改革开放和社会主义现代化建设新时期
1978年12月召开的中共十一届三中全会，开启了改革开放和社会主义现代化建设新时期，实现了新中国成立以来中国共产党历史上具有深远意义的伟大转折。
改革开放和社会主义现代化建设新时期，中国共产党作出把党和国家工作中心转移到经济建设上来、实行改革开放的历史性决策，大力推进实践基础上的理论创新、制度创新、文化创新以及其他各方面创新，实行社会主义市场经济体制，实现了从生产力相对落后的状况到经济总量跃居世界第二的历史性突破，实现了人民生活从温饱不足到总体小康、奔向全面小康的历史性跨越，为中国式现代化提供了充满新的活力的体制保证和快速发展的物质条件。
新中国成立特别是改革开放以来，中国用几十年时间走完西方发达国家几百年走过的工业化历程，创造了经济快速发展和社会长期稳定的奇迹，为中华民族伟大复兴开辟了广阔前景。
The new period of reform, opening up, and socialist modernization
The third plenary session of the 11th CPC Central Committee held in December 1978 saw the dawn of a new period in China: the period of reform, opening up, and socialist modernization. This was the most significant turning point in the history of the CPC since 1949.
This period began with the CPC's historic decision to shift the central work of the Party and the state to economic development and to launch reform and opening up. The Party promoted innovations grounded in practice across theoretical, institutional, cultural, and other domains. A socialist market economy was established, and China underwent a remarkable transformation from a country with relatively backward productive forces to the world's second largest economy and raised the living standards of its people from bare subsistence to moderate prosperity in general and then toward moderate prosperity in all respects. These provided institutional and material conditions for its rapid development toward modernization.
Since 1949, especially since the late 1970s, China has completed in a space of mere decades a process of industrialization that took the Western developed countries several centuries. This has resulted in two remarkable achievements – rapid economic development and long-term social stability – and boosted the prospects of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.