致富光荣 (zhìfù guāngróng: To get rich is glorious!) - Deng Xiaoping

China’s revolution exerts an attraction on all the revolutionary people in the world, who identify with it. Our drive for socialist modernization has enlisted their interest and support and will continue to do so ever more widely. We must endeavour to increase international academic exchanges and expand our friendly contacts and co-operation with scientific circles in other countries. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to all friends abroad who have helped us in science and technology.

Backwardness must be recognized before it can be changed. One must learn from those who are more advanced before he can catch up with and surpass them. Of course, in order to raise China’s scientific and technological level we must rely on our own efforts, develop our own creativity and persist in the policy of independence and self-reliance. But independence does not mean shutting the door on the world, nor does self-reliance mean blind opposition to everything foreign. Science and technology are part of the wealth created in common by all mankind. Every people or country should learn from the advanced science and technology of others. It is not just today, when we are scientifically and technologically backward, that we need to learn from others. Even after we catch up with the most advanced countries, we shall still have to learn from them in areas where they are particularly strong.

In many Asian, African and Latin American countries that have won political independence, the economic lifelines are still controlled by colonialism and imperialism in varying degrees, and the old economic structure has not changed fundamentally. The imperialists, and particularly the superpowers, have adopted neo-colonialist methods to continue and intensify their exploitation and plunder of the developing countries. They export capital to the developing countries and build there a “state within a state” by means of such international monopoly organizations as “trans-national corporations” to carry out economic plunder and political interference. Taking advantage of their monopoly position in international markets, they reap fabulous profits by raising the export prices of their own products and forcing down those of raw materials from the developing countries. Moreover, with the deepening of the political and economic crises of capitalism and the sharpening of their mutual competition, they are further intensifying their plunder of the developing countries by shifting the economic and monetary crises on to the latter.