In 1927, regardless of the resolute opposition of the left wing of the Kuomintang with Soong Ching-ling as its outstanding representative, the Kuomintang controlled by Chiang Kai-shek and Wang Jingwei betrayed the policies of Kuomintang-Communist cooperation and of anti-imperialists, massacred Communists and other revolutionaries. The party was still quite inexperienced and, moreover, was dominated by Chen Duxiu's right capitulationism, so that the revolution suffered a disastrous defeat under the surprise attack of a powerful enemy.
However, our party continued to fight tenaciously. Launched under the leadership of Zhou Enlai and several other comrades, the Nanchang uprising of 1927 fired the opening shot for armed resistance against the Kuomintang reactionaries.
The meeting of the Central Committee of the party held on Aug. 7, 1927, decided on the policy of carrying out agrarian revolution and organizing armed uprisings. Shortly afterwards, the autumn harvest and Canton uprisings and uprisings in many other areas were organized.
Led by Comrade Mao Zedong, the autumn-harvest uprising in the Hunan-Jiangxi border area gave birth to the first division of the Chinese workers' and peasants' revolutionary army and to the first rural revolutionary base area in the Jinggang Mountains. The First, Second and Fourth Front Armies of the workers' and peasants' Red Army were also born, as were many other Red Army units.
In the agrarian revolutionary war, the First Front Army of the Red Army and the central revolutionary base area under the direct leadership of Comrades Mao Zedong and Zhu De played the most important role. The Front Armies of the Red Army defeated a number of ''encirclement and suppression'' campaigns by the Kuomintang troops. But because of Wang Ming's left adventurist leadership, the struggle against the Kuomintang's fifth ''encirclement and suppression'' campaign ended in failure.
The First Front Army was forced to embark on the Long March and made its way to northern Shaanxi to join forces with units of the Red Army, which had been persevering in struggles there and with its 25th Army, which had arrived earlier.
In January 1935, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the party convened a meeting in Zunyi during the Long March, which established the leading position of Comrade Mao Zedong in the Red Army and the Central Committee of the party. This saved the Red Army and the Central Committee of the party, which were then in critical danger, and subsequently made it possible to defeat Zhang Guotao's splittism, bring the Long March to a triumphant conclusion and open up new vistas for the Chinese revolution. It was a vital turning point in the history of the party.
At a time of national crisis of unparalleled gravity when the Japanese imperialists were intensifying their aggression against China, the Central Committee of the party headed by Comrade Mao Zedong decided on and carried out the correct policy of forming an anti-Japanese united front.
During the war of resistance, the ruling clique of the Kuomintang continued to oppose the Communist Party and the people and was passive in resisting Japan. As a result, the Kuomintang suffered defeat after defeat in operations against the Japanese.
Our party persevered in the policy of maintaining its independence and initiative within the united front, closely relied on the masses of the people, conducted guerrilla warfare behing enemy lines and set up many anti-Japanese base areas. The Eighth Route Army and the new Fourth Army - the reorganized Red Army - grew rapidly and became the mainstay in the war of resistance.
Consequently, the Chinese people were able to hold out in the war for eight long years and win final victory in cooperation with the people of the Soviet Union and other countries.
After the conclusion of the war of resistance against Japan, the Chiang Kai-shek Government, with the aid of U.S. imperialism, flagrantly launched an all-out civil war, disregarding the just demand of our party and the people for peace and democracy. Our party led the People's Liberation Army in fighting the three-year war of liberation. The end result was the overthrow of the reactionary Kuomintang Government and the establishment of the great People's Republic of China. The Chinese people had stood up.
After the Victory in 1949
From the inception of the People's Republic of China in October 1949 to 1956, our party led the whole people in gradually realizing the transition from new democracy to socialism, rapidly rehabilitating the economy, undertaking planned economic construction and in the main accomplishing the socialist transformation of the private ownership of the means of production in most of the country. The guidelines and basic policies defined by the party in this historical period were correct and led to brilliant successes.
After the basic completion of socialist transformation, our party led the entire people in shifting our work to all-around, largescale socialist construction. In the 10 years preceding the Cultural Revolution we achieved big successes despite serious setbacks. By 1966, the value of fixed industrial assets, calculated on the basis of their original price, was four times that of 1956.
In the course of this decade, there were serious faults and errors in the guidelines of the party's work, which developed through twists and turns.
