APPENDIX: RESOLUTION ON CERTAIN QUESTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR PARTY

Adopted on April 20, 1945 by the Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session of
the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

I
Ever since its birth in 1921, the Communist Party of China has
made the integration of the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with
the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution the guiding principle
in all its work, and Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory and practice
of the Chinese revolution represent this integration.  With the founding
of our Party a new stage of the Chinese revolution was immediately
unfolded, the stage of the new-democratic revolution, as pointed
out by Comrade Mao Tse-tung.  Throughout the twenty-four years of
struggle for New Democracy (from
1921 to 1945), throughout the three
historical periods — the First Great Revolution, the Agrarian Revolution and the War of Resistance Against Japan — our Party has consistently led the broad masses of the Chinese people in extremely
arduous and bitter revolutionary struggles against their enemies, imperialism and feudalism, and has gained great successes and rich
experience.  In the course of its struggle the Party has produced its
own leader, Comrade Mao Tse-tung.  Representing the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese people, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has creatively
applied the scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism, the acme of human
wisdom, to China, a large semi-feudal and semi-colonial country in
which the peasantry constitutes the bulk of the masses and the immediate task is to fight against imperialism and feudalism, a country
with a vast area and a huge population, where the situation is
extremely complicated and the struggle extremely hard, and he has

brilliantly developed the theories of Lenin and Stalin on the colonial
and semi-colonial question as well as Stalin’s theory concerning the
Chinese revolution.  It is only because the Party has firmly adhered
to the correct Marxist-Leninist line and waged a victorious struggle
against all erroneous ideas opposed to this line that it has scored great
achievements in these three periods, has arrived at today’s unprecedented ideological, political and organizational solidarity and
unity, has developed into the powerful revolutionary force of today,
having over
1,200 ,000  members and leading China’s Liberated Areas
with their population of nearly 100,000 ,000  and an army of nearly
1,000 ,000 , and has become the centre of gravity for the whole nation
in the War of Resistance Against Japan and in the cause of liberation.
II
In the first period of China’s new-democratic revolution, from
1921 to 1927, and especially from 1924 to 1927, the great anti-imperialist
and anti-feudal revolution of the Chinese people, correctly guided
by the Communist International and influenced, impelled forward
and organized by the correct leadership of the Chinese Communist
Party, advanced rapidly and won great victories.  In this great revolution, the whole membership of the Communist Party of China carried
out tremendous revolutionary work, developed the labour, youth and
peasant movements throughout the country, pushed forward and
assisted in the reorganization of the Kuomintang and the formation
of the National Revolutionary Army, provided the political backbone
of the Eastern Campaign
1 and the Northern Expedition, led the great
nation-wide struggle against imperialism and feudalism, and so wrote
a most glorious chapter in the history of the Chinese revolution.
Nevertheless, this revolution ended in defeat because in
1927  the
clique of reactionaries in the Kuomintang, which was then our ally,
betrayed the revolution; because the combined forces of the imperialists
and the reactionary Kuomintang clique were then too strong; and in
particular because the Rightist ideology in our Party, represented by
Chen Tu-hsiu, developed into a line of capitulation during the concluding period of this revolution (for about six months) and dominated the
Party’s leading body, which refused to carry out the many wise
directives of the Communist International and of Comrade Stalin and

refused to accept the correct views of Comrade Mao Tse-tung and
other comrades, with the result that, when the Kuomintang betrayed
the revolution and sprang a surprise attack on the people, the Party
and the people were unable to organize effective resistance.
In the ten years from the defeat of the revolution in
1927  to the
outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan in 1937 , it was the
Communist Party of China, and the Communist Party of China alone,
which continued in unity to hold aloft the great banner of anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism under the counter-revolutionary reign
of extreme terror and which led the broad masses of workers, peasants,
soldiers, revolutionary intellectuals and other revolutionaries in great
political, military and ideological struggles.  During these struggles
the Communist Party of China created the Red Army, established the
government of Councils of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers, set up
revolutionary bases, distributed land to impoverished peasants and
resisted both the attacks of the reactionary Kuomintang government
and, after September
18, 1931, the aggression of Japanese imperialism.
As a result, the Chinese people achieved great successes in their new-democratic cause of national and social liberation.  Similarly, the
whole Party fought in unity against the counter-revolutionary activities
of the Trotskyist Chen Tu-hsiu clique and of Lo Chang-lung,
2 Chang
Kuo-tao3 and others who tried to split the Party and who betrayed it;
thus the unity of the Party on the basis of the general principles of
Marxism-Leninism was ensured.  Over these ten years, this general
policy of the Party and the heroic struggles to carry it out were entirely
correct and necessary.  Countless Party members, countless numbers
of the people and many revolutionaries outside the Party carried on
fiery revolutionary struggles on the various fronts, dauntlessly fighting
and sacrificing themselves, indomitably stepping into the breach as
others fell; by their spirit and deeds they have won immortality in
our nation’s history.  Without all this, the War of Resistance Against
Japan could not have been effected; or having been effected, it could
not have been sustained and carried through to victory because it
would not have had as its backbone a Communist Party which had
accumulated a rich experience of people’s war.  This is beyond all doubt.
We rejoice especially in the fact that in those ten years our Party,
with Comrade Mao Tse-tung as its representative, made very great
advances in creatively applying to Chinese conditions the revolutionary theories of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.  At last, towards
the end of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, our Party definitely

established the leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung in the central
leading body and throughout the Party.  This was the greatest achievement of the Communist Party of China in that period and it is the
surest guarantee of the liberation of the Chinese people.
We must point out, however, that besides its great achievements
in those ten years, our Party at certain times committed a number of
errors.  The gravest of all was the “Left” error in the political, military
and organizational lines from the time of the Fourth Plenary Session
of the Sixth Central Committee of the Party in January
1931 to the
enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee
in January
1935 (the Tsunyi Meeting).  That error caused serious losses
to our Party and to the Chinese revolution.
In order to learn the historic lessons of the Chinese revolution,
“to learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones and to cure the
sickness to save the patient”, to make “the overturning of the chariot
in front a warning for the chariot behind” and in order, on the
basis of a common Marxist-Leninist ideology, to unite the whole
Party like one harmonious family, like solid steel, to fight for total
victory in the War of Resistance Against Japan and for the complete
liberation of the Chinese people, this Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session
of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China
considers it useful and necessary to set forth formal conclusions on
certain questions of Party history during those ten years, and particularly on the line of the central leadership from the Fourth Plenary
Session to the Tsunyi Meeting.
III
After the defeat of the revolution in 1927 , both “Left” and Right
deviations occurred in our Party.
The handful of capitulationists of the period of the First Great
Revolution, with Chen Tu-hsiu as their representative, became pessimistic about the future of the revolution and gradually turned into
liquidationists.  They took the reactionary Trotskyist stand, holding
that after the
1927  revolution the Chinese bourgeoisie was already
victorious over imperialism and the feudal forces, that its rule over
the people was being stabilized, and that Chinese society was already
one in which capitalism was dominant and would develop peacefully.

Therefore, they arbitrarily asserted that the bourgeois-democratic
revolution in China had been completed and that the Chinese proletariat must wait until the future to make the “socialist revolution”
and could engage for the time being only in a so-called legal movement centring on the slogan “For a National Assembly”, thus liquidating the revolutionary movement.  Therefore, they opposed all the
revolutionary struggles waged by the Party and slandered the Red
Army movement as a “movement of roving rebels”.  They not only
refused to accept the Party’s advice and abandon their opportunist,
liquidationist anti-Party viewpoint, but even joined with the reactionary Trotskyites
4 and formed an anti-Party faction; as a result,
they had to be expelled from the Party and later degenerated into
counter-revolutionaries.
On the other hand, petty-bourgeois revolutionary impetuosity,
which was aggravated by hatred of the Kuomintang’s policy of
massacre and by indignation at Chen Tu-hsiu’s capitulationism, was
also reflected in the Party and led to a rapid growth of “Left” sentiment.  This “Left” sentiment first appeared at the emergency meeting
of the Party’s Central Committee on August
7, 1927 .  In the history
of the Party the August 7th Meeting made a positive contribution.
At a critical moment in the Chinese revolution, it resolutely corrected
and ended the capitulationism of Chen Tu-hsiu, decided upon a
general policy of Agrarian Revolution and armed resistance to the
Kuomintang reactionaries’ massacres and called on the Party and
the masses to continue the revolutionary fight.  All this was correct
and constituted the main aspect of the meeting.  But in combating
Right errors the meeting paved the way for “Left” errors.  Politically,
it failed to realize that either appropriate counter-attacks or necessary
tactical retreats had to be organized at that time, according to the
different conditions in the different localities, in order to preserve
revolutionary positions and muster the revolutionary forces in a
planned way.  Instead, it tolerated and fostered tendencies towards
adventurism and commandism (especially the forcing of workers to
strike).  Organizationally, the meeting initiated excessive and sectarian
inner-Party struggles, unduly or improperly stressed the importance
of the leading cadres’ being exclusively of working-class origin and
brought about a rather serious state of ultra-democracy in the Party.
After the August
7th Meeting this “Left” sentiment continued to grow
until, at the enlarged meeting of the central leading body in November
1927, it took shape in a “Left” line of putschism (i.e., adventurism)

and for the first time brought the “Left” line into a dominant position in the central leading body of the Party.  The putschists then
maintained that the Chinese revolution was by nature a so-called
permanent revolution (they confused the democratic with the socialist revolution) and that the Chinese revolution was in a situation of
so-called permanent upsurge (they denied the defeat of the
1927
revolution).  Consequently, they not only failed to organize an orderly
retreat but, on the contrary, disregarding the enemy’s strength and
the state of the masses after the defeat of the revolution, they
ordered handfuls of members and followers of the Party to stage
local insurrections all over the country which had not the slightest
hope of success.  Along with this political adventurism, there also
developed a sectarian organizational policy of attacking comrades.
However, as this wrong line from its outset evoked correct criticism
and objection on the part of Comrade Mao Tse-tung and many comrades working in the White areas, and as it caused many losses in
practical work, it had ceased to be applied in many places by the beginning of
1928  and by April of the same year (less than six months
from its beginning) it was virtually terminated in practical work
throughout the country.
The line of the Sixth National Congress of the Party, held in July
1928, was basically correct.  The Congress rightly affirmed that Chinese
society was semi-colonial and semi-feudal, pointed out that none
of the fundamental contradictions giving rise to the contemporary
Chinese revolution had yet been resolved, and therefore defined the
Chinese revolution at the present stage as still a bourgeois-democratic
revolution and proclaimed a Ten-Point Programme
5 for that democratic revolution.  The Congress correctly pointed out that the current
political situation was an interval between two revolutionary high
tides, that the development of the revolution was uneven and that
the general task of the Party at the time was not to take the offensive
or organize insurrections but to win over the masses.  It waged a two
front struggle, repudiating both Right Chen Tu-hsiuism and “Left”
putschism, and in particular indicated that the most dangerous tendency in the Party consisted in putschism, military adventurism and
commandism which alienate the masses.  All this was absolutely
necessary.  On the other hand, the Sixth Congress also had its shortcomings and mistakes.  It lacked correct estimates and policies concerning the dual character of the intermediate classes and the internal
contradictions among the reactionary forces; it also lacked the

necessary understanding of the Party’s need for an orderly tactical
retreat after the defeat of the Great Revolution, of the importance
of rural base areas and of the protracted nature of the democratic
revolution.  Although these shortcomings and mistakes prevented the
thorough eradication of the “Left” ideas existing after the August
7th
Meeting, and although they were made more extreme and were greatly
magnified by the subsequent “Left” ideas, nevertheless they cannot
eclipse the correctness of the Congress in its main aspect.  For some
time after the Congress, the Party’s work was fruitful.  During that
time, Comrade Mao Tse-tung not only, in practice, developed the
correct aspect of the line of the Sixth Congress and correctly solved
many problems which the Congress had either not solved or had
solved incorrectly, but also, in theory, provided a fuller and more
concrete, scientific Marxist-Leninist basis for the orientation of the
Chinese revolution.  Under his guidance and influence, the Red Army
movement gradually developed into an important political factor in
the country.  In the White areas, too, Party organizations and Party
work to some extent revived.
But during the second half of
1929 and the first half of 1930 certain
“Left” ideas and policies that still existed in the Party once more
gained some ground.  From this basis they developed into the second
“Left” line when events turned in favour of the revolution.  Excited
by the domestic situation after the outbreak of war in May
1930  between Chiang Kai-shek on the one side and Feng Yu-hsiang and Yen
Hsi-shan on the other, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee,
led by Comrade Li Li-san, adopted on June 11 the “Left” resolution,
“The New Revolutionary High Tide and Winning Victory First in
One or More Provinces”, whereupon the “Left” line came to dominate
the central leading body for the second time.  This wrong line (the
Li Li-san line) arose for a number of reasons.  It arose because Li
Li-san and other comrades failed to recognize that the revolution
required adequate preparation by the building up of its own organizational strength, but held that “the masses want only big actions,
not small ones”, and therefore believed that the incessant wars
among the warlords at the time, together with the initial unfolding
of the Red Army movement and the initial revival of our work in the
White areas, already provided conditions for “big actions” (armed
insurrections) throughout the country.  It arose because they failed
to recognize the uneven development of the Chinese revolution but
held that the revolutionary crisis was growing uniformly in all parts

