(Please see Translator’s Preface to Part 1)
7. Hu Jiao published an op-ed in the seventh issue of Hongqi in 1958, entitled "Collectivisation and socialisation of domestic work", in which he publicised the main practices of the Xushui communist pilot in terms of family life: collectivisation of life and communal canteens, etc. These so-called communist pilot projects, such as the "canteens" that brought about fundamental changes in rural life in 1958, and had been promoted throughout the country had not gone through a formal central decision-making process, but had been directly promoted with the help of propaganda. They cannot be traced to any official document issued by the central government, nor can they be traced to any official central government discussion or decision-making process. This was done together with extremely tough organizational means to ensure that whoever dared to say nothing in support would be removed immediately. [7]
8. In the middle of the editorial "Welcoming the Climax of People's Communisation" in the seventh issue of Red Flag magazine in 1958, which was used to promote the transition from poverty pilot in Xushui, the main elements of the poverty transition pilot were outlined - "The working people in their own advance put forward such slogans full of revolutionary spirit as ‘Militarisation of organisation, combatisation of action, collectivisation of life’." These "three transformations" were experienced personally by many cadres during the Yan'an period, but they were only practised among the authorities, troops and schools during the Yan'an period, and were not extended to the rural peasants". They were definitely not proposed by the "working people", but were designed by officials of the communist pilot program and then propagated in the name of the masses.
[Laotian, note: Mao Zedong's Biography (1949-1976), edited by PANG Xianzhi and JIN Chong (Central Literature Publishing House, 2003), says, "On August 4 and 5, Mao Zedong inspected Xushui, Ding County and Anguo in Hebei and affirmed Xushui's practice of 'militarization of organization, combatisation of action and collectivisation of life’." (P828) The book does not provide a documentary source for this statement. The "militarisation of the organisation" was only implemented on 13 August (on 13 August, the county was militarised, with 93 regiments, 417 battalions and 1,409 companies. (County Journal P832), Mao Zedong had not yet "organised militarisation" and other practices when he visited Xushui, so there is no way to be sure. According to the documents in "Long Live Mao Zedong Thought" published during the Cultural Revolution, it was the "militia" that Mao Zedong affirmed when he spoke with the leaders of Xushui. In other words: before Liu Shaoqi sent Chen Zhengren with Kang Youwei's "Book of Great Unity" to Xushui on 6 June to organise the communist pilot, there was no mention or practice of "militarisation of organisation, combatisation of action and collectivisation of life", which were themselves the central elements of the communist pilot project. The 'three transformations' themselves were central to the communist experiment.
9. Organising visits by cadres from all over the country to the three pilot projects, through which the various practices of the "transition from poverty pilots", which had no successful experience yet, were promoted. The number of visitors to the Xushui pilot was as high as 320,000 from March to October 1958; the number of visitors to the Chayashan pilot was 180,000 from June to November; and the number of visitors to the Fanxian pilot, which Tan Zhenlin had prepared in advance to organise for more than 100,000 people to visit, was not fully honoured in the end, but was also as high as 30,000 in the month following October. [8]
10. The "Overlord Work Method" authorized by An Ziwen, through the organization of work site meetings, was the most important crutch for the rapid promotion of the transition from poverty pilot. In September 1958, Organization Minister An Ziwen held an on-site organization work meeting in Xushui. At the meeting, he declared that "if you don't believe it, come and see it; if you don’t understand it, come and debate it; and if you can’t do it, just change." The provincial committees used strong organisational disciplinary measures to ensure that many of the brutal practices of the pilot units, which had no successful experience yet, were promoted. What is the meaning of "debate"? Does it mean to solve the problem of ideas through debate? No, An Ziwen's "debate if you can't understand it" was a way to promote the "struggle meeting" in Xushui to overwhelm dissenting views. There is a commentary on An Ziwen's "debate": "The central point is to solve the problem of implementing the working methods of the mass line, not to bind people, beat them, scold them, argue with them, punish them with hard work, the battalion commander did this to the company commander, 'argue you a guy', there is more than one example of this in Xushui, tying up the company commander, beating the company commander, cursing the company commander, arguing with the company commander. So, everyone is afraid of debate, debate has become a struggle meeting, and debate has become a punishment." (Mao Zedong: Speech at the Zhengzhou Conference in Preparation for the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, Fifth Address (9 November 1958), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought) Moreover, this barbaric approach was not only carried out among the cadres, but also extended to the countryside and the peasants, with struggle sessions and tying up and beating peasants for saying different things. [9]
