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Boluan Fanzheng () refers to a period of significant sociopolitical reforms starting with the accession of Deng Xiaoping to the paramount leadership in China, replacing Hua Guofeng, who had been appointed as Mao Zedong's successor before Mao's death in 1976. During this period, a far-reaching program of reforms was undertaken by Deng and his allies to "correct the mistakes of the Cultural Revolution", and restore order in the country. (2011). 9780674055445, Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674055445 The start of the Boluan Fanzheng period is regarded as an inflection point in Chinese history, with its cultural adjustments later proven to be the bedrock upon which the parallel economic reform and opening up could take place. As such, aspects of market capitalism were successfully introduced to the Chinese economy, giving rise to a period of growth often characterized as one of the most impressive economic achievements in human history.
Deng, who had been in and out of favor during the Cultural Revolution, first spoke publicly of the ideas of Boluan Fanzheng in September 1977, roughly a year after Mao's death and the subsequent arrest of the Gang of Four. With the help of allies such as Hu Yaobang, who later became the party's General Secretary, Deng was able to launch his reforms after the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee in December 1978, where he had ascended to the paramount leadership role. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Chinese government gradually dismantled the many distinctly Maoist policies associated with the Cultural Revolution, and rehabilitated millions of people who had been targeted during its decade of turmoil. Boluan Fanzheng lasted until early the 1980s, after which the primary focus of CCP and the Chinese government shifted from "class struggle" to further modernization and "economic construction". The subsequent speed of China's transformation in this period from one of the poorest countries to one of the world's largest economies is unmatched in history.Zongyuan Zoe Liu (2025). 9780674271913, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674271913 In addition, the "1978 Truth Criterion Discussion" during the Boluan Fanzheng period was the starting point of the decade-long New Enlightenment movement in mainland China.
However, the Boluan Fanzheng period also saw many controversies, such as the handling of the legacies of Mao and the Cultural Revolution—namely the light treatment of figures who had been involved in the period's atrocities, as well as the enshrinement of the "Four Cardinal Principles" in the country's constitution, which upheld One-party state in China. The CCP has not declassified many documents related to the Cultural Revolution, and has contributed to the chilling effect dissuading its academic study and public discussion within Chinese society.
On September 19, 1977, Deng Xiaoping first proposed the idea of "Boluan Fanzheng" during a meeting with senior officials of the Ministry of Education of China, asking the officials to correct the mistakes of Cultural Revolution in the field of education.
In July 1977, with support from a number of influential senior officials such as Ye Jianying and Chen Yun, Deng Xiaoping was officially rehabilitated and was reinstated as the Vice Chairman of CCP and Vice Premier of China, after being (twice) by Mao during the Cultural Revolution. In May 1978, Deng, together with Hu Yaobang and other allies, initiated a large-scale debate within the Chinese society, discussing the criteria for testing truth and criticizing the ideology of "Two Whatevers". Deng and his allies endorsed the philosophy of "practice is the sole criterion for testing truth", which was first proposed in an article published by Guangming Daily on May 11, 1978, and gained widespread support from the Chinese public. The debate also gave rise to the massive "New Enlightenment movement" in mainland China which lasted over a decade, promoting democracy, humanism and Universal value such as human rights and freedom.
On December 13, 1978, Deng delivered a speech at the closing ceremony of the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of CCP, during which he replaced Hua Guofeng as the new Paramount leader. In his speech titled Emancipate the Mind, Seek Truth from Facts, and Unite as One in Looking to the Future (解放思想，实事求是，团结一致向前看), Deng urged the Chinese society to seek truth from facts and pointed out that if the CCP, the whole country and the people continued to follow Maoism with stubborn mindset and blind superstition, then they would never be able to move forward and they would perish.
After Deng Xiaoping won the power struggle with Hua and became the new paramount leader of China in December 1978, he and his allies began to systematically implement the Boluan Fanzheng program in order to correct the mistakes of Cultural Revolution. Since the late 1970s, Deng and his allies gradually dismantled the Maoist line of "continuous class struggles", shifting the focus of the CCP and the Chinese government to "economic construction" as well as "modernization". In 1980–1981, Hua Guofeng eventually resigned from his positions as the Chairman of the CCP, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission and the Premier of the People's Republic of China. Deng succeeded as the new chairman of the military, while two of his closest allies assumed the other two positions: Hu Yaobang as the new Chairman of CCP and Zhao Ziyang as the new Premier.
From November 20, 1980, to January 25, 1981, a special court under the Supreme People's Court carried out a trial of the Gang of Four and six other people, eventually announcing Death-penalty with a two-year reprieve for Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao, and imprisonment of various terms up to life imprisonment for other members.
In June 1981, at the 6th Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of CCP, senior CCP officials unanimously passed the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party since the Founding of the People's Republic of China. The resolution was drafted under the supervision of Deng Xiaoping and officially invalidated the Cultural Revolution by calling it "a domestic havoc launched mistakenly by the leader (Mao Zedong) and taken advantage of by the counter-revolutionary gangs (Lin Biao and the Gang of Four)" and that it "was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the Party, the country, and the people since the founding of the People's Republic".
In addition to the "rightists" of the "Five Black Categories", the Central Committee of the CCP decided in January 1979 to abolish the other four discriminated social categories. According to official statistics, by 1984, around 4.4 million "landlords" and "rich farmers" had been rehabilitated, and a total of more than 20 million people who were labelled as members of the "four black categories" or their families had received rectification in their social status. of Yuanshuai Peng Dehuai, who was persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution. He was rehabilitated posthumously in December 1978. |left]]Some of the notable victims who received official rehabilitation during the Boluan Fanzheng period are listed below. The rehabilitation of these important figures were endorsed and directed by Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun, Hu Yaobang and other senior CCP officials.
