Lao Tian: Those things in 1958 - Chairman Mao also had piggy-backers (Part 3)

 (Please see Translator’s Preface to Part 1)

3. The Poverty Transition Pilot was never endorsed by the formal decision-making process

In 1958, at the Nanning Conference, he said, "For eight years I have struggled for such a method of work", which meant "faster and more economical" (Mao Zhuan, 769).

Later he also told people, "What 'three red flags', this is a theory of three first, we are Marxist philosophers of “one first”. There is only one red flag, the general line." [11] Mao did not agree with the juxtaposition of the "Great Leap Forward", whose meaning was not clear, with the General Line, nor was he willing to raise the People's Commune Movement to the level of the General Line. In retrospect, only the General Line of Socialist Construction was adopted in the formal decision-making process, while the Great Leap Forward was closer to what the media had concocted by the "sea-blowing work method".

13. At the Beidaihe Conference in August 1958, a resolution on the establishment of people's communes was adopted. This resolution, in retrospect, was forced out of the general situation when the poverty transition was already taking place. At the Chengdu conference in March, there was already a plan to require various localities to pilot large communes. and the resolution on the establishment of communes was issued before any further experience had been gained, obviously as a result of the situation: the reality was that, under the guidance of the Poverty Transition, various localities had set up people's communes and some were ahead of the others, and there was an urgent need to introduce policy measures to ease the situation. The “Resolution on the Question of People's Communes" begins by stating that "large, comprehensive people's communes have not only appeared, but have already developed generally in a number of places, in some cases very rapidly”. [12]

14、In October 1958 Mao Zedong, in addition to sending his own staff to Xushui to investigate, also specially dispatched Liu Zihou, secretary of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee, to organise an investigation in Xushui and asked for a quick return. After the relevant situation was summarised to Mao, Mao Zedong personally summoned Zhang Zhongwu, the secretary of the Xushui County Committee, to criticise him face to face in Tianjin. At a meeting in Zhengzhou in November 1958, Mao ordered that no further publicity be given to Xushui. In other words, the most influential of the three poor transition pilots, the Xushui communist pilot, was forcibly rejected by Mao himself, who intervened. During this period, Liu Shaoqi, who was the driving force behind the Xushui pilot, did nothing to review or actually correct the mistake, nor did An Ziwen and others do anything through the organisational system to correct or undo the mistake. [13]

15. The "poverty transition" promoted by Liu Shaoqi and others was a thoroughly "private exercise" and had no causal relationship with the "general line of socialist construction" as a formal decision; if  it was only limited to pilot projects in a few areas, such private work would not cause too much damage. The problem was that An Ziwen and many provincial party secretaries, without any successful experience, used the organisational tactics of "brutal struggle and merciless crackdown", together with propaganda and organising visits, to spread it throughout the country in a short period of time. As a result, the "five winds" of "communism, exaggeration, forced orders, blind command, and specialization of cadres" spread, and aggravated the subsequent losses. At the end of November 1958, the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee was held in Wuchang. At the meeting, Liu Shaoqi and Peng Zhen jointly persuaded Mao Zedong to try to include "communist transition" in the resolution of the plenary meeting, which was rejected by Mao Zedong. [14]

4.  The formation of the "communist wind team" and its political consequences, which were closely linked to the poverty transition

16. According to the literature currently available, the poverty transition pilot in 1958 was mainly the brainstorming decision of Liu Shaoqi alone, while others were mainly responsible for unprincipled speculation and following the trend. Among them, An Ziwen, the Minister of Organization, was the most personally responsible for promoting the "punishment" method against the organizational procedures; while in the process of propaganda, Deng Xiaoping was responsible for the leadership and Wu Lengxi for the direct responsibility. In the State Council it was Tan Zhenlin, the Vice-Premier in charge of agriculture, who followed the trend most vigorously, and he was more personally responsible for the Fan County pilot than Liu Shaoqi; he was also very active in the Chayashan pilot. Among the provincial party secretaries, those who followed the trend most closely were Peng Zhen in Beijing, Shu Tong and Tan Qilong in Shandong, Li Jingquan in Sichuan, Wu Zhipu in Henan, Zeng Xisheng in Anhui, Tao Zhu and Zhao Ziyang in Guangdong, etc. No provincial party secretary has been found yet who did not follow the trend. After the negative consequences of the poverty transition pilot, most of those responsible for the "poverty transition" refused to take part in the initiative to correct the situation, ignoring Mao's repeated criticism, forcing Mao to throw off the administrative chain and address the grassroots cadres in the form of an open letter. Moreover, this resistance to correction and criticism of the communist wind's brutality created a sectarian circle within the Party hierarchy - they shared a common interest in opposing criticism and accountability for the poverty transition, and the passionate criticism of Peng Dehuai at the Lushan Conference was a manifestation of this sectarian common interest.

Mao Zedong made specific leftist corrections to Xu Shui, but avoided directly naming Liu Shaoqi, a phenomenon worthy of consideration. Mao Zedong's expression of dissatisfaction with Liu Shaoqi in 1953 was taken advantage of by Gao Gang. It seems that Mao Zedong was not a real “turncoat”, and that people who could learn from their mistakes were maintained in power. Since the Communist Wind team occupied the most senior Party positions and were the majority of provincial party secretaries, they were indeed the centre of gravity of a realistic power structure. Mao Zedong, in his speech at the Lushan meeting on 23 July 1959, instead cleared the ground for Liu Shaoqi and others, saying that "[the visiting cadres from all over the country’s] reasoning was: ‘The people in Henan and Hubei have created the truth from experience, they have smashed Roosevelt’s “freedom” from want.’." (P237) (Editor's note: the author of p237 here does not indicate the specific document) The purpose of this statement was to remove from blame Liu Shaoqi and the most active Communist Wind proponents, as if the Communist Wind and the boastful wind were caused by unorganized cadres below and was nothing to do with Liu, the inventor, and the active followers at the provincial level.  Mao said that he would fight for "Party unity " under the banner of unity.

17. In retrospect, the "communist wind team’s" pursuit of Liu Shaoqi's poverty transition pilot's various barbaric practices was not a matter of inexperience or lack of awareness in any sense, but rather an act of outright opportunism, an opportunistic act that was carried out against Mao's series of corrective efforts at the top and through the criticism of the county party secretaries at the bottom through a brutal crackdown on the ground. In 1958 Mao's series of efforts to correct the "left" - to oppose the recklessness of the poverty transition team with the strength of one man - forced its own way forward. There were no other leftist or ultra-leftist manifestations apart from the communist wind and the various brutalities it promoted. Chairman Mao's correction of the "Left" was to correct that group of people. In the Party history in the post-Mao era, they fabricated a "leftist" fanaticism out of thin air, as if this non-existent thing was bad in everyone's mind, and even came from Mao Zedong. All of Chairman Mao's "left" correction seems to have been not against the poverty transition pilot and the various brutal measures of the "communist wind team", but against the “left” of thin air. The reason why the "left" correction was so ineffective and why the left continued to persist was that the Communist Wind Team refused to respond to corrective measures. In the spring of 1959 Mao wrote a rare series of five party newsletters, all of which were aimed at guiding specific corrective work and denying the nonsense of the communist wind team. These efforts to correct the "left" were mostly terminated by the officialdom after the Lushan Conference in favour of countering rightist opportunism - in effect, the criticism from lower levels. Mao later recalled that the "leftist" correction in 1959 had worked for only six months, and that after the Lushan Conference "leftist" opportunism had again prevailed. [15]

 

18. At the Second Zhengzhou Conference, Mao Zedong abhorred in the extreme, and made very harsh criticisms of, the communist wind teams’ leveling of the property of the common people and the grassroots production teams.

"Communism without food to eat, while every day engaging in communism, is actually 'robbery of property', communism for the rich. In the old society it was called theft, the Red Gang robbed, the Green Gang stole. the scientific term for robbing and stealing is called the unpaid appropriation of other people's labour.”

"There are rich people in the rich team. If they don't need money to eat, they will embezzle a part. This problem needs to be solved. One leveling, two adjustments, and three transfers[1] are fundamentally negating the law of value and equivalent exchange. It cannot be sustained."

“Taking the signboard of communism, it’s actually robbing property. If you are unwilling to exchange at different prices, it is said that there is no communist style. What is communism, is it not open robbery? There’s no money! What is it if not robbery? What is meant by "big" and "public"? One is big in the sense that there is a lot of land, and the other is public in the sense that the land reserved for oneself is public. What is public now? Pigs, ducks, chickens, turnips and cabbages have all been returned to the public now, so the transfer people are running away."

"The concealment of the private division of production, the flight of labour and the grinding of labour are the results of the wrong policy of all the gentlemen here. Tens of millions of production team cadres were so determined, and tens of thousands of community members supported their leaders, so that they immediately resolved to conceal their property and share it privately. Many of our policies have caused them to resolve to do so, and this is legal. Our leaders are not supported by the masses. This of course includes tables, chairs and benches, knives, pots, bowls and chopsticks. Last year industry was fighting the drought, there was the great steel fiasco, and there was no cost in offering labour and materials. In addition, they wanted to take manual laborers, the professional teams all want youth, and, as well, the cultural troupes are all made up of young people, the production team leaders are really in a lot of pain, there are so few people in the production teams. This situation will definitely collapse, a collapse is good, and if it collapses, build it again. It's nothing more than the world laughing. I speak on behalf of 10 million production brigade leaders and 500 million peasants. I insist on right-wing opportunism and will carry it through to the end. If you don't follow me in carrying it out, I will carry it out alone until I am expelled from the party., and I will also sue Marx.  Act in strict accordance with the law of value, and the exchange of equivalents."

"We are running communal industries, and if we go on like this, we will have to overthrow the peasants. Nor will any great, medium or small leap forward be possible, and production will come to a standstill."

"The accumulation of publicly run businesses increases year by year, and it will become a basic ownership system in the future, and section team ownership will always be there. As a process, we didn't analyse it in the past, and we didn't analyse it in Wuhan, we only analysed it in January and February. Thank you to hundreds of millions of farmers for concealing property and private distribution and for making me think about this problem. It is important to make the communes in general understand this issue, it is an objective law, and to violate it is to bump your head against the wall. If we cannot really convince them and remain so hesitant, the commune will collapse and people will run away." [16]

19, In addition to the leveling of the people's belongings, under the pressure of the exaggerated winds of comparisons between different places, the oversized tasks assigned by different places have also contributed to the increase in unnatural deaths during difficult times. In Anhui province, Zeng Xisheng was tempted to double or even multiply the earthwork tasks for water conservancy projects, and to label anyone who made pragmatic comments as "opportunistic". Mao Zedong criticized Zeng Xisheng to his face, saying that he was willing to be that "opportunist", and also clearly pointed out: "Now we have to reduce the task. For water resources, the whole country had to do 50 billion cubic meters of earth and rock last winter and this spring. This winter and next spring, the whole country will have to do 190 billion cubic meters of earth and rock, which is more than three times as much. There are also various other tasks, such as steel, copper, aluminium, coal, transport, processing industries, chemical industries, which require a lot of people. If not half, a third or a tenth, 50 million people will die."

