The Third Plenary Session of the Twelfth Central Committee of the CPC, held in Beijing on October 20, 1984, adopted the "Decision on Reform of the Economic Structure". In this document the Committee analysed both the positive and the negative experience in China's economic development, particularly the experience gained since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee (see note 3) in reforming the economic structure in urban and rural areas. In accordance with the principle of integrating the basic tenets of Marxism with Chinese practice, it stressed the need to continue the policies of invigorating the economy and opening China to the outside world and to speed up reform of the economic structure as a whole, but chiefly in the cities. The decision stated that the basic task of the reform was to completely change the old structure that had stunted the development of the productive forces and to establish a vigorous socialist structure of a specifically Chinese character. It rejected the traditional concept that a planned economy is in direct opposition to a commodity economy and declared that China would have a planned market economy based on public ownership. This decision was a programmatic document designed to serve as a guide to the overall reform of the economic structure.