Mao Zedong, "China Will Take a Giant Stride Forward," 1964

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Mao Zedong, "China Will Take a Giant Stride Forward"
December 13, 1964

Source: Peking Review, no. 52, December 1977

We cannot just follow the beaten track traversed by other countries in the development of technology and trail behind them at a snail's pace. We must break away from conventions and do our utmost to adopt advanced techniques in order to make China a powerful modern socialist country in not too long a historical period. This is   what we mean by a giant stride forward. Is this impossible of attainment? Is this boasting or bragging? Certainly not. It can be done. It is neither boasting nor bragging. We need only review our history to understand this. In our  country haven't we fundamentally overthrown imperialism, feudalism and capitalism, which were seemingly so strong? Starting as we did from "poverty and blankness," haven't we scored considerable successes in all fields of socialist revolution and socialist construction after 15 years of endeavor? Haven't we too exploded an atom bomb? Haven't we wiped out the stigma of "the sick man of the East" imposed on us by westerners? Why can't the proletariat of the East accomplish what the bourgeoisie of the west has been able to? Early this century Dr.Sun Yat-sen, the great Chinese revolutionary and our precursor, said that China would take a giant stride forward. His prediction will certainly come true in the coming decades. This is an inevitable trend no reactionary force can stop.

Other documents on Mao Zedong:

Sixties Radicals turn to Lenin, Mao and Che | Mao's Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War | Mao Zedong meets Richard Nixon | Foreword to the Second Edition of The Quotations of Chairman Mao | China Will Take a Giant Stride Forward | Order to the Chinese People's Volunteers | Conversation between the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin and China's Mao Zedong | The Chinese People Have Stood Up!