As a result of the low standard of food rations during the hard times and the long hours of heavy physical labour caused by the overwhelming tasks, there were indeed unnatural deaths during the irrigation works in Anhui's Pishishang Irrigation District, and one section of the main canal of the Pishi River was particularly difficult, with many strong labourers dying on site, and the locals called that section of the canal the "Wangfu River"[2]. A similar situation occurred at the Yanbaodi Reservoir site in Hong'an County, Hubei, where 69 people died of illness, exhaustion and hunger during the difficult period. [17]

20. In June 1959 Mao Zedong took Wang Renzhong back to Shaoshan, and in the middle of his private conversation with Wang Renzhong, he truthfully defined the poverty transition as left-wing opportunism, which was of the same nature as Wang Ming's mistakes, and guided Wang Renzhong to correct the opportunist mistakes of his subordinates while taking the lead in admitting his own mistakes and taking responsibility for them - "When a decision is wrong, the leader must take responsibility and not one-sidedly blame the followers; the leader taking responsibility for the led is a very important condition for gaining the trust of the subordinates." (Quoted from Mao Zedong's Return to Hunan Chronicle, p.280)

In 1960 Wang Renzhong publicly apologised at a general meeting to Li Yanshou and others who had been branded right-wing opportunists (the latter was moved to tears, and this man defended Wang Renzhong to the death during the Cultural Revolution), and then began to lead cadres at all levels to correct mistakes in a serious and pragmatic manner, proposing to correct the "five winds" through a pilot project to heal the community in Haitongkou in Xinyang, to which Chairman Mao quickly added a long note. In his "Summing Up Ten Years” speech in 1960, Mao himself first reviewed the situation and took responsibility for it, putting into practice "the desire to criticise from the point of view of unity and to reach a new unity." In 1961 Mao Zedong advocated "the style of investigation and research" and "the year of seeking truth from facts", and in 1962 at the Seven Thousand Cadres Congress Mao Zedong criticised the "overlords" and emphasised democratic centralism.

 

In November 1960 Mao Zedong approved in his own handwriting the Hubei Provincial Party Committee's experience in correcting the "five winds" at the Mianyang site, stressing that they should " focus on the correction of the communist wind and drive forward the correction of the remaining four winds."

21. In Mao's 1960 speech, "Summing Up Ten Years", the problems brought about by the poverty transition were characterised as inexperience, a statement made in order to preserve the reality of the pattern of power distribution and to avoid making damaging changes. Mao's 1959 call for reading (including reading Stalin's “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”) as a way of trying to clear up the various assumptions of senior officials on the transition issue also did not work; Mao once said in frustration: "Trying to apply Stalin, I continue to do persuasive work with some comrades. I think I am right. If the opposite is correct, I will obey. One is the question of not drawing the line between socialism and communism, and the other is the question of not confusing the two systems of ownership, i.e., pubic ownership and collective ownership." [18]

Mao Zedong speaking at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo in June 1960, 'Summing Up Ten Years'. (Source: China.com)

22. In Lin Biao's speech at the 7,000 cadre conference, he stressed, firstly, that Chairman Mao's understanding was always the most realistic, and that the fact that Liu Shaoqi and other "Communist Wind Teams" were engaged in the reckless act of poverty transition and did not listen to Chairman Mao's corrective measures was to apply pressure on the "Communist Wind Teams". This was partly to maintain the dominant power distribution pattern of Liu and Deng and the "communist team" and to absolve them of responsibility, which was the overall situation of the communist regime at that time. This contrasts with the reckless remarks of Peng Dehuai's 1959 Lushan meeting, which simply blamed the "communist wind team" and was interpreted as a threat to the established power structure. [19] [Lao Tian Note 1: After the whole team had failed the exam, the powerful onlooker next to him, General Peng, said you have completely failed the exam, and General Lin said that if you failed the exam, you paid the tuition, and you can do better next time.]

In 1966 Mao Zedong said.

"Deng Xiaoping is deaf and sits far away from me whenever there is a meeting. Since 1959, he has not reported to me for six years, and he grabbed Peng Zhen for the work of the Secretariat." [20]

"Deng Xiaoping never sought me out for anything from 1959 to the present. I was dissatisfied with the August Lushan meeting in 1959. They had the final say, so I couldn't help it." [20]

"The ministries and commissions of finance and economics never make reports, do not ask for instructions beforehand, do not report afterwards, are independent kingdoms, the whole year they force signatures, and do not contact the Central Committee from above or the masses from below. Thank God, a report came recently from the Organization Department." [21]

"We know all about foreign affairs, even what Kennedy is up to, but the various ministries in Beijing, who knows what they are doing? I don't know what is going on in several major economic sectors. How can we come up with ideas if we don't know? The provinces are said to have this problem too." [21]

24. In retrospect today, there was nothing wrong with the criticism of Peng Dehuai at the Lushan meeting, but the consequence was a lack of mutual trust - "discord between the generals" - and the consequent potential threat to the better pattern of power distribution chosen after the founding of the state. Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, etc., and the provincial party secretaries dominated the realpolitiks on the condition that the arrogant generals of the military meritocracy of the revolutionary era were marginalised. Mao Zedong said to Peng Dehuai in person, "Make a contract that you promise not to rebel after my death", suggesting that Peng should pay attention to building mutual trust with Liu and Deng and the other leadership groups.  You can go along with whatever you need to, but mere softness was still far from the requirement of building mutual trust. On the other hand, Liu Shaoqi's reasonable choice was to be self-critical and to take the initiative to seek unity with Peng Dehuai, but in the middle of Liu Shaoqi's speech he said "it is better for me to usurp the Party than for you to usurp the Party" (Li Rui, Lushan Conference), expressing a never-ending compromise of either/or, thus forcing Mao Zedong to choose to support Liu and Deng's group and to maintain the "marginalisation of the arrogant and powerful" pattern of power distribution established after the founding of the state. After Lin Biao's group came to power during the Cultural Revolution, the pattern of "marginalisation of the arrogant and the tough" was ended, with serious consequences - a truly fascist censorship of Party cadres and many mass organisations led to unjust imprisonment everywhere, which in turn proved that maintaining the power pattern of the early years of the state had its own internal rationale. However, the Poverty Transition Pilot in 1958 and its subsequent refusal to correct deviations, especially in 1962 when Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yun, without going through the formal decision-making process, once again "slapped their heads" and rejected the two general lines in one go on the basis of the "black wind" propaganda, this time completely exhausting the last vestiges of rationality that had supported their continuation in power. Thus, when Mao Zedong met Snow later, he said: "Since 1962, we have seen the problems appear." In early March 1967 Zhang Shizhao wrote to Mao, stressing that Liu Shaoqi's personal retention was a matter of "the strength of the core of the Communist Party leadership", which was a very insightful view. But if we look at it historically, from the poverty transition in 1958 to the Lushan Conference in 1959 it had already depleted most of the rationality of the support, and after the rash overturning of the two general lines after the Xilu Conference in 1962 it was, I should say, wrong to maintain the status quo. In this sense, Zhang Shizhao was a bit "late in seeing things". Of course, had it not been for historical problems, Liu Shaoqi would have been elected to the Central Committee in the same way as Wang Ming and Li Lisan, but the old pattern of superior power allocation no longer existed - the general situation had been gradually disintegrating since 1958 - and there was no way to repair or maintain it now.

Mao Zedong's Biography (1949-1976), edited by PANG Xianzhi and JIN Chonghe, Central Literature Publishing House, 2003, p. 1535 refers to the note written to Mao Zedong by his old friend Zhang Shizhao. 

5. Party history: deliberately confusing the general line decision with the opportunism of the "poverty transition”

25. Liu Shaoqi made no mention of the "poverty transition pilot" and the problems arising from its brutal extension, but consistently confused this "private work" with the official decision to implement the "three red flags" decision[3]. (Liu Shaoqi, speaking at a meeting of the Central Working Conference of the CPC Central Committee in South and North China on 19 March 1961: "Since 1958, in the course of implementing the Three Red Flags, many mistakes, large and small, have been made and considerable losses have been suffered. Some of these losses were inevitable and some could have been avoided. If good investigation and research had been done, with a good working style and right working methods, the losses might have been reduced and time could have been shortened, and we would not have been trapped in such a passive situation as we are now." "There are some policies of the Central Government which lack good investigation and research before they are decided, there is not enough to base a decision upon, and after they are decided, they are not checked for implementation, and problems are not found and corrected in time." On July 19, he inspected Harbin to hear Ouyang Qin, secretary of the CPC Heilongjiang Provincial Committee, and Li Fanwu report on industrial and agricultural production and forestry. When talking about the three red flags, he said: It is understandable that some of your third-tier cadres doubt the three red flags, because objectively there are some phenomena. The "Great Leap Forward" has now retreated somewhat, and the superiority of the commune is less obvious and diminished, so the question arises as to whether the three red flags are correct. Don’t blow down the senior level communes, and don’t touch them when there is no better way, they should be preserved. When talking about the issue of investigation and research, he said, "When you conduct an investigation, you should not only investigate the problem, but also propose solutions to the problem, and these solutions must be agreed upon locally. Investigation is not only to understand the world, but also to transform the world. Focus on a typical investigation. It’s not enough to see it once. You have to wait two or three years and see it again. [22]

26、On the eve of the Seven Thousand Cadre Conference in 1962, Deng Xiaoping and others reviewed the central documents. In his speech on 21 December 1961 Deng Xiaoping referred to two books of materials compiled and selected by the Central Secretariat: "One was a speech by Chairman Mao, which turned out to be free of errors; the other was a specific instruction and approval document with many faults, many of which were found here. " "These are all run by the Central Registry. The truth is the central responsibility first. Where did the fault lie in what happened in the past few years? Is it out of the wrong guiding ideology of the three red flags, or is it out of specific measures and specific policies? The result of our study, the conclusion, is not the fault of the guiding ideology, so it is not the problem of the general line of the three red flags, but the problem of our specific policies, the problem of specific measures, the problem is in the implementation of the general line." At the same time, Peng Zhen was ordered by Deng Xiaoping to organise a separate team to secretly review the central government documents at the Beijing Zoo's Changguan Building in an attempt to find Mao's statements advocating poverty transition, but failed to do so, finding only Tan Zhenlin's and other people's statements fuelling the boastful wind. Tan had criticised Beijing's backward work as "the bottom of the pot", and was resented by these people.In May 1966, the "Changguanlou Black Society" was uncovered by cadres of the Beijing Municipal Committee and was heavily criticised by the masses, saying that Peng Zhen and others were preparing a Khrushchev-style coup at the 7,000 Cadres Congress and that the black society was designed to collect bombs for the attack. Although Peng Zhen and others did not find anything on Mao Zedong, at the Seven Thousand Cadres Congress Peng Zhen made a statement that put the blame on Mao Zedong, which led to an on-the-spot rebuttal from Premier Zhou and Chen Boda. There was always an undercurrent in the official circles that tried to put the blame on Mao for official opportunism. In 1971, in Mao's speech during his southern tour, he also mentioned that there were still people in the official circles who wanted to put the blame on him for the "three-year disaster", and in the post-Mao era the government and academia joined forces to turn this goal into reality. [23]

 

The Seven Thousand Cadre's Congress in 1962 (Source: China.com)

