We are on the right track and our policies will not change

June 18, 1983

The modernization we are striving for is modernization of a Chinese type. The socialism we are building is a socialism with Chinese characteristics. This is because we are acting according to our own concrete realities and conditions and mainly relying on ourselves.

Now that we are on the right track, our people are happy and we are confident. Our policies will not change. Or if they do, it will be only for the better. And our policy of opening to the outside world will only expand. The path will not become narrower and narrower but wider and wider. We have suffered too much from taking a narrow path. If we turned back, where would we be headed? We would only be returning to backwardness and poverty.

The policy of abandoning the practice of having everybody "eat from the same big pot" will not change either. Industry has its distinctive characteristics, and so does agriculture; the experience in one can't be applied to the other. But the "responsibility system" of determining remuneration according to output remains our basic policy -- of that you can be sure.

(Excerpt from a talk with foreign experts attending a Symposium on Science and Technology Policies in Beijing.)

(From Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping, Volume III <1982-1992>)