Address to the Ninth Congress of the
Agricultural Association of China
(August 14, 1926)1

Gentlemen! As you meet in Guangdong, it is most important not to forget the
more than 800,000 peasants.2 Peasants are the foundation of agriculture and the
foundation of China! All you gentlemen, as you visit here today, would be well
advised to go to the countryside, to go amongst the people, to go directly to
guide the peasants, to arouse them from their bad conservative natures, and to
effect the fundamental salvation of agriculture. Present here are many graduates
of agricultural schools, and not a few who have returned from abroad, but they
have all encountered the obstruction of the peasants. In fact, the obstruction they
encounter results from their own earlier failure to go and lead the peasants, and
so they still haven't achieved much good to this day!

At present, the rural economy is extremely backward and crude, and the lives
of the peasants are extremely difficult. For this reason, the problem of the peasants in Guangdong is a problem for all you gentlemen meeting here. The hope
for a satisfactory resolution of this problem lies with all of us!

The text of Mao's address was published in Zhonghua nongxuehui bao (English title on
the cover: "The Journal of Agricultural Association of China"), No. 52, November 1926,
pp. 99-100. We have translated it from that source.
1. This congress was held at the Institute of Agriculture of Sun Yatsen University, near
Guangzhou. Mao had been invited to attend in his capacity as head of the Peasant Movement Training Institute and made this address on behalf of that institute.
2. This figure almost certainly refers to the number of peasant association members in
Guangdong Province, which Mao put at over 600,000 in the Resolution Concerning the
Peasant Movement of January 19, 1926, translated above, and which had grown further in
the intervening half year. On the other hand, it seems odd that Mao should have called for
arousing the peasants from their "bad conservative natures" if he was talking about those
who had already become revolutionary activists. Perhaps he was urging his listeners to go
out and organize those who had not joined.