邓小平文选/没有科学技术的高速度发展，也就不可能有国民经济的高速度发展。

The Central Committee of the Party decided to call this national science conference in order to bring home to the Party and country the importance of science, to map out a programme, to commend advanced units and individuals and to discuss measures for speeding up the development of science and technology in China.

The first point is the necessity of understanding that science and technology are part of the productive forces.

The Gang of Four raised a hue and cry over this, confounding right and wrong and sowing much confusion in people's minds.

Marxism has consistently treated science and technology as part of the productive forces.

More than a century ago, Marx said that expansion of the use of machinery in production requires the conscious application of natural science.

Science too, he said, is among the productive forces.

The development of modern science and technology has bound science and production ever more tightly together.

The advances over the last three decades have not been limited to particular scientific theories or production techniques, nor have they just represented progress and reform in the usual sense.

Modern science opens the way for the improvement of production techniques and determines the direction of their development.

Many new instruments of production and technical processes first come into being in the laboratory.

A series of new industries, including high-polymer synthesis, atomic energy, electronic computers, semi-conductors, astronautics and lasers, have been founded on the basis of newly emerging sciences.

Of course both now and in the future there will be many topics of theoretical research for which at the moment no practical application can be seen.

But a host of historical facts have proved that once a major breakthrough is achieved in theoretical research, it leads, sooner or later, to enormous progress in production and technology.

In particular, the development of electronic computers, cybernetics and automation technology is rapidly raising the degree of automation in production.

With the same manpower and the same number of man-hours, people can turn out scores or hundreds of times more products than before.

What has brought about the tremendous advances in the productive forces and the vast increase in labour productivity?

Mainly the power of science, the power of technology.

We all know that the basic factors in the productive forces are the means of production and labour power.

What is the relationship of science and technology to these two factors?”

Throughout history, the means of production have always been linked with a given type of science and technology, and, likewise, labour power has always meant labour power armed with a certain degree of knowledge of science and technology.

We often say that man is the most active productive force.

“Man” here refers to people who possess a certain amount of scientific knowledge, experience in production and skill in the use of tools to create material wealth.

There were vast differences between the instruments of production man used, his mastery of scientific knowledge, and his production experience and skills in the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages and in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Today, the rapid progress of science and technology is speeding up the introduction of new production equipment and new technological processes.