Oral Political Report at the Seventh
National Congress of the Chinese
Communist Party
(April 24, 1945)1
Comrades! I am making a report to you on behalf of the Central Committee. The
written version of the political report has been printed and circulated, and
everyone has already seen it, so I will not speak from the written version. I shall
talk merely about a few of the questions raised in this report and some questions
that this report has not sufficiently elaborated. I will speak on three questions: the
questions of line, a few policy questions, and a few questions regarding internal
Party affairs.
1. Questions of Line
What line should our Seventh Party Congress decide on? What political line?
How can we best make this decision? We think that it should be: “Give free rein
to the mobilization of the masses and expand the people’s forces, and under the
leadership of our Party, defeat the Japanese aggressors, liberate the people of the
whole nation, and establish a new democratic China.” This is the line of our
Party, the political line of our Party. When we say under our Party’s leadership,
give free rein to the mobilization of the masses and expand the people’s forces we
mean organize our troops. Why are we organizing our troops? For no other
reason than to defeat the enemy, the Japanese imperialists and their running

dogs. After they are defeated, what will be the result? We will obtain the
liberation of the whole nation, the liberation of the whole Chinese people; we will
establish a new China, a new democratic China, an independent, free,
democratic, unified, rich and strong China. This is our general line.
Is this the sort of line our Party has always had? Yes. Our Party has always
adopted such a line. After the Russian October Revolution, the nature of the
Chinese Revolution changed, becoming transformed from an old democratic
revolution into a new democratic revolution. Particularly after the creation of the
Chinese Communist Party, through the three periods of the Northern Expedition,
the Agrarian Revolution, and the War of Resistance Against Japan, haven’t the
Chinese people all been striving for a new democratic China? Yes.
Our line, our program in a nutshell, can be summarized as “the revolution of
the great popular masses against imperialism and feudalism led by the
proletariat.” What sort of revolution is the people’s revolution under the
leadership of the proletariat? It is the revolution of the great popular masses
against imperialism and feudalism led by the proletariat. This is the new
democratic revolution. Therefore, our politics is the politics of the great popular
masses under the leadership of the proletariat against imperialism and feudalism.
Our economics is the economics of the great popular masses under the leadership
of the proletariat against imperialism and feudalism. Our culture is the culture of
the great popular masses under the leadership of the proletariat against
imperialism and feudalism. All in all, whether politics, military affairs,
economics, culture, or the various revolutionary tasks of the present, they are all
of this nature, and the various revolutionary forces are all of this nature. In this
line, there is an issue of the army, an issue of the enemy, and an issue of the
leader or the commander of the army. The army is the great popular masses of
the people; the enemy is imperialism and feudal forces; the leader, the
commander, is the proletariat. What does the proletariat lead? It leads the great
popular masses. It leads the great popular masses to do what? To oppose
imperialism and feudalism.
That is our program in a few words, yet they are often forgotten by some of
our comrades. Do they forget to oppose imperialism? Sometimes, they do.
However, it is not very easy to forget to oppose imperialism, so they are better at
remembering this. They sometimes forget to oppose feudalism. Why do they

sometimes forget to oppose feudalism? Because they forget the peasants.
Do we want the peasants? Or do we want the landlords? On this question, if
we want the landlords, then, we will forget the peasants. If we want the peasants,
we need not forget the landlords completely. It is easier to want the peasants
without forgetting the landlords, but more difficult to want the landlords without
forgetting the peasants. What we call the great popular masses mainly consists of
peasants. Is it not true that there was a time when we forgot the peasants? We
forgot them in 1927. At that time, the peasants stretched out their hands to
demand some things and the Communists forgot to give them these things.
During the War of Resistance, questions of a similar nature have persisted. Upon
whom do we rely to defeat the Japanese imperialists? Upon whom do we rely to
establish a new China? Where are these forces? Some people have now become
confused; they have forgotten.
The most important part of the great popular masses is the peasants, next is the
petty bourgeoisie, and only then the other democratic elements. The main force
of the Chinese democratic revolution is the peasants. If you forget the peasants,
there is no Chinese democratic revolution; if there is no Chinese democratic
revolution, then there is no Chinese socialist revolution, and then there will be no
revolution at all. We have read a lot of our Marxist books, but take note: don’t
forget the word “peasant.” If you forget this word, even if you read a million
Marxist books, it will be of no use, because you will not have power. Although
you can resist a bit by relying on a few of the petty-bourgeois elements and
liberal bourgeois elements, without the peasants who is going to feed you?
Without food, there are no soldiers. Then you will not be able to resist for more
than two to three days.
What we call leadership by the proletariat is leadership by the Communist
Party. The Chinese Communist Party is the political party of the proletariat.
Some comparatively more progressive people emerged within the proletariat who
then formed an organization of a political nature called the Communist Party. Of
course, there are other elements within the Communist Party; there are other
classes such as peasants, people of petty-bourgeois origins, and intellectuals of
other class origins. But origin is one thing, joining the Party is another. If your
origin is not proletarian, once you join the Party you become proletarian, your
thought and actions should become proletarian. The Communist Party exists to

make revolution, and to make revolution, you need to organize troops, and to
organize troops is mainly to organize the peasants, though there are also other
social strata including the petty bourgeoisie, liberal bourgeoisie, and sometimes
the big bourgeoisie and even landlords. Troops require a commander, a leader.
For commanders and leaders in China, there are only two: either you want the
proletariat, or you want the big bourgeoisie and big landlords. In a society like
China’s, the two ends of the social spectrum are small, and yet they are both
strong. The middle part is big, but it is politically weak. The middle strata are
wavering, no matter what middle stratum you are talking about. There are only
two classes that are resolute: the proletariat and the big landlords and big
bourgeoisie. Their political representatives are the Communist Party and the
Guomindang. The liberal bourgeoisie is also competing with us for leadership.
Don’t think that the liberal bourgeoisie is so revolutionary as to be comparable to
the Communist Party. The liberal bourgeoisie has its independent point of view
and its independent political organization. Now it is the Democratic League.
Within the Democratic League, there are some who are petty bourgeoisie, yet
most are liberal bourgeoisie. They have their character. Recently, Reference
Materials carried a statement made by the venerable old gentleman Zhang Lan,
chairman of the Democratic League. I do not know if you comrades have read it.
It is his point of view, his independent political view. Recently, during a reception
implementing the line of the great popular masses’ revolution under the
leadership of the proletariat against imperialism and feudalism; then we only
talked about the leadership of the proletariat but in reality we had abandoned the
leadership. Before that time, during a very long period of time between 1921 and
1926, numerous comrades in the Chinese Communist Party organized workers,
and led worker movements and student movements; later, they promoted the
reform of the Guomindang and helped organize the Guomindang; lastly, in the
course of the revolution, they organized numerous peasant associations with a
membership of dozens of millions, mainly in the various provinces in the South,
was there to be led? The leadership of the proletariat in the main should be
leadership of the peasants, but they did not want the peasants. When the peasants
reached out their hands, they poured cold water on their heads because the
landlords also reached out their hands. The landlords said: Communist Party, this
will not do! So the Communist Party was squeezed between the landlords and the
peasants, and, in the end, it was swayed by the landlords and poured cold water
on the heads of the peasants. When opposing imperialism and feudalism, if you
do not want the peasants, where is the opposition to feudalism? Without
opposing feudalism, is there any opposition to imperialism? What is imperialism
up to? The imperialists believe that there is fat to be had from China. They want

a slice of it. Of every five people in China, four are peasants, so if we divide our
450 million people into five parts, every part equals 90 million people and there
are four of these 90 million people who are the rural population; only one of the
90 million people is the urban population. You use five fingers to fight
imperialism, but they say you are using too many fingers, there is no need for so
many, so you should cut four and only use one to fight imperialism. Oh, that will
be very powerful. “Imperialism” will panic, it will cry, it will cry but cannot get
off the stage; it will kneel before us. You see four fingers are cut off, there is only
one left, and the proletariat is isolated. It has turned into a commander without
troops, a commander of an army of nothing. If you want to be a commander-inchief, you have to have troops. If you do not have peasants, will the petty
bourgeoisie come? They will come to your room to have a look, but when they
see that there are very few people, they will be frightened and they will not enter.
The petty bourgeoisie are the most changeable. Sometimes, they appear very
arrogant and strike their own chests bragging, “I’m Number One,” and
sometimes, they are so frightened that piss and shit flow all around. You do not
have a single soldier in your room, and there is no food to eat; this old gentleman
will come and have a look and then will defect. Is he to blame? No. It is our
commander-in-chief who is to blame, because you do not recruit soldiers. The
temperament of the petty bourgeoisie is like this. He considers power and policy.
If you are powerful, he’s an activist: “How can I join in? Do you want me to be
the advanced force?” When he sees that there are only a few people in your
room, he will say, “Next time. I have some other things to do today. My wife is ill
at home.” It is only when the proletariat recruits the troops, buys the horses, and
stocks up grain and fodder, when four of the five fingers are there and half of the
fifth being the proletariat, big landlords and big bourgeoisie being the fingernail,
the other half is the petty bourgeoisie and the liberal bourgeoisie, then, if you ask
again, “Are you coming? Comrade, come for the meeting!” Even if his wife is
indeed ill, he will not mention it. He sees you are so powerful. He will say, “There
is nothing to do at home. There is food. The old lady’s fine.”
We did make mistakes. We forgot leadership. We forgot the peasant masses.
For what we call leadership, you need to have something to lead. There is the
leader only when there is the led; only when there is the led does there arise the
problem of leadership. You did not want the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie

defected, the liberal bourgeoisie also defected, and the big landlords and big
bourgeoisie concentrated their forces to fight us. The proletariat rolled down
from the stage with a broken nose. Then it got up and looked around: “Why do
you beat me, your father? Chiang Kaishek, you are no friend!” Then, we became
sober again and engaged in the Agrarian Revolution. During the Agrarian
Revolution, again, we became impetuous. We still did not want the peasants, did
not want the leadership role, did not want the biggest constituent of power
within the Chinese people, did not want four of the five fingers. While being
impetuous, why didn’t you want the peasants? It was because those who were
impetuous only wanted worker rebellions and urban uprisings; they were very
enthusiastic about city work. Even when they did want the peasants, it was as
something secondary; they did not pay attention to studying the peasants,
studying their facial features, their eyes, their height, their surnames, whether
Zhang or Li, what they think or what food they have to eat. Some people have
marched across numerous provinces and walked 25,000 li plus some more and
have engaged in the Agrarian Revolution for so many years, and yet if you ask
them, “What is a rich peasant?” They say, “Sorry, I have not studied this.” You
ask them, “What is a middle peasant?” They haven’t studied that either. Even if
you are “looking at flowers while riding on horseback” [i.e., have a superficial
understanding], you still need to watch, but they ride their horses without
looking at the flowers; the flowers are the peasants. Of course, you can look at
the flowers more clearly after dismounting from the horse—that is called carrying
out investigation and research. Those who were impetuous did not even want the
petty bourgeoisie or the middle classes, and, as a result, they became air force
commanders. The more battles they fought, the smaller their own forces became.
Our Party shrank in size twice. It became small again after growing big, and then
small again after getting big. The first time, of 50,000 Party members, there were
not many left in the end. The second time this happened, again, of 300,000 Party
members, there were not many left. In terms of percentages, the loss the first time
this occurred was smaller. Of the 50,000 people, there were just over 10,000 people
left, a fifth remained. The second time this occurred, out of the 300,000 people, no
more than 30,000 were left, with only approximately 25,000 organized Party
members. That is, less than a tenth remained. Now our Party has grown again, a
little finger has become a fist. In the future, we should not permit it to become