of the country, that preparations should be made everywhere for immediate insurrections and that the key cities in particular should take
the lead and become centres of a nation-wide revolutionary upsurge;
and they slandered as “utterly erroneous . . . localism and conservatism
characteristic of peasant mentality” Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s idea
that for a long time we should employ our main strength to create
rural base areas, use the rural areas to encircle the cities and use these
bases to advance a high tide of nation-wide revolution.  It arose because
they failed to recognize the uneven development of world revolution
but held that the general outbreak of the Chinese revolution would
inevitably lead to a general outbreak of world revolution, without
which the Chinese revolution could not possibly be successful.  And
it arose because they failed to recognize the protracted character of
China’s bourgeois-democratic revolution but held that the beginning
of victory in one or more provinces would mark the beginning of the
transition to socialist revolution, and so they formulated a number
of untimely and “Left” policies.  With these wrong views, the leaders
of the Li Li-san line drew up an adventurist plan for organizing armed
insurrections in the key cities throughout the country and for concentrating the whole of the Red Army to attack these cities.  Then
they merged the various leading bodies of the Party, the Youth League
and the trade unions into action committees at corresponding levels
for preparing armed insurrections, and thus brought all day-to-day
work to a standstill.  In the course of formulating and executing these
wrong decisions, Comrade Li Li-san rejected the correct criticisms
and suggestions of many comrades and stressed the fight within the
Party against the so-called “Right deviation”, under the slogan of
which he wrongly attacked those cadres who disagreed with his views,
thereby deepening inner-Party sectarianism.  Thus, the Li Li-san line
assumed a more fully developed form than did the first “Left” line.
However, the domination of the Li Li-san line in the Party was
also short-lived (lasting less than four months).  Since the Party and
the revolutionary forces suffered losses wherever this line was put
into practice, broad sections of cadres and Party members demanded
that it should be corrected.  Comrade Mao Tse-tung in particular never
agreed with the Li Li-san line, and indeed most patiently corrected
the “Left” mistakes of the First Front Army of the Red Army;
6 consequently, instead of suffering losses in this period, the Red Army in
the revolutionary base in Kiangsi actually grew stronger by utilizing
the favourable situation created by the war between Chiang Kai-shek

and Feng Yu-hsiang and Yen Hsi-shan, and it successfully smashed
the enemy’s first campaign of “encirclement and suppression” in late
1930 and early 1931.  With a few exceptions, the Red Army in the other
revolutionary base areas achieved similar results.  In the White areas
also, there were many comrades engaged in practical work who opposed
the Li Li-san line through the organizational channels of the Party.
The Third Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee held
in September
1930  and the subsequent central leadership played a
positive role in putting an end to the application of the Li Li-san line.
Although the documents of this session showed a conciliatory and
compromising spirit with regard to the Li Li-san line (for instance, in
denying that it was a wrong line and in saying that it was only “wrong
tactically”) and although organizationally this session continued the
error of sectarianism, it nevertheless corrected the ultra-Left appraisal
of the situation of the Chinese revolution, dropped the plan for organizing a general nation-wide insurrection and concentrating the whole
of the Red Army to attack key cities, and restored the independent
organizations and the day-to-day work of the Party, the Youth League
and the trade unions; it thereby terminated the most characteristic
errors of the Li Li-san line.  At the Third Plenary Session, Comrade
Li Li-san himself admitted the mistakes that had been pointed out and
then relinquished his leading position in the Political Bureau.  The
central leadership after the Third Plenary Session, going a step
further, declared in its supplementary resolution of November
1930
and in Circular No. 96  of December that the line of Li Li-san and
other comrades was wrong and that the conciliatory attitude of the
plenary session was wrong too.  Of course, both the Third Plenary
Session and the subsequent central leadership failed to examine the
ideological essence of the Li Li-san line thoroughly and to correct it,
and so certain “Left” ideas and policies that had existed within the
Party ever since the August
7th Meeting in 1927 , and especially since
1929 , strongly persisted at this session and afterwards.  However, since
both the Third Plenary Session and the subsequent central leadership
did take the positive measures described above to end the Li Li-san
line, all Party comrades should have made further efforts, on the
basis of these measures, to carry through the struggle against the
“Left” errors.
But at this time, a number of Party comrades who were inexperienced in practical revolutionary struggle and guilty of “Left
dogmatist errors came forward, with Comrade Chen Shao-yu (Wang

Ming) at their head, and fought against the central leadership under
the banners of “Against the Li Li-san Line” and “Against the Line
of Conciliation”, taking a sectarian stand even more violent than
that of the Li Li-san line.  Their fight was not designed to help the
central leadership liquidate the ideological essence of the Li Li-san
line and those “Left” ideas and policies which had existed in the Party
since the August
7th Meeting in 1927 , and particularly since 1929 , and
had never been thoroughly dealt with.  They put forward what was
actually a new political programme in Comrade Chen Shao-yu’s
pamphlet published at that time, The Two Lines  or The Struggle for
the Further Bolshevization of the Communist Party of China , a
programme that continued, revived or developed the Li Li-san line
and other “Left” ideas and policies in a new guise.  Thus, there was
a further growth of “Left” ideas in the Party which took the form of
a new “Left” line.
Although this new “Left” line under Comrade Chen Shao-yu’s
leadership criticized the “Left” errors of the Li Li-san line and the
error of conciliation on the part of the Third Plenary Session, its
distinctive feature was that it mainly criticized the Li Li-san line as
“Rightist”, that it accused the Third Plenary Session of “doing nothing
to expose and attack the consistently Right opportunist theory and
practice of the Li Li-san line” and that it blamed Circular No.
96 for
failure to see that “the Right deviation is still the main danger in the
Party at present”.  On the question of the nature of Chinese society
and class relations, the new “Left” line exaggerated the relative
weight of capitalism in China’s economy, exaggerated the significance
of the struggle against the bourgeoisie and the rich peasants and the
significance of the “elements of socialist revolution” at the present
stage of the Chinese revolution, and denied the existence of the intermediate camp and of third parties and groups.  On the question of
the revolutionary situation and the tasks of the Party, the new “Left”
line continued to stress that there was a “revolutionary high tide”
throughout the country and that the Party should have a “line of taking
the offensive” on a national scale, and it held that an “immediate
revolutionary situation” would soon occur in one or more major
provinces containing key cities.  From a “Left” viewpoint it slanderously asserted that in China there was as yet no “genuine” Red Army
and no “genuine” government of Councils of Workers, Peasants and
Soldiers and asserted with special emphasis that the main danger in
the Party then consisted of “Right opportunism”, “opportunism in

practical work” and “the rich peasant line”.  Organizationally, the
exponents of this new “Left” line violated discipline, refused the
work assigned them by the Party, committed the error of joining with
a number of other comrades in factional activities against the central
leadership, wrongly called upon the Party membership to set up a
provisional central leading body and demanded that “fighting cadres”
who “actively support and pursue” their “Left” line should be used
to “reform and strengthen the leading bodies at all levels”; they
thereby created a serious crisis in the Party.  Hence, generally speaking, the new “Left” line was more determined, more “theoretical”,
more domineering and more fully articulated in its “Leftism” than the
Li Li-san line, even though it did not call for organizing insurrections
in the key cities and, for a time, did not call for concentrating the Red
Army to attack those cities.
In January
1931 the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central
Committee of the Party was convened under circumstances in which
pressure was being applied from all directions by the “Left” dogmatist and sectarian elements headed by Comrade Chen Shao-yu and
in which some comrades in the central leading body who had committed empiricist errors were compromising with these elements and
supporting them.  The convening of this session played no positive or
constructive role; the outcome was the acceptance of the new “Left”
line, its triumph in the central leading body and the beginning of the
domination of a “Left” line in the Party for the third time during the
period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War.  The Fourth Plenary Session
immediately put into effect two interrelated and erroneous tenets in
the programme of the new “Left” line: the fight against the alleged
“Right deviation” as the “main danger in the Party at present”, and
the “reform and strengthening of the leading bodies at all levels”.
Ostensibly it still carried the banner of opposition to the Li Li-san
line and to the “line of conciliation”, but in essence its political programme was chiefly “against the Right deviation”.  In its resolutions,
the Fourth Plenary Session did not analyse the current political situation or lay down concrete political tasks for the Party and merely
opposed the so-called “Right deviation” and “opportunism in practical
work” in a general way, but in fact it approved Comrade Chen
Shao-yu’s pamphlet, The Two Lines  or The Struggle for the Further
Bolshevization of the Communist Party of China , the pamphlet which
represented the “Left” ideas in the Party and was taken by people
then, and for another ten years or more, to have played a “correct

programmatic role”, although, as can be seen from the above analysis,
it was basically a completely wrong, “Left” opportunist general programme “against the Right deviation”.  Under this programme the
Fourth Plenary Session and the subsequent central leadership promoted the “Left” dogmatist and sectarian comrades to responsible
positions in the central leading body on the one hand; on the other,
they excessively attacked those comrades who had committed the
errors of the Li Li-san line, wrongly attacked those comrades headed
by Chu Chiu-pai
7 who were alleged to have committed “the error of
the line of conciliation”, and immediately after the session the Central Committee wrongly attacked the great majority of the so-called
“Rightist” comrades.  In fact, the then “Rightists” were mainly the
creation of the factionalist struggle “against the Right deviation” conducted at this session.  Of course, among these people there was a
handful of splitters headed by Lo Chang-lung, who later became real
Rightists, degenerated into counter-revolutionaries and were permanently expelled from the Party, and who, beyond any doubt, had to
be resolutely combated; their establishment of a duplicate Party
organization and their persistence in maintaining it were absolutely
impermissible according to Party discipline.  But as for Lin Yu-nan,
8
Li Chiu-shih,9 Ho Meng-hsiung10  and some twenty other important
Party cadres who were then attacked, they had done much useful work
for the Party and the people and maintained close ties with the masses,
and when they were arrested shortly afterwards, they stood firm and
unyielding before the enemy and died as heroes.  Comrade Chu Chiu-pai, who was alleged to have committed “the error of the line of
conciliation”, was then a Party leader of prestige, and after he was
attacked, he continued to do much useful work (mainly in the cultural
field) and died heroically in June
1935 at the hands of the enemy
executioners.  The memory of the proletarian heroism of all these
comrades should be cherished for ever.  The kind of “reform” which
the Fourth Plenary Session carried out in the central body was likewise extended to the local organizations in all the revolutionary bases
and White areas.  As compared with the Third Plenary Session and
the subsequent central leadership, the central leadership after the
Fourth Plenary Session was more insistent and more systematic in
sending its representatives, agencies or new leading cadres to all parts
of the country to carry through its fight “against the Right deviation”.
The resolutions issued by the central leadership on May
9, 1931,
shortly after the Fourth Plenary Session, showed that the new “Left”

line was already being concretely applied and developed in practical
work.  Then a series of major events occurred in China.  Before the
central leadership following the Fourth Plenary Session had time to
carry through its erroneous line, the Red Army of the Central Area
in Kiangsi, under the correct leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung
and through the vigorous efforts of all comrades, won great victories
and smashed the enemy’s second and third campaigns of “encirclement
and suppression”; most of the other revolutionary base areas and Red
Army units also won many victories and made much progress in the
same period and under the same conditions.  Meanwhile, the Japanese
imperialist invasion, which began with the September
18th Incident
in 1931, aroused a new upsurge in the national democratic movement
throughout the country.  From the very beginning, the new central
leadership made an entirely wrong appraisal of the new situation
created by these events.  It greatly exaggerated both the current crisis
of the Kuomintang regime and the growth of the revolutionary forces;
it ignored the fact that after the September
18th Incident the national
contradiction between China and Japan was mounting and that the
intermediate classes were making demands for resistance to Japan and
for democracy; it emphasized that Japanese imperialism and other
imperialist powers would combine to attack the Soviet Union and
that the imperialist powers, the Chinese counter-revolutionary cliques
and even the intermediate groups would combine to attack the Chinese
revolution; and it categorically asserted that the intermediate groups
were the most dangerous enemy of the Chinese revolution.  The new
central leadership therefore continued to advocate “down with everything” and held that “the very heart of the political situation in China
is a life-and-death struggle between counter-revolution and revolution”; hence it once again put forward many adventurist proposals,
such as the seizure of key cities by the Red Army in order to win
victory first in one or more provinces, the arming of workers and
peasants everywhere in the White areas and the calling of general
strikes there.  These errors first found expression in its “Resolution
on the Urgent Tasks Arising from the Smashing of the Enemy’s
Third Campaign of ‘Encirclement and Suppression’ by the Workers’
and Peasants’ Red Army and from the Gradual Maturing of the
Revolutionary Crisis”, dated September
20 , 1931.  They were repeated
and given fuller expression in the following documents, which were
drawn up either by the subsequent provisional central leadership or
under its guidance:

“Resolution on the Forcible Occupation of Manchuria by
Japanese Imperialism” (September 22, 1931);
“Resolution on the Struggle for the Victory of the Revolution
First in One or More Provinces” (January 9, 1932 );
“Resolution on the January 28th Incident” (February 26, 1932);
“Opportunist Vacillation Within the Communist Party of
China in the Struggle for the Victory of the Chinese Revolution
First in One or More Provinces” (April 4, 1932 );
“Resolution of the Central Area Bureau of the Central Committee on Leadership of and Participation in a Campaign Week
Against the Imperialist Attack on the Soviet Union and Against
Partition of China and for Extending the National Revolutionary
War” (May 11, 1932); and
“The Mounting Revolutionary Crisis and the Tasks of the
Party in Northern China” (June 24, 1932 ).
The period from the establishment of the provisional central
leadership headed by Comrade Chin Pang-hsien (Po Ku)
11  in September 1931 to the Tsunyi Meeting in January 1935 was one of continued
development of the third “Left” line.  During this period, because of
the serious damage the incorrect line had done to the work in the
White areas, the provisional central leadership moved to the southern
Kiangsi base area early in
1933, and this move facilitated the further
application of its incorrect line there and in the neighbouring base
areas.  Before that, the correct line followed in the base areas of
southern Kiangsi and western Fukien had already been maligned by
the Party congress of the southern Kiangsi base area in November
1931
and by the Ningtu Meeting of the Central Bureau of the Red Base Areas
in August
1932 , in accordance with the erroneous programme of the
Fourth Plenary Session “against the Right deviation” and for “reforming the leading bodies at all levels” — the correct line had been called
a “rich peasant line” and an “error of the most serious and consistent
Right opportunism” and the correct Party and military leadership had
been removed.  Nevertheless, owing to the profound influence in the
Red Army of Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s correct strategic principles, the
campaign against the fourth “encirclement and suppression” achieved
victory in the spring of
1933 before the erroneous line of the provisional
central leadership had been fully enforced in the army.  On the other
hand, an utterly wrong strategy gained complete control in the campaign
against the fifth “encirclement and suppression”, which started at the

close of 1933.  In many other policies, too, and particularly in the policy regarding the Fukien Incident, the erroneous “Left” line was fully applied.
The Fifth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee, convened by the provisional central leadership in January 1934 , marked
the peak of the development of the third “Left” line.  Disregarding
the setbacks which the “Left” line had caused the Chinese revolutionary movement and the people’s anti-Japanese democratic movement
in the Kuomintang areas after the incidents of September
18, 1931 and
January 28, 1932, the Fifth Plenary Session blindly concluded that “the
revolutionary crisis in China has reached a new acute stage — an immediate revolutionary situation exists in China” and that the struggle
against the fifth “encirclement and suppression” was a “struggle for
the complete victory of the Chinese revolution”, which would decide
for China “the question of ‘who conquers whom’, of the road of
revolution or the road of colonialism”.  Repeating the views of the
Li Li-san line, this session declared that “when we have extended the
democratic revolution of the workers and peasants to important parts
of China, the socialist revolution will become the basic task of the
Communist Party; only on this basis can China be unified and the
Chinese people achieve national liberation”, etc., etc.  Using the slogans
of fighting “Right opportunism, the main danger”, “fighting the conciliatory attitude towards Right opportunism” and fighting “the use
of double-dealing to sabotage the Party line in practical work”, it
continued and developed the excessive factional struggles and the
policy of attacking comrades.
In the revolutionary base areas the most disastrous consequence
of the third “Left” line was the failure of the campaign against the
fifth “encirclement and suppression” in the area where the central
leading body was located and the withdrawal from there of the main
forces of the Red Army.  In the military operations during the withdrawal from Kiangsi and on the Long March, a different error, the
error of flightism, was committed under the “Left” line, causing
further losses to the Red Army.  Similarly, on account of the domination of the “Left” line, the Party’s work suffered defeat in most of
the other revolutionary bases (the Fukien-Chekiang-Kiangsi area,
the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei area, the Hunan-Hupeh-Kiangsi area, the
Hunan-Kiangsi area, the western Hunan-Hupeh area and the Szechuan-Shensi area) and in the vast White areas.  As for the Chang
Kuo-tao line, which once dominated the Hupeh-Honan-Anhwei and
the Szechuan-Shensi areas, it not only was a “Left” line of the general

type but was also characterized by a particularly serious form of warlordism and by flightism in the face of enemy attacks.
Such was the main content of the erroneous “Left” line which
dominated the whole Party for the third time and the leaders of
which were the two dogmatists, Comrades Chen Shao-yu and Chin
Pang-hsien.
Cloaking themselves in “Marxist-Leninist theory” and relying on
the political and organizational prestige and influence built up by the
Fourth Plenary Session, those comrades who were guilty of dogmatist
errors were responsible for the domination of the third “Left” line
in the Party for four long years, gave it the fullest and most systematic
expression ideologically, politically, militarily and organizationally,
and enabled it to exercise the most profound influence in the Party
and consequently to do the greatest damage.  Nevertheless, in defiance
of the facts, the comrades guilty of this wrong line bragged long and
hard about the “correctness” and the “immortal achievements” of the
line of the central leadership following the Fourth Plenary Session,
using such dogmatic phrases as “further bolshevization of the Communist Party of China” and “
100  per cent Bolshevik”.  Thus they
completely distorted the history of the Party.
The comrades who advocated the correct line, with Comrade Mao
Tse-tung as their representative, were diametrically opposed to the
third “Left” line during the period of its domination.  They disagreed
with the “Left” line and demanded that it should be corrected, and
as a result their correct leadership was everywhere overthrown by the
central leadership that followed the Fourth Plenary Session and by
the agencies or representatives it dispatched.  But the repeated failures
of the “Left” line in practical work, and especially the repeated
defeats in the campaign against the fifth “encirclement and suppression” in the area where the central leading body was located, had begun
to reveal the wrongness of this line to more and more leading cadres
and rank-and-file Party members and to arouse their doubt and dissatisfaction.  After the Red Army in that area set out on the Long
March, this doubt and dissatisfaction grew to such an extent that some
comrades who had committed “Left” errors began to awaken and take
a stand against them.  Accordingly, large numbers of cadres and Party
members who were opposed to the “Left” line rallied under the leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung.  It was therefore possible for the
enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee,
held under the leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung in January
1935

at the city of Tsunyi in Kweichow Province, triumphantly to put an
end to the domination of the “Left” line in the central leading body
and to save the Party at that most critical juncture.
The Tsunyi Meeting was entirely correct in concentrating all its
efforts on rectifying the military and organizational errors, which at
that time were of decisive significance.  The meeting inaugurated a
new central leadership, headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung — a historic change of paramount importance in the Chinese Communist
Party.  Precisely because of this change, our Party was able to conclude the Long March victoriously, to preserve and steel a hard core
of cadres in the Party and the Red Army under the extremely
difficult and dangerous conditions of the Long March, successfully to
overcome the line of Chang Kuo-tao who insisted on retreating and
fleeing and actually set up a duplicate Party, to save the northern
Shensi revolutionary base area from the crisis brought about by the
“Left” line,
12 to lead the national salvation movement of December
9, 1935 correctly, to settle the Sian Incident of 1936 correctly, to organize
the Anti-Japanese National United Front, and to set in motion the
sacred War of Resistance Against Japan.
Since the Tsunyi Meeting, the political line of the central leading
body of the Party, led by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, has been entirely
correct.  The “Left” line has been gradually overcome politically,
militarily and organizationally.  Since
1942 , under the leadership of
Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the Party-wide movement for the rectification of subjectivism, sectarianism and stereotyped Party writing and
also for the study of Party history has corrected, at their very ideological roots, the various “Left” and Right errors that have arisen in
the history of the Party.  The overwhelming majority of the comrades
who committed “Left” or Right errors have made great progress
through a long process of learning from experience and have done
much good work for the Party and the people.  They are now united
with the masses of other comrades on the basis of a common political
understanding.  This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session is happy to
point out that through its successes and reverses our Party has at last
attained, under the leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the unprecedentedly high level of solidarity and unity it now enjoys—
ideologically, politically, organizationally and militarily.  It is a Party
that will soon win victory, a Party no force can conquer.
This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session holds that, since the stage
of the War of Resistance is not yet concluded, it is appropriate to

postpone to a future date the drawing of conclusions on certain questions in the history of the Party during the War of Resistance.
IV
In order that comrades may have a better understanding of the
errors of the various “Left” lines, and particularly of the third “Left”
line, so that, “learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones”, they
may prevent the recurrence of such errors, we set forth the main
content of these lines where they were contrary to the correct line
politically, militarily, organizationally and ideologically.
1.  Politically:
As Comrade Stalin pointed out13 and as Comrade Mao Tse-tung
has analysed in detail, China at the present stage is a semi-colonial
and semi-feudal country (reduced in some parts to a colony since the
September
18th Incident), and the Chinese revolution since World
War I has been a national democratic revolution in the era in which
the international proletariat has won victory in the Soviet Union and
the Chinese proletariat has awakened politically.  This determines the
character of the Chinese revolution at the present stage as an antiimperialist and anti-feudal revolution under the leadership of the
proletariat, with the workers and peasants forming the main body and
with other broad social strata taking part, i.e., it is a new-democratic
revolution, distinct both from the old democratic revolution and from
a socialist revolution.  As China at the present stage is a large semicolonial and semi-feudal country, dominated by a number of powerful
yet conflicting imperialist countries and by the feudal forces of China,
her economic and political development is extremely uneven and
lacking in uniformity.  This determines the extreme unevenness in the
development of China’s new-democratic revolution and renders it
necessary for the revolution to go through a protracted, tortuous
struggle before nation-wide victory can be achieved; at the same time,
this renders it possible in the struggle to make extensive use of the
enemy’s contradictions and to set up and maintain armed revolutionary base areas, first in those vast territories where the enemy’s control
is comparatively weak.  These basic characteristics and basic laws of
the Chinese revolution, which have been verified by Chinese revolutionary practice, were not comprehended but were contravened both

by the various Right lines and by the various “Left” lines, and
especially by the third “Left” line.  Therefore, the “Left” lines were
wrong politically in three main respects.
First.  The various “Left” lines were in error, above all, on the
question of the task of the revolution and the question of class relations.
As far back as the period of the First Great Revolution, Comrade
Mao Tse-tung, like Comrade Stalin, pointed out not only that the
task of the Chinese revolution in its present stage is to fight imperialism and feudalism, but also, and more particularly, that the peasants’
struggle for land is the fundamental content of the fight against
imperialism and feudalism in China, that the Chinese bourgeoisdemocratic revolution is in essence a peasant revolution and that the
basic task of the Chinese proletariat in the bourgeois-democrat
revolution is therefore to lead the peasants’ struggle.
14   In the early
period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, Comrade Mao Tse-tung
again pointed out that what China still needed was the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution and that China “must go through such a
democratic revolution” before one could speak of the prospect of
socialism.
15   He stated that the Agrarian Revolution was all the more
important because of the defeat of the revolution in the cities and that
“in the revolution in semi-colonial China, the peasant struggle must
always fail if it does not have the leadership of the workers, but the
revolution is never harmed if the peasant struggle outstrips the forces
of the workers”.
16   He pointed out that after the big bourgeoisie’s
betrayal of the revolution there was still a difference between the liberal
bourgeoisie and the comprador bourgeoisie; that there were still broad
strata of people who demanded democracy and especially demanded
a fight against imperialism; that it was therefore necessary to treat the
various intermediate classes correctly and do everything possible to
make an alliance with them or neutralize them; and that in the countryside it was necessary to treat the middle and rich peasants correctly
(“taking from those who have a surplus and giving to those who have
a shortage and taking from those who have better and giving to those
who have worse” while firmly uniting with the middle peasants, protecting the well-to-do middle peasants, providing certain economic
opportunities for the rich peasants and also enabling the ordinary
landlord to make a living).
17   These are all basic ideas of New
Democracy, yet they were not understood and were opposed by the
exponents of the “Left” line.  Although many of the revolutionary tasks
set by the various “Left” lines were democratic in character, the

