speech at the Welcome Meeting Held by the
Provincial Peasants' and Workers' Congresses
(December 20, 1926)
In the afternoon of the day before yesterday (December 20), the Peasants' and
the Workers' Congresses held a joint meeting in the magic lantern theater to
welcome Mr. Mao Runzhi and Mr. Bu Lici, the representative of the Peasant
International.1 Over three hundred people attended the meeting, and the audience was very enthusiastic. The upstairs hall was practically filled to capacity.
The meeting began at 2 P.M. with the ringing of a bell. Chairman Liu Jingtao
first made introductory remarks. He said, ”This afternoon we are here to welcome two guests. The first one is Mr. Mao Runzhi. Born in Xiangtan, Hunan
Province, Mr. Mao is a leader of the Chinese revolution, and he has paid
particular attention to the peasant movement. He has come back to Hunan at
this time specially to investigate the peasant movement. At the beginning of
our congress, we sent a telegram to Mr. Mao asking him to come back to give
his guidance to the congress. We are very pleased to have Mr. Mao back here
at this time. Our second guest is Mr. Bu Lici, the representative from the
Peasant International. Mr. Bu Lici has been sent by the Peasant International to
This summary of Mao's speech was published at the time in the Daily Bulletin of the
Workers' and Peasants' Congresses. Our translation is based on the reprint of the entire
collection of this periodical under the original title: Hunan quansheng diyici gongnong
daibiao dahui rikan (Daily Bulletin of the First Workers' Peasants' Congresses of Hunan
Province) (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1979), pp. 338-40. Mao's remarks are
also reproduced in Mao Zedongji. Bujuan, Vol. 2, pp. 205-06.
I. We have not been able to identify the person whose name is given as Bu Lici. The
Peasant International, an emanation of the Comintern, which held its First Conference in
October 1923, was nearing the end of its active life at this time, though a second and final
conference would take place in the autumn of 1927. In his speech, delivered after the
five-minute break which followed Mao's talk, the representative of the Peasant Interna-tional began by stressing that in Europe the peasantry had not been revolutionary prior to
the First World War. Although the 12 million deaths in the war had brought about a major
change in this respect, cooperation between peasants and workers had nevertheless proved
difficult to achieve. This, suggested Bu Lici, had been an important reason for the defeat of
the German and Bulgarian revolutions. In the light of these remarks, it is conceivable that
the emissary was a German or an East European, and since the Chinese do not always
distinguish clearly between voiced and unvoiced consonants, Bu Lici might be a transcription for something like Politzer, but no such person is known to have participated in the
activities of the Peasant International. Simply on phonetic grounds, a name which fits the
Chinese rendering reasonably well is that of Bouysse, a French peasant who was a delegate
to the First Conference, but we have found no evidence that he ever visited China.
420


DECEMBER 1926
421
China to observe the peasant movement. We have invited him to give a report
today. His report will consist of three parts: the first is about the peasants'
conditions in Russia; the second is about the policies of the Soviet government
towards the peasants; and the third is his opinions on the peasant movement in
China. Now Mr. Mao has arrived, let's welcome Mr. Mao to speak to us."
(Applause)
The speech of Mr. Mao is quite long, and will be published later after
having been edited. Here are the main ideas:
I have been away from Hunan for only one year, but the situation this year is
quite different from what it was last year. At that time, it would have been
impossible to hold a mass meeting like this. At that time, the government was
that of warlord Zhao Hengti; this year the government is one that can more or
less work in cooperation with the people. Last year, the peasant movement was
in its embryonic stage; this year it already has 1.2 million organized peasants. All
this is the result of the efforts on the part of all you comrades. The topic of my
speech today is the union of workers, peasants, merchants, and students. The
national revolution is the joint revolution of all classes, but there is a central
problem of the national revolution, which is the peasant problem. Everything
depends on the solution to this problem. The demand of the workers in the
national revolution is for adequate raw materials and abundant manufactured
goods. Only the peasants can solve this problem. The problems of the merchants
in the national revolution are of two types: one concerns the industrialists, and
the other the businessmen. The market for manufactured goods is in the villages,
and it is the peasants who buy manufactured goods. The raw materials for the
merchants' commodities are sent from the countryside. The market for their
commodities is also in the countryside. If they want good sales for their products,
the merchants must have the peasant problem solved, so that peasants have extra
money with which to buy their goods. As for students in the national revolution,
some of them are involved in the peasant and labor movements. Some of them
are studying industry, and some of them are studying commerce, and the reason
they haven't gone to work in industry and commerce lies in the fact that the
peasant problem has not yet been solved. That is why many Chinese students are
involved in the revolutionary movement, while students in other countries oppose revolution. Most Chinese students live a very hard life, and after they
graduate they have no place to use what they've learned, so they have no choice
but to make revolution. Chinese students are quite important, but they are not the
only important ones. It's like a three-storied building. On the top floor are the
imperialists, the warlords, and local bullies and bad gentry. On the bottom floor
are the classes of workers and peasants. In the middle are the students. Some of
them go up and link up with the imperialists, some go down and link up with the
workers and peasants, and then there are some who go neither up nor down. A
phenomenon among Chinese students is that the revolutionary ones are a minority and so are the counterrevolutionary ones, while those who do not participate


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MAO'S ROAD TO POWER
in the revolution are the majority. At present, the time for us to overthrow the
landlords has not yet come. We must make some concessions to them. In the
national revolution, now is the time to knock down the imperialists, the warlords,
and the local bullies and bad gentry, to reduce land rents, to reduce interest, and
to increase the wages of farm laborers. All of this is part of the peasant problem.
If the peasant problem is solved, the problems of the workers, merchants, students, educators, and others will likewise be solved.
By this time, it was already 4 P.M., and the chairman announced a five-minute
break ... (balance omitted).