smaller again.
Before the War of Resistance erupted, our preparations were like this. After the
War of Resistance began, our policy was: “Give free rein to the mobilization of
the masses and expand the people’s forces.” At that time, the Center held that
only through a people’s war could we defeat Japan. What we call people’s war,
basically speaking or in the main, consists of peasant war. We have never said
that the anti-Japanese war can be won without the wide participation of the
peasants. It has already been over 102 years since the birth of Marxism; of all the
genuine Marxists in the whole world, has anyone ever said that we can defeat the
enemy without a popular struggle? No one has ever said it. What we call the
popular struggle is either the more pacific struggle, such as strikes, ideological
struggles, economic struggles, or political struggles, or the apogee of political
struggles, war. If someone calls himself a Marxist and yet says that “we can
defeat the enemy without a popular struggle,” then, in saying this, he proclaims
himself not to be a Marxist, and his original claim to be a Marxist was false.
Some people have harbored such thoughts temporarily, it was temporary
wavering when it seemed as if we might also defeat the enemy without a popular
struggle. What forces did they expect to rely on? For example, rely on the
Guomindang, even the diehard faction of the Guomindang, so we could defeat
Japan. However, after a time, they again felt that this would not do. At that time,
these people did not have much Marxism, and only later did they acquire more.
In our Party, there are many cases like this, there are many comrades like this.
Our Party held a national conference in May 1937, and in that August the
Luochuan Conference, and in November, a meeting of Party activists in Yan’an.4
At these meetings, the Center affirmed this line, namely: Give free rein to the
mobilization of the masses and expand the people’s forces, and under the
leadership of our Party, defeat the Japanese aggressors, liberate the people of the
whole nation, and establish a new democratic China. This line was endorsed by
these meetings and decisions were made from it. At these meetings, the Center
did not believe that a dictatorial government which would not launch a people’s
war could liberate China. This point was written into the resolutions, it was also
written into the documents. Can a dictatorial government that represses the
people liberate China? Can we rely on them for victory? We absolutely do not
believe it! Because if one believed this, Marxism would flee, at least it would

temporarily run away one morning. Later on, you would have to go look for it, to
rediscover Marxism. Marxism, if you look for it, will come back; but if you do not
look for it, it will not come back, for it does not know whether you want it! We
do not believe that we can defeat Japan so easily without mobilizing the vast
forces of the people. By putting the question in this manner, we are not lowering
the program of the proletariat to the level of the program of the bourgeoisie, but
we are raising the program of the bourgeoisie to the level of the program of the
proletariat. Such a formulation was once criticized by some; they said it was not
Marxist, they said such a formulation was only for the purpose of seeking
leadership. They said that the program of the bourgeoisie, particularly the
program of the Guomindang which represents the big bourgeoisie and big
landlords, was powerful and should be propagandized among the ranks of the
vast masses of the people, the peasants, and the petty bourgeoisie. They said that
the Communist Party and that lot were useless.
On this question, we need to analyze further and extensively propagandize our
position, saying: “Peasants! Petty bourgeoisie! Compatriots! You should know:
The Japanese imperialists can be overthrown only if we ourselves unite, reform
our nation’s system, make it a democracy with a people’s army, a people’s
government, and people’s organizations. A China without these is a dark China,
and we will not be able to overthrow the Japanese imperialists. Even if we
overthrow them by borrowing the power of foreign countries, China will still be
dark!” Our propagandists need to say these things. We need to say to the non-Communists, to propagandize to them: “People of the whole nation should unite
to organize the people’s armed forces, the people’s parties, and the people’s
government. We must reform the Guomindang, the Nationalist government, and
the Guomindang armed forces.” Why do we advocate reforming them? We want
to raise them to the level of our program. What is to be done if you want to lift
them up, but they refuse to be lifted? Then we need to rely on the people of the
whole country, rely on the growth of the progressive forces, rely on winning over
the middle forces, and rely on the democratic elements within the Guomindang.
Once before, we had considered the matter of reforming the Guomindang, and it
seems that we made a mistake, which is to say that the assessment that the
Guomindang could be reformed was incorrect and we could not do what we had
planned to do, so the Guomindang has never been reformed. It should be pointed

out that it is not a mistake to want to reform the Guomindang, but the
Guomindang will not listen to you. Can the Guomindang be reformed? It is
possible, and it is impossible. At that time, if we wanted to reform it, then we
needed to create certain conditions, to expand the progressive forces, win over
the middle forces, and develop divisions within the ranks of the Guomindang, but
there was not enough time. The progressive forces never grew very large, there
was not enough time to win over the middle forces, and the democratic elements
within the Guomindang were throttled by the Fascists, and, as a result, the
reform came to nothing. Did we lose our investment? No, not a cent of it. We
said we wanted to reform the Guomindang, but that did not mean that we would
not expand the progressive forces, not expand the Eighth Route Army, the New
Fourth Army, or not engage in wide-ranging propaganda; indeed, the propaganda
on reforming the Guomindang was a success in and of itself. After the common
people heard this, they thought that what the Communist Party was talking
about was reasonable and the face of the Generalissimo [i.e., Chiang Kaishek] did
not look so good; it needed a bit of a wash. I heard once there was a big meeting
held in Xi’an chaired by somebody from the Three People’s Principles Youth
League. There were many peasants who went to attend this meeting. When the
meeting was about to end, somebody on the stage took the lead to chant slogans,
and when he shouted “Long live Generalissimo Chiang!” the peasants shouted
“Hand over the grain, and pay the taxes quickly!” What was the reason for this?
This was because the Guomindang wanted the peasants to attend the meeting for
no other purpose than to hand over the grain and pay the taxes. All they had in
their minds was handing over the grain and paying the taxes, so when that guy
shouted a slogan, the peasants shouted that. The Guomindang’s face is very
black; if we say we want to wash its face, perhaps 430 million to 440 million out
of the 450 million people in the country would agree. We told the Generalissimo
to wash his face, but he refused. Not only did we not lose our investment, we
made money. We made it possible for the common people to know why we
wanted him to wash his face. Comrades, do we still have this same policy today?
Are we asking him to wash his face, or do we want to cut off his head? Even
today, we still ask him to wash his face, and we do not want to cut off his head.
In holding this meeting, we are deciding not to cut off his head. We cannot cut
off his head. We still follow the “face-washing policy,” asking him to change his

erroneous policies. As to whether he will do it, we shall have to wait and see.
Today he will not wash his face, but how about tomorrow? It is hard to say. Old
folks do not like to wash their faces very much; old comrades should not blame
me for this, for the Generalissimo is also very old. The chances of his not washing
his face are greater than his washing it, or he may just wipe it lightly to make a
show, or he may not wipe it at all, leaving his head full of sweat, a foul scene.
Comrades, who are the main people, what are the main forces, within China
competing with us for leadership and wanting to pull China back into the world
of the dark? They are the reactionary clique within the Guomindang, the
representatives of the big landlords, big bourgeoisie, big bankers, and big
compradors.
At the Sixth Party Plenum in 1938, we corrected such erroneous thinking
mentioned above—that is, not wanting the Guomindang to wash its face and
instead saying its face was very pretty, saying our faces were dirty, or not as
clean as theirs, or at least no cleaner. Time and again we supported the
Nationalist government, supported the Nationalist government on all issues, and
supported the Nationalist government everywhere—these were the slogans
representing such erroneous thought. These things are wrong.
We corrected these at the Sixth Plenum, and many comrades came to
understand this issue. After the Sixth Plenum, there were still some who thought
the Guomindang was very good, very pretty, but later, there came the “Measures
for Restricting the Activities of Alien Parties,” and the first anti-Communist high
tide. After these two incidents, the mask worn by the Guomindang came off,
revealing its ugly features. This time, some of our comrades gradually came to
understand the situation. After that came the second anti-Communist high tide,
the Southern Anhui Incident,5 and the third anti-Communist incident, the effort
of July 1943 to disband the Communist Party and to eliminate the border region.
By this time, illusions regarding the Guomindang within our Party were basically
eliminated. The idea of rescuing China and expelling Japan without reforming
the Guomindang was dispelled, the thinking that we should mainly not rely on
ourselves, not expand our forces, not expand the liberated area, and not remove
the restrictions on the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army was
changed and the idea that we should give free rein to the mobilization of the
popular masses and expand the people’s forces, defeat the Japanese aggressors,

and construct a new China under our leadership was planted. Among the great
popular masses and in the minds of our comrades there emerged a new picture.
Therefore, ideology is a very strange thing, it takes stages and requires experience
to get rid of the bad part, that part that does not conform to Marxism-Leninism
or to the realities of China, so purely relying on talk won’t work. Lenin said, “We
need to educate the people through experience” because the people only believe
in experience and not in talk. But we still need to talk. We have two great
teachers: one is the Japanese, and the other is the Generalissimo. These two great
teachers have given us classes without asking for any salary. Without these two
great teachers, the Chinese people would not have been educated; our Party
would not have been educated. As for the junior teachers within our Party who
are barely literate and cannot discuss many theories, when they set about to
lecture, nobody listens. Later, we invited one Japanese and one Chinese, one was
the Japanese Fascists and the other was the Generalissimo, and these two teachers
helped us to teach and the job got done.
After the Sixth Plenum, our Party resolutely exercised leadership over the
peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, the middle classes, and even the landlords. In the
liberated areas, we engaged in reduction of rents and interest, and the landlords
also followed us. Because we resolutely exercised leadership, we expanded our
military, our liberated areas, and our Party. After that, we defeated numerous
offensives by the Japanese aggressors and gradually staged offensives ourselves,
like the offensive begun last year, while the offensive this year is even bigger. At
the beginning of the War of Resistance we took the offensive, in the middle stage
of the war we were on the defensive, and now, we are predominantly on the
offensive and secondarily on the defensive, that is, with regard to Japan. With
regard to the Guomindang, we have beaten back its three anti-Communist high
tides and its numerous offensives, including ideological, political, and military
offensives, and what kind of position has this left the Guomindang in? Its
influence has dwindled and its forces have shrunk. The Guomindang has also
invited a teacher, the same person as our teacher. His name is Okamura Yasuji.6
He used to live in Beijing, but now he lives fairly near where the Generalissimo
lives. Once this teacher started teaching, the influence of the Guomindang
dwindled and its forces shrank. Does the Guomindang still have influence now?
Yes. It still has considerable influence. The Guomindang has a saying: “I have