We can't rule the majority of people by relying on law. The majority of people can by relying on the cultivation of good habits. The army's reliance on rule by law didn't work; what's actually worked has been the 1,400-man conference. Who could remember so many clauses of a civil code or criminal law? I participated in the formulation of the Constitution, even I can't remember it.During the Cultural Revolution, China's Constitution was revised in 1975 and the second Constitution, commonly known as the "1975 Constitution", absorbed Maoism and vocabulary such as the "absolute leadership of CCP (in China)" into its main content. The Constitution also incorporated manifest descriptions of the CCP organization, abolishing top government positions including the President and the Vice President of the People's Republic of China.
Soon after the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, following the guidelines of Hua Guofeng's "Two Whatevers", a third Constitution of China (known as the "1978 Constitution") was published in 1978. Although some of the expressions associated with the Cultural Revolution were deleted from the 1978 Constitution, most of the content from the 1975 Constitution remained in the new Constitution, including recognition of the "achievement" of the Cultural Revolution and manifest statements like the "leadership of CCP" in China.
During the Boluan Fanzheng period, however, Deng Xiaoping made an important speech titled On the Reform of the System of Party and State Leadership (党和国家领导制度改革) on August 18, 1980, proposing to the National People's Congress that China needed political reforms and a systematic revision of its Constitution. Deng pointed out that the new Constitution must be able to protect the civil rights of Chinese nationals and must demonstrate the principle of separation of powers; he also described the idea of "collective leadership", advocating "one man, one vote" among senior leaders to avoid the dictatorship of the General Secretary of CCP. In December 1982, the fourth Constitution of China (commonly known as the "1982 Constitution"), was passed by the 5th National People's Congress, embodying Chinese-style constitutionalism, and much of its content remains effective as of today. Compared to previous versions, some of the notable changes in the 1982 Constitution include:
During the Boluan Fanzheng period, Deng Xiaoping himself was in charge of the rehabilitation of scientists and intellectuals who were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. In March 1978, Deng emphasized at the National Science Conference that intellectuals were part of the working class and that the core of modernization was the modernization of science and technology. Later, he also emphasized that knowledge and talented people must be respected, whereas the wrong thought such as disrespecting intellectuals must be opposed. One of Deng's notable statements was that "science and technology are primary productive forces".
Since the Boluan Fanzheng period, various new genres of literature have emerged, including the "scar literature", the "contemplative literature (反思文学) " and the "literature of reforms (改革文学)".
In 1977, upon the suggestion of Zha Quanxing and Wen Yuankai, Deng Xiaoping restored the National College Entrance Examination (Gaokao) after its ten-year halt during the Cultural Revolution, thus re-establishing the Higher education in China and changing the life of tens of millions. Deng viewed science and education as the fundamentals of China's Four Modernizations. A compulsory education system was proposed during the Boluan Fanzheng period and, with the support of Deng and others, the compulsory education was written into the "1982 Constitution" while China's nine-year compulsory education was eventually established in 1986 under law ( Law on Nine-Year Compulsory Education). In 1985, upon the recommendation of Zhao Ziyang, then Premier of China, the National People's Congress designated "September 10" as the annual National Teacher's Day.
In addition, renowned Chinese American mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern once proposed to Deng to raise the basic salary of professors in mainland China, increasing their monthly payments by 100 Yuan, and the proposal was soon approved by Deng.
Erecting the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Square and retaining the picture of Mao on Tiananmen were also disputed. Furthermore, a few scholars have pointed out that Deng Xiaoping himself revealed his personal limitations in his understanding of Mao and totalitarianism; these could be seen, for example, when Deng insisted that among all that Mao had done to the Chinese people, "70% were good and 30% were bad", whereas attributing many disasters in Cultural Revolution to Lin Biao and the Gang of Four.
After his death, Mao has been viewed as a controversial figure worldwide. In the late 1970s, political dissidents in China such as Wei Jingsheng started the "Democracy Wall" in Beijing, criticizing Mao as well as Maoism and the One-party state in China while demanding democracy and freedom. However, Wei's initiatives were eventually suppressed by Deng.
In 1983, the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign was launched, followed by the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization Campaign which was launched in late 1986. The two campaigns were initiated by left-wing conservative politicians and received some support from Deng, but they were both called off eventually thanks to the persuasion and interventions from Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, the leading reformists besides Deng within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
After the Cultural Revolution, the Central Committee of CCP failed to systematically clear the "elements" associated with the Revolution inside the Chinese society, meanwhile banning comprehensive reflections and reviews on this period of history within China. The main reason why CCP took such actions, according to a number of researchers and observers, is that having a comprehensive review on the Cultural Revolution within China would fundamentally threaten the legitimacy of CCP as China's only ruling party. Others, at the same time, have also pointed out that even though Deng and other senior CCP officials admitted that the Party had made numerous mistakes in the past, yet they were still trying to preserve CCP's one-party rule in China. Recently, there have been concerns about a potential erosion of the era's reforms and a more autocratic rule under Xi Jinping, who became General Secretary in 2012.
In 1996, the local government of Shantou in Guangdong Province decided to establish the first Cultural Revolution museum in mainland China—the Shantou Cultural Revolution Museum, which was eventually opened to the public in 2005. However, the museum was forced to shut down in 2016 by Xi Jinping's administration.
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