exponents of the “Left” lines were invariably confused about the
definite distinction between the democratic revolution and the socialist
revolution and subjectively were anxious to go beyond the democratic
revolution; they invariably underestimated the decisive role of the
peasants’ anti-feudal struggle in the Chinese revolution; and they
invariably advocated a struggle against the bourgeoisie as a whole,
including even the upper petty bourgeoisie.  The third “Left” line went
further and put the struggle against the bourgeoisie on a par with the
struggle against imperialism and feudalism, denied the existence of an
intermediate camp and of third parties and groups and laid particular
stress on the struggle against the rich peasants.  Especially after the
September
18th Incident in 1931, there was an obvious and great change
in China’s class relations, but, so far from recognizing this change, the
third “Left” line categorically labelled as “the most dangerous enemy”
those intermediate groups which had contradictions with the reactionary Kuomintang rule and were taking positive action.  It should be
said that the exponents of the third “Left” line did lead the peasants
in distributing the land, in setting up political power and in offering
armed resistance to the attacks of the Kuomintang government.  All
these undertakings were correct.  However, owing to the “Left” views
mentioned above, they were mistakenly afraid to acknowledge that the
Red Army movement was a peasant movement led by the proletariat,
and they mistakenly opposed what they called the “peculiar revolutionariness of the peasants”, “peasant capitalism” and “the rich peasant
line”.  Instead, they carried out a number of so-called “class-line”
policies going beyond the democratic revolution, for instance, a policy
of eliminating the rich peasant economy and other ultra-Left economic
and labour policies; a state policy in which no exploiters had any
political rights; a policy of popular education which in its content
stressed communism; an ultra-Left policy towards the intellectuals; a
policy of working among enemy troops to win over only the soldiers
but not the officers; and an ultra-Left policy in the suppression of
counter-revolutionaries.  Thus, the immediate tasks of the revolution
were distorted, the revolutionary forces were isolated and the Red
Army movement suffered setbacks.  Similarly, it should be said that
in the Kuomintang areas after the defeat of the revolution in
1927 ,
our Party persevered in leading the people’s national democratic
movement, in leading the economic struggles of the workers and the
other masses and the revolutionary cultural movement, and in fighting
the Kuomintang government’s policies of betraying the national interests and oppressing the people.  After the September 18th Incident,
in particular, our Party led the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army,
supported the war of January
28, 1932  and the Anti-Japanese Allied
Army in northern Chahar, formed an anti-Japanese democratic
alliance with the Fukien People’s Government, put forward three
conditions on which the Red Army would ally with the Kuomintang
troops to resist Japan
18  and six conditions for forming a Committee
for National Armed Self-Defence with all sections of the people,19
and on August 1, 1935 issued “An Appeal to All Fellow-Countrymen
for Resistance to Japan and for National Salvation” which called for
the formation of a government of national defence and of an anti-
Japanese united army.  All this too was correct.  But because the guiding
policy was erroneous during the dominance of the various “Left” lines,
and especially of the third, the Party was unable to solve problems
correctly in practice and consequently, in the Kuomintang areas too,
the Party’s work either did not achieve such results as it should have,
or ended in failure.  On the question of resistance to Japan, of course
it was not yet possible to foresee the changes that would take place
after the Northern China Incident of
1935, and particularly after the
Sian Incident of 1936 , within the Kuomintang’s chief ruling groups,
which represented the main sections of China’s big landlords and big
bourgeoisie.  But the intermediate strata and some local groups of the
big landlords and big bourgeoisie were already changing into our
allies against Japan.  While this change was recognized by the broad
ranks of our Party members and the people, it was either ignored or
denied by the exponents of the third “Left” line, who thus created a
serious state of closed-doorism and fell far behind the Chinese people
in political life.  This state of isolation and lagging behind, which
resulted from the error of closed-doorism, remained basically unchanged until the Tsunyi Meeting.
Second.  The various “Left” lines were in error on the question of
revolutionary war and revolutionary base areas.  Comrade Stalin said,
“In China the armed revolution is fighting the armed counterrevolution.  That is one of the specific features and one of the advantages of the Chinese revolution.”
20  Like Comrade Stalin, Comrade Mao
Tse-tung had correctly pointed out as far back as the early period of the
Agrarian Revolutionary War that, in the Chinese revolution, armed
struggle is the main form of struggle and an army composed chiefly
of peasants is the main form of organization, for the reason that semicolonial and semi-feudal China is a large, non-uniform country which

lacks democracy and industry.  Comrade Mao Tse-tung also pointed
out that the vast rural areas inhabited by the broad masses of the
peasantry are the indispensable, vital positions of the Chinese revolution (revolutionary villages can encircle the cities, but revolutionary
cities cannot detach themselves from the villages), and that China
can and must establish armed revolutionary base areas as the starting
point for country-wide victory (democratic unification of the whole
country).
21  In the period of the 1924 - 27 revolution, when a coalition
government had been formed through Kuomintang-Communist cooperation, the base areas had certain big cities as their centres, but
even then, in order to consolidate the foundations of the base areas,
it was necessary, under the leadership of the proletariat, to build a
people’s army with the peasants as the main body and solve the land
problem in the rural areas.  But in the period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, since the cities were all occupied by powerful counterrevolutionary forces, base areas had to be set up, expanded and
consolidated mainly by relying on peasant guerrilla warfare (not on
positional warfare) and first of all in the countryside where counterrevolutionary rule was weak (and not in the key cities).  Comrade
Mao Tse-tung pointed out that in China the historical conditions for
the existence of such armed revolutionary rural base areas are the
“localized agricultural economy (not a unified capitalist economy) and
the imperialist policy of marking off spheres of influence in order to
divide and exploit” and the resulting “prolonged splits and wars
within the White regime”.
22  He also pointed out the historic significance
of such base areas for the Chinese revolution:
Only thus is it possible to build the confidence of the revolutionary masses throughout the country, as the Soviet Union has
built it throughout the world.  Only thus is it possible to create
tremendous difficulties for the reactionary ruling classes, shake
their foundations and hasten their internal disintegration.  Only
thus is it really possible to create a Red Army which will become
the chief weapon for the great revolution of the future.  In short,
only thus is it possible to hasten the revolutionary high tide.
23
As for mass work in the cities during that period, the principal policies
should have been those advocated by Comrade Liu Shao-chi, the exponent of the correct line for work in the White areas, namely, to
act chiefly on the defensive (and not on the offensive); to utilize all
possible legal opportunities for work (and not to reject the use of

legality) so that the Party organizations could go deep among the
masses, work under cover for a long time and accumulate strength;
and always to be ready to send people to develop armed struggle in
the rural areas, and thereby to co-ordinate with the struggle in the
countryside and advance the development of the revolutionary situation.  Therefore, until such time as the general situation again made
it possible to form democratic governments in the cities, the Chinese
revolutionary movement should have made rural work primary and
urban work supplementary.  Victories of the revolution in the countryside and temporary inability to win victories in the cities, offensives in
the countryside and a general defensive position in the cities, even
victory and the offensive in one rural area and defeat, retreat and the
defensive in another — all these formed the criss-cross pattern of
revolution and counter-revolution up and down the country during
that period and accordingly determined the course from defeat to
victory which the revolution had to follow.  But the exponents of the
various “Left” lines did not understand the specific features of
semi-colonial and semi-feudal Chinese society, did not understand that
the bourgeois-democratic revolution in China was in essence a peasant
revolution and did not understand the uneven, tortuous and protracted
nature of the Chinese revolution; therefore they underestimated the
importance of military struggle, and especially of peasant guerrilla
warfare and rural base areas, and opposed what they called “the
doctrine of the gun” and the “localism and conservatism characteristic
of peasant mentality”.  They were for ever dreaming that the struggles
of the workers and the other masses in the cities would suddenly break
through the enemy’s severe repression and surge forward, erupt into
armed insurrections in key cities, achieve “victory first in one or more
provinces”, and bring about a so-called nation-wide revolutionary high
tide and nation-wide victory; and they made this dream the basis on
which all their work was planned and organized.  In reality, however,
given the general relation of class forces after the defeat of the revolution in
1927 , the first result of this dream was none other than the
failure of the urban work itself.  This was how the first “Left” line met
with defeat; the second “Left” line repeated the same error, the only
difference being that now support was demanded from the Red Army,
for the Red Army had become a considerable force.  The second “Left”
line too ended in failure, yet the third “Left” line continued to demand
“real” preparations for armed insurrections in the big cities, the only
difference being that now the main demand was for the Red Army to

seize big cities, because it had grown even stronger, while the work
in the cities had shrunk even further.  The result of subordinating rural
work to city work, instead of the other way round, was that after the
work in the cities failed, most of the rural work failed too.  It should
be pointed out that after
1932 the actions aimed at capturing key cities
had in fact come to a halt because the Red Army could not capture
or hold them, and particularly because the Kuomintang was attacking
on a large scale; furthermore, after 1933, owing to the still greater
damage done to our city work, the provisional central leadership
itself moved from the city to a rural base area.  Thus a change did
take place.  But as far as the comrades pursuing the “Left” line were
concerned, this change was not made consciously or as a result of correct
conclusions reached through a study of the specific characteristics of
the Chinese revolution; therefore they continued to direct all the work
in the Red Army and the base areas from their erroneous urban viewpoint, and caused great damage to the work.  The following instances
are clear proof: they advocated positional warfare and opposed
guerrilla warfare or mobile warfare of a guerrilla character; they
wrongly stressed what they called “regularization” of the Red Army
and opposed its so-called “guerrilla-ism”; they did not realize that
they had to adapt themselves to dispersed rural areas and to protracted
guerrilla warfare in areas cut off from one another by the enemy, and
so they did not use the manpower and material resources in the base
areas sparingly or take other necessary measures; in the campaign
against the fifth “encirclement and suppression” they put forward the
wrong slogans of “The decisive battle as between the two roads for
China” and “Do not yield a single inch of territory in the base
areas”.
This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session declares emphatically that
a change in the situation is now imminent, the very change our rural
work should have promoted and our city work should have awaited
in the period discussed above.  Only now, in the final stage of the War
of Resistance Against Japan, when the army under our Party’s leadership has grown strong and will grow still stronger, is it correct to place
work in the Japanese-occupied cities on a par with work in the
Liberated Areas, actively to prepare all the conditions for annihilating
the Japanese aggressors in the key cities by co-ordinated attacks from
within and without and then to shift the centre of gravity of our work
to these cities.  This will be a new change of historic significance for
our Party, which shifted the centre of gravity of its work to the country-

side with so much difficulty after the defeat of the revolution in 1927 .
All Party members should prepare for this change with full political
awareness and should not repeat the error of the “Left” line on the
matter of the shift from the cities to the countryside during the
Agrarian Revolutionary War, an error which was manifested first in
opposing and refusing a shift and then in shifting reluctantly under
compulsion and without political awareness.  In the Kuomintang areas,
however, conditions are different; there our immediate tasks, whether
in the countryside or in the cities, are to go all out to mobilize the
masses, resolutely to oppose a split and civil war, to strive for unity
and peace and to demand redoubled efforts in the war against Japan,
the abolition of the Kuomintang’s one-party dictatorship and the
formation of a unified democratic coalition government.  When the
Japanese-occupied cities are liberated by the people and a unified
democratic coalition government is really established and consolidated,
the rural base areas will have accomplished their historical task.
Third.  The various “Left” lines were also in error on the directing
of tactics for attack and defence.  Correct direction of tactics, as
Comrade Stalin points out, requires a correct analysis of the situation
(a correct estimate of the relation of class forces and a correct judgement of the ebb and flow of the movement), requires correct forms
of struggle and organization based thereon, and requires correctly
“taking advantage of every rift in the camp of its enemies, and the
ability to find allies”;
24 and one of the best models is Comrade Mao
Tse-tung’s direction of the Chinese revolutionary movement.  After
the defeat of the revolution in 1927 , Comrade Mao Tse-tung correctly
pointed out that the tide of revolution was at a low ebb throughout
the country, that the enemy was stronger than we in the country as
a whole, and that adventurist attacks would court inevitable defeat,
but that it was possible for “one or more small areas under Red
political power” to emerge “in the midst of a White regime which
encircles them”
25 in the general conditions in which there were incessant splits and wars within the reactionary regime and the demand
of the people for revolution was gradually reviving and growing, and
in the specific conditions in which the masses had gone through the
struggles of the First Great Revolution, there was a Red Army possessing considerable strength and there was a Communist Party with
correct policies.  He also stated that in a period when there are splits
within the ruling classes the expansion of Red political power “can
be comparatively adventurous and the area carved out by military