devoted myself to the Nationalist Revolution for forty years”; add twenty more
years to it, and now its history totals sixty years. We are not nearly half as old as
they are, we only have a history of twenty-four years. Their influence will only
leave a place when our influence reaches there, and if our shadow does not reach
there, their shadow will not quit. Therefore, I say their influence is low but is not
nonexistent; it has only declined, but it still has considerable power. They have
1.5 million troops, while we only have 910,000 troops. They have international
standing, and we don’t. They have a population of 200 million, we only have 100
million. They have had sixty years of influence, while we have had only twentyfour.
The result of correctly implementing our Party line during the War of
Resistance, resolutely giving free rein to the mobilization of the popular masses
and to expanding the people’s forces, to defeating the enemy and to establishing a
new China under our leadership, and to opposing imperialism and feudalism has
been to push the Guomindang to such a position: Its influence is low, and its
forces have shrunk. At the same time, this has promoted our Party to such a
position: It has become the center of the struggle against Japan and [the struggle]
to save the nation, the center to which the great popular masses of the whole
nation look.
Now it has been proven that only such a line is the correct line. The line to
compete for leadership and to strive for independence is the line of our Party’s
Central Committee, the line that reflects the demands of the majority of
comrades within the whole Party, and the line that reflects the demands of the
majority of the people in the whole nation. Where has this line come from? Has it
dropped from the sky? No. Has it been delivered from abroad? Again, no. It has
sprung from China’s own soil. Lu Xun once said: The path emerges as people
walk on it.7 In the same fashion, our line was created by the Chinese people as
they walked it. To compete for leadership and strive for independence is the line
of the War of Resistance Against the Japanese imperialists and their running dogs
by the great popular masses under the leadership of the proletariat, that is, the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. The correct nature of this line has
now been completely and clearly proven. This is unlike the winter of 1937, or
1938, or even the period just after the Sixth Plenum, even up to the third anti-Communist high tide, when there were still some comrades who did not believe

this line. So, has everybody awakened by now? Has everybody come to believe
this fully? Has everybody come to believe in Long Live Marxism? As far as I can
judge, the situation varies; some believe Marxism will live for 10,000 years, some,
9,000 years, and still others, 8,000 years …8 Just speaking of our Party members,
the perceptions of the 1.21 million Party members vary. Recently, there have been
many seminars held in North and Central China that have demonstrated that not
only are there many personages outside the Party who are not completely
informed and clear about this line of ours, but also there are many within the
ranks of our Party who are like this. Therefore, I say among the vast number of
our Party members, there is Marxism, but there are different degrees. It varies
from those who believe Marxism is going to be around for one year to those who
believe it is going to be around for 9,999 years, and, of course, there are also those
who believe it will be around for 10,000 years.
Our policy toward the Guomindang is one of unity and struggle. Our struggle
is reasonable, beneficial, and restrained. We are struggling against them from the
position of self-defense—that’s reasonable. Such struggle is partial; we only
struggle against them when it is to our benefit to do so. Such struggle is
temporary in nature, in order to achieve unity we are restrained. Looking from
the other side, struggle which is temporary, partial, and carried out in selfdefense should be conducive to unity. Every day the Guomindang wants to attack
us, but it does not dare to have a complete falling out with us. Our struggle is also
restrained. For example, we sent them a letter, demanding that we send people to
attend the San Francisco Conference.9 At the beginning, they were unwilling, but
didn’t we end up going? We suggested three; they said one—OK, one is one, and
we didn’t make a fuss. Now our delegate has already reached Washington.10
Comrades, rights are won through struggle; they are not granted to you as gifts—
that’s why there is the word “struggle” in this world—and our comrades should
not forget it. Some say that our Party’s philosophy is the “philosophy of struggle.”
There is a commander-in-chief by the name of Deng Baoshan at Yulin [Elm
Grove] who said this. I said, “you got that right.” Ever since the emergence of
slave owners, feudal lords, and capitalists, they have struggled against the
oppressed people, so the “philosophy of struggle” was first invented by them. The
“philosophy of struggle” of the oppressed people emerged later, as Marxism only
emerged after several thousand years. To abandon struggle, only to want unity,

or not to pay attention to struggle, just muddling through without doing it
appropriately or forcefully, is the reflection of the weakness of the petty
bourgeoisie. There is another characteristic of the petty bourgeoisie, its
revolutionary nature. Their revolution is revolutionary, but somewhat weak.
Weakness has now been proven to be completely wrong. Take Zhang Naiqi,11 I
had given him a “hat,” “Zhang Naiqi-ism,” and I think it was reasonable for me to
do this. Now this man has already patched things up with us, telling Comrade
Zhou Enlai that he made mistakes. This is very good. At a Party conference in
November 1937, I criticized him; I said Zhang Naiqi’s philosophy is no good,
because at that time he advocated “making fewer demands and more
suggestions.” This was a manifestation of the weakness of the liberal bourgeoisie,
and we defeated his position. He belongs to the middle forces, and it is only
through firmly uniting with them that we can educate them through long-term
experience. In the future, the liberal bourgeoisie will continue to affect us
frequently with their weakness, because that is their character, just like Lin
Daiyu in the novel Dream of the Red Chamber, who emits a “fragrance” after
having a bath. The liberal bourgeoisie also has such a “fragrance,” but this
fragrance is the “fragrance of weakness.” Since it produces that “fragrance,” it
must find a market to sell it, so it deliberately sends it to Yan’an, which has a bad
influence on our Party. Our propaganda, as well, is sometimes too sharp;
although roses are lovely, they are very thorny. “While the mutton tastes nice, it
is too hot.” For these gentlemen, though the roses are lovely, they do not like
them because they are thorny. They like Xue Baochai. They don’t like Tanchun.12
This is very troublesome. Comrades! More trouble is yet to come. Don’t be afraid
of trouble. As long as you want to make revolution, you will have trouble,
sometimes a lot of trouble. If you want to stay out of trouble, you can stay at
home to smoke your long pipe. Now summer is here, and you can sit under a
tree, holding your fan—not much trouble there. Yet there still is turmoil. Didn’t
Lu Xun write a story called “Turmoil” [Fengbo]? The world cannot avoid turmoil;
you cannot be a man if you are afraid of turmoil. If you are indeed afraid of
turmoil, you had better go and settle accounts with the King of Hell. Our Party
now frequently encounters turmoil, big turmoil, moderate turmoil, and small
turmoil; we have no need to fear turmoil. Now that our will is all the stronger,
turmoil will not drown us. It is impossible to drown us in the sea of China—it

cannot happen.
A few last words to conclude this section.
First, what is the condition of the peasants? What attitudes do peasants have?
Whether over the past eight years or over the past twenty-four years, the
peasants have welcomed our policies very much—very much welcomed the
policies I have just mentioned. However, as for our Party, as for the leading
ideology, we need to distinguish ourselves clearly from the peasants and should
avoid getting ourselves mixed up with them. This may not be easy to understand
for comrades who have come from peasant origins. “I am a peasant myself, so
why can’t I mix with the peasants?” I say now you are a member of the
Communist Party. You are a peasant only by origin, but origin and admission to
the Party are two different things, for the Communist Party is the vanguard of
the proletariat. But it will take time to become clear about this. If you cannot do
it in one year, then take two years; if two years are not long enough, then take
three. Don’t say that our Communist Party has held a meeting and you are just
reciting the documents of the meeting. There was a comrade who said yesterday
that Georgi Dimitrov13 once wrote about a German comrade who was making a
speech at a meeting of unemployed workers in Berlin by reading out word for
word the resolution of the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the
Communist International, and, as a result, the common people did not want to
hear it. Now we need not copy verbatim the things of the Seventh Congress,
either.14 The Seventh Congress says, “Don’t get mixed up with the peasants.” Go
back and say this, and many comrades of peasant origins will not approve. They
say they are peasants themselves. What I mean by saying that we should not get
mixed up with the peasants is that we should raise the level of the peasants by
one more step, to the level of the proletariat. After several decades, we will have
raised the level of all peasants outside the Party to the level of the proletariat. If
you do not believe this, you are not a Marxist. In the future, we will mechanize
and collectivize and that will raise them up.
Second, what about the petty bourgeoisie? Intellectuals of petty-bourgeois
origin either inside or outside the Party have their wavering nature, and they
have their revolutionary nature. Wavering is their bad side, but generally
speaking, this can be overcome through education. As far as the situation within
the Party is concerned, the Yan’an Rectification movement is proof of this. Artists

and writers endorse such methods as the Forum on Literature and Art, for in the
past they did not know how to do it and our Party provided them with guidelines
and educated them. It was not commandism but an effort to bring them around
to self-consciousness gradually, and this has been very effective. It takes regular
and appropriate propaganda work by our Party to overcome the wavering of the
petty bourgeoisie, relying mainly on actual practice, as well as on our own vast
strength, the broad liberated areas, and the powerful armies.
Third, how about the liberal bourgeoisie? The liberal bourgeoisie wavers all the
more. But the liberal bourgeoisie now wants democracy; it wants democracy as it
perceives it, so therefore it is our ally. Such wavering can be turned into
neutrality under our firm influence, and [liberals] might even travel with us.
Take the slogan of coalition government, for example. It supported it, and during
the anti-Communist high tides it held a position of neutrality. The Guomindang
and the Chinese Communist Party are fighting each other, and they give advice
from the sidelines, they tell one side not to do this and tell the other side not to
do that. Here is a clear example. On March 1, 1941, the National Congress was
convened, but our representatives declined to attend while the Generalissimo
categorically wanted us to attend. We categorically declined. We said, “We will
only attend if you give us something.” They said, “We will give you something
after you attend.” We said, “We will attend after you give us these things.” This
was repeated several times. We wanted them to give these things; they wanted us
to attend the conference. The result was that the one did not give, and the other
did not attend. The potential giver did not give, and we did not attend. In the
course of these events, certain personages belonging to the middle forces tried to
work on both sides. They told the Guomindang, “Please give something.” They
told us, “Please attend the conference.” This is a classic example of the wavering
of the liberal bourgeoisie. There are numerous events of this kind, but given time
constraints now, I cannot cover them all at one time. All in all, under our firm
influence, it is possible to neutralize the liberal bourgeoisie and even to get them
to go along with us.
Fourth, what about the big landlords and big bourgeoisie? Big landlords, big
bankers, and the big compradors are the strata represented by the reactionary
wing of the Guomindang, and they comprise the reactionary faction within the
resistance front in the country. Our attitude toward them is like the attitude of