On the one hand, it maximised the power of the "Communist Wind Team", which supported the transition from poverty despite the opposition of the subordinates, and on the other hand, it built up huge resentment among most of the subordinates who were brutally punished. Liu Shaoqi, as the inventor of the transition from poverty scheme, together with active followers at the top and at the provincial level, formed a collection of members of the "Communist Wind Team", and identifying the position and performance of this Communist Wind Team in the history of the Communist Party is the key to understanding many of the major events in the history of the Party. According to Lao Tian's 2005 interview with Dang Xiangmin (a member of the Standing Committee of the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee before he retired), Zhao Ziyang, secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, actively promoted the transition from poverty and boastful style in 1958, and Dang Xiangmin, then secretary of the Jiangmen District Party Committee, was removed from his post by Zhao Ziyang on the spot when he raised a slight query to his face (this removal was against the organisational procedure, which normally requires a decision by the provincial party committee to be submitted for approval by the central government). There were two interrelated aspects of the "overlord work method": during the poverty transition period in 1958, anyone who disobeyed was punished or removed from office; later, when the transition from poverty had many problems, anyone who raised an opinion or told the truth was dealt with severely, and after the Lushan Conference in 1959, the opposition to right-wing opportunism and the rectification of the wind in 1960, the "democratic work method" was used. During the "remedial democratic revolution"[1] in the middle of the rectification process, the "communist wind team" at the top used this to crack down on cadres who criticised and told the truth. After the Lushan Conference, because Hunan's Zhou Hui and others owed a lot of money on the poor transition issue, many county party secretaries in the province were provoked into uttering discordant voices, and as a result, after the Lushan Conference, taking advantage of the anti-rightist opportunism and the rectification wind, more than 30 counties were designated as three types of "Guomindang counties", and nearly half of the county party secretaries had to be removed from their posts. At the 7,000 Cadre Congress the "communist wind team" was criticized by the local and county party secretaries before it was restrained, and it was only when Wang Renzhong went to Hunan to speak and explain the new policy that this cruel blow was ended. The poverty transition project, which was a "private" activity that did not go through the formal decision-making process, was promoted on a large scale as a matter of priority, through the brutal and overbearing style of the "Communist Wind Team". This brutal and overbearing style, which defied organizational procedures, stirred up widespread resentment against the "communist wind team" among the officials, and at the 7000 Cadre Congress in 1962 Mao Zedong supported the strong demand of the local and county party secretaries to hold "anger meetings". The most aggressive and brutal provincial party secretaries were subjected to the usual accusations of "landlord fighting", with Liu Shaoqi personally protecting Zeng Xisheng in Anhui and Deng Xiaoping protecting Li Jingquan in Sichuan.
End Notes:
[7] (1958) On 16 July, the county had built 1,777 collective canteens, and 285,000 people were eating in them, accounting for 80 per cent of the county's total population. [Xushui Xianzhi] (P832)
[8] Excerpts from the literature: After the establishment of the Chayashan People’s Commune in the summer of 1958, the vice-premier of the State Council, Tan Zhenlin, who was in charge of agriculture, asked the secretary in charge of agriculture in the province to visit. I was the secretary of the Shandong Provincial Party Committee and also visited." [Tan Qilong: Memories of Mao Zedong's research, in Mao Zedong and Shandong, edited by the Shandong Provincial Archives, Central Literature Press, 2003].
[Xiong Yingmin
and Yan Tianyou, 'An unforgettable meeting - Mao Zedong receives cadres from
the Suiping Satellite People's Commune', P198, in Mao Zedong in Henan, edited
by Lin Yinghai, Henan People's Publishing House, 1993].