27. Liu Shaoqi and others talked about "opposing decentralism" in the report of the Seven Thousand Cadre's Congress, but Mao Zedong refused to endorse the report and demanded that it be sent directly to the Congress for discussion – in the report, the so-called "decentralism" was understood as the source of the "five winds". It seemed that by strengthening centralised power there would be no room for local cadres to make mistakes, and it implicitly proposed to put an end to the decentralisation of power to localities and enterprises in 1958. This was rejected by the provincial party secretaries, and the majority of the Congress rejected the agenda. Some people in Hubei province asked to their faces whether this was a return to the pre-1957 period. However, at the Xilou Conference, which followed the Seven Thousand Cadre’s Congress, Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun and others still used "opposition to decentralism" as a prescription and began to systematically abolish the general line of socialist construction that had gone through the formal decision-making process - especially, the decentralisation of power to the local level. Giving full play to the enthusiasm of the central and local governments, the degree of centralization since then had exceeded that before the decentralization in 1958.  This was the same situation that Mao had criticised in 1956 when he criticised the ‘oppose rash advances’ process: the making of individual decisions to negate decisions that had been made through a collective decision-making process. At the Beidaihe Conference, Mao Zedong criticised the "dark wind" and "single-handedness", targeting Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun and others for their personal opposition to the two general lines of collective decision-making. Behind Liu Shaoqi's rejection of the General Line, he did not admit that his own private work of "poverty transition" had led to the "five winds" and caused huge losses, but rather put the problems caused by the poverty transition under the account of the General Line, on the basis of which he overturned the official decision. Mao Zedong later criticised Liu Shaoqi and Chen Yun at least twice, in 1966 and 1970, for wilfully overturning the General Line in 1962 and again over-centralising power in the centre. [24]

28. Deng Xiaoping said in 1985 that "we revolutionaries" were impatient and "wanted to enter communism earlier" based on our communist beliefs, while at the same time saying that it was leftist thinking that led to the losses of the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune Movement. [25]

29. Before his death Mao Zedong was reluctant to criticise the different views of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping because if there is no acknowledgement of the mistake then there is of course no need to actively correct it. “There is still some difference between Deng and Liu and Lin, Deng is willing to make self-criticism, while Liu and Lin are not willing at all. If you want to help him, criticising his mistakes is to help, it is not good to submit to him. Criticism is necessary, but he should not be beaten to death with a stick. For those who have made shortcomings and mistakes, our Party has always had a policy of learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones, and curing the sickness to save the patient." [26]

30. Party history is written in such a way that the manifestations of the "five winds" arising from the poverty transition are described as having been brought about by the formal decision on the general line of socialist construction, in line with the need to whitewash the "communist wind team". Authoritative party history writings say that the evaluation of the General Line of Socialist Construction, the "Great Leap Forward" movement and the rural people's commune movement in the Resolution on Certain Historical Problems of the Party since the Founding of the People's Republic, adopted at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party in June 1981, is scientific and objective and fair. The Resolution states: " In 1958, the Second Plenum of the Eighth National Congress of the Party adopted the general line for socialist construction. The line and its fundamental aspects were correct in that it reflected the masses’ pressing demand for a change in the economic and cultural backwardness of our country. Its shortcoming was that it overlooked objective economic laws. Both before and after the plenum, all comrades in the Party and people of all nationalities displayed high enthusiasm and initiative for socialism and achieved certain results in production and construction. However, “Left” errors, characterized by excessive targets, the issuing of arbitrary directions, boastfulness and the stirring up of a “communist wind", spread unchecked throughout the country. This was due to our lack of experience in socialist construction and inadequate understanding of the laws of economic development and of the basic economic conditions in China. More important, it was due to the fact that Comrade Mao Zedong and many leading comrades, both at the centre and in the localities, had become smug about their successes, were impatient for quick results and overestimated the role of man’s subjective will and efforts. After the general line was formulated, the Great Leap Forward and the movement for rural people’s communes were initiated without careful investigation and study and without prior experimentation.." [27]

First draft, March 31, 2018

(Editor's note: This article was revised on April 3)

Lao Tian note: In January 1958, the Nanning Conference issued 60 working methods. The last one was that Mao no longer served as the chairman of the country and gave a briefing in the party. Liu's recklessness in the pilot project is not a big problem. The activists below are too ruthless and cause problems. This messy handling is a test of people, and there are few things that are affordable. All speculation rushed forward, taking responsibility or taking responsibility for everything. Liu inadvertently encountered a problem, led the entire team and failed the exam, and then said that the teacher was not good. In 1959, Grandpa Mao fell into a pessimistic state, and his poetry was in a state of breakthrough.

 Shaoshan Revisited (June 1959)

Like a dim dream recalled, I curse the long-fled past —

My native soil two and thirty years gone by.

The red flag roused the serf, halberd in hand,

While the despot's black talons held his whip aloft.

 

Bitter sacrifice strengthens bold resolve

Which dares to make sun and moon shine in new skies.

Happy, I see wave upon wave of paddy and beans,

And all around heroes home-bound in the evening mist.

Ascent of Lushan (July 1 1959)

Perching as after flight, the mountain towers over the Yangtze;

I have overleapt four hundred twists to its green crest.

Cold-eyed I survey the world beyond seas;

A hot wind spatters raindrops on the sky-brooded waters.

 

Clouds cluster over the nine streams, the yellow crane floating,

And billows roll on to the eastern coast, white foam flying.

Who knows whither Prefect Tao Yuanming is gone

Now that he can till fields in the Land of Peach Blooming?

 

Changing Lu Xun's poem (December 1959)

I was once frightened by the autumn's solemnity,

But I have even sent the spring's warmth to my tongue.

The sea of dust is pale and sunken with a hundred feelings;

The golden breeze is sluggish and high officials are walking.

 

I was happy to climb on the wings of the sky,

But I was bitter to fall on the clouds of the sky.

I was frightened to hear myself bragging about my holy achievements,

And I rose to see the enemy's flames going up.

 

………………….

End Notes

[11] Wang Li's Reflections, 1st edition, Hong Kong, North Star Press, 2000, p. 302

[12] Someone in Northwest China suggested that Chairman Mao had said that communes were to be set up on a trial basis in 1958, and then the lower part of the country did it all at once. It was only at the Zhengzhou Conference that the three-tier ownership system of communes was proposed, and it was not so proposed at the 1958 Beidaihe Conference, so where does the responsibility lie?

The "three red flags" were a very important, sensitive and complex issue. At the time of the 1959 Lushan Conference, Peng Dehuai was criticised to a large extent for his opposition to the "three red flags", namely, "opposing the General Line, the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune". Before the Lushan Conference, the "General Line", the "Great Leap Forward" and the "People's Commune" did not stand side by side, and the "General Line" was considered to be the guideline that governed everything, and the "Great Leap Forward" and the "People's Commune" were the products of the "General Line". Because of the criticism of Peng Dehuai, the status of these three changed and were juxtaposed together as the glorious banner of the socialist construction cause, which began to be treed in a big way. Soon they became known as the "Three Long Lives". By the beginning of 1960, the editorial of the People's Daily even hailed this as the "Three Great Treasures" that Mao Zedong had found during the period of socialist construction, on a par with the "Three Great Treasures" of the democratic revolution, and as the guiding ideology for socialist construction in China. From 1961 onwards, it was probably felt that the "Three Great Treasures" were too far ahead of the actual situation, and the term was changed to "Three Red Flags". p72-73

Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game: The End of the Seven Thousand People's Congress, China Youth Press, 2006

First, people's communes are an inevitable trend in the development of the situation. Large-scale comprehensive people's communes have not only emerged, but have also been developed in several places, some of them very rapidly, and it is likely that there will soon be a nationwide climax in the development of people's communes, with an unstoppable trend. p446

The development of rural industry also requires the transfer of some of the labour force from the agricultural production front, and the demand for the mechanisation and electrification of China's countryside is becoming more and more urgent; in the struggle for the basic construction of farmland and for a good harvest, the great collaboration of community, township and county boundaries is being broken down, and the organisation is being militarised, action is being combatised, and the collectivisation of life is being turned into a mass movement. The communal canteens, kindergartens, nurseries, sewing groups, hairdressers, public baths, happy houses[4], agricultural high schools, red colleges, and so on, led the peasants to a happier collective life, further cultivating and tempering the peasant masses' collectivist ideology. All this shows that the single agricultural production co-operative of a few dozen or a few hundred families cannot meet the requirements of the development of the situation. In the present situation, the establishment of a people's commune with comprehensive development of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery, and a combination of agriculture, commerce, academia and soldiers, is the basic policy that must be adopted to guide the peasants to speed up the construction of socialism and to make a gradual transition to communism ahead of schedule. p446-447

In terms of steps, it is of course better to merge large cooperatives and turn them into communes in one go, but if it is not possible to do so in one go, it is also possible to go in two steps. All counties should first carry out pilot projects and then gradually extend them. p448

It is important that the merger of the cooperatives and the transformation into communes be closely integrated with current production, not only so that it does not affect current production, but also so that the movement becomes a huge force for a greater leap forward in production. To this end, the method of "moving up and not moving down" can be adopted at the early stage of the merger. First of all, the original small cooperatives jointly elect the management committee of the large cooperative, set up a framework, plan and deploy the work in a unified way, the original small cooperatives into farming area or production teams, the original arrangement of production organisation and management system remains unchanged for the time being, business as usual. Everything that should be merged and adjusted and the specific problems that should be solved in the merger should be gradually cleared up and solved later, so as to ensure that production would not be affected. p448

The large communes were uniformly named people's communes and did not need to be made into state farms, which would not be good enough to include all aspects of industry, agriculture, commerce, learning and the military. p449

After the people's communes have been established, it is better not to rush to change the collective ownership system to a system of ownership by the whole people, but to adopt the collective ownership system for the time being, so as to avoid unnecessary troubles in the process of changing the ownership system. In fact, the collective ownership of the people's communes already contains some elements of a system of ownership by the whole people. This a system of ownership by the whole people will continue to grow as it develops, gradually replacing collective ownership. The transition from collective ownership to a system of ownership by the whole people is a process which in some places may be quicker, being completed in three or four years, and in others, slower, taking five or six years or longer, when the transition to a system of ownership by the whole people, as in the case of state-run industry, is still socialist in nature, with each man doing his best and being paid according to his work. Then, after many more years, the social product is greatly enriched, the communist ideological consciousness and moral quality of the whole people are greatly raised, education for all is universal and improved, and the differences between workers and peasants, between urban and rural areas, between mental and manual labour, which had to be preserved during the socialist period, all gradually disappear. The remnants of bourgeois right, which reflected these differences, also gradually disappears, and the state functions only to counter the aggression of external enemies and was no longer useful internally, at which point our society would enter the era of communism in which each man would do what he could and take what he needed. p449-450

Once the people's communes are established, there is no need to rush to change the old system of distribution in order to avoid adverse effects on production. p450

VI. Our task at this stage is to build socialism. The establishment of people's communes is first and foremost to speed up the building of socialism, and the building of socialism is to actively prepare for the transition to communism. It seems that the realisation of communism in our country is no longer a matter of the distant future, and we should actively use the people's commune to work out a concrete way of transition to communism.

[Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Establishment of People's Communes in the Countryside (29 August 1958), published in the People's Daily on 10 September 1958, in Selected Important Documents since the Founding of the People's Republic (Vol. 11), Beijing: Central Documents Publishing House, 1994].

On 21 October 1958, the Hebei Provincial Party Committee reported to Chairman Mao on some major issues. Chairman Mao gave important instructions on some of the problems in Xushui County, pointing out clearly that there should be no egalitarianism in distribution, that there should be no falsehoods or pressures on the style of work, that the remnants of feudalism should be removed, and that the five lines of yin and yang should also be discussed in relation to family issues.P349

On 29 October 1958, the Secretariat of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee met to discuss Xushui's work and Chairman Mao's instructions, chaired by Lin Tie and attended by Yang Peisheng, Commissioner of the Baoding Executive Office.