the Communist Party of Great Britain toward Churchill. There was an article in
the newspaper by the secretary general of the Communist Party of Great Britain
[Harry Pollitt] which I suggest you comrades read.15 The slogan that he put forth
calls for a coalition government with the Liberal Party, the Labour Party, and the
Public Order Party [Gong’an dang] [sic] to overthrow Churchill during the next
election. The word “overthrow” which he used is liable to cause certain
misunderstandings in China, for the situation here is different from that in
foreign countries. Here, “to overthrow” is to strive to compete for leadership. In
the past, we did this—we strove for leadership. We need to pay attention to the
character “power” in the word “striving.”16 Big landlords and big bourgeoisie
strive to obtain leadership by any means, in an effort to bring the broad popular
masses, mainly the 360 million peasants, under their leadership and away from
our influence. Who in China has fat? The peasants are the ones who have the
most fat. In invading China the Japanese want to get this fat from the Chinese
peasants, and Chiang Kaishek also wants to cut this fat from the peasants, and—
take note—in the future there will no doubt be the old gentleman [Lt. Gen. Sir
Ronald] Scobie, who will come to cut this fat.17 In Greece, Scobie, representing
Britain, cut the fat from the Greek people. The big landlords and big bourgeoisie
want to turn China into a China of darkness, and so they are the long-term
targets of our struggle.
Last, the foreign countries. What about the foreign countries? There is no
question that the Soviet Union is a friend, the Chinese people’s best friend. I
pointed this out very clearly in the written report. As for other foreign countries,
the major powers, the allies, we also need to unite firmly with them. But when
they do not get it right, we also need to struggle a bit. Why did Liberation Daily
not publish this? The fact it did not carry this does not mean it never will, and it
does not negate the need to engage in a little struggle. It won’t do if they bring
out their Scobies. I mentioned this in my report. There are still reactionary forces
abroad. The reactionary forces are still very powerful. The present international
situation as a whole is good. There is unity in the anti-Fascist front to which the
Soviet Union is a party, mainly unity among Britain, the United States, and the
Soviet Union. This unity is essential, and it dominates everything. The situation
in the world now has already completely changed, and I wrote a great deal on
this in the report, quite enough. As for the dark side, I wrote very little. The faces

of those foreigners who support Chiang Kaishek are not pretty; though some
behave as if they are bestowing fortune on us from on high, they still do not look
good, and we need to be on the alert against this.
This is the first question, which may be called the situation and the line.
2. A Few Questions on Policy
Policy has its various aspects, and there is the general program and there are
concrete programs.
The first question: the general program and concrete programs. Have we only
begun using such a division now? This was done in the past, too, but it was never
written in such a way in the same place: the first being the general program and
the second being the concrete programs. For instance, in the pamphlet On New
Democracy, there was no discussion of concrete policies while only the general
program was discussed. We have, however, had concrete policies during different
periods, for example, at the beginning of the War of Resistance, there were the
Ten Great Programs,18 and during the middle period each area had its concrete
policies, such as the Twenty-one Article Administrative Program in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and the various programs in the anti-Japanese
bases behind the lines which have more similarities than differences and share
the same character with few differences in their articles. During the Civil War,
the Sixth Party Congress decided on the Ten Major Programs,19 which are
concrete programs under the general line of New Democracy, the more concrete
programs being the Land Law, the Marriage Law, the Regulations on Political
Work, and so on. During the time of the Northern Expedition, there were similar
things in which the Party issued various declarations regarding the situation
prevailing at that time, all of which are concrete programs. We are now clarifying
this question so that our comrades will learn that our general program is New
Democracy, and it has rope and holes. “Rope” is like the rope on a fishing net that
you hold in your hands, and “holes” are the various holes in the fishing net.
The second question: concerning Sun Yatsen. In my report I said some very
nice things about him. We need to adopt a balanced approach with regard to this

gentleman, Sun Yatsen.20 We are Marxists, and we engage in historical dialectics.
Indeed, Sun Yatsen did do and say some good things. In my report I did my best
to pick out these good things. These are the things we should grasp and should
not let go even if we die, and even then, we should pass these things on to our
sons and grandsons. However, there is also a difference between us and Sun
Yatsen. Sun Yatsen’s Three People’s Principles are not as good as our New
Democracy, for New Democracy is indeed more progressive, more developed,
and more complete than the Three People’s Principles. Our present New
Democracy will become even more complete in the future. Within our Party,
there is a sense of not liking Sun Yatsen, and this sense is pervasive among
numerous Party members. Seriously speaking, this feeling is not balanced and
demonstrates a lack of a true awareness. This reflects the sensibilities of the Civil
War period when, due to differing circumstances, even Sun Yatsen was dropped.
Why did we not talk much about Sun Yatsen at that time? Because we were then
thrown to the ground by the Guomindang and after we climbed back up, we
became extremely furious. Chiang Kaishek killed people everywhere while
waving the banner of Sun Yatsen, so at that time, the masses did not like Sun
Yatsen either. During the ten years of the Civil War, they did not want Sun
Yatsen, and it is difficult to blame them for that because our forces were
extremely small. During the initial period of the War of Resistance, our forces
were also quite small, hence even though we wanted Sun Yatsen, our impact was
not great, for others looked down on us. In the future, the more powerful we
become, the more we ought to want Sun Yatsen, and there will be all the more
benefits in doing this and there will be no negative effects. We should raise the
banner of Sun Yatsen with a clear head.
The third question: capitalism. In my report, I have already elaborated on the
question of capitalism, and I affirmed it quite fully. What good does this do? It
does good. I affirmed it with the following qualification, that is, as Sun Yatsen
put it, the capitalism which “cannot manipulate the national lifeline.” The big
landlords, big bankers, and big compradors who do manipulate the national lifeline are not included in this. When drafting concrete programs, some suggested
adding the following: “Confiscate the property of the big landlords, big bankers,
and big compradors.” In fact, by quoting in the main text, Sun Yatsen’s “The state
shall manage and administer those enterprises belonging to Chinese and foreign

nationals that are monopolistic in nature or so massive in scale as to be beyond
the capability of private individuals, such as banks, railroads, and civil
aviation,”21 this is already implied. If we now talk about confiscation, it is to
confiscate the property of the three families of Chiang Kaishek, Song Ziwen [T.V.
Soong], and Kong Xiangxi [H.H. Kung], and that will not sound good. This is
why I did not talk of confiscating their property, but it is there, for Sun Yatsen
has said it. In the later part, I also talk about a new capitalist democratic
revolution. They will be the targets of this revolution, for they are no ordinary
capitalists. “Ordinary capitalists” refer to middle capitalists and the petty
bourgeoisie. The special capitalists who “manipulate the national lifeline,” as Sun
Yatsen put it, are not included in them. In the future, under our New Democracy,
we will also confiscate properties that manipulate the national lifeline in the big
cities and we will confiscate the property of Chinese traitors (I talked about this
in my report). We are going to confiscate such property and turn it into state
property. In addition, I will talk below on the need for extensive development of
the cooperative and state economies, two kinds of economies that should be
permitted to develop extensively.
There are only good effects and no bad effects to come from our affirmation of
the need for the extensive development of capitalism. For a fairly long time, some
people in our Party could not become clear on this question, hanging on to a sort
of populist ideology. Such an ideology will exist for a long time in a Party that
consists predominantly of members of peasant origin. What we call populism
advocates a direct advance from the feudal economy to the socialist economy,
without going through the stage of developing capitalism. Russian populism was
like this. At that time, the party of Lenin and Stalin criticized them. In the end,
they became the Social Revolutionary Party. They were extremely “Leftist” and
wanted to develop socialism even faster and not to develop capitalism. The result
was that they turned into counterrevolutionaries. The Bolsheviks were quite
different. They affirmed that Russia needed to develop capitalism and held that
this was beneficial to the proletariat. In his “Two Tactics,” Lenin said, “The
bourgeois democratic revolution is more beneficial to the proletariat than to the
bourgeoisie.” We need not be afraid of developing capitalism. After the victory of
the Russian October Revolution, for a certain period, capitalism was allowed to
exist as part of the economy, and quite a large part at that, constituting almost 50

percent of the national economy. At that time, grain was mostly produced by the
rich peasants, and only in the Second Five-year Plan were the middle and small
capitalists in the cities and the rich peasants in the countryside eliminated. Our
comrades are in a great hurry to eliminate capitalism. In the Soviet Union, even
after the victory of the socialist revolution, it passed through the period of the
New Economic Policy and the First Five-year Plan and then to the Second Fiveyear Plan, when the collective farms underwent major development and the rich
peasants no longer produced most of the grain; it was only then that it proposed
to eliminate rich peasants. In this regard, our comrades are in too much of a
hurry.
The fourth question: communism. I have already touched on this question in
my report, but I did not emphasize it. Why did I not emphasize it? If I were to
emphasize it, I would have to list its programs, but we thought it was better not
to do this right now, for the program of communism is the abolition of private
property and classes. There would only be a little benefit to including this in the
report and that would be for the education of Party members, for many of our
comrades still do not know what communism is. In the past, when I was
attacking local tyrants, I once went to the house of a local tyrant to see if there
were any books. An old granny came out and asked me what I was up to. I said
that I had come to look for things, and she said, “They were already communized
[gonglechan] yesterday. Everything was communized. Now there is nothing left
to communize anymore.” Many of our peasant comrades hold that communism
means distributing the property of landlords to them. This, of course, is not
correct.
Some say our Party needs to change its name. They say that our program is
very good, but our name is no good. “Big as the ambition of the gentleman is, yet
his name is unacceptable.” Not only Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek sent us
telegrams asking us to change our name but also the middle factions. A person
like Zuo Shunsheng has said, “Your program is truly very fine. I would join your
Party if you were not called the Communist Party.” During the three months of
the anti-Communist high tide during July, August, and September of the year
before last [1943], many things got out. After they read them, they were very
happy, and they said that our program was very good but that our name was no
good. Many Americans also want us to change our name, and if we were to

change our name, they would like us. They would like us to change our name to
Guomindang, and perhaps this is the best name in the world. In addition, there is
the third party, but it is no more than third place. It may also be called the
Conservative Party. But the question is not what your name is. Or we could take
the name of the Conservative Party. The question is not really the name. You can
call yourself the Conservative Party, or some other Party, and they will continue
to call you the Red Party. An American journalist named [Harrison] Forman
wrote a book called Report from Red China. Still another American newsman,
Edgar Snow, wrote a book called Red Star Over China, which has now been
translated as Notes of a Western Tour [Xixing manji]. No matter how you change
your name, it will always be Red. You are White, with only the white powder
without the makeup, and they will still mark you as Red. Therefore, it is not the
name that makes the difference. The name Guomindang may count as a good
name, but then why do people still dislike the Guomindang so much? In the past,
there were many people who were afraid their children might fall ill or die and so
they intentionally gave bad names to their children, calling them “cat” or “dog.”
In olden days there was a fellow named Wang Zhen’e (zhen’e means
“suppressing evil”), but even though his name sounded very nice, he also died.
Shall we make up a name for our Party so that it shall never die? No matter what
name you give it, as long as it keeps doing the same old things, the substance will
not change. There is a journalist named [Brooks] Atkinson, who has something
of a liberal tendency, an old democrat. He calls us “moderate democratic
centralizers” who are not that Red after all. The representatives of the bourgeoisie
all talk like that. So, really, we need not change the name of our Party. The
Chinese people like the name of our Party.22
The fifth question, the Guomindang. We criticize the Guomindang very
sharply but also very objectively and not beyond their realities. We credit to their
account any little good thing about them. It is a pity that there are not many
good things about the Guomindang, so even though we want to credit their
account, it is very difficult to do so. We can only do it a little bit, and we put a
proviso there; we want the Generalissimo to wash the black stuff from his face.
This is our policy. On the one hand, we criticize them very sharply, but, on the
other, we also allow some leeway. In this way, we can negotiate and cooperate
and hope that they will change their policy. Have we said “down with the