In October, the Central Committee held a meeting in Xi'an on autumn agricultural cooperation among the nine provinces (cities) in northern China. The conference made Fan County a "red flag" for the whole country and proposed to organize a visit to Fan County to learn from it. After learning the news, the county committee of Fan County held an emergency meeting on October 24 to arrange for the visit. The first secretary of the county party committee said at the meeting: "The central government recently held a collaborative meeting in North China,......, during the meeting political commissar Tan (i.e. Tan Zhenlin) sked for materials from our county and declared that our county is a national red flag. Recently more than 100,000 people came here to visit, ... ... but our county is now a red flag. ... But the current work situation in our county makes visitors feel uncomfortable. In order to quickly change this situation, we decided to hold this emergency meeting.. This is a promotional meeting, a meeting that blows forward. If we mess up, we cannot be responsible to the central, provincial and local committees." The meeting laid out a dozen tasks to welcome the visitors, such as building archways, writing communist slogans, and unifying the message, especially the demand that "production and measures must be consistent.” At the meeting, the county party committee asked the secretaries of each management area to report their production, and those who failed to report 2,500 kilograms were criticised as "rightists" and branded as "accountants". After the meeting, a big debate on production was organised at all levels in the county, and those who told the truth and reported yields of less than 2,500 kg were considered "white flags". Under these circumstances, the county party committee issued a unified table of the county's grain yield of 2553.5 kilograms per mu, and also had the office notify all departments by telephone to report this yield wherever they were reporting. In less than a month, Fan County received more than 30,000 visitors from nearly 20 provinces and autonomous regions, including Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou and Fujian, and from counties all over the province. In order to meet the tour, they not only put up archways, wrote slogans, put up red and green and other forms beside the tour route, but also made false pretences, engaged in "sweet potato mountain", "peanut mountain", "high yield fields", warehouses, exhibition halls, and so on, creating a great deal of prestige.
[Zhang Linnan and Fan Chaojing, "Planning for the "Transition to Communism" in Fan County", in The Great Leap Forward Movement in Henan, edited by the Party History Research Office of the CPC Henan Provincial Committee, 2006, p. 379].
[9] In late September 1955, Comrade Peng Zhen, Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, visited Xushui, and in late September 1958, An Ziwen, Director of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee, held a national conference on organizational work in Xushui.
[Liu Yu: On the start and end of the transition to communism in Xushui, in Party History Research Office of the CPC Hebei Provincial Committee, Hebei People's Publishing House, 1994, p. 348. From April 1957 to September 1958, Liu Yu was the secretary of the Xushui County Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Someone in Hebei advised the provincial party committee: "In the past few years, there have been a lot of campaigns and cadres have been overwhelmed. Meetings often talk about dismissal and expulsion. If cadres do not enter the canteen, the bad guys will not be removed ...... ... Finding bad people in the cafeteria and digging out bureaucrats from cadres at all levels is really scary. "These opinions reflect the fact that the higher-level leaders are separated from the masses and their leadership style is arbitrary, and when they encounter problems, they always use the idea of suppressing counter-revolutionaries in the war years (catch the bad guys at every turn) to carry out construction. As a result, the relationship between the top and the bottom is tense and the work is serious. The frustration is not surprising.
Others have commented on the struggle against tendencies, saying, "In recent years, in the anti-tendency struggle, an excessive struggle has been practiced, destroying democratic life, and everyone is in danger, in fact, it is a cruel struggle and a merciless fight ...... There is practically no democratic life in the party, and in the struggle, as soon as it is underway, a clique is found. "
[Zhang Suhua, "The Change - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Congress" China Youth Press 2006, P176-177]
(At the Seven Thousand Cadre's Congress) Some people asked in a straightforward manner: If the main cause of mistakes is inexperience, why have so many problems occurred in these few years alone? Lies can never be said to be inexperienced. Why have the party’s fine traditions been lost in such a short time? Others said: "Inexperience is the right thing to say, and blaming everything on inexperience is not convincing. p66
Secondly, it is believed that the key reason for the mistakes made was on the issue of anti-tendency struggle, or that it was because the struggle within the Party had gone too far. Some people say: the lessons learnt over the past few years, just from the anti-right consideration of the issue, put some different opinions within the Party, also as a struggle on the issue of the two roads. The fundamental problem is here. Just saying inexperience is not possible. The party organizations at all levels cannot push the inexperience of those who say nothing onto those who say something. Others said that the excessive struggle within the party over a long period of time has frustrated some comrades and made some cadres outside the party wary. You can't really learn your lesson just by saying that your brain was hot. p66
Some people said, for example, that a campaign to pluck white flags out and plant red flags among cadres was launched, emphasising that "all white flags in leadership positions should be plucked out, no matter how much credit they have, how long their history is, how high their status is, as long as they are white flags, they should be plucked out", resulting in many cadres not daring to speak up for fear of being plucked out as white flags! p66
Over the past few years, the top could not listen to the different opinions of the bottom, and at every turn, it was up-graded as a question of ideological line and characterized as rightism; the problems that arose were always simply analysed and dealt with from the viewpoint of class struggle, making the political life within the Party abnormal and devoid of different voices. In other words, the main problem lies in the constant drawing of ideological lines, in the excesses of the struggle within the Party. The Central Committee's draft report is not clear and specific on this issue. p66-67
Thirdly, it is thought that the mistakes made are the result of subjectivism. They said: Our main problem in these years was not decentralism or high targets, but subjectivism as well as commandist methods of work and punishmentist means of organisation. High targets, commandism and punishmentism all arise from subjectivism. Obviously, this is the ideological root of the mistakes made. The Central Committee's draft report stresses that "we have not been in close contact with the actual situation and have not conducted serious investigations and studies", which in fact means that we have also made the mistake of subjectivism. p67
[Zhang Suhua, The
Changing of the Game: The End of the Seven Thousand Cadre's Conference, China Youth
Press, 2006].
