Page 20 - SELECTED WORKS OF ZHOU ENLAI Volume II

18 ZHOU ENLAI

departmentalism and exclusive reliance on the state and will make
the greatest possible contributions in its field.

ON RELATIONS BETWEEN DIFFERENT ASPECTS
OF THE ECONOMY

Now I want to discuss six relationships between different aspects
of the economy. These are: the relations between the cities and the
countryside, between self-reliance and foreign aid, between industry
and commerce, between the public sector and the private sector, be-
tween labour and capital, and between upper and lower levels.
1. The relation between the cities and the countryside
The relation between the cities and the countryside is of vital im-
portance in China. On the one hand, the Chinese revolution calls
for the leadership of the working class; on the other hand, in order
for the revolution to succeed, it must rely on the peasantry and the
vast countryside. To liberate the cities, we must depend on the
countryside, establishing revolutionary base areas there, organizing
and accumulating our forces, carrying out armed struggles, encircling
the cities and seizing enemy positions one by one. The cities in turn
provide leadership for the countryside in restoring and developing
production and in building the country. This dialectical handling
of the relation between the cities and the countryside in our country
is the most successful example of Comrade Mao Zedong’s application
of Marxism-Leninism to the problems of the Chinese revolution.
On the question of who is to exercise leadership, we have now
established the principle that the cities exercise leadership over the
countryside and industry over agriculture. This is true in capitalist
society and even more so in socialist society. Although the country-
side contributes a far greater proportion of China’s national economy
than the cities — agriculture and handicrafts make up about 90 per
cent while modern industry accounts for only about 10 per cent — that
in no way diminishes the leadership role of the cities and of industry,
far less deprives them of that role. The cities’ demand for food and
industrial raw materials spurs agricultural production in the country-
side, and at the same time the consumer goods and means of produc-
tion they supply serve to advance it.