Generalissimo”? No. In my report, I have not mentioned him by name even once.
This Generalissimo wrote a “very good” book titled China’s Destiny. Originally, I
should have mentioned it, but I did not. This was a great pity. Of the people I
mention in my report, there are Sun Yatsen and now Roosevelt among the dead
and among the living, of the revolutionaries, there is Stalin; among the
counterrevolutionaries, there is Hitler. As for the others, the less you mention
them, the better. Therefore, by allowing some leeway for the Guomindang we
will not make mistakes. If we do not, there is only one realistic conclusion. That
is to overthrow them. Then we will have made a political mistake. The
Generalissimo has seen this, too, and on several occasions, he wanted to
encourage us to make such a mistake, to encourage our forces to sally forth in the
direction of Xi’an and to induce us to advocate the overthrow of the
Guomindang. Comrades! We need to pay attention to these things, to his efforts
to induce us. You say that you want to cooperate, and that is very good. But you
must wash your face a bit, for only then will we marry you. If you refuse to wash
your faces, they will not look very pretty, and we will not marry you. This is our
policy.
On self-defense and counterattack. We shall proceed from the position of selfdefense to engage in counterattacks against the attacks of the Guomindang, one
is self-defense and the other is counterattack. We must retaliate against and reply
to all the attacks waged by the Guomindang, be they large or small or be they by
word or by weapon. Especially for attacks by weapon, as long as they attack, we
need to eliminate their forces cleanly. We have put forth such a slogan: to
eliminate them resolutely, thoroughly, cleanly, and totally. I also mentioned this
to the Guomindang staff person responsible for liaison. I said that our policy is,
first, based on the philosophy of Laozi, “Don’t be the first under Heaven [to do
it].” That is to say, we will not fire the first shot. Second, we “retreat by 90 li to
avoid battle in accordance with the Zuo Commentaries [Zuochuan]. When you
come, we will turn back, march back for 90 li. But it is not necessarily so, it
depends on the size of the area. The meaning of “retreat by 90 li” is that when
you come, we will make some concessions. Third, we “exchange visits according
to the rites,” as in the Book of Rites [Li ji]. If you come to visit me, and I don’t
return the visit, this is not compatible with the rites. But if I go to visit you, and
you do not reciprocate my visit, this is not compatible with the rites, either. That

is, “If others don’t transgress us, we will not transgress them, but if others
transgress us, we will definitely transgress them.” We put forth this slogan as
early as 1939, and we still follow this policy. Suppose we have a hundred rifles
and you have forcefully taken away ninety-nine. Of course, we will not be happy.
But we will not blame you. You do this because you are capable and very smart.
However, with even one gun left, we will fight to the end, and as long as we have
one gun left in our hands, even if we are thrown to the ground, we will hand
over the gun to our sons, and our sons will hand over the gun to our grandsons.
There is a story about a foolish old man who moved the mountain.23 It is about
Shanxi, where there are the Taihang mountains and Wangwu mountain. Now
these two mountains are relatively low, but in the old days they were quite high
and difficult to climb. There was a man called the Foolish Old Man, who was a
very stupid old man. Near him lived another old man by the name of the Wise
Old Man, who was a very intelligent old man. One day, these two men had a
fight. Why did they fight? It was because the Foolish Old Man wanted to move
the Taihang and Wangwu mountains and told his son to dig up the dirt and carry
it away. The intelligent old man told him not to dig, that the Taihang and
Wangwu mountains were so high—how could he dig them up and move them?
The Foolish Old Man said: Even though these two mountains are high, after I die,
there is my son; after my son dies, there is my son’s son; after my son’s son dies,
there is my son’s son’s son. From the father to the son, from the son to the
grandson, sons and grandsons, there’s no end to it, and the mountains will not
get higher. Later, an immortal, moved by the spirit of this Foolish Old Man,
reported this to [the emperor] Shangdi, and Shangdi sent people to move the
mountains! This story is carried in books, not something I have made up.
As for the counterrevolutionaries of the world, we must overthrow the
Japanese aggressors and the Chinese reactionaries. As for the attacks by the
Guomindang, we are engaging in counterattacks from a position of self-defense.
If we go beyond self-defense, we will make mistakes. But some comrades in the
heat of the moment forget this, and this is not good. We should basically proceed
from a position of self-defense. As long as we proceed from this position, we will
not make mistakes. Self-defense is reasonable, partial is to our benefit, and
temporary entails restraint. This is reason, benefit, and restraint. If we violate this
policy, we will make mistakes. There will be a lot of trouble, all the more trouble

between us and the Guomindang.
The sixth question, reforming the old troops. The reform and use of old officers
has some ideological problems that require extensive propaganda within our
Party. There are numerous old forces with many officers in their ranks who need
to be reformed; they cannot be dealt with on an individual basis, and there
should be an overall policy. Except for the out-and-out reactionaries who defy
reform, most of these officers can be reformed. We made mistakes on this
problem in the past, for we did not believe that old officers could be reformed; we
thought that these people were difficult to deal with, that they did not have
Marxism and Leninism, that there could be no Bolsheviks among them. In reality,
however, in the semi-colonial and semifeudal society of China, many of these old
officers have been deceived; they needed to earn a crust, to find a way out, but
they can find a way out only by coming to our side, so we are not afraid of their
rebelling. The most frightening thing in the world is rebellion, but rebellion is
also not so frightening. There are two kinds of rebellion, one is open rebellion,
and the other is covert rebellion, engaging in espionage. We are prepared for
open rebellion, and there have been such open rebellions for many years, though
nothing has come of them. We need to be on guard against secret espionage
activities, and though we should not harbor the intention to harm other people,
we should be on guard against others harming us. Our eyes are looking at them
with seriousness and vigilance. Then there are the deserters. If he quits with a
gun, we have not lost our investment, for he brought it over with him and now
he is taking it away. If you want to quit, we will give you some money and hold
a farewell party. We also tell him that in the future if he wishes to come again, he
is welcome to do so; this is called politics. For the comparatively progressive
troops, we need to render them appropriate assistance, as we did in the past.
There are two extreme views on this: One is that we should not take on anybody
from the old troops, that we should not trust them, and we should get them to
surrender their guns. This is not good. The other is to give everything to the
comparatively progressive troops; this is called doing a disservice, and it is no
good, either. In our effort to reform the old troops, we need to wage a struggle on
two fronts.
The seventh question, our troops. The Eighth Route Army, the New Fourth
Army, the New Army of Shanxi,24 and so on all adopt the policy of the United

Front, for this is the meaning of alliance. The Red Army during the Civil War
was also an alliance, an alliance between the workers and peasants and an
alliance between the Party and non-Party; all our forces, without exception, are
like this. With our forces, unlike the Guomindang forces, we do not require that
everyone join the Party. Though we talk of the Party army, that refers to the
leadership of the Party and does not require that everyone within our forces be a
Party member. Historically, at most, the share of Party members within our
forces constituted only about half, and often it was between a third and a fifth,
but always in the minority. In our forces, the Communist Party members who are
in the minority should cooperate with the non-Party personages who are in the
majority. “Personages” refers to the peasants, workers, and intellectuals. Our
forces are the forces of the great popular masses. They belong to the great
popular masses and serve them. That is, they are of the people, by the people, and
for the people; they are the forces of the New Three People’s Principles, the forces
of New Democracy. They are the forces of the great popular masses opposing
imperialism and feudalism under the leadership of the Communist Party. These
forces are under the leadership of the proletariat. Some people are not happy
upon hearing that they are under the leadership of the proletariat. Others keep on
insisting that you are under its leadership and that it is incorrect, and there is a
problem if you do not come under its leadership. Such arrogance is no good, and
people do not welcome it. Here, we need to make clear the character of
leadership. What is this leadership? It is embodied in policies, work, and actions;
it is necessary to lead in actuality, not just to talk about leadership. Talk less
about it if others do not like to hear it. We need to be clear about the character of
leadership, but do not talk about it every day as if you are reciting hymns.
Now our forces are expanding cooperation as much as possible with non-Party
personages. Recently, in Shandong three contingents of puppet forces came over
to our side. Now they are no longer called puppet forces but, instead, they are
called the Eighth Route Army. We held meetings for them in an effort to help
them clarify and reform their thought, and, at the beginning, they were afraid.
Later on, they gradually overcame ideological obstacles and came to feel more
comfortable. This is a very good method, and Liberation Daily carried an editorial
on it. If the delegates to our congress think this is a very good method, we should
make a decision and then everyone should abide by it. This is called cooperation

