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China Resumption of Systematic Growth, 1970-74
As political stability was gradually restored, a renewed drive
for coordinated, balanced development was set in motion under the
leadership of Premier Zhou Enlai. To revive efficiency in industry,
Chinese Communist Party committees were returned to positions of
leadership over the revolutionary committees, and a campaign was
carried out to return skilled and highly educated personnel to the
jobs from which they had been displaced during the Cultural
Revolution. Universities began to reopen, and foreign contacts were
expanded. Once again the economy suffered from imbalances in the
capacities of different industrial sectors and an urgent need for
increased supplies of modern inputs for agriculture. In response to
these problems, there was a significant increase in investment,
including the signing of contracts with foreign firms for the
construction of major facilities for chemical fertilizer
production, steel finishing, and oil extraction and refining. The
most notable of these contracts was for thirteen of the world's
largest and most modern chemical fertilizer plants
(see Chemicals
, ch. 7). During this period, industrial output grew at an average
rate of 8 percent a year.
Agricultural production declined somewhat in 1972 because of
poor weather but increased at an average annual rate of 3.8 percent
for the period as a whole. The party and state leadership undertook
a general reevaluation of development needs, and Zhou Enlai
presented the conclusions in a report to the Fourth National
People's Congress in January 1975. In it he called for the
Four Modernizations (see Glossary).
Zhou emphasized the mechanization of
agriculture and a comprehensive two-stage program for the
modernization of the entire economy by the end of the century.
Data as of July 1987
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