Speech at the Closing Ceremony
of the Guangdong Provincial Congress
of the Chinese Guomindang
(October 27, 1925)¹

This is the closing day of the Congress of Representatives of the Guangdong
Council of the Chinese Guomindang, and I, your younger brother, have the
opportunity to offer some suggestions to all you comrades. That is an excellent
thing. There is no need for me to praise the past work of all you comrades, nor
do I think I should praise it. Consequently, for now I will only raise one question
for discussion with all the comrades. Because in the case of any question whatsoever, it is only if it can be fully discussed within the party that it can be uniformly propagated outside the party, and at the same time the Second National
Congress will soon be opening, and so it becomes even more necessary to raise
and discuss this question. What is this question I wish to raise for discussion? It
is the question of the middle elements. At the First Congress, our party decided
on various policies, and the results of their application during the past two years
have already demonstrated that the policies of the First Congress were correct.
As regards the policy toward the peasants, our party decided to support the
middle and lower strata of the peasantry in their efforts to get organized, and to
help them eliminate their misery by such means as rent reduction. But because of this, another question arose. As soon as the movement for rent
reduction was launched, it was necessary to oppose the village bullies and
bad gentry, and criticisms then surfaced. Some comrades held that the present
period is the period of unity against the foreigners, and we should all unanimously oppose imperialism. The landlords are our Chinese compatriots, and
we must not advocate attacking one another. Comrades of this type seem to

This speech appeared in the Guangzhou Minguo ribao for October 28, 1925, and our
translation has been made from that source.
1. On October 5, 1925, Wang Jingwei, who had been concurrently chairman of the
national government and head of the Propaganda Department of the Guomindang Central
Executive Committee, proposed to the Standing Committee of the Guomindang Central
Bureau that, because he was fully occupied by his work in the government, Mao Zedong
should be appointed acting head of the Propaganda Department. This is Mao's address to
the closing session of the congress in that capacity.
want to constitute something like an intermediate faction within the party. In my
opinion, this problem is extremely important. Formerly, Comrade Liao
Zhongkai had a slogan, "Let the revolutionary factions unite!" Since Comrade
Liao was slaughtered, Comrade Wang Jingwei has put forward another slogan,
"Those who wish to make revolution should move toward the left!"² Those
comrades who want to create an intermediate faction hold that right is no good
and left is no good either; only the way of the invariable mean³ is good. But all
of you comrades must ask yourselves whether this thinking is correct or not. Are
their views harmful or beneficial to the party and to the interests of the majority
of the popular masses? Can such an intermediate faction be created, exist, and
develop within the party and within China? According to my observations, this
intermediate faction will not be able to exist. I shall now put forward three
proofs. First of all, before the European war there were intermediate factions in
all the European countries, and moreover rather big and powerful intermediate
factions, such as the Social Democratic Party in Germany, the Labor Party in
England, and the Socialist Party in France. They all took up an intermediate
position, but after the European war the world was divided into two big camps.
One is the great camp of counterrevolution, led by the big bourgeoisie; the other
is the great camp of revolution, led by the proletariat. Once these two are engaged in close combat, the basis of the intermediate faction is shaken, and so the
intermediate faction undergoes further splits. One part subordinates itself completely to the counterrevolutionary forces of the bourgeoisie, and another part
joins the revolutionary forces of the proletariat. Such is the situation in Europe.
Secondly, in China, since the 1911 Revolution, there have been some instances
of strong intermediate factions. At that time, the faction of the left was the
Guomindang, and the faction of the right was Yuan Shikai.⁴ The intermediate
faction was the Progressive Party, which later became the Research clique and
then joined with a number of backward members of the Guomindang to split off
and form the Political Studies clique.⁵ It even regards itself as an intermediate

2. Wang Jingwei (1883-1944), zi Jixin, original name Zhaoming, was born in
Guangdong. In 1905, while a student in Japan, he joined the Tongmenghui, and from that
time forward he was closely associated with Sun Yatsen. In 1910, he led an attempt to
assassinate the prince regent, which made him a national hero when he was released from
prison after the 1911 Revolution. He accompanied Sun Yatsen on his journey to Beijing at
the end of 1924, and it was he who drafted the testament that Sun signed on his deathbed.
In July 1925 he was elected chairman of the national government formed in Guangzhou.
Though he ended his life as the premier of the Japanese puppet government in Nanjing, he
was regarded at this time, as the slogan quoted by Mao indicates, as a leading figure in the
Guomindang left.
3. Zhongyong zhi dao, the Confucian "Doctrine of the Mean."
4. The Chinese text actually has you [right] for the faction represented by the
Guomindang, and zuo [left] for Yuan Shikai. This must be a printer's error.
5. See above, Mao's article of April 10, 1923, "The Foreign Powers, the Warlords, and
the Revolution," in which he evokes these various centrist factions, and the notes thereto.