The "white flag" against the so-called "right-leaning conservatives" became more and more aggressive, and Tan Zhenlin's "drumming up energy" became more and more "hot"....... he once demanded that localities, counties and communes should be "determined" to "pluck the white flag" and, on the premise of "dealing with it leniently", the first thing you need to do is to be very determined.
[Final Remarks at
the Symposium on Cooperation Ministers and Commune Cadres of Local and
Municipal Committees in Shandong, 2 October 1958, P321]
During his inspections in Jiangsu and other places, he expressed his appreciation for the erroneous claims made in some places that "communism is about to be entered", and even considered that "when the average annual income of community members reaches 100 yuan", it can be said to be "entering communism". The Communist Party is now "in communism".
[Tan Zhenlin's
Biography, Zhejiang People's Publishing, 1992, P322].
Some people in Hunan said: firstly, the peasants were treated with political coercion, not persuasion, depriving them of their right to freedom; secondly, the "communist wind" was blowing economically, depriving them of their ownership rights; thirdly, the peasants' autonomy was violated by blind command in production. In addition, there were the "four highs", which seriously harmed the peasants' motivation.
[Zhang Suhua, The
Changing of the Game: The End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China
Youth Press, 2006, p. 68].
Hubei Provincial Party Committee Secretary Zhang Tixue pointed out: Dead bureaucrats are at the central, provincial, and prefecture levels. Don't look for them from below. When the central government raised opposition to dead bureaucrats in 1961, cadres below the county level, including county party committee secretaries, were often reorganized. Comrades in Hubei expressed dissatisfaction with this. Some people spoke a little more clearly about such problems. They said: The root of many of the problems that have arisen in the past few years lies at the top, but successive political campaigns have often rectified the bottom but not the top, so many of the problems are repeatedly committed, and are getting worse and worse. Such a comment is obviously directed at the central government, hoping that the central government will take more responsibility.
The first secretary of the Central and South Bureau, Tao Zhu, made a few staggering remarks. He said: "The argument that the central and local governments are 30/70 in terms of responsibility is not convincing. He argued that the responsibility for the mistakes lay mainly at the top, and that the heads of the central departments should make a written review even if they did not do so at the congress, and that the review by the Central Secretariat was not profound.