within and without the forces. As long as they are not opposed to the revolution,
we will cooperate with them. At the same time, we keep an eye on them to watch
for any espionage activities. What is there to fear in cooperating with democratic
elements? If we have food, everyone can eat it. If we have an enemy, everyone
can fight him. We cannot pay them salaries, but if everyone pitches in, there will
be plenty of clothes and food. We also carry out the Three Main Rules of
Discipline and Eight Points for Attention [of the Red Army in 1928], so through
trial and error, we will succeed. Places like Liangshanbo adopted this policy, and
they did a very good job with respect to their internal political work. Of course,
they had their problems; they had big landlords and big tyrants in their ranks,
and they did not carry out rectification. Lu Junyi25 was compelled to go to
Liangshan; he was forced to do so through commandism, and he did not do it
voluntarily.
Our policy toward those who are not firm reactionaries is that as long as they
are willing to engage in revolution and cooperate with us, we welcome them all
as “Master Jiang is fishing, those willing come join him.”26 Master Jiang issued a
declaration: “If you are willing, come along. If you are not, forget it.” He
understood it very clearly, he could even issue a declaration on fishing. We can
also issue a declaration.
The eighth question, expanding the liberated areas. We need to launch
offensives in all places where it is possible to do so. But we need to look out for
and defend against enemy offensives, and when the enemy attacks, smash him.
We need to be predominantly on the offensive, with defense as a supplement.
During the initial stages of the War of Resistance, we went on the offensive
everywhere. During the middle period of the war between 1941 and 1942, it was
mainly retreat and defense. Between 1943 and 1944, once again offense
dominated. In view of the experience of these two years, we have come to two
conclusions: One is offense, and the other is defense. We should not be
frightened, even by seeing a rope just because we were bitten by a snake,
suffering losses in 1941 and 1942. In view of the experience of 1943 and 1944,
particularly that of 1944, our task calls on us to wage offensives, expand the
liberated areas, and concentrate big (five to six regiments) and small (armed work
teams) forces to engage in offensives behind the enemy’s rear. This is because the
circumstances of the Japanese bandits have changed, their forces have weakened,

they cannot even look after themselves, while, by contrast, our areas have
expanded. The situations for both ourselves and the enemy have changed. The
situation of the world has also changed: Berlin is on the point of falling.
Therefore, as conditions permit, we should concentrate some forces to attack the
points where the enemy is the weakest. This is also very conducive to our
defense. Now in the plans for 1945 that are being formulated in various places,
the first thing to do is offense and the second thing is defense. This is not
adventurism, for we are talking of waging offensives when conditions permit but
not when conditions do not permit, and we also are talking about the possibility
that the enemy will attack us and that we need to make a point to consolidate the
base areas, so this is not adventurism.
The ninth question, preparations for transformation. We need to be prepared to
gradually transform dispersed guerrilla warfare into regular mobile war, from a
war which is mainly guerrilla war into a war which is mainly mobile war.
During the initial stages of the War of Resistance we also advocated this, but it
was only a hope then. What was the task then? Some comrades are not clear on
this question. At that time, the enemy before us was the Japanese and behind us
was the Guomindang reactionaries; we were sandwiched in the middle. Our
forces at that time were but the little finger. In 1936, our forces in the whole
country, including the guerrillas in the south totaled only 30,000. They increased
a little bit in 1937, but not much. Our task then was to augment our forces and to
grow, to add one more finger, and then one more and one more still. It was to
expand our forces. How could we expand our forces? By relying on sparrow
warfare, on guerrilla warfare. Sparrows fly all over the place; they go wherever
there is food. At the Sixth Plenum, we made a point and listed eighteen
advantages of guerrilla warfare. This is a good method, and it has been proven as
such in the past eight years. The sparrows flying all over the sky are seeds, and
they will produce numerous seedlings. Once we have these seeds, the Party is
established, political power is established, and the base areas are in hand, we
have the common folk behind us, there is food to eat, and the cadres have been
tested and trained. At that time, we flew everywhere. The enemy before us, the
Japanese, attacked us; the enemy in the rear, the Guomindang reactionaries, also
attacked us. Both of them were egging us on. Egging us on to do what? To fight
big battles by concentrating our forces. One of them encouraged us, the other

cursed us. One said that the Chinese Communist Party was heroic and was the
national hero in resisting Japan. The other labeled us as opportunists and said
that we were afraid of death. Who wants to be an opportunist? Who is not
willing to be a national hero? Yet we still need to learn from the sparrows,
though the sparrows are opportunistic and go wherever there is food, and
although they remain small sparrows, when concentrated, they number 910,000.
Are we always going to be sparrows? Long-life sparrows? The objective reality
completely demonstrates that our sparrows are different from other sparrows, for
we can grow big and turn into eagles. In Chinese mythology, there is a story that
says: once upon a time, there was a giant eagle. It flew from the Arctic to the
Antarctic. By a mere flap of its wings, it flew over the best part of China. We are
prepared to do the same. We are prepared to expand to 3 million, 5 million, and
this process calls for the transformation of small sparrows into big sparrows and
then into a giant eagle that can sweep across the whole of China.
We now need to “adjust to the enemy and to the demand for food.” The enemy
has many strongholds, yet he only has points, lines, and small fronts. When the
enemy wants to establish points and lines, we disperse to establish fronts. This is
the meaning of adjusting ourselves to the enemy. People need to eat. When [the
people are] concentrated, there is nothing to eat, so we need to be dispersed to
have food to eat. This is the meaning of adjusting to the demand for food. During
the Civil War, the reason we engaged in the effort to regularize our forces was
that we forgot that people need to eat, the road has to be walked by foot, and
bullets can kill people. We did not clearly understand these things. The troops did
not engage in production but lived off the civilians, so after several months, after
a year, all the grain was eaten up. We could only turn back and go on the Long
March, which can be termed “heroic.” Now we need to concentrate larger forces
and use the bigger forces to overcome the smaller, to attack the weak points of
the enemy. You have one hundred men, we have one thousand men, and one
thousand men can eliminate your one hundred men. In addition, we also need to
regularize. In the report I wrote that the day we obtain new weapons will be the
day that we become all the more invincible and will be able finally to defeat the
Japanese imperialists. Herein lies the meaning of preparing for transformation.
Among the tasks of the liberated areas, I talked about using offense as the main
method and defense as a supplement. That is, offense should precede defense. We

ought to be so prepared, because in the future, once we obtain new weapons it
will be no good if we are not prepared. Now the situation has changed, and our
policies need to change, too; we need a complete and thorough Marxism. In our
history, there have been many different kinds of Marxism: There has been
fragrant Marxism and stinky Marxism, there has been living Marxism and dead
Marxism—quite a lot of Marxism when you pile it all up. The kind of Marxism
we need is the fragrant Marxism, not the smelly kind; it is living Marxism, not
dead Marxism. We need to be prepared to transform from small sparrows into
giant eagles, using one wing beat to sweep across the whole of China and to blow
away the Japanese imperialists.
We need to transform, but we cannot expect that everything will change in
one morning. It will depend on concrete circumstances; when we have strength,
we will attack the fortresses and the big cities. When it is possible to break open
the fortress and there is food to eat, we will do it. If we cannot break open the
fortress and there is no food, then we will turn back and disperse our forces, “The
deaf setting off firecrackers—scattered all over the place.” Also, there is a question
that has been in dispute for over ten years, namely, whether we should advance
from the countryside to the cities or go from the cities to the countryside. This is
an extremely contentious dispute. The correct line is to begin in the countryside
first, study the situation in the countryside. People say this is the correct line, and
it is Marxism. When Marxists walk and get to a place that they cannot walk
through, they need to make a detour, because you cannot go through there. Of
course, if you keep walking in the countryside, doing it for a few million years,
this is not Marxism either. This is called anti-Marxism. Real Marxism is: If it is
necessary to be in the countryside, stay in the countryside; when it becomes
necessary to move to the cities, move to the cities. Now we want finally to defeat
the Japanese imperialists, so we need to exert great efforts to move to the cities,
to be prepared to seize big cities and to engage in work in the cities, and to take
control of large railroads, factories, and banks. There is a population of millions
there; for example, Beiping has a population of 1 million to 2 million, and there is
quite a large population in Baoding, Tianjin, and Shijiazhuang as well. We must
prepare well in order to move the focus of our work to the cities. However, we
should not forget the countryside after we remember the cities or refuse to
engage in rural work when assigned. If I am not assigned to do city work, then I

will cry the cadre policy is wrong. If you go to the city, he goes to the city, too.
There are not that many houses in the cities, and if no one goes to live in the
countryside, will this do?27 That is why in my report I called on large numbers of
intellectuals to go down to the countryside. Don’t wear student clothes, wear
clothes made of rough cloth. Yet when we take over big cities, the three to five
major cities such as Beiping and Tianjin, our Eighth Route Army will need to go
there. We will definitely hold our Eighth Congress there, even though some
people say this is opportunism. On the contrary, if we still held the Eighth
Congress in Yan’an then, that would be more like opportunism.
Urban work should be given equal importance to work in the base areas. This
is not rhetoric—it needs to be implemented. We need to send out cadres and to
transform thinking. After the conclusion of the Seventh Party Congress, we need
to send out cadres one batch after another, as conditions permit, they need to go
one batch after another. To engage in underground work in the cities, you cannot
behave like the gallant warriors in the novel Water Margin, and refuse to change
your name under any circumstances; you will have to change your name and
your surname. They also did city work at Liangshanbo and the Magic Traveler
Daizong did city work.28 Without city work, it would have been impossible to
take Zhujiazhuang. If there is no internal wavering in the cities, no internal
problems occurring, it will be very difficult to solve problems.
As we transform the mode of warfare from guerrilla warfare to regular
warfare and the focus of work from the countryside to the cities, we will also
need to prepare for the differing views that will emerge during such
transformations. On this question, I think there will definitely emerge varying
degrees of differing views, but if we are well prepared, there will be fewer
differences, and if we are ill-prepared, there will likely be more differences. The
Center should be prepared regarding this question, as should the various
localities. You should be clear-headed before the events arise; primarily, the highranking cadres need to be clear-headed, then there will be fewer differences.
The tenth question: troops and localities. We need to penetrate deeply into the
countryside and to struggle to gain the Guomindang-ruled areas and the areas
lost to the Japanese. We need to seize the big cities, though at present, we have
not yet planted our flags in Beiping or Wuhan but, instead, they fly above
mountains such as the Qingling mountains, the Taihang mountains and Wutai