Nineteen fifty-seven was one of the years that saw best results in economic work after the founding of the People's Republic owing to the conscientious implementation of the correct line formulated at the 8th National Congress of the party. To start a rectification campaign throughout the party in that year and urge the masses to offer criticisms and suggestions were normal steps in developing socialist democracy. In the rectification campaign a handful of bourgeois rightists seized the opportunity to advocate what they called ''speaking out and airing views in a big way'' and to mount a wild attack against the party and the nascent socialist system in an attempt to replace the leadership of the Communist Party. It was therefore entirely correct and necessary to launch a resolute counterattack. But the scope of this struggle was made far too broad and a number of intellectuals, patriotic people and party cadres were unjustifiably labeled rightist, with unfortunate consequences.
All the successes in these 10 years were achieved under the collective leadership of the Central Committee of the party headed by Comrade Mao Zedong. Likewise, responsibility for errors committed in the work of this period rested with the same collective leadership. Although Comrade Mao Zedong must be held chiefly responsible, we cannot lay the blame on him alone for all those errors. During this period, his theoretical and practical mistakes concerning class struggle in a socialist society became increasingly furious, his personal arbitrariness gradually undermined democratic centralism in party life, and the personality cult grew graver and graver. The Central Committee failed to rectify these mistakes in good time. Careerists like Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng, harboring ulterior motives, made use of these errors and inflated them. This led to the inauguration of the Cultural Revolution.
The Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, which lasted from May 1966 to October 1976, was responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the party, the state and the people since the founding of the People's Republic.
It was initiated and led by Comrade Mao Zedong. His principal theses were that many representatives of the bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionary revisionists had sneaked into the party, the Government, the army and cultural circles, and leadership in a fairly large majority of organizations and departments was no longer in the hands of Marxists and the people; that party persons in power taking the capitalist road had formed a bourgeois headquarters inside the Central Committee which pursued a revisionist political and organizational line and had agents in all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions, as well as in all central departments; that since the forms of struggle adopted in the past had not been able to solve this problem, the power usurped by the capitalist-roaders could be recaptured only by carrying out a Great Cultural Revolution, by openly and fully mobilizing the broad masses from the bottom up to expose these sinister phenomena, and that the Cultural Revolution was in fact a great political revolution in which one class would overthrow another, a revolution that would have to be waged time and again.
These theses appeared mainly in the May 16 Circular, which served as the programmatic document of the Cultural Revolution, and in the political report to the 9th National Congress of the party in April 1969. They were incorporated into a general theory - the theory of continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat -which then took on a specific meaning.
These erroneous left theses, upon which Comrade Mao Zedong based himself in initiating the Cultural Revolution, were obviously inconsistent with the system of Mao Zedong thought, which is the integration of the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution. These theses must be thoroughly distinguished from Mao Zedong thought.
As for Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and others, who were placed in important positions by Comrade Mao Zedong, the matter is of an entirely different nature. They rigged up two counterrevolutionary cliques in an attempt to seize power and, taking advantage of Comrade Mao Zedong's errors, committed crimes behind his back, bringing disaster to the country and the people. Appraisal of the Situation
The history of the Cultural Revolution has proved that Comrade Mao Zedong's theses for initiating it conformed neither to Marxism-Leninism nor to Chinese reality. They represent an entirely erroneous appraisal of the prevailing class relations and political situation in the party and state.
The Cultural Revolution was defined as a struggle against the revisionist line or the capitalist road. There were no grounds at all for this definition. It led to the confusing of right and wrong on a series of important theories and policies. Many things denounced as revisionist or capitalist during the Cultural Revolution were actually Marxist and Socialist principles, many of which had been set forth or supported by Comrade Mao Zedong himself.
The Cultural Revolution negated many of the correct princples, policies and achievements of the 17 years after the founding of the People's Republic. In fact, it negated much of the work of the Central Committee of the party and the people's Government, including Comrade Mao Zedong's own contribution. It negated the arduous struggles the entire people had conducted in socialist construction. No 'Great Order'
The confusing of right and wrong inevitably led to confusing the people with the enemy. The capitalist-roaders overthrown in the Cultural Revolution were leading cadres of party and Government organizations who formed the core force of the socialist cause. The so-called bourgeois headquarters headed by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping simply did not exist.
Practice has shown that the Cultural Revolution did not in fact constitute a revolution or social progress in any sense, nor could it possibly have done so. It was we and not the enemy at all who were thrown into disorder by the Cultural Revolution. Therefore, from beginning to end, it did not turn ''great disorder under heaven'' into ''great order under heaven,'' nor could it conceivably have done so.
