Historical Development Of CPC's Understandings Of Mao Zedong Thought

The CPC's understandings of Mao Zedong Thought include the meaning of Mao Zedong Thought, the theoretical system, and the soul as well as the guiding position. The Party's understanding of Mao Zedong Thought has gone through a tortuous and complicated process. This process can be divided into four stages: The first stage is from July 1921 to January 1935, this stage is the party's understanding of Mao Zedong Thought, the initial stage. The Party first recognized that the Marxist-Leninist's guiding role to the Chinese revolution. Then a number of party leaders began to recognize the necessity of combination of the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete reality of Chinese revolution. Followed the Party recognized the partial results of the combination of basic principles of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of China's revolution. The understanding was a step forward. However, it was only part of the leaders understanding rather than understanding of the whole party. Otherwise, for the Mao Zedong Thought has not yet developed to the extent of a complete system, so this is only part of the understanding of Mao Zedong Thought.The second stage is from January 1935 to June 1957, this stage is the Party's understanding of Mao Zedong Thought, the first leap. Compared with the previous fourteen years, the party's understanding of combination necessity of basic principles of Marxism-Leninism and the concrete realities of China's revolution changed. The understanding changed as follows: from part of the leaders to the whole party; from in local to a whole (the contents of Mao Zedong Thought); and the theoretical system is summarized and naming. In the same time, the guiding role of Mao Zedong Thought has also been scientific knowledge. However, at this stage the Party did not distinguish between Mao Zedong Thought and personal Mao Zedong Thought. They confused the two. Since Mao Zedong's personal thoughts at this stage is basically correct, and thus confusing Mao Zedong Thought and the individual does not pose any harm in practice. The third stage is from June 1957 to December 1978, this stage is a tortuous stage for the party's understanding of Mao Zedong Thought. As the previous stage does not distinguish between Mao Zedong Thought and the individual's thinking, so when the anti-rightist campaign in June 1957 magnify later (when personal Mao Zedong Thought first made mistake and made more and more serious mistakes), the confusion between the two boundaries in practice apparent clearly drawbacks.The fourth stage is from December 1978 till now; this stage is the second leap of the Party's understanding of Mao Zedong Thought. This stage, the party's understanding of Mao Zedong Thought has been sublimated. The party's understanding of Mao Zedong Thought, the scientific meaning of theoretical system, as well as the guiding status of the soul has reached a new height. There are two points: first, the Party distinguished between the personal thought and Mao Zedong Thought, so we understand the mistakes in Mao's later years and corrected it. We also adhere to the guiding role of Mao Zedong Thought. Another point is we scientific grasp the soul of the theoretical system of Mao Zedong Thought and has been successfully used in practice, thus we create the Deng Xiaoping Theory and the important thinking of"Three Represents", and the scientific concept of development, namely, theoretical system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.