[Zhang Suhua, The
Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand Cadre's
Congress, China Youth Press 2006, p71]
Some people even proposed to expel Zeng Xisheng from the Party and send him to reform through labour. This request was made in all localities and counties, and no one raised any objections. Liu Shaoqi knew about it and said, "Don't talk about this issue, Zeng Xisheng has done special merit to the Party and cannot be expelled from the Party casually, everyone can talk about it if they have opinions, but the treatment will be decided by the Central Committee. p238-239
[The Memoirs of
Qi Benyu (first volume) China Cultural Revolution History Press 2016]
On the afternoon of 3 February, Liu Shaoqi once again arrived at the Friendship Hotel in Beijing to attend a meeting of the Anhui group. After three and a half days of discussion, people had already made a lot of comments. At the same time, Liu Shaoqi also talked to a number of comrades from Anhui to understand the situation. At this meeting, Zeng Xisheng and Huang Yan, the governor of Anhui, made a review. In his review, Zeng Xisheng said: firstly, he did not study the instructions of the Central Committee and Chairman Mao seriously, did not seek to understand them well and did not carry them out effectively; secondly, he actually formed a blockade of information to the Central Committee; thirdly, he was arrogant and disorderly to some departments of the Central Committee and did not have good relations with friendly regions; fourthly, he was undemocratic to his peers and subordinates and did not treat people in an equal manner. All these caused serious losses to the Party, serious losses to the people, serious losses to the work, caused serious unnatural deaths and destroyed the productive forces in the countryside. He also said that the mistakes in rural work in Anhui in 1959 and 1960 were the main ones and the lessons were very painful. After hearing this, Liu Shaoqi asked the audience: "Comrade Zeng Xisheng and Comrade Huang Yan have made a self-criticism, are you satisfied? The crowd replied: No. P236-237
Liu Shaoqi also said that the Central Committee was responsible for these serious problems in Anhui, and not all of them could be put on the Provincial Party Committee and Comrade Zeng Xisheng. The Central Committee had to take a large part of the responsibility for the Provincial Party Committee and Comrade Zeng Xisheng, as many things were proposed by the Central Committee, such as the People's Commune, the Great Leap Forward, high targets, canteens and the supply system. At that time, other provinces were doing it, and Anhui could not do without it, namely the "three reforms", which Comrade Zeng Xisheng also reported to the Central Government and which the Central Government agreed to. However, it was not said that the experiment would be widely applied in Anhui, but only within the scope of one prefectural committee. Many cases such as Zhang Kaifan, Li Shinong, and Niu Shucai were also approved by the central government. Anything Anhui Province did wrong, the Anhui Provincial Party Committee should be held accountable, Comrade Zeng Xisheng should be held responsible, and the Central Committee should also be held responsible. p239
On 29 January, the Sichuan comrades were delighted when Mao Zedong announced the extension of the session, calling for democracy and "airing out" meetings to solve the problem of upper and lower levels keeping in touch. The next afternoon, when Mao warned some provincial party secretaries at the conference that if they did not allow people to speak, they would inevitably collapse, and would have to “farewell their concubines”, that they would have to touch the tiger's buttocks, Li Jingquan was more perceptive and immediately felt a great deal of pressure. After the meeting, he approached the governor of Sichuan, Li Dazhang, and said: "The Chairman's speech is mainly addressed to us in Sichuan”. This shows that Li Jingquan was very nervous! With so many problems in Sichuan, how could he not be nervous? P244
The approach Li
Jingquan took was to respond positively to Mao Zedong's call for a self-criticism
in front of the province's cadres in an effort to get over the obstacles. He
covered all the issues mentioned in the letter of censure in his self-criticism.
He could not shirk his responsibility for some things, such as not implementing
the Central Government's instructions to correct the "left", or not
actively implementing them, suppressing the opinions of the masses, etc. But
some things were not all his fault, such as transferring too much food, but he
could not blame it on the Central Government, so his self-critiscism was not
very profound, causing most of the comrades at the meeting to be even more
dissatisfied and to criticise him. Li Jingquan made his self-criticim again and
again, and when he got emotional, he even shed tears. The atmosphere was one of
denunciation, and people refused to let him off the hook. p245
What Deng Xiaoping did and said at such a time has not yet been clearly documented in writing. According to Dong Fu's book "The Chronicle of the Great Leap Forward in western Sichuan”, it was Deng Xiaoping who came to help Li Jingquan out. Deng Xiaoping said, "Li Jingquan should not do any more self-criticism, the provincial committee is responsible, the central government is also responsible, the blame cannot be put on a certain level." It is impossible to confirm exactly what Deng Xiaoping said, but from the result that Li Jingquan was not removed from his post nor disciplined, Deng Xiaoping may have said some of the above. So the later part of the meeting shifted from concentrating on criticising Li Jingquan to everyone doing self-criticism. p245
[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press, 2006].
Li Ruishan recalls, "Hunan was bustling in 1961, with Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De and Chairman Mao all coming to Hunan one after another." "After I came back (from followig Liu to the countryside task force), Hunan had 30 category three counties, all of which were Guomindang counties. ...... I was the organization minister of Hunan, and I was familiar with all the county party secretaries. Weren’t they all cadres of our party? How did they become the Guomindang? It was tough at the time. After Chairman Mao left, Wang Renchong and Wang Yanchun came to Hunan from Hubei to preside over a meeting of cadres at the provincial, prefectural and county levels and talked to us one by one. We said that there were not so many Guomindang, and that the high targets from the top must have led to falsehoods from the bottom, and we were not in favour of getting so many Guomindang counties. Later, Wang Renzhong made a very good report and solved the problem. Otherwise, there would have been problems with 30 counties and there would have been chaos everywhere."