operations can be comparatively large”, whereas in a period of
relative stability for the ruling classes, such expansion
must be one of gradual advance.  In such a period, the worst thing
in military affairs is to divide our forces for an adventurous
advance, and the worst thing in local work (distributing land,
establishing political power, expanding the Party and organizing
local armed forces) is to scatter our personnel and neglect to lay
a solid foundation in the central districts.
26
Even within one and the same period, our tactics should vary according to our enemies’ differences in strength; therefore, the area we
carved out on the Hunan-Kiangsi border was “on the defensive against
Hunan with its comparatively strong ruling power, and take the offensive against Kiangsi with its comparatively weak ruling power”.
27
Later, when the Red Army of the Hunan-Kiangsi border reached the
Fukien-Kiangsi border, a plan was proposed to “contend . . . for Kiangsi
Province and also for western Fukien and western Chekiang”.
28  An
important basis for determining our varying tactics is the different
impact of the revolution on the interests of different enemies.  Consequently Comrade Mao Tse-tung has always advocated that we “utilize
every conflict within the counter-revolution and take active measures
to widen the cleavages within it”,
29 and “oppose the policy of isolation,
and affirm the policy of winning over all possible allies”.30  The application of the tactical principles, “make use of contradictions, win
over the many, oppose the few and crush our enemies one by one”,
31
was brilliantly developed in the campaigns Comrade Mao Tse-tung
led against “encirclement and suppression” and especially, after the
Tsunyi Meeting, in the Long March and in the work of the Anti-
Japanese National United Front.  Comrade Liu Shao-chi’s ideas on
tactics for work in the White areas are likewise a model.  Correctly
taking into account the glaring disparity between the enemy’s strength
and our own in the White areas, and particularly in the cities, after
the defeat of the revolution in
1927 , Comrade Liu Shao-chi advocated
systematic organization of our retreat and defence and “the avoidance
of decisive engagements with the enemy for the time being, while the
situation and conditions are unfavourable to us”, in order “to prepare
for revolutionary attacks and decisive engagements in the future”.
32
He also advocated that the Party’s open organizations of the period
of the
1924 - 27  revolution be transformed systematically and strictly
into underground organizations, while “utilizing open legal means as
far as possible” in mass work to enable the Party’s underground

organizations to conceal their strength for a long time in such mass
work, go deep among the masses and “accumulate and strengthen the
forces of the masses and heighten their political consciousness”.
33
With respect to leadership in mass struggles, Comrade Liu Shao-chi
held that it was necessary,
in accordance with the situation and the specific conditions at a
given time and place and the degree of political consciousness of
the masses, to advance limited slogans, demands and forms of
struggle acceptable to the masses in order to set the mass struggle
in motion and then, in accordance with the changing conditions
in the course of the struggle, either gradually to raise the mass
struggle to a higher stage or, “knowing how far to go”, temporarily
to conclude the battle so as to prepare for the next battle at a
higher stage and on a larger scale.
On the question of utilizing the enemy’s internal contradictions and
winning temporary allies, he held that it was necessary
to push these contradictions to the breaking point and form a temporary alliance against the chief enemy with those elements in the
enemy camp who may co-operate with us or who are not yet our
chief enemy;
and
to make necessary concessions to the allies who are willing to cooperate with us, induce them to join with us and participate in
common action and then influence them and win over their mass
following.
34
The success of the December 9th Movement in 1935 proved the correctness of these tactical principles for work in the White areas.  In contrast to such correct direction of tactics, the comrades taking the various
“Left” lines failed to examine the balance of forces between the enemy
and ourselves objectively, failed to adopt corresponding forms of
struggle and organization and did not recognize or pay sufficient attention to the enemy’s internal contradictions.  Therefore, not only did
they meet with defeat as a result of blindly executing a so-called
“offensive line” when they should have been on the defensive, they
also met with defeat even when an offensive was timely, because they
did not know how to organize a victorious offensive.  Their way of
“appraising a situation” was to take individual, incipient, indirect,
one-sided and superficial phenomena favourable to their viewpoint
and magnify them into something widespread, grave, direct, all-sided
and essential, and they were afraid to acknowledge or were blind to

all facts not in conformity with their viewpoint (such as the enemy’s
strength and temporary victory, our weakness and temporary defeat,
the inadequate political consciousness of the masses, the enemy’s
internal contradictions and the progressive side of the middle-of-the-roaders).  They never envisaged the most difficult and complex
situations which might arise; they always dreamed about the most
favourable and simplest situations which could not possibly arise.  In
the Red Army movement, they invariably described the enemy encircling the revolutionary base areas as “terribly shaky”, “extremely
panicky”, “approaching final extinction”, “collapsing at an accelerating speed”, “totally collapsing”, and so on.  The exponents of the third
“Left” line even held that the Red Army enjoyed superiority over the
entire Kuomintang forces, which outnumbered it many times, and
therefore kept on pressing the Red Army to make reckless advances
regardless of the conditions and even without resting.  They denied
the unevenness of revolutionary development as between southern
and northern China resulting from the
1924 - 27 revolution (a situation
that was not reversed until the War of Resistance Against Japan),
wrongly opposed what they called “the theory of the backwardness
of the north” and demanded the establishment of Red regimes everywhere in the countryside of northern China and the organization of
mutinies in all the White armies there so as to form Red Army units.
They also denied the unevenness of development as between the
central and border sections of the base areas and wrongly opposed
what they called the “Lo Ming line”.
35  They refused to make use of
the contradictions among the warlords attacking the Red Army and
to reach compromises with those forces which were willing to stop
attacking.  As for work in the White areas, they refused to take the
necessary steps for retreat and defence or to make use of all legal
possibilities in the cities where the revolutionary tide had ebbed and
the counter-revolutionary ruling forces were very powerful.  Instead,
they continued to take the offensive in forms inadmissible under the
prevailing conditions, they set up large unprotected Party organizations and various “Red mass organizations” divorced from the masses
and duplicating the Party, they constantly and regardless of conditions
called for and organized political strikes, joint strikes, and strikes of
students, merchants, troops and policemen, and also parades and
demonstrations, lightning meetings and even armed insurrections —
actions which were unlikely or unable to win the participation or support
of the masses — and they misrepresented the failures of these actions

as “victories”.  To sum up, the comrades taking the various “Left”
lines, and particularly the third, were versed in nothing but closeddoorism and adventurism, they believed blindly in “struggle above all
and all for struggle” and in “continuously expanding the struggle and
raising it to a higher level”, and they therefore continuously met with
defeats which should not have occurred and could have been avoided.
2.  Militarily:
At the present stage of the Chinese revolution, military struggle
is the main form of political struggle.  During the Agrarian Revolutionary War it became the most urgent question in the Party
line.  Comrade Mao Tse-tung has applied Marxism-Leninism and
formulated not only the correct political line for the Chinese revolution, but also, beginning with the period of the Agrarian Revolutionary
War, the correct military line subordinate to this political line.  Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s military line proceeds from two fundamental
points.  First, our army is and can be an army of only one kind; it must
be an instrument subordinate to the ideological leadership of the proletariat and serving the struggle of the people and the building of
revolutionary base areas.  Second, our war is and can be a war of only
one kind; it must be a war in which we recognize that the enemy
is strong and we are weak, that the enemy is big and we are small,
and in which therefore we fully utilize the enemy’s weaknesses and
our strong points and fully rely on the strength of the masses for
survival, victory and expansion.  From the first point, it follows that
the Red Army (now the Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth Army
and the other armed forces of the people) must fight whole-heartedly
for the line, programme and policies of the Party, that is, for all the
manifold interests of the whole people, and must combat the tendencies towards warlordism which run counter to this.  Therefore,
the Red Army must oppose the purely military point of view and
the roving-rebel ideology, according to which the military does not
obey the political, or even commands the political.  The Red Army
must simultaneously shoulder the threefold task of fighting, doing
mass work and raising funds (which at present means production);
doing mass work means becoming a propagandist and organizer for
the Party and for the people’s political power and means helping
the local people in land distribution (at present, the reduction of rent
and interest) and in establishing armed forces, organs of political
power, and Party organizations.  Hence, in its relations with the
government and the people, it is required that the Red Army

scrupulously respect the organs of the people’s political power and
the mass organizations, strengthen their prestige and strictly observe
the Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention.
36  Within the army it is necessary to establish a correct relationship between officers and men and to have both an appropriate
democratic life and an authoritative military discipline based on
political consciousness.  In the work among the enemy troops, it is
necessary to have a correct policy for disintegrating enemy forces and
winning over prisoners.  From the second point of departure, it follows that the Red Army had to recognize that, during the period
of the Agrarian Revolutionary War, guerrilla warfare and mobile
warfare of a guerrilla character were the main forms of warfare,
and must recognize that only a people’s war, in which the main forces
are integrated with regional forces, the regular army with guerrilla
units and people’s militia, and the armed masses with the unarmed
masses, can bring victory over an enemy many times stronger than
ourselves.  Hence, in strategy, the Red Army must oppose a war of
quick decision, and in tactics, must oppose protracted fighting; in
strategy, it must adhere firmly to protracted warfare and in tactics,
to quick decisions; in campaigns and battles it must oppose the use
of the few to defeat the many and must adhere firmly to the use of
the many to defeat the few.  The Red Army must therefore carry out
the following strategic and tactical principles:
Divide our forces to arouse the masses, concentrate our forces
to deal with the enemy.
The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass;
the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.
To extend stable base areas, employ the policy of advancing
in waves; when pursued by a powerful enemy, employ the policy
of circling around.
37
Lure the enemy in deep.38
Concentrate superior forces, pick out the enemy’s weak spots,
and fight when you are sure of wiping out part, or the greater
part, of the enemy in mobile warfare, so as to crush the enemy
forces one by one.
39
Militarily, the various “Left” lines were diametrically opposed to the
line of Comrade Mao Tse-tung.  The putschism of the first “Left”
line caused the Red Army to become alienated from the masses of
the people; the second “Left” line led the Red Army into adventurist

attacks.  But neither was completely systematized militarily.  A fully
articulated system emerged only with the third “Left” line.  On the
question of building the army, the exponents of the third “Left” line
reduced the Red Army’s threefold task to the single one of fighting
and neglected to educate the Red Army on the correct relations
between army and people, between army and government and between
officers and men; they demanded undue regularization and opposed
the then sound guerrilla character of the Red Army as “guerrilla-ism”;
furthermore, they fostered formalism in the political work in the army.
On the question of military operations, they denied the premise that
the enemy was strong and we were weak; they demanded positional
warfare and so-called regular warfare, which relied solely on the
main forces; they demanded the strategy of a war of quick decision
and the tactics of protracted fighting; they demanded “attack on all
fronts” and “strike with two fists”; they opposed luring the enemy
in deep and regarded necessary shifts of troops as “retreat and
flightism”; and they also demanded fixed battle lines and an absolutely
centralized command.  In brief, they negated guerrilla warfare and
mobile warfare of a guerrilla character and did not understand how
to conduct a people’s war correctly.  During the campaign against the
fifth “encirclement and suppression”, the exponents of the third “Left”
line began with adventurism in attack, urging that we “engage the
enemy outside the gates”; then they turned to conservatism in defence, calling for division of our forces to defend everything, for
“short, swift thrusts” and for “a contest of attrition”; and they ended
with real flightism, when they were compelled to withdraw from
the Kiangsi base area.  Such were the consequences of their attempt
to substitute positional warfare for guerrilla and mobile warfare and
to substitute “regular” warfare for a correctly conducted people’s war.
During the stages of strategic retreat and strategic stalemate in
the War of Resistance Against Japan, there has been an even greater
disparity between the enemy’s strength and our own, and so the
correct principle for the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth
Army has been: “Guerrilla warfare is basic, but lose no chance for
mobile warfare under favourable conditions.” It would have been
a mistake to press for too much mobile warfare.  But in the approaching stage of strategic counter-offensive, just as the centre of gravity
in the work of the whole Party will have to be shifted from the
countryside to the cities, so in strategy it will be necessary to shift
from guerrilla warfare as primary to mobile and positional warfare

as primary, provided our forces obtain modern equipment.  For this
impending change, too, the whole Party must make preparations with
full awareness.
3.  Organizationally:
As Comrade Mao Tse-tung says, the correct political line should be
“from the masses, to the masses”.  To ensure that the line really comes
from the masses and in particular that it really goes back to the masses,
there must be close ties not only between the Party and the masses
outside the Party (between the class and the people), but above all
between the Party’s leading bodies and the masses within the Party
(between the cadres and the rank and file); in other words, there
must be a correct organizational line.  Therefore, just as in each period
of the Party’s history Comrade Mao Tse-tung has laid down a political
line representing the interests of the masses, so he has laid down
an organizational line serving the political line and maintaining ties
with the masses both inside and outside the Party.  There were important developments in this respect during the period of the Agrarian
Revolutionary War, which were crystallized in the resolution of the
Ninth Party Congress of the Fourth Red Army in
1929 .40   This resolution raised Party-building to the plane of ideological and political
principle and firmly upheld the leading role of proletarian ideology;
it fought in a correct manner against the purely military viewpoint,
against subjectivism, individualism, equalitarianism, the roving-rebel
ideology, putschism and other tendencies; and it pointed out the roots
and harmfulness of these tendencies and the methods for correcting
them.  At the same time, the resolution firmly upheld strict democratic
centralism, opposing improper restrictions either on democracy or on
centralism.  Proceeding from the interests of the unity of the whole
Party, Comrade Mao Tse-tung insisted that the part should obey the
whole and, in accordance with the concrete characteristics of the
Chinese revolution, he defined the proper relationships between new
and old cadres, between outside and local cadres, between army
cadres and other cadres working in the locality and between cadres
of different departments or localities.  Thus Comrade Mao Tse-tung
provided us with a model of how to combine perseverance in truth
as a matter of principle with submission to organization as a matter
of discipline, a model of how to conduct inner-Party struggles in a
correct way while maintaining inner-Party unity in a correct way.
Conversely, whenever an erroneous political line became dominant,
an erroneous organizational line inevitably emerged, and the longer

