prosperity and the realization of communism. It's against the above background that in June 1953, the Communist Party of China formally set the plan to transit to socialism. The plan may be generalized as using around 15 years to gradually achieve national industrialization and the state's socialist transformation of individual farming, individual handicraft industry and the private capitalist industry and commerce, i.e., changing the private ownership into the public ownership. Since then the Communist Party of China began to mobilize the Chinese people to strive for building China into a great socialist country.