[Zhang Suhua, The Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Congress, China Youth Press 2006, P317-318]
"When they have made mistakes they don’t talk about themselves, and they are afraid of the masses talking about them. The more frightened they are, the more haunted they become." "Now there are some comrades who are afraid of the masses initiating discussion and putting forward ideas which differ from those of the leaders and leading organizations. As soon as problems are discussed they suppress the activism of the masses and do not allow others to speak out. This attitude is extremely evil."
"Some provinces are taking more initiative and letting everyone talk. Those who started self-criticism earlier did so as early as 1959. The late-starters started self-criticism in 1961. Some provincial Party committees were compelled to carry out self-examinations, such as Henan, Gansu and Qhinghai. According to some reports there are other provinces which are only now starting on self-criticism."
"If there is no democracy we cannot possibly summarize experience correctly. If there is no democracy, if ideas are not coming from the masses, it is impossible to establish a good line, good general and specific policies and methods. Our leading organs merely play the role of a processing plant in the establishment of a good line and good general and specific policies and methods.”
"Without democracy, you have no understanding of what is happening down below; the situation will be unclear; you will be unable to collect sufficient opinions from all sides; there can be no communication between top and bottom; top-level organs of leadership will depend on one-sided and incorrect material to decide issues, thus you will find it difficult to avoid being subjectivist; it will be impossible to achieve unity of understanding and unity of action, and impossible to achieve true centralism. Is not the main item for discussion at this session of our conference opposition to dispersionism and the strengthening of centralized unification? If we fail to promote democracy in full measure, then will this centralism and this unification be true or false? Will it be real or empty? Will it be correct or incorrect? Of course it must be false, empty and incorrect."
"I am told that the situation exists within some provincial Party committees, district Party committees and county Party committees, whereby in all matters whatever the first secretary says goes. This is quite wrong. It is nonsense if whatever one person says goes.”
"All important matters must be discussed collectively, different opinions must be listened to seriously, and the complexities of the situation and partial opinions must be analysed. Account must be taken of various possibilities and estimates made of the various aspects of a situation: which are good, which bad, which easy, which difficult, which possible and which impossible. Every effort must be made to be both cautious and thorough. Otherwise you have one-man tyranny. Such first secretaries should be called tyrants and not ‘squad leaders’ of democratic centralism. Once upon a time there was a certain Hsiang Yü, who was called the Tyrant of Western Ch’u. He hated listening to opinions which differed from his. He had a man called Fan Tseng working for him who offered him advice, but Hsiang Y&u! uml; did not listen. There was another man called Liu Pang, who became Emperor Kao-tsu of Han, who was better at accepting ideas different from his own.”
"We now have some first secretaries who cannot even match Liu Pang of the feudal period, and are somewhat like Hsiang Yü. If these comrades don’t reform, they will lose their jobs. You all know the play called The Tyrant Bids His Lady Farewell; if these comrades don’t reform, the day will surely come when they too will be saying farewell to their ladies (laughter). Why do I say this so bluntly? It is because I intend to be mean and make some comrades feel sore so that they think over things properly. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if they couldn’t sleep for a night or two. If they were able to sleep, then I wouldn’t be pleased because it would mean that they have not yet felt sore.”
"There are some comrades who cannot bear to listen to ideas contrary to their own, and cannot bear to be criticized. This is very wrong. During this conference one province held a meeting which started off in a very lively manner, but as soon as the provincial Party secretary arrived a hush fell on the proceedings and nobody spoke.”
"If you have made mistakes, then you should carry out self-criticism, let others speak, let others criticize you. On 12 June last year, during the last day of the Peking Conference called by the Central Committee, I talked about my own shortcomings and mistakes. I said I wanted the comrades to convey what I said to their various provinces and districts. I found out later that many districts did not get my message, as if my mistakes could be hidden and ought to be hidden. Comrades, they mustn’t be hidden. Any mistakes that the Centre has made ought to be my direct responsibilty, and I also have an indirect share in the blame because I am the Chairman of the Central Committee. I don’t want other people to shirk their responsibility. There are some other comrades who also bear responsibility, but the person primarily responsible should be me. All you who are our provincial committee secretaries, district Party committee secretaries, county Party committee secretaries, down to ward Party and other secretaries, enterprise committee secretaries and commune Party committee secretaries, since you have taken on the job of first secretary you must bear the responsibility for mistakes and shortcomings in the work. Those of you who shirk responsibility or who are afraid of taking responsibility, who do not allow people to speak, who think you are tigers, and that nobody will dare to touch your arse, whoever has this attitude, ten out of ten of you will fail. People will talk anyway. You think that nobody will really dare to touch the arse of tigers like you? They damn well will!"