the domination of the erroneous political line, the more the harm
done by its organizational line.  Accordingly, the various “Left” lines
of the period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War were opposed to
Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s organizational line as well as to his political
line; they created a sectarianism which alienated the masses within
the Party (that is, which did not subordinate the partial interests of
some of the Party members to the interests of the whole Party and did
not regard the leading body of the Party as the concentrator of the will
of the whole Party) as well as one which alienated the masses outside
the Party (that is, which did not regard the Party as the representative
of the interests of the masses and the concentrator of their will).  In
particular, in order to enforce their will, the exponents of the third
“Left” line invariably and indiscriminately branded all Party comrades
who found the wrong line impracticable and who therefore expressed
doubt, disagreement or dissatisfaction, or did not actively support the
wrong line or firmly carry it out; they stigmatized these comrades with
such labels as “Right opportunism”, “the rich peasant line”, “the Lo
Ming line”, “the line of conciliation” and “double-dealing”, waged
“ruthless struggles” against them and dealt them “merciless blows”,
and even conducted these “inner-Party struggles” as if they were dealing with criminals and enemies.  This wrong kind of inner-Party struggle
became the regular method by which the comrades who led or carried
out the “Left” line raised their own prestige, enforced their own
demands and intimidated the Party cadres.  It violated the fundamental principle of democratic centralism within the Party, eliminated
the democratic spirit of criticism and self-criticism, turned Party discipline into mechanical discipline and fostered tendencies to blind
obedience and docility; thus the development of living and creative
Marxism was hampered and damaged.  A factionalist policy towards
cadres was combined with this incorrect kind of inner-Party struggle.
The factionalists did not regard veteran cadres as valuable assets
of the Party; instead they attacked, punished and dismissed from the
central and local organizations large numbers of veteran cadres who
were experienced in work and had close ties with the masses but were
uncongenial to the factionalists and unwilling to be their blind followers
and yes-men.  Nor did they give proper education to new cadres nor
handle their promotion seriously (especially those of working-class
origin); instead they rashly promoted new cadres and cadres from
outside who lacked working experience and close ties with the masses
but were congenial to the factionalists and were merely their blind

followers and yes-men, substituting them for veterans in the central
and local organizations.  Thus, they not only attacked old cadres
but spoiled new ones.  Moreover, in many places where an incorrect
policy for suppressing counter-revolutionaries became entangled with
the factionalist policy towards cadres, large numbers of fine comrades
were unjustly dealt with under false charges, and this caused the
Party most grievous losses.  Such factionalist errors very greatly
weakened the Party, causing dislocation between higher and lower
organizations and many other anomalies in the Party.
This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session hereby declares: Any
penalty, or any part of a penalty, that was wrongly inflicted upon a
comrade by the exponents of the erroneous line shall be rescinded in
accordance with circumstances.  Every comrade who upon investigation is proved to have fallen victim to false charges shall be exonerated
and reinstated as a Party member, and his memory shall be held in
honour by all comrades.
4.  Ideologically:
The correctness or incorrectness of any political, military or organizational line has ideological roots — it depends on whether or
not the line starts from Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism and
historical materialism and whether or not the line starts from the
objective realities of the Chinese revolution and the objective needs
of the Chinese people.  From the very day he embraced the cause
of the Chinese revolution, Comrade Mao Tse-tung has devoted himself to applying the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism to the investigation and study of the actual conditions of Chinese society; time
and again during the period of the Agrarian Revolutionary War,
he laid great stress on the principle, “No investigation, no right to
speak”, and time and again fought against the dangers of dogmatism
and subjectivism.  Indeed, the political, military and organizational
lines then laid down by Comrade Mao Tse-tung were brilliant achievements which he made on the basis of the universal truth of Marxism-
Leninism, of dialectical and historical materialism, by his concrete
analysis of the actual situation and its characteristics inside and outside the country and inside and outside the Party and by his concrete
summing up of the historical experience of the Chinese revolution,
and especially of the
1924 - 27  revolution.  For Chinese Communists,
living and fighting in China, the purpose of studying dialectical
materialism and historical materialism should be to apply them to
the study and solution of the practical problems of the Chinese revolu-

tion, as Comrade Mao Tse-tung has done.  But, of course, none of the
comrades who committed “Left” errors was then able to understand
or accept his method, and the exponents of the third “Left” line even
slandered him as being a “narrow empiricist”.  The reason was that
their ideology was rooted in subjectivism and formalism, which during
the domination of the third “Left” line expressed itself in a still more
pronounced form as dogmatism.  It is characteristic of dogmatism that
it starts not from actual conditions but from particular words and
phrases taken out of books.  The dogmatists did not base themselves on the Marxist-Leninist standpoint and method to make a
serious study of China’s past and present — political, military, economic
and cultural — and of the practical experience of the Chinese revolution, to draw conclusions as a guide to action in the Chinese revolution
and to test the validity of these conclusions in the practice of the
masses.  On the contrary, throwing away the essence of Marxism-
Leninism, they transported particular words and phrases from Marxist-
Leninist literature into the country and took them for dogma, without
any study of the suitability of these quotations to the actual conditions of present-day China.  Inevitably, therefore, the “theories” of the
dogmatists were divorced from reality, their leadership was divorced
from the masses, and instead of seeking truth from facts they
were opinionated, arrogant, glib and afraid of proper criticism and
self-criticism.
Empiricist ideology, which was the collaborator and assistant of
dogmatism in the period of its domination, is likewise a manifestation
of subjectivism and formalism.  Empiricism differs from dogmatism
in that it starts not from books but from narrow experience.  It should
be emphasized that all the useful experience gained by vast numbers
of comrades in practical work is a most precious asset.  It is definitely
not empiricism, but Marxism-Leninism, to sum up such experience
scientifically as the guide to future action, just as it is definitely not
dogmatism, but Marxism-Leninism, to take the theories and principles
of Marxism-Leninism as the guide to revolutionary action and not
as dogma.  But if there are some comrades among all those versed in
practical work who remain satisfied with their own limited experience
and with that alone, who take it for dogma that can be applied
everywhere, who do not understand and moreover do not want to
acknowledge the truth that “without revolutionary theory there can
be no revolutionary movement”
41  and that “in order to lead, one must
foresee”,42 and who consequently belittle the study of Marxism-

Leninism which is the summation of world revolutionary experience,
and are infatuated with a narrow practicalism which is devoid of
principle and with a brainless routinism that leads nowhere; and if
they nevertheless sit and give orders from on high, if in their purblindness they style themselves heroes, put on the airs of veterans and
refuse to heed the criticism of comrades or to practise self-criticism —
then indeed these comrades have become empiricists.  Thus, in spite of
their different points of departure, the empiricists and the dogmatists
were essentially one in their method of thinking.  Both severed the
universal truth of Marxism-Leninism from the concrete practice of
the Chinese revolution; both violated dialectical and historical materialism and magnified partial and relative truths into universal and
absolute truths; and the thinking of neither corresponded to the
objective, actual situation as a whole.  Hence they shared many misconceptions about Chinese society and the Chinese revolution (for
instance, their erroneous views about the cities as the centre of gravity,
about work in the White areas as the centre of gravity and their
erroneous views about “regular” warfare, irrespective of actual conditions).  Such were the ideological roots which made it possible for
these two different sets of comrades to collaborate.  On account of
their limited and narrow experience, most of the empiricists lacked
independent, clear-cut and systematic views on problems of a general
nature and therefore they usually played second fiddle in their association with the dogmatists; but the history of our Party proves that
it would not have been easy for the dogmatists to have “spread their
poison throughout the Party” without the collaboration of the empiricists; and after the defeat of dogmatism, empiricism became the
main obstacle to the development of Marxism-Leninism in the Party.
Hence we must overcome subjectivist empiricism as well as subjectivist dogmatism.  Only by completely overcoming both dogmatist and
empiricist ideology can the Marxist-Leninist ideology, line and style
of work spread far and wide and take deep root in the whole Party.
The errors discussed above in their four aspects, political, military,
organizational and ideological, were the fundamental errors of the
various “Left” lines, and especially of the third.  And the political,
military and organizational errors all stemmed ideologically from the
violation of Marxist-Leninist dialectical and historical materialism,
from subjectivism and formalism, from dogmatism and empiricism.
This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session points out that in negating
the errors of the various “Left” lines we must bear in mind and carry

out Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s injunction, “Treat all questions analytically; do not negate everything.”43 It should be noted that the comrades who made these errors were not wrong in all their views; some
of their views on fighting imperialism and feudalism, on the agrarian
revolution and on the war against Chiang Kai-shek were in agreement
with the views of the comrades who upheld the correct line.  It should
be further noted that, despite the especially long domination of the
third “Left” line and the especially heavy losses it inflicted on the
Party and the revolution, the Party in the same period scored great
achievements in practical work in many areas and in many fields
(for example, in warfare, in building the army, in war mobilization,
in building political power and in the work in the White areas), thanks
to the active work and heroic struggles of vast numbers of cadres and
members, together with the masses of the soldiers and the people.  It
was precisely because of these achievements that over several years
we were able to sustain the war against the attacks of the enemy and to
hit him hard; and it was only because of the domination of the erroneous
line that these achievements were in the end destroyed.  The Party and
the people will for ever revere all the leaders, leading personnel and
cadres inside and outside the Party, all the members of the Party and
the masses who heroically sacrificed their lives in the interests of the
people during the domination of the various erroneous lines, just as
they revere those who sacrificed their lives in other periods of the
Party’s history.
V
The errors of the “Left” line in the four aspects discussed above
were not accidental; they had very deep social roots.
Just as the correct line represented by Comrade Mao Tse-tung
reflected the ideology of the advanced elements of the Chinese proletariat, so the “Left” line reflected the ideology of the Chinese pettybourgeois democrats.  Semi-colonial and semi-feudal China is a country
with an enormous petty bourgeoisie.  Not only is our Party surrounded
by this vast stratum; within the Party too, people of petty-bourgeois
origin make up most of the membership, the reason being that large
numbers of petty-bourgeois revolutionary democrats have turned to
the proletariat for a way out of their predicament, because in China
a strong petty-bourgeois political party has been rendered impossible

by the great world victories of Marxism-Leninism following the
October Revolution, by the existing social and political conditions
in China, and especially by the historical development of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.  Moreover, in the economic conditions of China, even the masses of workers and Party members of
working-class origin are liable to have a petty-bourgeois tinge.  It is
therefore not surprising but inevitable that petty-bourgeois ideology
should frequently be reflected inside our Party in every shape and form.
Among the petty-bourgeois masses outside the Party, in addition
to the peasants who form the main force in the Chinese bourgeoisdemocratic revolution, the urban petty bourgeoisie is also one of the
motive forces of the revolution in the present stage because the great
majority of its members are subjected to all kinds of oppression, are
being constantly and rapidly driven to poverty, bankruptcy and
unemployment, and very urgently demand economic and political
democracy.  But as a class in transition, the petty bourgeoisie has a dual
character.  As for its good and revolutionary side, the great majority
of this class are receptive to the political and organizational influence
of the proletariat and even to its ideological influence, at present they
demand a democratic revolution and are capable of uniting and fighting
for it, and in the future they can take the path of socialism together
with the proletariat; but as for its bad and backward side, not only
does this class have various weaknesses which distinguish it from
the proletariat, but when deprived of proletarian leadership, it often
veers and falls under the influence of the liberal bourgeoisie, or even
of the big bourgeoisie, and becomes their prisoner.  In the present
stage, therefore, the proletariat and its vanguard, the Communist Party
of China, should base themselves on a firm and broad alliance with the
masses of the petty bourgeoisie outside the Party, and should, on the
one hand, be lenient in dealing with them and tolerate their liberal
ideas and style of work, insofar as these do not impede the struggle
against the enemy or disrupt the social life we share in common and,
on the other, give them appropriate education so as to strengthen our
alliance with them.
But the case is entirely different with those people of pettybourgeois origin who have voluntarily abandoned their original class
stand and joined the party of the proletariat.  The Party should adopt
a policy towards them that differs in principle from that towards the
petty-bourgeois masses outside the Party.  Since such people were close
to the proletariat to begin with and joined its party voluntarily, they

