Telegram to Zhou Enlai
(February 21, 1942)
Comrade Enlai,
1. We have taken note of your telegram of the 16th. The documents from the
Fifth Plenum and the Zunyi Conference will be wired to you. Last October, the
Politburo carefully examined the question of the former line and unanimously
held that the line of the Central Committee from the Fourth Plenum to the
September 18 Incident 1 was basically correct, though there were several serious
errors of principle. The Central Committee’s line from September 18 to the Zunyi
Conference (a total of three years and four months) was erroneous. The line of
the Central Committee since the Zunyi Conference has been correct. The
summation has been written. It can be discussed and decided upon only when
Zhou, [Liu] Shaoqi, and [Peng] Dehuai have come back before the Seventh
Congress. It will be passed to the Seventh Congress for adoption and will be
distributed internally (do not distribute it externally). The Senior Study Group
may discuss past issues now but should not implicate individuals. The purpose of
the study is to learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones, and to “Cure the
Illness to Save the Patient.”
2. Please pay attention to this point.
Mao [Zedong], Wang [Jiaxiang] 2
Notes
Our source for this text is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 9, p. 387, where it is reproduced from Dangshi yanjiu,

No. 5 (1984).

--- Notes

1. That is, between January 1931 and the Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, when Japan began its
occupation of Manchuria.

2. Wang Jiaxiang (1906–1974) went to the Jiangxi Base Area as a member of the delegation of the Central
Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in the spring of 1931 and was a member of the Central Bureau
of the central soviet region and the head of the General Political Department of the Chinese Red Army of
Peasants and Workers. He was elected to the Central Committee as an alternate member of the Politburo in
January 1934. He supported Mao Zedong at the famous Zunyi Conference and joined Mao Zedong and Zhou
Enlai and made up of the three-member military leadership group after the conference. In Yan’an he was the
vice chairman of the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the
head of the General Political Department, and the head of the Political Department of the Eighth Route
Army. He was elected to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party as an alternate member at
the Seventh Congress in 1945.