"Without a high degree of democracy, it is impossible to achieve a high degree of centralism, and without a high degree of centralism, it is impossible to establish a socialist economy. If our country does not establish a socialist economy, what kind of situation shall we be in? We shall become a country like Yugoslavia, which has actually become a bourgeois country; the dictatorship of the proletariat will be transformed into a bourgeois dictatorship, into a reactionary fascist type of dictatorship. This is a question which demands the utmost vigilance. I hope comrades will give a great deal of thought to it.”
"Comrade Liu Shao-ch’i said in his report that in the past four years our line was correct. and that our achievements were the main feature; we made some mistakes in our practical work and suffered some hardships, but we gained experience; therefore we are stronger than before, not weaker. This is how things actually are. During the period of the democratic revolution, it was only after experiencing first victory, then defeat, victory again and again defeat, and after comparing the two [victories and defeats], that I came to understand this objective world of China.”
“When I explain how our Chinese Communist Party during the period of democratic revolution, after much difficulty successfully came to understand the laws of the Chinese revolution, my aim in bringing up these historical facts is to help our comrades to appreciate one thing: that understanding the laws of socialist construction must pass through a process. It must take practice as its starting-point, passing from having no experience to having some experience; from having little experience to having more experience; from the construction of socialism, which is in the realm of necessity as yet not understood, to the gradual overcoming of our blindness and the understanding of objective laws, thereby attaining freedom, achieving a flying leap in our knowledge and reaching the realm of freedom.”
"The next fifty or hundred years from now will be an epic period of fundamental change in the social system of the world, an earth-shaking period, with which no past era can be compared. Living in such a period, we must be prepared to carry out great struggles, differing in many respects from the forms of struggle of previous periods. In order to carry out this task, we must do our very best to combine the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete reality of Chinese socialist construction and with the concrete reality of future world revolution and, through practice, gradually come to understand the objective laws of the struggle. We must be prepared to suffer many defeats and set-backs as a result of our blindness, thereby gaining experience and winning final victory. When we see things in this light, then there are many advantages in envisaging it as taking a long period; conversely, harm would result from envisaging a short period.”
"As regards our Party as a whole, our knowledge of socialist construction is extremely inadequate. We should from now on spend a period of time in summarizing our experiences and in hard study, and in the course of practice gradually deepen our understanding of it through clarifying its laws. We must put in a lot of hard work and make thorough investigations. We must go down to the countryside to squat on a selected spot. We must go and squat in the production brigades and production teams, and go to the factories and shops. As to making investigations and studies, we used to do them rather well but since we came into the cities, we have no longer taken them seriously. In 1961 we did advocate it once again, and now there have already been some changes. But amongst the leading cadres, especially the higher-level leading cadres, some districts, departments and enterprises still haven’t adopted this style.”
" Our understanding of the objective world must pass through a process. First of all, we do not understand, or do not completely understand it, but after repeated practice and after we have obtained results through practice, when we have won victories and also had tumbles and setbacks, we are able to compare our victories and defeats. Only then is there a possibility of developing to the point of achieving complete understanding or relatively complete understanding. By that time, we shall be exercising more initiative, we shall be more free and we shall become more intelligent. Freedom means the recognition of necessity and it means transforming the objective world. Only on the basis of recognizing necessity can man enjoy freedom of activity; this is the dialectical law of freedom and necessity. What we call necessity is an objectively existing law. Before we recognize it, our behaviour cannot be conscious; it has elements of blindness. At this time, we are stupid; during the last few years haven’t we made many stupid blunders?”