can gradually become proletarian in their ideology through Marxist-
Leninist education in the Party and steeling in mass revolutionary
struggles, and they can be of great service to the proletarian forces.
In fact, the overwhelming majority of the people of petty-bourgeois
origin who have joined our Party have fought bravely, made sacrifices
for the Party and the people and progressed ideologically, and many
of them have already become Marxist-Leninists.  It has to be emphasized, however, that the revolutionary character of the petty
bourgeois who has not yet been proletarianized is essentially different
from the revolutionary character of the proletarian, and that this difference can often develop into a state of antagonism.  Party members
with a petty-bourgeois revolutionary character have joined the Party
organizationally, but they have not yet joined the Party ideologically,
or have not done so fully, and they are often liberals, reformists,
anarchists, Blanquists,
44  etc.  in the guise of Marxist-Leninists.  Such
being the case, not only are they incapable of leading to victory China’s
communist movement of tomorrow, but they cannot even lead to
victory her new-democratic movement of today.  If the advanced
elements of the proletariat do not draw a firm and sharp line between
Marxist-Leninist ideology and the original ideology of those Party
members who came from the petty bourgeoisie and do not educate
them and struggle with them in a serious but appropriate and patient
way, it will be impossible to overcome their petty-bourgeois ideology,
and what is more, these members will inevitably strive to remould
the vanguard of the proletariat in their own image and usurp Party
leadership, thus damaging the cause of the Party and the people.  The
more numerous the petty bourgeoisie outside the Party and the more
numerous the members of petty-bourgeois origin inside the Party, the
more strictly must the Party preserve its purity as the vanguard of the
proletariat; failing this, petty-bourgeois ideology will assail the Party
the more violently and the damage will be the greater.  In the history
of our Party, the struggles between the correct line and the various
erroneous lines have been in essence the acting out within the Party
of the class struggle outside it, and the political, military, organizational and ideological errors of the “Left” lines discussed above have
been reflections in the Party of precisely this petty-bourgeois ideology.
This question may be analysed from three aspects.
First, the method of thinking.  The petty-bourgeois method of
thinking manifests itself basically in subjectivism and one-sidedness in
viewing problems, that is, it does not proceed from an objective and

comprehensive picture of the balance of class forces, but takes subjective wishes, impressions and empty talk for reality, takes a single
aspect for all aspects, the part for the whole and the tree for the forest.
Being detached from the actual process of production, petty-bourgeois
intellectuals have only book knowledge and lack perceptual knowledge, and so their method of thinking is apt to manifest itself in
the dogmatism discussed above.  Though they have some perceptual
knowledge, those petty-bourgeois elements associated with production
suffer from the limitations characteristic of petty production — narrowness, diffuseness, isolation and conservatism — and so their method
of thinking is apt to manifest itself in the empiricism discussed above.
Second, political tendency.  The political tendency of the petty
bourgeoisie is apt to manifest itself in vacillation between the “Left”
and the Right because of its mode of life and the resulting subjectivism
and one-sidedness of its method of thinking.  Many representatives of
the petty-bourgeois revolutionaries hope for an immediate victory of
the revolution in order to bring about a radical change in their present
status; therefore, they lack the patience needed for protracted revolutionary endeavour, are fond of “Left” revolutionary phrases and
slogans and, in their sentiments and actions, are given to closeddoorism or adventurism.  Reflected in the Party, this petty-bourgeois
tendency gave rise to the various errors of the “Left” line on the
questions discussed above, namely, the tasks of the revolution, the
revolutionary base areas, the direction of tactics and the military line.
But the same petty-bourgeois revolutionaries when placed in a
different set of circumstances — or another section of the pettybourgeois revolutionaries — may become pessimistic and despondent
and express Rightist sentiments and views, tailing after the bourgeoisie.
The Chen Tu-hsiuism of the latter period of the
1924 - 27  revolution,
the Chang Kuo-taoism of the latter period of the Agrarian Revolution
and the flightism of the early period of the Long March were all
reflections within the Party of such petty-bourgeois Rightist ideology.
And during the War of Resistance Against Japan, capitulationist ideas
appeared once again.  Generally speaking, “Left” errors are more liable
to occur in periods when there is a split between the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat (for instance, the “Left” line dominated the leading
body of the Party no less than three times during the period of the
Agrarian Revolution), while Rightist errors are more liable to occur
in periods when there is an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat (for instance, in the latter part of the
1924- 27 revolution and

in the early part of the War of Resistance Against Japan).  But whether
“Left” or Right, these tendencies benefit not the revolution but only
the counter-revolution.  Vacillation to the “Left” or to the Right, the
fondness for going to extremes, flashiness without substance and slick
opportunism, all of which occur under the stress of changing conditions, are features of the bad side of petty-bourgeois ideology.  They
are all reflections in the ideological sphere of the unstable economic
status of the petty bourgeoisie.
Third, organizational life.  Because of the limitations in the way
of life and the method of thinking of the petty bourgeoisie in general,
and particularly because of China’s backward and decentralized social
environment with its clans and guilds, the tendency of the petty bourgeoisie in organizational life is apt to manifest itself in individualism
and sectarianism, which alienate the masses.  This tendency, when
reflected in the Party, led to the erroneous, “Left” organizational line,
which was discussed above.  The fact that the Party had for a long
time been fighting a scattered guerrilla war in the countryside made
it still easier for this tendency to grow.  This tendency consisted not
of working selflessly for the Party and the people, but of exploiting
the strength of the Party and the people and undermining their interests
for personal or sectarian ends; it was therefore incompatible with the
Party’s principle of close links with the masses, incompatible with the
democratic centralism of the Party and with Party discipline.  This
tendency frequently took such forms as bureaucracy, patriarchalism,
punitiveness, commandism, individualistic heroism, semi-anarchism,
liberalism, ultra-democracy, assertion of “independence”, the guild
mentality, the “mountain-stronghold” mentality,
45 favouritism towards
fellow-townsmen and schoolmates, factional squabbles and rascally
tricks, all of which undermine the Party’s ties with the masses and its
internal unity.
These are the three aspects of petty-bourgeois ideology.  The subjectivism in ideology, the “Left” and Right deviations in politics and
the sectarianism in organization, which have all appeared on various
occasions in our Party, are obviously anti-Marxist-Leninist and anti-proletarian manifestations of petty-bourgeois ideology, whether or not
they crystallize into a line and gain control of the Party leadership.
In the interests of the Party and the people, it is absolutely necessary
to use the method of education to analyse and overcome pettybourgeois ideology within the Party, and to help transform it into
proletarian ideology.

VI
It can be seen from the above that the various “Left” lines, and
especially the third “Left” line, which dominated the whole Party,
were not accidental but were the products of specific social and historical conditions.  Hence if we are to overcome erroneous “Left” or
Right ideology, we cannot go about it either casually or impetuously,
but must deepen Marxist-Leninist education and raise the ability of
the whole Party to differentiate between proletarian and pettybourgeois ideology; we must give full play to inner-Party democracy,
develop criticism and self-criticism, proceed with the work of patient
persuasion and education, make a concrete analysis of errors and their
dangers and explain their historical and ideological roots as well as
the means of correcting them.  Such is the proper attitude for Marxist-
Leninists in overcoming errors within the Party.  This Enlarged Seventh
Plenary Session points out that the policy Comrade Mao Tse-tung has
adopted for the present rectification movement throughout the Party
and for the study of Party history, namely, “learn from past mistakes
to avoid future ones and cure the sickness to save the patient”, and
achieve “clarity in ideology and unity among comrades”,
46 is a model
of the correct attitude for Marxist-Leninists in overcoming errors
within the Party.  Therefore it has led to great achievements in uniting
and raising the level of the whole Party ideologically, politically and
organizationally.
This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session points out that the struggles which the Party waged in the course of its history against Chen
Tu-hsiuism and Li Li-sanism were absolutely necessary.  The defect in
these struggles was that they were not undertaken consciously as
serious steps for correcting the petty-bourgeois ideology which existed
on a serious scale in the Party; consequently they neither clarified the
ideological essence and roots of the errors thoroughly nor properly
indicated the methods of correcting them, and so it was easy for these
errors to recur.  Moreover, undue stress was placed on personal responsibility in the belief that once an erring comrade was attacked, the
problem was solved.  Having examined the errors committed during
and after the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee,
the Party considers that such defects must be avoided in all future
inner-Party ideological struggles and that Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s
policy must be resolutely applied.  So long as any comrade who has

erred in the past understands his errors and has begun to correct
them, we should welcome him without prejudice and unite with him
to work for the Party.  We should take a sincere and comradely attitude
even towards those comrades who have not yet properly understood
and corrected their errors but who no longer persist in them, and we
should help them to realize and correct these errors.  The whole Party
is now unanimous in its understanding of the erroneous lines of the
past.  The whole Party has rallied round the Central Committee headed
by Comrade Mao Tse-tung.  Therefore, the task of the entire Party
from now on is to strengthen unity by clarifying thinking and holding
fast to principle, or, in the words of the second section of this Resolu-tion, to “unite the whole Party like one harmonious family, like solid
steel, to fight for total victory in the War of Resistance Against
Japan and for the complete liberation of the Chinese people”.  All
our Party’s analyses, criticisms and controversies concerning questions of Party history should start from the desire for unity and arrive
at unity; any violation of this principle is wrong.  Since petty-bourgeois
ideology in the Party has its social roots and the Party has long been
placed in an environment of protracted and scattered guerrilla warfare in the countryside, since ideological remnants of dogmatism and
empiricism still exist and the criticism of empiricism in particular has
been inadequate, and since the “mountain-stronghold” mentality with
its sectarian tendencies is still quite widespread although serious
sectarianism has been mainly overcome in the Party, the whole Party
should be alert to the fact that a long process of continuous struggle
to overcome wrong ideas is required if the Party is to achieve
complete Marxist-Leninist ideological unity.  This Enlarged Seventh
Plenary Session therefore resolves that the whole Party must strengthen
its Marxist-Leninist ideological education and stress the linking of
Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the Chinese revolution, so as
further to develop a correct Party style of work and completely overcome such tendencies as dogmatism, empiricism, sectarianism and the
“mountain-stronghold” mentality.
VII
This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session emphatically declares that
the practice of the Chinese revolution during the last twenty-four
years has proved, and continues to prove, that the line represented

by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the line of struggle of our Party and of
the people of the whole country, is entirely correct.  The great successes
achieved by our Party in the present War of Resistance and the decisive role our Party has played testify most vividly to the correctness
of this line.  When viewed in relation to the Chinese revolution as a
whole with its stormy development, great achievements and rich
experience in the past twenty-four years under the leadership of our
Party, the “Left” and Right errors in the Party during certain periods
were only partial phenomena.  It was difficult to avoid such phenomena
completely at a time when the Party lacked adequate experience and
political consciousness.  Furthermore, it has been precisely through the
struggle to overcome these errors that the Party has grown firmer and
stronger.  Today, with unprecedented unanimity the whole Party
recognizes the correctness of Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s line and with
unprecedented political consciousness rallies under his banner.  As
Marxist-Leninist ideology, which Comrade Mao Tse-tung represents,
more and more profoundly grips more and more of the cadres, the
Party members and the masses of the people, the result will surely be
tremendous progress and invincible strength for the Party and the
Chinese revolution.
This Enlarged Seventh Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee is firmly convinced that under the correct leadership of the
Central Committee headed by Comrade Mao Tse-tung, the Commu-nist Party of China, with the rich experience of the three revolutionary
struggles — the Northern Expedition, the Agrarian Revolutionary War
and the War of Resistance Against Japan — will assuredly lead the
Chinese revolution to complete victory.
NOTES
1 In 1924 , Dr. Sun Yat-sen, in alliance with the Communist Party and the
revolutionary workers and peasants, defeated the “Merchants’ Corps”, an armed
force of the compradors and landlords which engaged in counter-revolutionary
activities in Canton in collaboration with the British imperialists.  The revolutionary
army, which had been founded on the basis of co-operation between the Kuomintang
and the Communist Party, set out from Canton early in
1925, fought the Eastern Campaign and, with the support of the peasants, defeated the troops of the warlord Chen
Chiung-ming.  It then returned to Canton and overthrew the Yunnan and Kwangsi
warlords who had entrenched themselves there.  That autumn it conducted the Second
Eastern Campaign and finally wiped out Chen Chiung-ming’s forces.  These campaigns, in which members of the Communist Party and the Communist Youth League
fought heroically in the van, brought about the political unification of Kwangtung
Province and paved the way for the Northern Expedition.
2Lo Chang-lung, an early member of the Chinese Communist Party, later turned
traitor to the revolution.  At the time of the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central
Committee of the Party in 1931 , Lo Chang-lung, who was pessimistic about the future
of the Chinese revolution, openly supported the counter-revolutionary stand of the
Trotskyist Chen Tu-hsiu clique in opposition to the line of the Sixth National Congress
of the Party, vilified the Red Army and the Red base areas, and distributed leaflets
in which he betrayed the names of Communist cadres to Chiang Kai-shek’s gang.
To undermine the revolutionary struggle led by the Party, he set up the so-called
“Emergency Central Committee”, “Second Provincial Committees”, “Second Regional
Committees” and “Second Party Fractions in Trade Unions” and carried out splitting activities in the Party.  He was expelled from the Party in January 1931.
3For Chang Kuo-tao, see “Rectify the Party’s Style of Work”, Note 5, p. 51
of this volume.
4 After the failure of the Chinese revolution in 1927 , a small number of Trotskyites
appeared in China, too.  Ganging up with Chen Tu-hsiu and other renegades, they
formed a small counter-revolutionary clique in 1929  and spread such counter-revolutionary propaganda as that the Kuomintang had already completed the bourgeoisdemocratic revolution, and they became a dirty imperialist and Kuomintang instrument
against the people.  The Chinese Trotskyites shamelessly joined the Kuomintang secret
service.  After the September 18th Incident, to fulfil the order given by the criminal
renegade Trotsky “not to impede the occupation of China by imperial Japan”, they
began collaborating with the Japanese secret agents, received subsidies from them
and engaged in all kinds of activities facilitating Japanese aggression.
5 For the Ten-Point Programme, see “Our Study and the Current Situation”,
Note 5, p. 175 of this volume.
6 The First Front Army of the Red Army launched its second offensive against
Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, in September 1930 .  As the enemy forces put
up a stubborn defence behind fortifications and had the support of aircraft and
warships, the Red Army failed to capture the city even after prolonged attacks.
Meanwhile, enemy reinforcements were concentrating and the situation became
unfavourable for the Red Army.  Comrade Mao Tse-tung impressed upon the cadres
of the First Front Army the need to withdraw the troops besieging Changsha, and
then persuaded them to give up their idea of seizing the key city of Kiukiang in
northern Kiangsi and attacking other big cities and to change their policy, divide
their forces and capture Chaling, Yuhsien and Liling Counties in Hunan and
Pinghsiang and Kian Counties in Kiangsi.  This enabled the First Front Army to
expand greatly.
7Comrade Chu Chiu-pai, one of the earliest members and leaders of the Chinese
Communist Party, was elected to the Central Committee at the Third, Fourth, Fifth
and Sixth National Congresses of the Party in the years 1923-28 .  During the First
Revolutionary Civil War he actively fought against the anti-Communist, anti-popular
“Tai Chi-tao doctrine” of the Kuomintang’s right-wing and against the Right opportunism represented by Chen Tu-hsiu in the Chinese Communist Party.  After the
Kuomintang’s betrayal of the revolution in 1927 , he called the emergency meeting
of the Central Committee of the Party on August 7, which ended the domination of
Chen Tu-hsiuism in the Party.  But from the winter of 1927  to the spring of 1928 , while
directing the work of the central leading body, he committed the “Left” error of