On 27 November 1958, the CPC Hebei Provincial Committee and the Baoding Local Committee sent a working group led by Wang Ying, Deputy Minister of the Rural Work Department of the Provincial Committee, and Yang Peisheng, Commissioner of the Baoding Special Administrative Region, to help Xushui County solve the problems of the communist pilot project and the universal supply system, as well as the problems of policy and leadership style. Comrade Yang Peisheng was instructed to convey the instructions of the Provincial Party Committee and the opinions of the local Party Committee to Zhang Guozhong, the first secretary of the Xushui County Party Committee. It was not conveyed to the other secretaries and members of the Xushui County Committee. p349-350

From 27 November to 25 December 1958, Zhang Guozhong, on behalf of the county committee, examined the problems of the communist pilot project and the universal supply system, as well as the policies and leadership style. Several meetings of the county committee were held to examine and sum up the lessons learned. p350

[Liu Yu: On the beginning 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 edition, Hebei Party History Materials, Series 15 - Xushui Communist Pilot Album. Xushui County Party Committee, Secretary of the Secretariat].

In November of that year, Xushui County began to correct the mistakes of the "Great Leap Forward". From 27 November to 25 December, the county committee held five meetings of the secretary's office, three standing committees and one enlarged meeting of the county committee. The main problems examined were: confusion between collective ownership and ownership by the whole people, the belief that the realisation of the people's commune was the beginning of ownership by the whole people, the declaration of commune ownership of the houses and trees of commune members, and the declaration of commune ownership of the means of subsistence in some places; the creation of a county and commune level of finance, which was too rigid and affected the enthusiasm of communes and production teams; the abolition of fixed interest for industrialists and businessmen, contrary to the Party's policy. Among the cadres of counties, communes and communes, the bad style of commandism was fostered and many problems of tying up, beating, scolding and punishing occurred; the two types of conflicts of different nature were confused and the scope of centralised re-education through labour was extended, sending to re-education through labour even some members of communes who were not active in production or disobedient to the leadership; several important issues were dealt with without the collective study of the county committee, as soon as a few people met, contrary to the principle of collective leadership. p530

On 31 December 1958, the county committee's report on the examination of shortcomings and mistakes made in its work to the provincial and prefectural committees said: "From November onwards, in accordance with the instructions of the provincial and prefectural committees and the spirit of the resolution of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee on certain problems of the people's communes, we corrected the deviations and changed the system of one county and one commune into a three-tier system of real power. The management of finance and trade was changed to a three-tier system of real power, and the management of finance and trade was changed to a system of 'two releases, three unifications and one package'.[5] The national supply system was changed to a distribution system combining the wage system and the supply system. The salary system was restored for cadres who were supplied by the state. The treatment of housing was declared to remain the property of the original owners, and those who were now occupying canteens were appropriately allocated a portion back to the original owners; items that could not be re-allocated were temporarily borrowed through the consent of the original owners. For those who were sentenced to re-education through labour, we organised a review and released those who should not have been sentenced to re-education through labour to go home through aftercare work. In order to strengthen collective leadership, improve the style of work and give full play to the role of grass-roots organizations, we made three decisions at an enlarged meeting of the county committee, pointing out the direction of our efforts, and began to implement them."

[Xushui County Journal P530-531].

In August 1958, Mao Zedong said in his speech at the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in Beidaihe: "Xushui County in Hebei Province is engaged in militarization, combat and discipline. These three slogans can be mentioned or not.  The form of organization does not necessarily involve regiments, battalions, companies, platoons and squads, but the setting up of brigades, squadrons and teams is also possible. In fact, it is a question of labour organisation and democratisation. The imperialists are creating rumours about this, but we are not afraid of them. Forced orders are of course bad, but a bit of coercion in the work is also needed. This is discipline. All regions do not necessarily have to follow Xushui's approach (meaning militarisation, combatism, discipline).  p73

When Zhang Guozhong talked about the commune having built happy homes and kindergartens, with the elderly and children living together separately, Mao said: happy home are for the elderly, but the happy homes are not happy. Adults cannot live without the children.  I will not go to such a happy home! He also said to Zhang Guozhong, "Ask your lover if she is willing to be separated from her children for a long time”.

On October 18, 1958, Mao Zedong received a report on what the staff of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee had seen and heard in Xushui, and on October 21, he listened to Liu Zihou's investigation report and gave instructions on the work in Xushui. On 29 October, the provincial party committee held a meeting of the secretariat and invited Yang Peisheng, the secretary of the Baoding local party committee and a commissioner, to attend and discuss Mao Zedong's instructions for Xushui. p75

On 31 October 1958, Mao Zedong took a special train from Beijing to Zhengzhou, and when he passed through Baoding, he called the provincial, prefectural and municipal officials to report on board. The report was attended by the first secretary of the provincial party committee, Lin Tie; the second secretary of the provincial party committee, Liu Zihou; the first secretary of the Baoding local party committee, Li Yuenong; the second secretary, Chen Zirui; the secretaries of the Baoding local party committee, Li Shoushan, Yang Peisheng, Li Peixian and Yan Jingbo; the political commissar of a military unit in the garrison, Pei Zhouyu; the deputy military commander, Zeng Wei; the head of the provincial steel production inspection team, Li Xuzhe; the secretary of the Baoding municipal party committee, Yang Zhichang; and the secretary-general of the Baoding local party committee, Zhang Rong. At the end of the report, Zhang Rong gave Mao Zedong a copy of the Baoding Dongfeng Daily on that day. Mao Zedong said: "Thank you! After listening to the report on the steel-making and agricultural production, Mao Zedong pointed out that the masses could not stand the fierce battles day and night; they should be guaranteed 8 hours of rest every day. Lin Tie and Liu Zihou also reported to Mao Zedong about the forced orders in Xushui and other problems, and Zhang Guozhong did not listen to the criticisms of the provincial and local committees. Thus, at the first Zhengzhou meeting on 9 November, Mao Zedong criticised Xushui as an "independent kingdom" that was "rushing forward". He said that Xushui was inferior to Anguo and that in future he should promote Anguo and not Xushui.

In the afternoon of 10 November, Mao Zedong again criticised Xushui when he spoke in person at the Zhengzhou meeting about Stalin's "Problems of the Soviet Socialist Economy". At 10 p.m. that evening, he sent a report from the Secretariat of the Central Office dated 18 October on what he had seen and heard during the report on the labour situation in Xushui County to Lin Tie, the first secretary of the Hebei Provincial Party Committee, and Zhang Chengxian, secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, who had attended the meeting in Zhengzhou. “This is about the situation in Xushui. It has both strengths and weaknesses. Please look into it. This kind of situation may be found in more than one place." "This document, you take it back, I don't want it." P75

On 1 March 1959, in his speech at the Second Zhengzhou Conference, Mao Zedong said: "We are mainly opposed to egalitarianism and the idea of over-centralisation. This is in fact "left" adventurism. It is worth noting from Anguo's paper that in previous years, the rich middle peasants took the lead in the food riots; this year, it was mainly the grassroots cadres who took the lead. I don't think it's right to say that the reason is that the propaganda work was not done properly. As long as the 'two releases, three unifications and one package', is done well, so will the propaganda work be done well. The masses thought that everything should be owned by the public and everything should be communist. In addition, small co-operatives sold grain and large co-operatives blocked the accounts. After the grain was sold, the grain money was empty; some production-increasing teams increased the task of requisitioning, making it impossible for the cadres to find out. Therefore, grass-roots cadres have five fears: one is afraid of leveling; two, afraid of reporting actual output and additional tasks; three, afraid of adjusting and solving the problem of spring shortages; four, afraid of losing money; five, afraid…So, the first thing to do was to get their hands on the grain, and they were very determined and good at it. This was mainly because there was mass support and it became common to conceal the production for private distribution. p76

At the Central Working Conference from 24 December 1960 to 13 January 1961, when Liu Zihou reported on 9 January 1961 that the problems of Xushui and Baxian had been uncovered in the 1960 movement to clean-up the “winds” and clean-up rural societ. Mao Zedong said: "The experience of these two counties is very good, have you informed the whole province? They should be informed”. He also said that when Zhang Guozhong wanted to start a system of ownership by the whole people in 1958, I told him no, but he didn't listen and he sent photos around. (The treatment of Zhang Guozhong was later corrected. After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, Zhang became deputy governor of Laiyuan County.) P77

[Mao Zedong and Baoding, in Mao Zedong and Hebei, edited by the Hebei Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the Hebei Provincial Archives Bureau, Hebei People's Publishing House, 2006]

[14] During Mao Zedong's speech at the Wuchang meeting on November 21, 1958, Liu Shaoqi and Peng Zhen interjected, trying to write the poverty transition into the resolution: Liu Shaoqi: When you reach the consumption level of 150 to 200 yuan, you can transfer a group of people and transfer them in batches in the future, which is beneficial, otherwise, when it gets higher, there will be many difficulties in the transfer, which it is not beneficial. It's not easy to do the three changes, especially gardening. Peng Zhen: After the agrarian reform, we started the big cooperatives and the communes, so we could make the transition as soon as we reached 150 to 200 yuan per person – more than that would be too much. As in Romania, when farmers earn more than workers, it’s not easy to turn around. The three changes can be lowered, we should strike while the iron is hot, an early change is  better than a late change – the transition can take place in three or four years. Quoted in the 1968 Chinese edition of Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, vols. 58-60, p. 161; and in recording this conversation in The Chronicle of Mao Zedong (1949-1976) (vol. 3), Peng Zhen and Liu Shaoqi and others demanded a transition to communism, rewriting it out of thin air as "a transition to ownership by the whole people". Mao Zedong did not agree. also did not agree, "According to Liu Shaoqi and Peng Zhen, the transition is to take advantage of this poverty, otherwise he does not want to make the transition. This issue will not be discussed today." P520

[15] Qin Yuping, who was secretary-general of the Hunan Provincial Committee, recalled, "Chairman Mao wrote a letter to the peasants of the whole country. Some of what was mentioned in this letter might differ or diverge from the provincial committee's practice, and when I was secretary-general of the provincial committee, Comrade Zhou Xiaozhou told me to temporarily suspend sending this letter to the peasants." [Mao Zedong's Return to Hunan Chronicle, Hunan Publishing House 1993, P323]

[16] Mao Zedong: Speech at the Zhengzhou Conference (V) (5 March 1959), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, vols. 58-60

[17] Quoted in Hong'an County Journal, P328

Now to lighten the tasks. In order to carry out water conservancy, last winter and this spring, the whole country had to move 50 billion cubic meters of earth and stone. This winter and next spring, the whole country will have to move 190 billion cubic metres of earth and rock, which is more than three times as much. There are also various other tasks, such as steel, copper, aluminium, coal, transport, processing industries, chemical industries, which require a lot of people. If half the people don’t die, the it will be a third or a tenth, or 50 million people will die. People died in Guangxi. Wasn't Chen Manyuan dismissed? If 50 million people die, you won’t be dismissed from your posts, but at least I’ll get dismissed from mine, and there will be problems at the top. Anhui has to do more, you can do more, but the principle is that people must not die. The 190 billion cubic metres is always too much, you can discuss it, you must do it, I cannot help, you but the death of people cannot cut off my head. Adding a little more than last year, to move six or seven hundred billion cubic metres, is not too much. The documents of ×××× and ×××× have such an item in them, and I hope you will discuss it. In addition, any other tasks that are really overwhelming can also be cut back. The tasks should not be left unaddressed, but they should not have more added either. ...... I think it is better to be stable. The water resources are 50 billion cubic meters of earth and rock, they are not doubled even a little bit. Get him to do it for ten years. Isn’t it 50 billion? I say leave a little bit for your son to do, we can still get it all done.

[Mao Zedong: First Speech at the Wuchang Conference (November 21, 1958, morning), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, Vol. 58-60].