"Also, we mustn’t put hats on people
indiscriminately. Some of our comrades are in the habit of persecuting people
with hats. As soon as they open their mouths hats come flying out; they
frighten people so that they don’t dare speak. Of course, one cannot avoid hats
altogether. Are there not many hats in the report made by Comrade Liu
Shao-ch’i? Isn’t ‘dispersionism’ a hat? But we mustn’t put hats on people
without due consideration, so that every Tom, Dick and Harry is labelled with
‘dispersionism’, and everybody becomes labelled with ‘dispersionism’. It is
better that hats should be put on by people themselves and they should fit the
wearers, rather than that they should be put on them by others. If people put a
few hats on themselves and other people don’t agree that they should wear those
hats, then they should be removed. This will make for a very good democratic
atmosphere. We advocate not to grasp at others’ faults, not to put hats on
people, not to flourish the big stick. The aim is to make people unafraid in
their hearts and let them dare to express their opinions.”
[Mao Zedong: Speech at the Enlarged Central Working Conference (30 January 1962), in the 1968 Chinese edition of Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, vols. 61-68]
Xushui County corrected the mistakes of the "Great Leap Forward" and was influenced by the "Lushan Conference" of the Central Government in July 1959, which turned to the "anti-rightist" struggle. Leading cadres at all levels examined their attitude towards the "three red flags" (the General Line, the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune). The campaign lasted from the beginning of August 1959 to the end of March 1960. The campaign made it clear that the main content of the rectification was to "oppose right opportunism", to carry out the struggle between the two lines and two paths, and to create a situation in which "the leading cadres would hand over their hearts and minds to the Party and check them, and the masses would be mobilised to give their opinions to the cadres". First of all, we should carry out a loud and vigorous campaign to expose the right opportunist elements by sending out arrows at random. Secondly, the focus was directed to the core of leadership and leading cadres to engage in ideological confrontation and fight hand-to-hand battles on issues of policy and line. Once again, the general cadres rectified the situation and carried out criticism and self-criticism. Finally, the organs, factories, mines, enterprises and schools set off a high tide of production, work, business and study of Marxism-Leninism to prepare for the continuation of the Great Leap Forward in 1960. At the end of 1958, during the "Rectification", some cadres spoke about the problems of boastfulness and forced orders of the "Great Leap Forward" and were criticised and punished. Among them, one was classified as a right opportunist, four as serious right-wing ideologues, 34 as a general right-wing ideologues, three as a serious individualists and three as something else. Except for 20 people who were exempted from punishment, the rest were given expulsion from the Party, detention in the Party, dismissal, and serious warnings. In response, the screening office of the Xushui County Party Committee made a conclusion in May 1962 to revoke the original punishment and reinstate the reputation of those who had been disciplined. [Xushui County Records P531].
Without investigation and research, the situation was unclear, and there was little determination. In the midst of the opposition to the Communist wind in 1959, and the lack of clarity, there was a Lushan meeting to counter right-leaning opportunism. Originally, the Lushan meeting was to correct the "leftist" mistakes and take stock of the work, but it was interrupted by the right-leaning opportunist offensive, and it was necessary to oppose the right. After the conference, the communist wind was blowing again, and in the rush to make the transition, several big operations were carried out. The Communist wind rose again after the meeting, and in the rush to make the transition, several major projects were launched: a major social economy, a major water conservancy project, a major pig farming project, a major county and community enterprise, and a major earth railway project. At the same time, they want to do all these big things, such as raising pigs without giving anything, and this will blow up the communist wind. ...... The anti-communist wind at the Zhengzhou Conference only worked for six months. After the Lushan Conference, communist wind blew again in the winter. [Mao Zedong: Speech at the Ninth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee (18 January 1961), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought]
Many people believe that the mistakes made in the past few years should be divided into two periods, before and after the Lushan Conference against rightist tendencies. Before could be said to be due to inexperience in building, after could not be said to be due to inexperience, but mainly stemmed from the abnormal democratic life and mental state of the cadres within the Party. Before the Lushan Conference, the task was heavy and the pressure was great, but everyone worked with great vigour. But after the Lushan Conference, the situation changed dramatically, and the cadres were in a heavy mood, looking at the leaders with a clear conscience and telling lies, and blowing with the wind rather than acting according to Party policy. p83
[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press 2006]
..................................
[1] A campaign to rectify
problems that had arisen in the Great Leap Forward, it grew out of the belief
that the New Democratic Revolution had not been thoroughly implemented, that
landlords and rich peasants were actively opposing collectivisation and that
therefore, steps had to be taken to remedy the shortcomings of the New
Democratic Revolution. It ran through to about April 1961, when it developed
into the “Five-antis” campaign.
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