1978 Constitution of the People's Republic of China

Constitution of the People's Republic of China
Overview
Jurisdiction	People's Republic of China
Ratified	March 5, 1978 (1978-03-05)
Author(s)	National People's Congress
Supersedes	1975 Constitution of the People's Republic of China
Full text
Constitution of the People's Republic of China (1978) at Wikisource

The 1978 Constitution of the People's Republic of China was promulgated in 1978. This was the PRC's 3rd constitution, and was adopted at the 1st Meeting of the 5th National People's Congress on March 5, 1978, two years after the downfall of the Gang of Four.

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 party leadership's right to nominate cabinet ministers deleted and returned to the Premier. A number of checks and balances present in the 1954 Constitution, including term limits for party leaders, elections 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. 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".

Citizen 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 Chinese Communist Party and the socialist system remained as part of citizens' duties.

Altogether, the Constitution still suffered from the backdrop of the just-gone-by Cultural Revolution. 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 The 1978 Constitution survived for four years before being superseded by the current (1982) Constitution of the People's Republic of China during the Deng Xiaoping era.

Although short-lived, the 1978 Constitution witnessed the first time since the 1950s that the document was considered authoritative enough for its provisions to remain within the Communist Party'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 Tienanmen Square Incident in 1976 when this same right had been invoked to criticize the Cultural Revolution, protests were forcibly suppressed without the relevant constitutional provisions being acknowledged in any way by the authorities.

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".

External links

• The Constitution of the People's Republic of China (1978)
• The Constitution of the People's Republic of China (1978)