mountain. Our present base areas are the strategic areas from which to expand.
For the moment, however, we have too few people, we need to extend ourselves
to cover half the 450 million people in the country. If we are able to extend
ourselves to cover 200 million people, we will be in a good position to get things
done. Now we have a million troops, but these troops are dispersed. We cannot
concentrate 100,000 troops in any single place, for first there is no food and then
there are no aircraft or artillery. If we concentrated tens of thousands of troops
from Wutai mountain, the Taihang mountains Shanxi, Suiyuan, and Shandong to
go and seize Beiping carrying rifles, that would not work. After eight waves of
attack, we could not take Ji’an, nor could we take Ganzhou after seven waves of
attack. The reason for this was not that there was a lack of enthusiasm or that
Marxism-Leninism did not work its magic. The reason was that we had too few
weapons with which to attack the cities, so we could not mount the city walls
even if we had wished to. In the future, once we have weapons enough to equip
100,000 to 200,000 troops, then we will be able to pull together and break
Shijiazhuang, Baoding, and Beiping from the hands of the Japanese. We will fight
our way through with no retreat or only retreat for one to two days and then
advance again. In the future, we want both “weaponry and a quantity of
military”; when we can equip several hundred thousand troops, then the whole
country will be in our hands. In the future, we will need 3 million to 5 million
troops to be victorious in all of China to achieve peace under heaven and to turn
China into an independent, democratic, free, unified, prosperous, and powerful
China. When necessary, we can expand our forces by several million, and, even
then, the burden on the common folk of the country will not be too heavy, but
we will need weapons. Under the present circumstances, the expansion of our
forces must not increase the burden on the people. We shall expand our forces
under all permissible conditions; however, if we expand everywhere, become
overzealous, and run out of millet and rice for a month or two and the common
people complain, that will be wrong. Expanding under permissible conditions
means that we do not increase the burden on the common people.
The eleventh question: convening a people’s representatives congress of
China’s liberated areas.29 The convening of such a congress is the proposal of our
congress to the people of the various liberated areas, and it is a major event. It
has not been published in the papers yet. Right now we can only hold a

representatives meeting, where the representatives are not elected but are
nominated by the military, the government, and the people’s associations. This is
simpler. To hold a people’s representatives congress, we would need to find out
such things as age, and whether people have the right to vote, so it is better to
have elections after the end of the war. Of course, if we want to do it now, we
can. There are also elections in the various liberated areas, but this time we
require that it be done quickly and not too slowly. It is decided to hold this
congress, so we need to prepare a declaration to be issued after the congress,
resolutions need to be adopted, and a standing leading organization must be
established. This organ will not be called a government but will be called the
“Federation of the Chinese People’s Liberated Areas.” This is something we have
planned for and have contemplated, but for now it will not be reported or written
about in the papers; we will just talk about it here. We will need to convene a
meeting, adopt resolutions, and issue declarations, sending telegrams to
Generalissimo Chiang to request him to organize a coalition government.
Comrades! That political report of mine is titled “On Coalition Government.” I
have not talked much about this question today, but I will mention this here.
Asking the Generalissimo to organize a coalition government, have we put such
requests to him? Indeed, we have done this on many occasions. Some time ago,
Comrade Zhou Enlai went there to put such a request to him, and is it not the
case that every few days our Liberation Daily and the New China News Agency
put such a request to him? Every time you ask him, he always shakes his head,
he’s not happy. He says that to organize a coalition government is to “overthrow
the government.” How can the organization of a coalition government be
tantamount to overthrowing the government? We say that we will unite with
him, but he says that we want to overthrow his government. We say that we
should hold a meeting attended by various parties, but he calls such a meeting a
“meeting to divide the spoils.” He calls his government the spoils, and he is
opposed to others’ dividing them. Comrade Zhou Enlai said to Chiang Kaishek
that “Mr. Sun Yatsen had said that a National Assembly should be held in the
future.” He then said, “You treat my government as the government of the
Beiyang warlords and regard yourselves as the premier!” It is truly difficult for
this person to be reasonable, and he has the temperament of a scoundrel, rather
nasty.

At the people’s representatives congress of the liberated areas, personages
outside the Party should constitute the overwhelming majority. We are prepared
to elect an organ and I ask you to think a little as to what name we should give it,
perhaps you can come up with a good name. Now the proposed name for it is the
Federation of the Chinese People’s Liberated Areas. The Guomindang has a
government, and we want to avoid confrontation with them. That is why it will
be called the Federation of the Chinese People’s Liberated Areas. We need to
liberate the Chinese people. Who says that should not be done? All people have
the right to resist Japan, and all should strive to win this right. It is absolutely
impermissible for the reactionaries to obstruct progress and deprive the people of
their right to resist Japan. When we mention these things, some will curse us as
“self-proclaimed kings and overlords.” So we shall be such kings and overlords,
we shall be the kings of liberation, the overlords of liberation. What man dares
not to want our liberation?
3. A Few Questions within the Party
The first question: individuality and Party character (parti’nost). Some people
raised this question during the Rectification movement, and outsiders have talked
about us, too. One journalist wrote an article in Dagong bao (Impartial Daily)
saying that the Communist Party wants to eliminate individuality and only keep
the Party character and that many of their documents only talk about the Party
character and their decisions all concern strengthening the Party character, and
so on. Such opinions are incorrect. I talk about this in my report, that China is a
semicolonial, semifeudal country, where imperialist and feudal forces have
destroyed individuality, preventing the Chinese people from developing their
intelligence and talent or their bodies; both have been destroyed. I have said Lu
Xun’s bones were very strong, and it is a very valuable thing to have a strongboned man like Lu Xun in a semicolonial country.30 Semicolonial countries are
very poor and are where people lead miserable lives and suffer severely from
oppression, and, as a result, some people have become the slaves of the
foreigners, that is, compradors. In Shanghai, there is something called “foreign

ham”: if someone is kicked by the foreigners, he is said to have been given a piece
of “ham.” Those who have been to Shanghai have seen placards in some parks
saying “No Dogs or Chinese Allowed.”31 The purpose of the national war [minzu
zhanzheng] is to oppose these things; we cannot let foreign countries oppress the
Chinese [Zhongguo minzu]—we must have independence. It is not acceptable
that the savage foreign Fascists oppress the Chinese people and behave in an
unreasonable way. On behalf of the people of the whole nation, the Chinese
Communist Party demands independence! Without independence for China,
there is no individuality, for national [minzu] liberation is individual liberation; it
is this way in politics, in economics, and in culture. Without a clear, awakened,
democratic, and independent consciousness, the broad masses of the people will
have no respect. Within the Party, is there any difference regarding this issue?
Yes, there is a difference. The Party army has many characteristics that are
particular to it in comparison with other armies of the people, for it is an
advanced army, an organized advanced army, it is more organized and more
tightly structured and integrated than other organizations, and through concerted
effort, it strives to attain one single goal. If an army wants such a level of
integration, it must follow orders: attention, at ease, look left, look right, march,
aim, fire. Otherwise, if the enemy is in front of you and one of you shoots in one
direction and another shoots in the opposite direction, you will be wiped out by
the enemy. The forces of the Party army are no different; it cannot do without
democratic centralism, without democracy or centralism. The dictatorship of the
emperor, as in feudal society, will not do, that’s something from feudal times. We
are carrying out the democracy of the revolutionary people, which is different
from the democracy of the capitalists, the old type of democracy, for it is a more
extensive democracy. The Party is an association of outstanding elements among
the people who freely and voluntarily bind themselves to accept the Party
program, the Party Charter, to obey Party regulations, and are ready to sacrifice
themselves. Therefore, some people cannot join our Party, they are not willing to
be transferred, they want to decide what kind of work they want to do and where
they want to go. Party members, by contrast, must obey the organization and
obey Party resolutions.
Is our Party now unified? The Resolution on Party History32 says that there is
unprecedented unity, but this means there is more unity than before, not that

there is complete unity. Some comrades say, “If you let it go, there are no
problems, but if you bring it up, there are lots of problems.” There is truth in this
statement. This is because our Party has expanded forty to fifty times during the
period of the War of Resistance, from barely over 20,000 organized Party
members in 1936 to more than a million now. It is naturally difficult for such a
large Party not to have various differing views, and that is why we did a bit of
work and launched the Rectification movement. This was a campaign to push the
Party forward; without the Rectification movement, the Party would not have
been able to move forward. At that time, the differences in viewpoints reached to
such an extent: there was that Wang Shiwei who wrote an article in Yan’an titled
“Wild Lilies.”33 Many people enjoyed reading it. In the spring of 1942 during the
Rectification movement at the Central Research Institute there was a wall
newspaper,34 and this wall newspaper was very popular, people from Qiao’ergou
and Nanmenwai all went to read its articles, and even I went to have a look. At
that time, many men of letters would not work together with the workers,
peasants, and soldiers, they said that there was no Han of Jingzhou in the border
region, but we said Han of Jingzhou is in the border region. Who is he? He is Wu
Manyou, Zhao Zhankui, and Zhang Zhiguo.35 I can tell you this story. In the
Tang dynasty, there was someone with the surname Han who served as
prefectural governor in Jingzhou, so people called him Han of Jingzhou. Later,
there was someone named Li Taibai who knew how to write. He wanted to
become an official, so he wrote a letter to Han of Jingzhou praising him to the
sky and saying that Han was number-one under heaven, while, in fact, he just
wanted to meet with Han of Jingzhou so that Han would make him an official.
Hence, the Han of Jingzhou story. At that time in Yan’an there were many who
wished to find “Han of Jingzhou,” but they looked in the wrong direction and
found a Han of Jingzhou who wore makeup, a petty-bourgeois Han of Jingzhou,
the Kirkun in the play “The Front.”36 They could not find where Han of Jingzhou
was, while in reality, there were Hans of Jingzhou everywhere; they were the
workers, peasants, and soldiers. The worker Han of Jingzhou is Zhao Zhankui;
the farmer Han of Jingzhou is Wu Manyou; and the soldier Han of Jingzhou is
Zhang Zhiguo. The broad masses of Party members still do not clearly
understand this question. In general, without rectification it was impossible for
the Party to advance. The second job we did was to resolve the production

question. Without production, it is also impossible for the Party to advance. At
that time, we had nothing to eat. Wang Shiwei instigated his assistants to oppose
us and stood with them to oppose the “three classes and nine grades” and the
system of small canteens,37 for at that time there was nothing to eat in the big
canteens, but in fact there was not much to eat in the small canteens either. Later,
by promoting production we resolved this problem. In 1941 the border region
required the common people to submit 200,000 dan of grain to the government, as
well as to transport government salt, so the burden on them was very heavy, and
they complained a lot. That year, during a meeting of the Border Region
Government lightning struck and killed Magistrate Li. Some people said, “Aiya,
how come the God of Thunder didn’t kill Mao Zedong?” I did some investigation
work; there was only one reason for this—the government was taking too much
grain. And some of the common people were unhappy. The government indeed
procured too much grain. Should we repent and reconsider our policy? Yes. From
the birth of the Communist Party in 1921 to the higher cadres meeting in the
Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region in 1942 we had not learned how to do
economic work. If we have not learned it, we need to! Otherwise the God of
Thunder will strike the people. What was the attitude of the people of Yan’an
toward our comrades, whether the ones who had gone on the 10,000-li Long
March or the 1,000-li Long March, whether the old Communist Party members or
the youths who came to Yan’an during the War of Resistance? I say it was
“respect spirits but keep them at a distance.”38 Why was this? Because even
though they thought the Communist Party was very good and they respected it
very much, the Communist Party had increased their burden, so they kept their
distance. In the spring of last year, when Comrade Zhao Yiming led the yangge
dance troupe, organized by people from Yangjialing to Ansai to perform, and
since at that time the people in Ansai were in the middle of a meeting to
nominate labor heroes, they also organized yangge dance troupes to join the one
from Yangjialing, to perform, I say only from then on was there peace under
heaven! Because the intellectuals from outside joined the common people of
northern Shaanxi to perform the yangge. In the past, the common people treated
them like “respected spirits at a distance,” but now they had become one.39 There
is also the female intellectual comrade working at Yangjiawan Primary School,
and an intellectual, a doctor, who is working in the Qingliang mountains; they