putschism.  In September 1930  he conducted the Third Plenary Session of the Sixth
Central Committee of the Party, which put an end to the Li Li-san line that was
harming the Party.  However, at the Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central
Committee in January
1931, he was attacked by the “Left” dogmatists and factionalists
and was pushed out of the central leading body.  From that time to 1933 he worked in
the revolutionary cultural movement in Shanghai in co-operation with Lu Hsun.  In
1933  he arrived in the Red base area in Kiangsi and was made Commissioner of
People’s Education in the Workers’ and Peasants’ Democratic Central Government.
When the main forces of the Red Army embarked on the Long March, he was asked
to stay behind in the Kiangsi base area.  In March
1935 Comrade Chu Chiu-pai was
arrested by the Chiang Kai-shek gang in the Fukien guerrilla area and on June 18 he
died a martyr’s death in Changting, Fukien Province.
8 Comrade Lin Yu-nan, a member of the Chinese Communist Party and one of
the early leaders and organizers of the Chinese trade union movement, was Director
of the Wuhan office of the Chinese Trade Union Secretariat, a member of the
Executive Committee and concurrently Secretary-General of the All-China Federation
of Trade Unions.  In
1931 he was arrested by the Chiang Kai-shek gang and died a
martyr’s death at Lunghua in Shanghai.
9 Comrade Li Chiu-shih, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, served in
1928 on the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Youth League and was
head of its Propaganda Department and chief editor of its organ, Chinese Youth
In
1931, while working in the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of
the Party, he was arrested by the Chiang Kai-shek gang in Shanghai and died a
martyr’s death at Lunghua.
10 Comrade Ho Meng-hsiung, a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was
one of the early organizers of the trade union movement in northern China and
founder of the Railway Workers’ Union on the Peking-Suiyuan Line.  After the Kuomintang betrayed the revolution in 1927 , he served as a member of the Communist
Party’s Kiangsu Provincial Committee in Shanghai and as secretary of its Peasant
Department.  In 1931 he was arrested by the Chiang Kai-shek gang and died a martyr’s
death at Lunghua.
11 Comrade Chin Pang-hsien, also known as Po Ku, was a member of the
Chinese Communist Party.  From September 1931 to January 1935 he was at the head
first of the Party’s provisional central leadership in Shanghai and then of its Central
Bureau of the Red Base Areas.  During this period he committed the serious error of
the “Left” line.  He worked in the Southern Bureau of the Party’s Central Committee
during the early period of the War of Resistance Against Japan.  After
1941 , under
the leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, he founded and directed the Liberation
Daily and the Hsinhua News Agency in Yenan.  He was re-elected to the Central
Committee at the Seventh National Congress of the Party in 1945.  In February 1946
he went to Chungking to take part in the negotiations with the Kuomintang.  He died
in April in an aeroplane crash on his way back to Yenan.
12Comrade Chu Li-chih, who committed “Left” errors, arrived in the autumn
of 1935 in the northern Shensi revolutionary base area (comprising the Shensi-Kansu
border area and northern Shensi) as a representative of the central leading body.  In
collaboration with Comrade Kuo Hung-tao, who was there and who also committed
“Left” errors, he carried through the “Left” opportunist line in political, military and
organizational work, and they pushed out Liu Chih-tan and the other comrades who
had pursued the correct line and had built up the Red Army and the revolutionary
base area in northern Shensi.  Then, in the work of suppressing counter-revolu-

tionaries, they made the serious error of arresting a large number of cadres who
were carrying out the correct line, and thus created a grave crisis in the northern
Shensi revolutionary base area.  The central leadership of the Party, which arrived
in northern Shensi in November
1935 after the Long March, corrected these “Left”
errors, released Liu Chih-tan and the other comrades from prison, and thus saved
the northern Shensi revolutionary base area from its dangerous situation.
13 See J. V. Stalin, “Questions of the Chinese Revolution” and “The Revolution
in China and the Tasks of the Comintern”, Works , Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954 ,
Vol. IX, pp. 224-34, 291-99 , and “The Prospects of the Revolution in China”, Works,
Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954 , Vol. VIII, pp. 373-91 .
14 See “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan”,
Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 , Vol. I, pp. 23-59 .
15 See “The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains”, Selected Works of Mao
Tse-tung, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 , Vol. I, pp. 97-99 .
16 From the Letter of the Front Committee in the Chingkang Mountains to
the Central Committee of the Party in April 1929 , quoted in “A Single Spark Can
Start a Prairie Fire”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 ,
Vol. I, p. 123.
17 See “Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?” and “The
Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed.,
FLP, Peking, 1965 , Vol. I, pp. 63-104 .
18 In January 1933 , the Communist Party of China made a declaration proposing
to all Kuomintang troops attacking the revolutionary base areas and the Red Army
that a cease-fire agreement be concluded and joint resistance conducted against Japan
on three conditions: (
1) stop attacking the revolutionary base areas and the Red
Army; (2) grant freedoms and rights to the people; and (3) arm the people.
19 The six conditions were those contained in the “Chinese People’s Basic Pro-gramme for Fighting Japan” put forward by the Chinese Communist Party in
1934  and published over the signatures of Soong Ching Ling (Mme. Sun Yat-sen)
and others.  They were: (1) mobilize all sea, land and air forces to fight Japan;
(2) mobilize the people throughout the country; (3) arm all the people; (4) confiscate the property of the Japanese imperialists in China and of the traitors to
defray war expenditure; (5) establish an all-China committee for national armed
defence, to be elected by the representatives of workers, peasants, soldiers, students
and businessmen; and (6) form an alliance with all the forces opposed to the
Japanese imperialists, and establish friendly relations with all countries observing
benevolent neutrality.
20J. V. Stalin, “The Prospects of the Revolution in China”, Works , Eng. ed.,
FLPH, Moscow, 1954 , Vol. VIII, p. 379 .
21See “Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?” and “A
Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed.,
FLP, Peking,  1965 , Vol. I, pp. 63-72, 117-28 .
22From “Why Is It That Red Political Power Can Exist in China?”, Selected
Works of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking,  1965 , Vol. I, p. 65.
23From “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire”, Selected Works of Mao
Tse-tung, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking,  1965 , Vol. I, p.  118.
24J. V. Stalin, “The Foundations of Leninism”, Works , Eng. ed., FLPH,
Moscow, 1953 , Vol. VI, pp. 155-75, and “Notes on Contemporary Themes”, Works ,
Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954 , Vol. IX, p. 346.

25From “The Struggle in the Chingkang Mountains”, Selected Works of
Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 , Vol. I, p. 73 .
26Ibid., p. 74.
27Ibid., p. 76.
28From the Letter of the Front Committee in the Chingkang Mountains to the
Central Committee of the Party in April 1929 , quoted in “A Single Spark Can
Start a Prairie Fire”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 ,
Vol. I, p. 126 .
29From “General Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of China on the Fight Against the Enemy’s Fifth Campaign of ‘Encirclement and
Suppression’” (Resolution of the Tsunyi Meeting).
30 From “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War”, Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 , Vol. I, p. 200 .
31 See “On Policy”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Vol. II.
32From Liu Shao-chi’s “Eliminate Closed-Doorism and Adventurism”.
33From Liu Shao-chi’s “Letter to the Central Committee on Past Work in the
White Areas”.
34 From Liu Shao-chi’s “Eliminate Closed-Doorism and Adventurism”.
35Lo Ming, formerly a member of the Chinese Communist Party, was the
acting secretary of the Fukien Provincial Committee of the Central Red Base Area
in 1933 .  He was attacked by the “Leftists” because he held that as the Party was
confronted with a rather difficult situation in Shanghang, Yungting and other outlying
parts of western Fukien, its policy there should be different from that in the stable
base areas.  The “Leftists” wrongly and exaggeratedly represented his views as
“a line of opportunist-liquidationist flight and retreat, due to pessimism and despair
about the revolution”, and, organizationally, waged the so-called “struggle against
the Lo Ming line”.
36The Three Main Rules of Discipline and the Eight Points for Attention were
drawn up by Comrade Mao Tse-tung for the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red
Army during the Agrarian Revolutionary War and were later adopted as rules of
discipline by the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army and the present
People’s Liberation Army.  As these rules varied slightly in content in the army
units of different areas, the General Headquarters of the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army in October 1947  issued a standard version as follows:
The Three Main Rules of Discipline:
(1) Obey orders in all your actions.
(2) Do not take a single needle or piece of thread from the masses.
(3) Turn in everything captured.
The Eight Points for Attention:
(1) Speak politely.
(2) Pay fairly for what you buy.
(3) Return everything you borrow.
(4) Pay for anything you damage.
(5) Do not hit or swear at people.
(6) Do not damage crops.
(7) Do not take liberties with women.
(8) Do not ill-treat captives.
37From the Letter of the Front Committee in the Chingkang Mountains to the
Central Committee of the Party in April 1929 , quoted in “A Single Spark Can

Start a Prairie Fire”, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 ,
Vol. I, p. 124 .
38See “Problems of Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War”, Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 , Vol. I, pp. 205-49 .
39 From “The Conclusions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of China on Breaking Through the Enemy’s Fifth Campaign of ‘Encirclement and
Suppression’”, February 1935.
40 The resolution of the Ninth Party Congress of the Fourth Red Army in 1929
refers to the article “On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party”, Selected Works
of Mao Tse-tung , Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1965 , Vol. I, pp. 105-16 .
41 V. I. Lenin, “What Is to Be Done?”, Collected Works , Eng. ed., FLPH,
Moscow, 1961 , Vol. V, p. 369 .
42J. V. Stalin, “The Work of the April Joint Plenum of the Central Committee
and Central Control Commission”, Works, Eng. ed., FLPH, Moscow, 1954 , Vol. XI,
p. 39.
43 From “Our Study and the Current Situation”, p. 164  of this volume.
44 Blanquism is the ideology of revolutionary adventurism as represented in
France by Auguste Blanqui (1805-81 ).  The Blanquists denied class struggle and
imagined that mankind could be delivered from the system of capitalist exploitation
not through the class struggle by the proletariat, but through conspiracy by a handful
of intellectuals.
45 For the “mountain-stronghold” mentality, see “Our Study and the Current
Situation”, Note 8, p. 176 of this volume.
46 Ibid., p. 164  of this volume.