The 1978 Constitution of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

was promulgated in 1978. This was the PRC's 3rd

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed. When these pri ...

, and was adopted at the 1st Meeting of the

5th National People's Congress The 5th National People's Congress (NPC) was in session from 1978 to 1983. It succeeded the 4th National People's Congress. It held five plenary sessions in this period. Seat distribution The first session *Chairman and Vice Chairman: ''Po ...

on March 5, 1978, two years after the downfall of the Gang of Four.

Content

The number of articles grew from the 1975 Constitution's 30 articles to double the amount. The courts and the procurates, which were minimized or dumped altogether in the 1975 Constitution of the People's Republic of China, were somewhat restored. A greater degree of separation of party and state was also instituted, with the

Premier Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier. A premier will normally be a head of govern ...

regaining the right to nominate cabinet ministers and the

National People's Congress The National People's Congress (NPC) is the highest organ of state power of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The NPC is the only branch of government in China, and per the principle of unified power, all state organs from the Sta ...

no longer defined as an extension of the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

. A number of

checks and balances The separation of powers principle functionally differentiates several types of state power (usually law-making, adjudication, and execution) and requires these operations of government to be conceptually and institutionally distinguishabl ...

present in the 1954 Constitution, including

term limit A term limit is a legal restriction on the number of terms a person may serve in a particular elected office. When term limits are found in presidential and semi-presidential systems they act as a method of curbing the potential for monopoly, w ...

s for party leaders,

elections An election is a formal group decision-making process whereby a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has operated ...

and more independence in the judiciary, were restored. The 1978 Constitution was the first Constitution in the PRC to touch explicitly on the

political status of Taiwan The island of Taiwan is the subject of a geopolitical dispute between the Republic of China (ROC), which controls it, and the People's Republic of China (PRC), which claims it as part of its territory. The Republic of China (ROC) was establ ...

. It said that "Taiwan is part of China" and said that the PRC "must liberate Taiwan, and finish the great task of reunifying the motherland". However, in 1979, the PRC dropped the liberation stance and opted for peaceful reunification instead. The 1982 Constitution mentioned that "Taiwan is a sacred part of the territory of the People's Republic of China" instead of just "China". Citizens' rights were also reinstated somewhat. The right to strike was still present, although it would be removed in the 1982 Constitution. However, the required support for the leadership of the Communist Party and the socialist system remained as part of citizens' duties. Nevertheless, the 1978 Constitution witnessed the first time since the 1950s that the document was considered authoritative enough for its provisions to merit the government's attention. For instance, after the Democracy Wall movement saw students using the constitutionally-guaranteed right to use big-character posters to criticize the government, the party responded by ordering a series of constitutional amendments which deleted this right in 1980. Previously, during the Tiananmen Square incident in 1976 when this same right had been invoked to criticize the Cultural Revolution, the Central Committee ordered the suppression of dissent without any effort to reconcile its actions with the constitution. Altogether, the Constitution still suffered from the backdrop of the just-gone-by

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

. Revolutionary language was still persistent (such as "Revolutionary Committees"), although the slogans were gone. The 1978 Constitution survived for four years before being superseded by the current (1982)

Constitution of China The Constitution of the People's Republic of China is the supreme law of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In September 1949, the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference adopted the Common Progr ...

during the

Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping also Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Teng Hsiao-p'ing; born Xiansheng (). (22 August 190419 February 1997) was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and political theorist who served as the paramount leader of the People's R ...

era. In addition to inheriting some fundamental principles from the 1954 Constitution, the 1978 Constitution officially included the Four Modernizations policy with an emphasis on socialist democracy, scientific and educational development. It also mandated in the preamble part that China must "be constructed into a great, powerful, modern socialist country in agriculture, industry, national defense, science and technology within the century".

References

External links

* The Constitution of the People's Republic of China (1978)
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China (1978)
{{DEFAULTSORT:1978 Constitution Of The People's Republic Of China

Constitution of the People's Republic of China The Constitution of the People's Republic of China is the supreme law of the People's Republic of China (PRC). In September 1949, the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference adopted the Common Progr ...

Political history of China Constitution of China