Zeng Xisheng wanted to convince me. He showed me maps of three river networks and maintained that the rural areas could be basically transformed...... Maybe we can strive for basic transformation in five years and thorough transformation in 10-15 years. What is the best? I hope our comrades will think about it! Maybe we can call it basic transformation when Great Britain is surpassed and complete transformation when the U.S. is surpassed. When we force ourselves to surpass others, we will become exhausted. It is better to take it a little easier. If we do not require these many years and surpass them in three or four years, then what should we do? If it can be realized in advance, it’s all right! The sooner we achieve our goal in advance of plans, the sooner we will get the results. I don’t believe that will be a loss! Zeng Xisheng has an idea which is nothing but “opportunism.” Last winter and this spring, Anhui began to undertake 800 million cubic meters of earth and stone work in water conservation. Subsequently it was doubled to 1.6 billion. Eight hundred million was opportunism; 1.6 billion was Marxism-Leninism. In a short time, it was increased to 3.2 billion, and 1.6 billion looked like “opportunism.” Later on it was increased to 6.4 billion. When we set the time for the transformation a little longer, we are not being anything but “opportunists.” Such opportunism is very interesting and I am willing to practice it. Marx appreciated such opportunism. He would not have criticized me.

[Mao Zedong: Speech at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee (9 December 1958), ibid]

Tao Chuang said, "On the question of water conservancy, the Chairman said at the Wuchang Conference that if we did this, half of the Chinese people would die, or at least one tenth of them, 50 million. But we are still working on it. Water conservancy can be done without people dying, but as a result, people are still dying. So we stopped. How could we have imagined that we would die if we did it more quickly and with less effort? We don't have that experience. It's not that we don't support the Chairman's instructions. It took a process to turn the ideas of the Chairman and the central comrades into the ideas of the whole party. p107

Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The End of the Seven Thousand Cadre's Conference (China Youth Publishing House, 2006)

[18] Mao Zedong: Address at the Zhengzhou Conference in Preparation for the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee, Sixth Address (afternoon of 10 November 1958), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought

[19] Our Party, having done a lot of great work, and the achievements are great. If there are shortcomings, they are, by comparison, secondary aspects. Work is never without shortcomings; there is no such thing as a complete absence of shortcomings, not ever. p102

Under the leadership of the Communist Party, the people have been liberated, they have taken power, the three great mountains have been overthrown, and we can and should take great strides forward. Of course, in its implementation, we must not divide the various components of the general line. We must not divide up the various components of the General Line. The General Line itself is a unified whole, and the various components are indispensable. It would be bad if we were to grasp one aspect and lose the others. Some of the shortcomings that have arisen in our work over the past few years are not problems with the General Line itself, but problems in the middle of its implementation. p103

The vast majority of our comrades do not run things badly on purpose, but it’s because they are inexperienced. Of course, we have to admit that there are a very small number of cadres who are bad, yet this is not the whole situation of our whole party. p104

We have an aspect of loss and an aspect of gain. The role of this lost side is now clearly visible, while the role of the gained side is not clear for the time being. We should be confident that the lessons we have learned will be of great, great use. These experiences will enable our party members, our cadres, to improve considerably in quality and ability. With the same material conditions, or even worse, they will be able to do things a little better thanks to their experience, and the material wealth they will receive will be much greater than in the past. We have reduced the material aspect in the last few years,  and this reduction is just like when students pay tuition when they go to school. After school, it will have a great effect. A little child, from the time he goes to primary school until he graduates from university, for 17 or 18 years, produces nothing, on the contrary, eats and wears all he can. But when he learns, it makes a big difference. If he had not been given that little material and time, and had not been allowed to learn so much, he would not have been able to do so. p105

Our whole party has engaged in a big study. This learning, that is, learning in practice, cannot be learned in lecture halls or textbooks. No teacher is as convincing as this teacher. It is the best Marxism-Leninism. What is meant by materialism, what is meant by dialectics, what is meant by historical materialism, what is meant by the mass line, what is meant by the laws of the economy, what is meant by acting according to the laws, all these truths are, of course, very simple when they are taught in the classroom and learned in books, but it is not easy to really understand them and really do them. We have now gone through a big study, which is very impressive for the whole party, at any rate, one person forgets, another remembers, and it becomes the tradition of our party, becomes the common understanding of our party, becomes the basis of our party's ideological unity. Therefore, we should not only see that there are losses, but also gains. Nor is there just one point in our work that has been lost; in fact, industry, agriculture, science and technology, capital construction, laid a great foundation, a real great leap forward. Because it is laying the foundation, it cannot work directly for the time being, but it is going to work greatly in the future. p106

In difficult times, we should all the more strengthen the unity of the Party. I think that there are thousands of things and many projects, and the biggest, the first and foremost, is the unity of the Party. Compared to the gains and losses on individual issues, compared to the gains and losses on ad hoc issues, we would rather maintain the unity of the party and the unity of our party ranks. Only then will we be visionary, only then will we be true Marxists, only then will we have strength, only then will we be able to win all our battles. p106-107

In times of difficulty, we should rely more on, trust more in, the leadership of the Party, the leadership of the Central Committee, the leadership of Chairman Mao, so that it will be easier for us to overcome the difficulties. And it turns out that these difficulties, in some ways, to some extent, are precisely because we did not follow Chairman Mao's instructions, Chairman Mao's warnings, Chairman Mao's ideas. If we had listened to Chairman Mao and experienced his spirit, there would have been far fewer detours and the difficulties today would have been far less. p107

I feel that when we comrades approach many issues, we often have three kinds of thinking: one is Chairman Mao's thinking, one is "leftist" thinking and one is rightist thinking. At the time and afterwards, it was proved that Chairman Mao's thinking was always correct. However, some of our comrades were not able to appreciate Chairman Mao's thinking very well, and always deviated to the "left" side, saying that they were carrying out Chairman Mao's instructions, but in fact they had gone astray. Of course, there are also ideas of the right, both within and outside the Party. Whether they are "left" or "right", they are not in line with reality and are not Marxism-Leninism. What is correct is dialectical materialism, Marxism-Leninism and the thought of Chairman Mao. He is always a little more practical than others, always eight or nine times more practical. He was always around the practical, not out of touch with the practical. This is different from some of our comrades who have only a fierce energy, and different from some of our comrades who are uninspired in every way and have no great plans. As I see it, one of the most important parts of our worldview, the main thing, is materialism, that is, respect for facts, that is, starting from reality, that is, seeking truth from facts, that is, working according to conditions, according to subjective and objective conditions, that is, not based on wishes alone, but also estimating the outcome of things, not only according to needs but also according to possibilities. I have a deep feeling that the time when we get our work done better is when Chairman Mao's ideas can be implemented smoothly, when Chairman Mao's ideas are not disturbed. If Chairman Mao's views are not respected, or are subject to great interference, things are going to go wrong. The history of our Party over the past few decades is such a history. Therefore, in times of difficulty, our Party needs to be united all the more and to follow Chairman Mao. Only then can our Party move from victory to victory, from small victories to even greater victories, and our country can be even better and stronger. p107-108

We are a backward country, but we have enough conditions to become advanced, powerful, the most powerful country in the world. No other country has such a large population, such a large workforce, as we do. We know that economic development is dependent on production, on the development of productive forces. The main thing in productivity is labour. As for machines, you can build them when you have people. With machines and taking machine labour, a machine can be used as dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people. If we have such a large amount of labour force, coupled with the ability to manufacture a large number of machines, and if labour force is combined with machines, our production can be greatly developed, and the fruit of one person's labour can be several times, a dozen times, tens of times, a hundred times or two hundred times greater than it is now, and one person can be a few people, a dozen people, dozens of people, a hundred people or two hundred people. In this way, our country will be rich and strong. We have many other good conditions. Our climatic conditions, our geographical conditions, the conditions of such a large country, are not scattered but united, are all conducive to turning our country into a very strong one; not only better than the old imperialist Britain, which has fallen behind, but also able to be better than the United States. What is so great about America? A few hundred years ago, there was nothing there. It was just a wasteland with a few Indians (who have now been pretty much wiped out). America is a newly created place. The United States is typical of how a backward country can become an advanced country, when you talk about the world. It used to be the most backward part of the world, but now it is the strongest. Of course, this is only to say that it is economically strong, not that it is mentally strong, which is in decline. p109-110

[Lin Biao: Speech at the Enlarged Central Working Conference (29 January 1962), in Selected Important Documents since the Founding of the People's Republic (Vol. XV), Central Literature Publishing House 1997]

[20] (Mao Zedong: Speech at the Meeting on Reporting the Work of the Central Political Bureau (October 1966); also: Speech at the Meeting on Reporting the Work of the Central Political Bureau (October 24, 1966) in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought)

[21] Mao Zedong: Speech at the Central Group Meeting of the Central Working Conference at Beidaihe (9 August 1962), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, vols. 61-68

[22] Liu Shaoqi's Chronicle, pp. 508-509, 531

[23] After examining the central documents of the three years of the Great Leap Forward, the Central Secretariat compiled two books of materials and presented a report to Mao Zedong and the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau. Deng Xiaoping spoke about this at the meeting of the Central Secretariat on 16 December 1961 and at the plenary session of the small Central Working Conference on 21 December. [4] In his speech on 21 December, Deng Xiaoping referred to two books of materials compiled and selected by the Central Secretariat: "One was a speech by Chairman Mao, which turned out to be free of errors; the other was a specific instruction and approved document, which had many faults, many of which were found here." Among the contents of the second book of materials, "three were too much devolution of power, three were about high targets, four were about big offices, and two had deadlines for completing technical reforms." Deng Xiaoping said, "These are all run by the Central Secretariat. The truth is that the central government is responsible for the first. What is wrong with what has happened in the past few years? Did it lie in the wrong guiding ideology of the three red flags, or in the specific measures and concrete policies? The result of our study, the conclusion, is not the fault of the guiding ideology, so it is not the problem of the general line of the three red flags, but the problem of our specific policies, the problem of specific measures, the problem in the middle of the implementation of the general line."

Accordingly, Deng Xiaoping believed that in the report of the Central Secretariat to Mao Zedong and the Politburo Standing Committee, mention should be made of the mistakes of the Secretariat in four areas. (1) Failure to study and propose specific policies in various areas in a timely manner or some unrealistic ones, and specific policies which were themselves incorrect or not entirely correct. (2) The planning targets were too high and varied, regardless of whether they were for steel, food or coal. In the four years from 1958 to 1961, there were at most seven changes a year, and this year they changed three times. This year was the best. It was not the case that a few "big things" were done in a practical way, according to local conditions. The impact of these "big events" was so great that they actually collapsed our original policy and the mass line. It is itself a mass movement that violates the mass line. This mass movement was actually an illusion, and the masses were not happy. The Chairman said that the masses in the canteens were not happy. There are too many delegations of power, and there are many conference calls and on-site meetings. The work of the Central Secretariat in checking the central documents and its report was affirmed by the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau and became the basis for the summary of the work of the 7,000-strong congress. Liu Shaoqi said in his report to the congress: "This report affirms the correctness of the three red flags, and at the same time explains the main shortcomings and mistakes in the work of the Central Committee and the responsibilities that should be borne by the Central Secretariat. Some of the things stated in the report have passed through the Central Political Bureau, which should bear the responsibility." [5] When Liu Shaoqi also suggested that the Central Committee and the provincial committees should seriously clean up the unrealistic slogans put forward in recent years, Mao Zedong interjected, "The Central Secretariat has already cleaned up once, but it has not yet finished. What other words against the people have been said in the People's Daily, the Xinhua News Agency, the Red Flag magazine and the Broadcasting Bureau? It needs to be cleaned up."