History has shown that the Cultural Revolution, initiated by a leader laboring under a misapprehension and capitalized on by counterrevolutionary cliques, led to domestic turmoil and brought catastrophe to the party, the state and the whole people.
Nominally, the Cultural Revolution was conducted by directly relying on the masses. In fact, it was divorced both from the party organizations and from the masses. After the movement started, party organizations at different levels were attacked and became partially or wholly paralyzed, the party's leading cadres at various levels were subjected to criticism and struggle, inner-party life came to a standstill and many activists and large numbers of the basic masses whom the party has long relied on were rejected. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the vast majority of participants acted out of faith in Comrade Mao Zedong and the party.
Except for a handful of extremists, however, they did not approve of launching ruthless struggles against leading party cadres. With the lapse of time, following their own circuitous paths, they eventually attained a heightened political consciousness and began to adopt a skeptical or wait-and-see attitude toward the Cultural Revolution, or even resisted and opposed it. Many people were assailed more or less severely for this very reason. Such a state of affairs could not but provide openings to be exploited by opportunists, careerists and conspirators, not a few of whom were rose to high or even key positions.
In 1970-71 the counterrevolutionary Lin Biao clique plotted to capture power and attempted an armed counterrevolutionary coup. This was the outcome of the Cultural Revolution, which overturned a series of fundamental party principles. Objectively, it announced the failure of the theories and practices of the Cultural Revolution.
Comrades Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai ingeniously thwarted the plotted coup. Supported by Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Zhou Enlai took charge of the day-to-day work of the Central Committee and things began to improve in all fields. During the criticism and repudiation of Lin Biao in 1972, he correctly proposed criticism of the ultraleft trend of thought. In fact, this was an extension of the correct proposals put forward around February 1967 by many leading comrades of the Central Committee, who had called for the correction of the errors of the Cultural Revolution.
Comrade Mao Zedong, however, erroneously held that the task was still to oppose the ultraright. The 10th Congress of the party perpetuated the left errors of the 9th Congress and made Wang Hongwen a vice chairman of the party. Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen formed a Gang of Four inside the Politburo of the Central Committee, thus strengthening the influence of the counterrevolutionary Jiang Qing clique.
In 1975, when Comrade Zhou Enlai was seriously ill, Comrade Deng Xiaoping, with the support of Comrade Mao Zedong, took charge of the day-to-day work of the Central Committee. He convened an enlarged meeting of the Military Commission of the Central Committee and several other important meetings with a view to solving problems in industry, agriculture, transport and science and technology, and began to straighten out work in many fields so that the situation took an obvious turn for the better.
However, Comrade Mao Zedong could not bear to accept systematic correction of the errors of the Cultural Revolution by Comrade Deng and counter the right deviationist trend to reverse correct verdicts, once again plunging the nation into turmoil. In January of that year, Comrade Zhou Enlai passed away. Comrade Zhou Enlai was utterly devoted to the party and the people and stuck to his post until his dying day. He found himself in an extremely difficult situation throughout the Cultural Revolution. He always kept the general interest in mind, bore the burden of office without complaint, racking his brains and untiringly endeavouring to keep the normal work of the party and the state going, to minimize the damage caused by the Cultural Revolution and to protect party and nonparty cadres. Tian An Men Incident
He waged all forms of struggle to counter sabotage by the counterrevolutionary Lin Biao and Jiang Qing cliques. His death left the whole party and people in the most profound grief. In April of the same year, a powerful movement of protest signaled by the Tian An Men incident swept the whole country, a movement to mourn for the late Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and oppose the Gang of Four. In essence, the movement was a demonstration of support for the party's correct leadership as represented by Comrade Deng Xiaoping. It laid the ground for broad popular support for the subsequent overthrow of the counterrevolutionary Jiang Qing clique. The Politburo of the Central Committee and Comrade Mao Zedong wrongly assessed the nature of the Tian An Men incident and dismissed Comrade Deng Xiaoping from all his posts inside and outside the party.
Chief responsibility for the grave left error of the Cultural Revolution, an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong. But after all, it was the error of a great proletarian revolutionary. Comrade Mao Zedong paid constant attention to overcoming shortcomings in the life of the party and state. In his later years, however, far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy during the Cultural Revolution. While making serious mistakes, he repeatedly urged the whole party to study the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin conscientiously and imagined that his theory and practice were Marxist and that they were essential for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Herein lies his tragedy. While persisting in the comprehensive error of the Cultural Revolution, he checked and rectified some of its specific mistakes, protected some leading party cadres and nonparty public figures and enabled some leading cadres to return to important leading posts. He led the struggle to smash the counterrevolutionary Lin Biao clique. He made major criticisms and exposures of Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao and others, frustrating their sinister ambition to seize supreme leadership. All this was crucial to the subsequent and relatively painless overthrow of the Gang of Four by our party.