The Central Secretariat checked the central documents since the "Great Leap Forward" and summed up the lessons learnt, with the consent of Mao Zedong. While the Central Secretariat was cleaning up the central documents, Peng Zhen, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, Secretary of the Central Secretariat and First Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee, set up the work of checking the documents to the Beijing Municipal Committee in accordance with the request of the Central Committee. One afternoon, Peng Zhen found Xiang Ziming at home and told him that Comrade Xiaoping had talked to Comrade Shangkun and the Central Secretariat had asked the General Office of the Central Committee to check the documents issued by the Central Government in the past few years to see what problems there were. You should also organize a few people here to take a look. At that time, Peng Zhen was in a hurry to go out, so he briefly handed over this work to Xiang Ziming in the courtyard. [8]

From 23 May to mid-July, the new municipal committee held a working meeting at the Beijing Hotel (the "Beijing Hotel Meeting") to convey the decision of the enlarged meeting of the Central Political Bureau and the circular of the Central Government, and to carry out a reorganisation of the former municipal committee. It also announced the decision to deal with Peng Zhen, Liu Ren and 18 other leading comrades of the Municipal Committee. The meeting also pursued the matter of the former municipal committee's access to central government documents at Changgualou. [13] On 26 May, the working group of the North China Bureau wrote a special report on the issue of Changguanlou, which it found to be "conspiratorial activity". "Khrushchev's 'secret report' against Stalin was the same as Peng Zhen's 'secret report' against the Party, against the Chairman and plotting to usurp the Party and take over the country. The difference is that today, when the Chairman is alive, Peng Zhen has done so in a way that Khrushchev could never have done." On 17 January 1979, with the approval of the Central Committee, the Beijing Municipal Committee made a decision to rehabilitate Comrade Liu Ren. On 17 February, the Central Committee issued a notice on the vindication of Comrade Peng Zhen. Subsequently, on 26 September, the Beijing Municipal Party Committee made a decision on the complete vindication of the "Peng and Liu counter-revolutionary revisionist group", which was reported to the Central Committee and vindicated the ten "charges", including the "Changguanlou counter-revolutionary incident. The Decision stated that in December 1961, the Central Committee was going to examine the documents issued by the Party Central Committee since 1958 in order to draw lessons. Comrade Peng Zhen, as a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and Secretary of the Secretariat, approached some comrades of the Beijing Municipal Committee to help him, at the request of the Central Committee, to check at the Western Suburbs Zoo Changguanlou what was wrong with the documents issued by the Central Committee over the past three years, so that the situation could be reflected to the Central Committee when it discussed them. This was perfectly normal and there was no conspiracy at all. However, Lin Biao, the Gang of Four, Xie Fuzhi and the former head of the North China Bureau seized on this matter and made a big fuss about it, falsely accusing it of "preparing materials for a secret Khrushchev-style report", which was a complete distortion of the facts and a deliberate frame-up. “Summary of Central Documents”.  What is it all about? Let's start with the introduction. The 600-word introduction gives a general summary of the central government documents from 1958 to 1961. After the Chengdu Conference in March 1958, the main problems with the instructions issued by the Central Government and the relevant reports approved by it were that the targets were too high, the plans too big and the tasks too heavy, and that some things were too demanding, which were more concentrated in the series of documents adopted at the Beidaihe Conference. In industry, emphasis was placed on adjusting plans, implementing targets, improving product quality and strengthening enterprise management; in the countryside, measures were put forward against the 'communist wind', protecting the individual means of subsistence of community members, delivering grain to households, and determining the proportion of the supply system according to actual conditions. After the Lushan Conference in July and up to the first half of 1960, some things were again too much to ask for, and the Rural People's 'Summary of Central Documents' was collated, printed out and sent to the ministers or deputy ministers of the relevant departments of the municipal committees who took part in the work of checking the documents, but it was not ultimately submitted to the Central Committee.

[Fu Yi rediscovering the truth of the Changguanlou incident, Source: China Communist Party History Website, URL http://www.zgdsw.org.cn/n/2012/0711/c218989-18493823-1.html]

This climax was set off by Peng Zhen. He said: Our mistakes, first of all, are the responsibility of the Central Secretariat, including the Chairman, Shaoqi and the comrades of the Central Standing Committee. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes there are, they all should be included. Chairman Mao is not without anys mistakes, three or five years of transition, canteen are approved by Chairman Mao. We are not granite to Chairman Mao, but also sedimentary rock. Chairman Mao's prestige is not Mount Everest but is also Mount Tai, after a few tons of earth are taken away it is still so high. Now there is a tendency in the party to not dare to raise an opinion, not dare to review mistakes, if there is a review it will all collapse. If one percent or one thousandth of Chairman Mao's mistakes are not reviewed, it will leave a bad impact on our party. Should the provinces and cities take up the responsibility? Taking it up will do no good and no lesson will be learned. From Chairman Mao to the branch secretary, each has their own account. The biggest mistake of the Secretariat was that it did not investigate and study. p108

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press 2006]

This impassioned speech by Peng Zhen became one of the most striking highlights of the 7,000-strong congress, and he was the only one to name Mao Zedong as having made the mistake of going beyond the stage and running public canteens (of course, Mao made more than just these mistakes, but even some of these no one dared to point out specifically at the time) and that they should be reviewed. This speech by Peng Zhen became a classic statement in the history of the CCP, and is constantly praised. p108-109

After Peng Zhen's speech, Deng Xiaoping tactfully said, "We went to the Chairman, and the Chairman said, "In your report, you write me as a saint, there is no such thing as a saint, there are flaws and mistakes, it's just a matter of how many. I am not afraid to talk about my shortcomings. The revolution was not started by Chen Duxiu or Wang Ming, but by me and everyone else.” Deng Xiaoping's meaning was clear, that is, Chairman Mao also had made mistakes and was open to criticism. In fact, he supported Peng Zhen's opinion. Of course, Deng Xiaoping was also careful to talk about the fact that the Chairman's guiding ideology was right. p109

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press 2006]

Chen Boda began to take a swipe at Peng Zhen. He said, "Let's not make a mess. I have also talked nonsense and have to do self-criticism. We still have to act according to Chairman Mao's guiding ideology. I got a lot out of editing the Chairman's quotations. He told us how to run China. We have to check our work according to the Chairman's guiding ideology and whether it is in line with the Chairman's ideology. Comrade Peng Zhen's words yesterday about the Chairman are worth studying. We have done a lot of messy things, is it necessary to hold the Chairman responsible? Is it necessary to check the work of the Chairman? The fundamental problem now is that the Central Government cannot centralise power. The peasants do believe in the Central Committee and in Chairman Mao. It is not the Chairman's policy to make a mess. p110

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Congress, China Youth Press 2006]

In the second half of 1956 and the spring of 1957, when Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun and others were carrying out the "anti-rash advances" campaign, the Outline was met with some scepticism. When Mao Zedong criticised the "anti-rash advances", he said that they had swept away the "Outline of Agricultural Development" and the Promotion Committee, and had discouraged 600 million people. He also said that the "anti-rash advances" campaign was only 50 metres away from the rightists and had put a lot of pressure on Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun and others. This shows that Mao Zedong valued the Outline. At the beginning of 1958, on the basis of the Outline (revised draft), a second revised draft of the Outline was prepared and discussed at the second meeting of the Eighth Communist Party Congress in May 1958, with the result that it was basically adopted and then entrusted to the Central Committee to make the necessary changes in the light of the implementation of the Outline that year.

After nearly two more years of practice, in April 1960, the Second Session of the National People's Congress finally discussed and adopted the Outline (Draft Amendment) and began to announce it to the nation in an official document, the National Agricultural Development Outline 1956 to 1967. At that time, when Tan Zhenlin reported to the General Assembly, he also said that the Outline left room to manoeuvre, proposing that all efforts should be mobilised to achieve ahead of schedule the Outline of Agricultural Development People's Communes, industrial production plans, technological revolution and other aspects were more problematic.

There were fewer issues in the 1961 document." The Essentials. p119

[Zhang Suhua, "The Change - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference" China Youth Press 2006]

Some people said that I had caused the three-year disaster, and they disapproved of the approach I was going to take. Later, at the Beidaihe Conference, the situation, classes and contradictions were talked about before it got better. Mao Zedong: Conversations with Hua Guofeng and Wang Dongxing in Wuchang 1971.08.25

[24] On 15 January (1962), Yang Shangkun saw from the briefings of the various groups that there was a rather significant movement, with some local comrades disagreeing with the Central Committee's opposition to decentralism, which in effect challenged the theme of the congress. Yang Shangkun said: "From the briefings of the various groups, we can see that there is in fact a disagreement against decentralisation, mainly among the cadres at the provincial level. Their view is that there is decentralism in industry, but too much concentration in the countryside, not decentralism. And there are all sorts of reasons for decentralism in industry, and it seems that this must be the case, otherwise we will revert to the pre-1957 situation, and we won't be able to cheer up, we will be deflated!" In the evening "we had a debriefing meeting and heard the views of the various groups. The feeling described earlier was reinforced. The Hubei Provincial Committee raised the question of whether there was decentralism to discuss, and Wang Renzhong's statement was a negative one!" Yang Shangkun did not dare to be slow and immediately reported his views to Deng Xiaoping on the following morning (16th), who also felt that the issue was important and instructed Yang Shangkun to report to Liu Shaoqi immediately. In the afternoon, Liu Shaoqi, after listening to Yang Shangkun's report, said: "There are different views on the issue, mainly because some comrades have not received enough lessons and are not fully aware of them, and if we don't talk things through now, we will make mistakes in the future. This situation should be reflected to the chairman, who will decide how the meeting should be held." P51

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press 2006]

 Mao Zedong raised the question of what are the main contradictions at present, and does the report capture the main contradictions? The Central Committee thought that the local comrades were seriously self-centered and had no regard for the overall situation, and that it would be difficult for the Central Committee to centralise adjustment and command; while the local comrades obviously had different opinions. In this situation, Mao Zedong and the Central Committee did not adopt a blocking approach; they followed the trend of the conference and decided to listen fully to the views of local comrades, and a new decision arose: that is, to include the First Secretaries of the Central Bureaus and some comrades from the Central Committee, to re-organise the report drafting committee to talk first about what the main contradictions were at present, and to discuss whether the report was a matter of wording or of principle. Anything in the report that was unreasonable or not the truth could be overturned, or even all of it, but what was correct could not be overturned, and the draft could be written after unification of thought. Mao also said that it did not matter if a rewritten draft was taken out and then overturned, but it was better not to overturn it. That night, a report drafting committee of twenty-one people was formed. At this point, the theme of the congress began to change significantly, from opposition to decentralism to a focus on summing up experience. p51

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Congress, China Youth Press 2006].

Liu Shaoqi's report covers three issues, the second of which is "on centralisation and unity". This issue centres on the need to strengthen the unity of the central government and to oppose decentralism. This is also the main contradiction that the 7,000-strong congress is trying to resolve. The report says that this is "a key issue that needs to be resolved". p78

The governor of Hubei province, Zhang Tixue, said: "Over the past few years, the problem that has occurred is high targets, a "leftist" tendency and subjectivism. The problem is subjectivism, not decentralism. If we don't fight against subjectivism, we can't fight against decentralism. The plans are big, the targets are high, how can there be no decentralism? Some people have therefore suggested that the eight sins of decentralism should be listed in the briefings of the state authorities, as well as the eight sins of subjectivism, the eight sins of high targets! P80

Many of the provincial party secretaries actually have such thoughts. In the past few years, many policies were set by the central government, so they were not in a position to say anything if they had different opinions and followed the central government, but now that a difficult situation has arisen, they have to oppose decentralism again. The provincial party secretaries in eastern China had strong views on the fight against decentralism. They have asked: What does decentralism mean? In Shanghai, only 45 per cent of the work is arranged by the state and 55 per cent is collaborative. Will it be possible to collaborate in the future? How will it work? It is impossible to rely on planning for everything. Centralisation and unification will have to take care of the other side, and the local authorities can do everything they can to get it right, not to be cautious. p81

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game: The End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press 2006].

In favour of the first part of the report, namely on the current situation and tasks, and the second part on centralisation and unity, there are still some problems; Zhongnan said that the comrades of the provincial, municipal and local committees were all satisfied with the report, not overthrowing it, but went on to express that they had different views on opposing decentralism. These two large regions, although they have different views, can say that they still embrace the report as a whole, it is not an overthrowing attitude. East China, however, expressed the opposite attitude, with Ke Qingshi stating clearly: the more you read this report, the less interesting it becomes. p98

The question of opposing decentralism was the key issue to be addressed in the draft report, and it was also where the 7,000-strong congress was originally set to meet. However, as mentioned earlier, precisely on the issue of opposing decentralisation, there was a great deal of opinion from the local level, and there were clearly considerable differences with the central government. p99

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press 2006].

Chen Yun said: What is meant by a planned economy is centralised and unified. Half-planning is no planning. p99

 Zhou Enlai said: "Therefore, we must strengthen centralization and unity, oppose decentralism, and drum up real energy rather than vague energy. In Zhou Enlai's view, this conference was not effective if it did not oppose decentralism, and if it did not drum up energy for half a day, it did not get to the real thing. p99

Li Xiannian looked even more agitated and said: "The centralisation and unification are very agreeable, we have to speak Beijing dialect and standard words. "P99

Li Fuchun said: the central issue is centralized unity, what do you mean by centralized unity? P99

Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping even brought opposition to decentralism to a certain level of emphasis. Liu Shaoqi said: We now have some phenomena, similar to Yugoslavia's enterprise ownership, to produce raw materials themselves. Enterprise ownership infringes on ownership by the whole people. Yan Xishan has engaged in village public ownership. This kind of socialism is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Please think about it, we do not oppose it, revisionism comes quickly, if we don’t do things well there will also be revisionism. Liu Shaoqi also said: the sky is full of commerce, at least one million people in the country, is it a state enterprise? Socialist commerce? Semi-socialist commerce? Or Yugoslavia? What do you mean by ownership by the whole people, what is the nature of commerce in provinces, cities, enterprises and departments, and how is it managed? There is a question of the nature of Yugoslavia here. In Liu Shaoqi's view, if decentralism was not reversed, revisionism would come out. "The problem can be very serious!" P99

Deng Xiaoping also said: it is the moral quality that is at stake, taking the black road. The existence of a struggle between two roads in socialist countries and the possibility of capitalist restoration is a theoretical problem with practical implications. Do not think that the Soviet phenomenon is only found in the Soviet Union. The social climate was different in the first eight years and in the last four years. It seems that Deng Xiaoping also abhorred decentralism. p100

He also said: Was the central leadership more centralised before 1958 or after 1958? Off the top of my head, it was decentralisation post-1958, not the whole. True centralization is less than perfect. When it is most centralised, it is most democratic and most active ...... In Deng Xiaoping's view, if decentralism is not reversed, capitalism will be restored! P100

[Zhang Suhua: The Changing Game - The Beginning and End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press 2006]

Ke Qingshi then said, "What is the main contradiction now? I think it is that after 1957, the masses have been motivated and there is a contradiction with blindness. He went on to say: "It is about centralization and unification, but how do we write about it? The central government is emphasizing centralization and unification, but it should not start by opposing decentralism because that is not the main contradiction. p100

Tao said politely that there was no problem with the principle of centralisation, but the question was how decentralism arose, whether it was a consequence of what was happening below? How can decentralism be countered? Although Tao's words were polite, a closer analysis showed that he wanted everyone to think about the root causes of decentralism, with the implication that the central government's opposition to decentralism was not at the root. p100-101

Wang Renzhong was not the First Secretary of the Region, but he did take part in the work of the drafting committee. Wang Renzhong was one of the youngest provincial party secretaries in the country at the time (the other was Tao Lujia, the first secretary of the Shanxi provincial party committee, also aged 45) and was highly regarded by Mao Zedong and other central leaders, so he was the only member of the drafting committee in his capacity as first secretary of a provincial party committee. But he did not hold back at the meeting because of his "lowly position", on the contrary, he spoke with some fireworks. He said: "In Hubei there was a strong reaction against decentralism." P101

Wang Renzhong was telling the truth. The governor of Hubei province, Zhang Tixue, had made it clear that the main conflict at present was not decentralism, but subjectivism. The problem that has occurred over the past few years is the high target and the "leftist"  brutality. The problem is subjectivism, not decentralism. If we don't fight against subjectivism, we can't fight against decentralism. The plan is big, the targets are high, how can there be no decentralism? The problem is that if we don't fight against decentralism, we don't want to go down to the counties. From an objective point of view, Zhang Tixue's opinion is quite reasonable. p101

Zhang Suhua: The Changing of the Game - The End of the Seven Thousand People's Conference, China Youth Press, 2006

Ke Qingshi also said: The Chairman and the Central Committee have traditionally advocated giving full play to local initiatives. p103

Zhang Suhua: The Changing Landscape: The End of the Seven Thousand People's Congress, China Youth Press, 2006

his country of ours is made up of 28 “countries.” There are large “countries” as well as small “countries.” Such “countries” as Tibet and Tsinghai are small “countries,” they do not have many people. (Premier Chou: It is necessary to implement mechanization.) You people of the central bureaus, provinces, regions, and municipalities, carry out blooming and contending when you return to your posts; such places as provinces, regions, and municipalities must all carry out free expression of opinions during the months of April, May, June, and July. The free expression of opinions must be connected with “preparedness against war, preparedness against natural calamities, and everything for the people,” otherwise they will be afraid to express opinions freely. (Premier Chou: I’m afraid to say that they are for decentralization). The local areas must pay attention to wealth accumulation, now everything belongs to the state treasury. Shanghai has some accumulation. First, it has capital; second, it has raw materials; and third, it has equipment. It will not do to have everything concentrated at the central level. It will not do to drain the pond to catch the fish. It is said that the Soviet Union is the one which drains the pond to catch fish. (Peng X: Shanghai used machinery to support agriculture and changed from unlawful to lawful

 It is unlawful, but it must be recognized as being lawful. In history, everything changed from unlawful to lawful. Sun Yat-sen was unlawful in the beginning and became lawful afterwards. The Communist Party also changed from unlawful to lawful. Yuan Shikai changed from lawful to unlawful. Being lawful is reactionary. Being unlawful is revolutionary. At present time, being reactionary is not to permit people to have positiveness: it is to limit the people’s role in making revolution. The central government still is in favour of a figure-head republic, the Queen of England and the Emperor of Japan are all figureheads of republics. The central government is still in favour of a figure-head republic, caring only for major administrative policies. But these policies also came from local blooming and contending. So, the central government opened up a processing plant to produce them. The province municipalities, districts, and counties have to release them before the central government can produce them. It is fine to let the central government exercise control in name, but not in fact or only to a slight degree in fact. When the central government takes in too many factories, all those who take over the factories should be told to get out of the central government and go over to the local areas, lock stock, and barrel. [Mao Zedong: Speech at the Enlarged Meeting of the Politburo (Huadong, 20 March 1966), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought, vols. 61-68]

The fifth volume of The Chronicles of Mao Zedong (1949-1976) has a different text: "Speaking of the relationship between the central and local governments in the economic sphere, he said that local accumulation must be carried out, and that it must not be concentrated in the central government while localities cannot expand and reproduce. The Soviet Union suffered from this. Nowadays, people are not allowed to be active, and the top is in control, which hinders the development of the productive forces and is reactionary. It is better for the central government to be a figure-head of a republic, only managing general policies, policies and plans. The central government is called a planning and manufacturing factory, which only manages the imaginary, not the real, and also manages the real a little bit less. The central bureau, provinces, localities and counties, are also layers of consultation with the lower, after everyone's agreement, getting things done, that is more reliable. We must rely on models, plan with our brains, and produce good materials through practice. In this way, local governments cooperate with the central government to create guidelines, policies, and plans. The central plan must be integrated with the local plans. The central government cannot completely control things, and neither the provinces nor the plans can completely unify things. It can completely control the death without saving, and the plan should not be the same. All in all, it can't be perfect. P569

It is these two enthusiasms, the central enthusiasm and the local enthusiasm! For more than ten years, it is not listened to, what can be done? Now we are listening. That's the way things are in the world, you have to take a detour, it's S-shaped.

[Mao Zedong: Summary of his meeting with Snow (18 December 1970), in Mao Zedong's Documents since the Founding of the People's Republic (Vol. XIII)]

[25] We began to experience some trouble in 1957, when “Left” ideology appeared. It was necessary for us to combat bourgeois Rightists, but we went too far. In 1958 the spread of “Left” thinking led to the Great Leap Forward and the movement to establish people’s communes. That was a serious mistake, and we suffered because of it. During the three years of economic difficulty from 1959 through 1961, industrial and agricultural output dropped, so that commodities were in short supply. The people didn’t have enough to eat, and their enthusiasm was greatly dampened. At that time our Party and Chairman Mao Zedong enjoyed high prestige acquired through long years of struggle, and we explained to the people frankly why the situation was so difficult. We abandoned the slogan of the Great Leap Forward and adopted more realistic policies and measures instead. The year 1962 saw the beginning of recovery, and in 1963 and 1964 things were looking up, but our guiding ideology still contained remnants of “Left” thinking.

 In 1965 it was said that certain persons who were in power in the Party were taking the capitalist road. Then came the “cultural revolution”, in which the “Left” ideology was carried to its extreme and the ultra-Left trend of thought became rampant. The “cultural revolution” actually began in 1965, but it was officially declared only a year later. It lasted a whole decade, from 1966 through 1976, during which time almost all the veteran cadres who formed the backbone of the Party were brought down. It was they who were made the targets of the “cultural revolution”....... We summed up our experience in building socialism over the past few decades. We had not been quite clear about what socialism is and what Marxism is. Another term for Marxism is communism. It is for the realization of communism that we have struggled for so many years. We believe in communism, and our ideal is to bring it into being.  ...... What, after all, is socialism? The Soviet Union has been building socialism for so many years and yet is still not quite clear what it is. Perhaps Lenin had a good idea when he adopted the New Economic Policy. But as time went on, the Soviet pattern became ossified. We were victorious in the Chinese revolution precisely because we applied the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism to our own realities.

In building socialism we have had both positive and negative experiences, and they are equally useful to us. I hope you will particularly study our “Left” errors. History bears witness to the losses we have suffered on account of those errors. Being totally dedicated to the revolution, we are liable to be too impetuous. It is true that we have good intentions, that we are eager to see the realization of communism at an early date. But often our very eagerness has prevented us from making a sober analysis of subjective and objective conditions, and we have therefore acted in contradiction to the laws governing the development of the objective world. In the past China made the mistake of trying to plunge ahead too fast.