In his later years, he still remained alert to safeguarding the security of our country, stood up to the pressure of the socialimperialists, pursued a correct foreign policy, firmly supported the just struggles of all peoples, outlined the correct strategy of the three worlds and advanced the important principle that China would never seek hegemony. During the Cultural Revolution our party was not destroyed but maintained its unity. The State Council and the Army were still able to do much of their essential work.
The 4th National People's Congress, which was attended by deputies from all nationalities and all walks of life, was convened and it determined the composition of the State Council with Comrades Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping as the core of its leadership. The foundation of China's socialist system remained intact and it was possible to continue economic construction. Our country remained united and exerted significant influence on world affairs.
All these important facts are inseparable from the great role played by Comrade Mao Zedong. For these reasons, and particularly for his vital contributions to the cause of the revolution over the years, the Chinese people have always regarded Comrade Mao Zedong as their respected and beloved great leader and teacher.
Comrade Mao Zedong's prestige reached a peak and he began to get arrogant at the very time when the party was confronted with the new task of shifting the focus of its work to socialist construction, a task for which the utmost caution was required. He gradually divorced himself from practice and from the masses, acted more and more arbitrarily and subjectively, and increasingly put himself above the Central Committee of the party. The result was a steady weakening and even undermining of the principle of collecive leadership and democratic centralism in the political life of the party and the country. This state of affairs took shape only gradually and the Central Committee of the party should be held partly responsible. From the Marxist viewpoint, this complex phenomenon was the product of given historical conditions. Blaming this on only one person or on only a handful of people will not provide a deep lesson for the whole party or enable it to find practical ways to change the situation. Accepted Personality Cult
He tried to suppress the discussions on the criterion of truth unfolded in the country in 1978, which were very significant in setting things right. He procrastinated and obstructed the work of reinstating veteran cadres in their posts and redressing the injustices left over from the past (including the case of the Tian An Men incident of 1976). He accepted and fostered the personality cult around himself while continuing the personality cult of the past. The 11th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, convened in August 1977, played a positive role in exposing and repudiating the Gang of Four and mobilizing the whole party for building China into a powerful modern socialist state. However, owing to the limitations imposed by the historical conditions then and the influence of Comrade Hua Guofeng's mistakes, it reaffirmed the erroneous theories, policies and slogans of the Cultural Revoltuion instead of correcting them. He also had his share of responsibility for impetuously seeking quick results in economic work and for continuing certain other left policies. Obviously, under his leadership it is impossible to correct left errors within the party, and all the more impossible to restore the party's fine traditions.
The victory won in overthrowing the counterrevolutionary Jiang Qing clique in October 1976 saved the party and the revolution from disaster and enabled our country to enter a new historical period of development. In the two years from October 1976 to December 1978 when the 3d plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the party was convened, large numbers of cadres and oher people most enthusiastically devoted themselves to all kinds of revolutionary work and the task of construction.
Comrades inside and outside the party demanded more and more strongly that the errors of the Cultural Revolution be corrected, but such demands met with resistance. This, of course, was partly due to the fact that the political and ideological confusion created in the Cultural Revolution could not be eliminated overnight, but it was also due to the left errors that Comrade Hua Guofeng continued to commit in his capacity as chairman of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. Naming of Hua Guofeng Recalled
On the proposal of Comrade Mao Zedong, Comrade Hua Guofeng had become first vice chairman of the Central Committee of the party and concurrently Prime Minister of the State Council during the ''movement to criticize Deng Xiaoping'' in 1976. He contributed to the struggle to overthrow the counterrevolutionary Jiang Qing clique and did useful work after that. But he promoted the erroneous ''two whatevers'' policy, that is, ''We firmly uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and we unswervingly adhere to whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave,'' and he took a long time to rectify the error.
Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist and theorist. It is true that he made gross mistakes during the Cultural Revolution, but if we judge his activities as a whole, his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes. His merits are primary and his errors secondary. He rendered indelible meritorious service in founding and building up our party and the Chinese liberation of the oppressed nations of the world and to the progress of mankind.