 [Deng Xiaoping: Reform is the Sure Way to Develop China's Productive Forces (August 28, 1985), in Deng Xiaoping's Selected Writings, Vol. 3]

 [26] Circular of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Studying the "Important Instructions of Chairman Mao" 1976.03.03; Zhongfa [1976] No. 4

[27] History of the Chinese Communist Party, by the Party History Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Vol. II), Chapter 12, Section 4

4. Lessons from the "Great Leap Forward" and the Rural People's Commune Movement

The Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune Movement, which began in 1958, were a serious setback for the Party in its quest to build China's own socialist road. When launching the Great Leap Forward, Mao Zedong said, "China's economic backwardness and weak material base have left us in a passive state, and we still feel mentally bound, and in this respect we have not yet been liberated." Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap Forward because, from his subjective desire, he wanted to change China's poor and backward appearance as soon as possible, so that China would no longer be bullied by imperialism and the people could live happily. In the view of Mao Zedong and the Party Central Committee, there were sufficient grounds for launching the Great Leap Forward campaign, namely: internationally, the forces of peace in the world, mainly in the socialist camp, were further strengthened, while the contradictions between the imperialist countries were further developed, and it was possible to secure a fairly long period of peace, which provided an opportunity for China to speed up its construction. Under the leadership of the Party, the enthusiasm of the 600 million people in the country for construction was unprecedentedly high, and by mobilising and relying on the people for economic construction, we were able to achieve the desired high rate of development that no other country in the world had ever achieved. After the rectification and anti-rightist struggle, the socialist revolution on the political and ideological fronts had won a great victory, which was even more conducive to bringing the people's enthusiasm into full play; the Party had already drawn up a general line of socialist construction and created a set of effective working methods, which could guarantee the smooth implementation of the Great Leap Forward movement. At that time, there was a sincere belief, based on past experience, that there was nothing that could not be done by the Chinese people, who were rapidly achieving a series of great victories, and that the socialist system combined with a mass movement would be invincible. At the beginning of the Great Leap Forward movement, the masses of cadres and people, including comrades who had opposed the advances, supported the movement in principle and fought tirelessly to achieve it. The people of the country broke away from superstition, dispelled their inferiority complex, and struggled with vigour and hardship to make a difference in the revival of the nation and the development of the socialist cause. With unprecedented enthusiasm and vigour, the cadres and masses worked hard day and night to achieve some of the tangible results of their hard work. The agricultural water conservancy projects, which were built to meet the needs, and the newly added industrial facilities, which later became productive, not only served their purpose at the time, but continued to do so for a considerable period of time afterwards. There have also been welcome developments in science and technology, especially in certain cutting-edge fields of science and technology that have filled some gaps. Industries were set up in many parts of the country where they had never existed before, and although a large proportion were not able to consolidate at the time, the initial foundations for subsequent industrial development in these areas were eventually laid.

In order to rapidly change the country's backwardness, it is not possible to do so without ambition and a lot of energy. However, economic construction has its own objective laws that do not depend on people's subjective will, and the development of productive forces also requires a process of accumulation. Due to the constraints of the long-standing economic and cultural backwardness of the past, the national economy cannot develop as fast as one might think, nor can the country's poverty and backwardness be fundamentally changed in a short period of time. What is more, the Party as a whole generally lacked experience in leading economic construction. The Party Central Committee and Mao Zedong considered the pace of development of socialist construction in the Soviet Union to be too slow and were dissatisfied with their experience. They were determined to use the Soviet experience as a reference to find a path to building socialism that would suit China's situation and develop at a relatively fast pace. Although some good and relatively good experiences in leading economic construction were accumulated during the first Five-Year Plan, these experiences were only preliminary and were far from a fuller grasp of the laws of socialist construction that were in line with the level of development of the productive forces and the realities of China. Moreover, the Party leaders did not pay enough attention to this issue. Under such circumstances, the successful experiences of the war years in conducting mass movements and political and military struggles were used to engage in socialist economic construction. Most of the cadres at all levels had grown up in the environment of the mass movements during the war years and were familiar with those practices, and thought that by applying these experiences they could make socialist economic construction go faster and better. As a result, the sentiment that building was easier than fighting wars in the past spread rapidly.

Many people did not completely miss the many confusions and deviations that emerged during the "Great Leap Forward" and the People's Commune Movement, but they tended to regard them as tributaries of the development of the situation, a price that must inevitably be paid in the process of moving forward. After the Great Leap Forward movement began, it was quite widely accepted that the most important and valuable thing was the enthusiasm and drive of the people, with which miracles on earth could be created, and there was a fear that correcting the deviations would damage the enthusiasm of the people. In fact, only when the masses are correctly led to achieve tangible construction results can the enthusiasm of the people be truly protected and brought into play; while practices that go against the laws of nature and economics, exaggerated and false "leapfrogging results" that bring destruction to the productive forces, will not only damage the enthusiasm of the people, but will ultimately seriously harm their It is not only the enthusiasm of the people that will be damaged, but also their real interests.

Since the harsh criticism of the anti-rash advance movement, the democratic life of the Party leadership began to be dysfunctional, with paternalism and one-word style prevailing. Coupled with the lack of a scientific and realistic attitude, differences of opinion in the workplace and the ability to accomplish many high targets and work tasks that are out of touch with reality are often presented as serious political issues, causing great political pressure. Under such circumstances, it becomes difficult for dissenting views within the party to be put forward and adhered to, while claims that are supported or even catered for are easily praised, leading to the growth of undesirable practices within the party such as boastfulness and false reporting, telling lies and commandism. In this way, the "Great Leap Forward" movement, which was based on subjective wishes and subjective will, and the "People's Commune" movement, which was eager to make the transition to communism, became inevitable.

Mao Zedong's original intention in launching the Great Leap Forward movement was to change the face of poverty and backwardness as soon as possible with the fastest construction speed, so that China could truly develop and become powerful and stand on its own in the world. This wish is consistent with the general wish of the cadres and masses. The problem lies in the fact that the actual work deviated from the Party's ideological line of seeking truth from facts, which has always been advocated by the Party. Without thorough and detailed investigation and scientific proof, the Party started from subjective aspirations, exaggerated the role of subjective will and subjective efforts, and proposed some goals, guidelines and policies that transcended the historical development stage, resulting in the actual work violating the laws of nature and economy. This kind of feverishness was not only found in Mao Zedong and other leaders of the Central Committee, but was also widespread among Party members and cadres at that time, and was a historical phenomenon that sprang from the eagerness to change China's "poor and white" backwardness at that stage of development. As Deng Xiaoping later concluded, "We are all revolutionaries, and revolutionaries are most prone to acute illnesses. Our intentions are good, we want to enter communism earlier. This often prevents us from calmly analysing the subjective and objective aspects of the situation, thus violating the laws of development of the objective world." On the other hand, in the face of successive victories, Mao's prestige grew and he heard more and more praise, he gradually became proud and thus began to deviate from the Party's principle of democratic centralism. It was for these reasons that Mao Zedong rashly launched the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune Movement and made it possible for them to rise up and spread throughout the country, thus making it difficult to correct problems in time even when they were discovered.

The greatest mistake of the "Great Leap Forward" movement was to rush for success in the speed of construction, and the greatest mistake of the People's Commune Movement was to blindly seek purity in the relationship between ownership systems. The common lesson of both movements was that they were limited to the understanding of socialism at that time, were detached from the reality of the level of development of the productive forces in Chinese society, and went against the objective laws of economic and social development. "Although the Great Leap Forward movement achieved certain results in some aspects, the price paid for it was enormous. The "Great Leap Forward" movement and the people's communes  movement caused great damage to the productive forces of society and disastrous losses to the country and the people. This was a serious mistake made by the Party in leading comprehensive socialist construction and in exploring its own path to building socialism. The lessons to be learnt from this are very profound and deserve to be learned forever by future generations.

With regard to the General Line of Socialist Construction, the Great Leap Forward Movement and the Rural Communalisation Movement, the Resolution on Certain Historical Issues of the Party since the Founding of the People's Republic, adopted at the Sixth Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party in June 1981, is scientific and objective. The Resolution states: "The general line of socialist construction and its basic points, adopted at the Second Session of the Eighth Party Congress in 1958, were correct in that they reflected the general desire of the masses of the people to change the backward economic and cultural situation of our country, but were flawed in that they ignored the objective laws of economics. Before and after this conference, the comrades of the Party and the people of all nationalities throughout the country exercised a high degree of socialist activism and creativity in production and construction, and achieved certain results. However, due to insufficient experience in socialist construction, insufficient understanding of the laws of economic development and the basic situation of the Chinese economy, and even more so due to the fact that Comrade Mao Zedong and many leading comrades at the central and local levels fostered complacency in the face of victory, rushed for success, exaggerated the role of subjective will and subjective efforts, and, without serious investigation and pilot projects, rashly launched the General Line after it was proposed. The 'Great Leap Forward' campaign and the campaign for the rural people's communes made the leftist mistakes, mainly marked by high targets, blind command, boastfulness and the 'communist wind', which were seriously widespread."

[History of the Chinese Communist Party, Volume II (1949-1976) by the Party History Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, 2011, pp. 500-503]

The first eight years were spent copying the experience of foreign countries. But from 1956, when the Ten Major Relations were proposed, we began to find a line of our own that suited China. ...... Comrades, the power of initiative is like “building tiles on a high roof and “breaking bamboo link by link.” This power of initiative is derived from the realistic and the practical, it comes from the honest reflection in objective conditions of the mind of the people, and it results from the people’s process of understanding the dialectic of the objective environment. In the course of this process there will be a good many mistaken understandings, a gradual correction of these errors, and finally a return to the correct… Now, as far as the Party comrades are concerned, not all of them are correct in their thinking, and many of them do not understand the Marxist-Leninist position, views and methods. It is our duty to help them to understand, especially the comrades in the counties, communities and teams. ...... It seems impossible for mistakes not to be made.

It is impossible not to commit errors. As Lenin said, there has never been a man who did not commit errors. An earnest Party will view seriously the commission of errors, search out the reasons for the commission of the errors, and openly correct them. Our Party’s general line is correct, and actual work has basically been carried out well. There are some errors, which are difficult to avoid. Where is the so-called saint who never commits errors and who at once carries out truth to completion? Knowledge of truth is not achieved at once, but is gradually achieved. We are adherents of the theory of dialectical materialism, not of the theory of metaphysics. Freedom is inevitable knowledge; from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom is a flying leap, which is accomplished only gradually in the course of a long process of knowledge. We already have ten years of experience in our socialist revolution and construction and we already understand quite few things. But we still have insufficient experience in socialist construction. Remaining before us is a great, still unrecognized realm of necessity. We are still unable to understand it penetratingly.

[Mao Zedong: Summary of Ten Years (June 18, 1960), in Long Live Mao Zedong Thought]

 

毛主席也有猪队友：1958年刘少奇“穷过渡”的决策、推广及分析（初稿）_炎黄之家 (womenjia.org)

 

 

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[1] One levelling, two adjustments is short for "egalitarianism" and three transfers for "transfer without compensation". It emerged at the beginning of the People’s Communes movement in China's rural areas. It denied the economic differences between the people's communes, especially between the original senior agricultural production co-operatives within the communes, and the principles of distribution according to labour and exchange of prices, and transferred the peasants’ houses, farm tools, poultry and livestock, and the means of production, products, labour and capital of the various collective economic organisations without compensation.

[2] A rough translation might be “longing for the labourers” river

[3] The General Line of Socialist Construction, the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune proposed by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1958 were known as the "Three Fabulous Treasures" before May 1960, and as the "Three Red Flags" after May .

[4] Housing for the elderly without family to care for them

[5] This refers to releasing or decentralising personnel and assets, unifying policy, plans and finance, and placing financial tasks in one “package”.