are getting along very well with the common people there. There are Communist
Party members like these in all the various base areas; wherever they go, they
become one with the people and for the local people they “serve heart and soul
and only stop in death.” Therefore, without the two wheels of rectification and
production, the cart of revolution could not roll forward, the Party could not
advance. There was a time in the past when a third of the comrades at Liberation
Daily were in the hospital. Comrade Zhou Yang told me that no sooner had the
students at the Lu Xun Academy gotten up in the morning than they felt sleepy
again. Why? Because they had nothing to eat. If we resolve the two problems of
rectification and production, our cause will advance. Rectification is the spiritual
basis for advance, and production is the material basis for advance. Our Party has
learned rectification and production, moving from the unconscious to the
conscious. Our Party now is relatively integrated; indeed, it can be said that it is
unprecedentedly integrated, as historical problems have been resolved pretty
appropriately. However, there are still problems. As I said at the preparatory
meeting the other day, our Party is not completely integrated, and we need
higher levels of integration and higher levels of unity. If we want unity, we shall
need democracy, for without democracy, without criticism and self-criticism,
without clarifying different views, it is impossible to achieve unity. Many unfair
things must gradually become fair. Unfair things exist every day, so we need to
tackle them every day. Problems are resolved, then they return, then they are
resolved once again, and this is the way we make progress. Leading comrades at
the Center and in the various leading institutions should make a point to heed the
opinions of others; just like a house, you should open up the windows often to let
in fresh air. Why don’t we have enough fresh air? Do we blame the air? Or do we
blame ourselves? Air regularly circulates, but since we have not opened our
windows, there is not enough fresh air. If we open our windows, the air will
come into the house. What house of ours is this? It is the political house, the
political factory. You need to have raw materials to operate a factory, you need
workers, technicians, and engineers. How come there is not enough raw
materials? Not enough personnel? We need to think about our own
responsibility. Have we put up advertisements? Are the advertisements large
enough? Have we paid a high price for the raw materials? In fact, the raw
materials do not cost much money, and all we need to do is put up a poster

carrying the word “Welcome” and all kinds of raw materials will then come in
large quantities. So we should let people express their various opinions. We need
to make sure that “those who know can speak up; there shall be no reservation in
speaking up; those who speak up are not culpable, yet those who listen ought to
be on guard; if the criticism is correct, then mend your ways; if it is not valid,
take it as advice.” These are clichés, but they are very significant. I want to make
it clear that if somebody talks very well but acts quite differently, if he does not
act as he talks, that’s not right.
As for individuality and Party character, Party character is the general, and
individuality is the particular. There is no generality without a basis in the
particular. Without the particular, how can there be the general? Without the
individuality of a Party member, where is the Party character? The Party
character is the common character, the general character, the character shared by
every member of the whole Party. For example, with principles such as
uniformity in policy, coalition government, the programs of New Democracy and
its various components, rectification, and production, there should be a unified
attitude on the basis of Marxist ideology, for these are things in common. Is each
individual Party member different from the other? Of course. You cannot
eliminate individuality and make everyone the same by force. Among human
beings, there are the old, the young, the male, the female, and various other
differences, and there are differences in work, too, between military, political,
economic, cultural, and Party organizational work. In military work, there is the
difference between officers, political affairs personnel, and logistics personnel. In
Party organizational work, there is the difference between the different types of
regions in which work is conducted, such as the base areas and the occupied
areas. There are also differences in people’s understanding of Marxism; for the
same person, there is the difference in his understanding of Marxism when he is
young and when he is old. All in all, there are differences in work, in position, in
sex, in age, and so on, and to eliminate these differences would be to prevent the
comrades from expanding on their strengths. These cannot be unified into the
same orbit. There are nine planets in the solar system, Venus, Mercury, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto, and the Earth is also one of them.
They all follow their own respective orbits, move according to a certain sequence,
and yet they all came out of the sun through splitting, and they only vary in size

and shape. As for the things on these planets, they are not necessarily the same
either. There are no men on the sun. Yet there are men on Earth, and as for
whether there are men on one of the other eight planets, I cannot say, since I
have not made an investigation yet. In ancient times, there were no men on Earth
either. There was no water, no air; only after there was air could there be water,
and then there could be living things, and only then men. The stars in the sky
often assert their independence as well, just look up into the sky at night,
sometimes you see a star escapes! They also assert their independence. All in all,
Party members have their varying individuality, and it will not do for one to
eliminate the varying types of individuality. The result of eliminating various
differences will be the elimination of unity. There will be no unity if the special is
done away with. This is one question.
The second question is on the treatment of various types of cadres within the
Party. Usually it seems as if these sorts of cadres within the Party have not been
fairly treated, so we need to pay special attention to comrades of these types.
1. Theoretical workers. During rectification, we advocated seeking truth from
facts and opposing dogmatism, but when we do that, it looks as if the theoretical
workers are not faring as well as before. We should value theoretical workers,
and we should value theory. Lenin once said: “Without revolutionary theory,
there would be no revolutionary movement.” Therefore, within our Party, we
need to study theory. I said at the Sixth Plenum that the theoretical level of our
Party was very low, now it is a little higher than before, but that is not enough.
Of course, our Party now has made some progress; however, judging from the
requirements of the Chinese revolutionary movement, our theoretical level is still
not good enough. Revolution calls on us to be able to explain the Chinese
revolutionary movement, its various aspects, its inner connections, including
military, political, cultural, and economic, all the different aspects of the entire
revolutionary project, as well as its inner connections; it calls on us to sum up
experience and to raise it to a higher level, making it well-structured and
systematic. What is theory? It is systematic knowledge. The theories of Marxism-Leninism are precisely systematic knowledge based on Marxism.
Comrades who engage in translation work are very important, so do not think
that translation work is not good. We now need great translators. I am a country
bumpkin, so I need translators to be able to understand a little bit about foreign

things. There are very few within our Party who can read foreign books directly.
All those who can read foreign books directly should first translate the works of
Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin, translate advanced things from the Soviet Union
and by Marxists from various countries. We also need to translate a lot of
historical things, which, though not Marxist, have some progressive elements,
and some things by democrats.
Therefore, we need to value theoretical workers, look up to them, and regard
them as those in our ranks who are erudite and cultured; we should respect them.
2. Intellectuals. Not all intellectuals are necessarily theory workers. It is a very
good phenomenon that the number of intellectuals in our Party is increasing. A
class revolution must have intellectuals in order to triumph; it’s just not possible
to do without intellectuals. You must have read The Romance of the Three
Kingdoms and Water Margin, where the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu, and Wu
each had its own intellectuals. There were high-level intellectuals and there were
ordinary intellectuals; the person who wore the Eight Diagrams gowns and held a
goose-feather fan there was an intellectual. The rebellion of Liangshanbo would
not have been successful without such people as Gongsun Sheng, Wu Yong, and
Xiao Rang.40
Of course, it would not have been successful without other people, as well. The
proletariat wants emancipation, the poor laboring masses need intellectuals, and
all classes need intellectuals who serve their respective interests. Slave owners
had intellectuals who served them, these were the saints in the ranks of the slave
owners, such as Aristotle and Socrates of Greece. The slave owners in China also
had intellectuals who served them, for example, Duke Dan of Zhou, was a saint
for the slave owners. Zhuge Liang, Liu Bowen,41 and Wu Yong in Water Margin
were all intellectuals during the feudal era. As a result of rectification and cadre
screening, it seems that the intellectuals have been demoted a little bit, so it
seems a little unfair. It is like a scale with one side lower and the other side
higher. Our congress is designed to readjust this balance, making the side of the
intellectuals a little higher. Are we going to tilt the balance in the other direction?
No. We shall welcome them to serve our Party, to strive for the interests of our
Party, and to strive for the interests of the people. Our Party, our military, our
government, our economic departments, and our mass organizations should
admit a great number of intellectuals to serve us, and we need to respect them.

3. On comrades who work in the occupied territories and areas held by the
Guomindang. As soon as these comrades come to the base areas, they feel that
they are not faring very well. There are numerous leaders in the base areas, and
when watching an opera, it is always the leaders who sit in the front. There are
big leaders, middling leaders, and small leaders, so these comrades feel repressed.
They also had trouble during the cadre screening. “Where did you come from?”
“Shanghai? Xi’an?” “Do you have problems?” After repeated reviews, they are
still not completely trusted. “Which hotel did you stay in?” “Do you have a letter
of introduction?” Because letters of introduction are required in the base areas,
we think that they are also required in order to check into hotels in Shanghai. If
you say there is no letter of introduction, that sounds very strange. If we have
made a mistake, we should apologize. If we have wrongfully put [political] caps
on them, these labels need to be respectfully removed, and we need to admit our
mistakes. These comrades are not accustomed to the style of work in the base
areas, and this is understandable; it may take three to five years before the styles
of work can slowly come together.
4. Local cadres and local military cadres. I have already written in the report
that we need to treat the local cadres as if they are our own brothers and sisters.
Wherever our troops go, they should help the local cadres organize their own
armed forces, their militia, their self-defense forces, their regional corps, and their
regional troops and then on this basis, we may organize main force corps and
main force units. I neglected this question when I first got to northern Shaanxi.
This border region was single-handedly established by Comrade Gao Gang and
others, and since we did not deal with this question correctly, people in northern
Shaanxi complained. Some said that people in northern Shaanxi can only
establish soviet areas but they cannot join the Red Army. The reason for the
emergence of such talk is that we have not handled well the question of local
forces. As for North China, Central China, and South China, are there also cases
in which the question of local cadres and local forces have been mishandled? If
there are, we should admit mistakes and correct them just as I must in northern
Shaanxi. The presence of these sayings demonstrates that these comrades feel
that they have been wronged. I advocate doing investigation and research,
however after I got to northern Shaanxi, at the beginning I did not carry out
investigation and research in this regard. Now we have done this. At the same

time, I hope that local comrades working in the south, the north, the east, and the
west will submit many suggestions. We need to open the window, let the air
circulate, hear the news and heed public opinion, and if there are shortcomings
and mistakes, correct them. It will not do to get this one wrong. This question
once set off a big dispute in our history. After the close of this congress, many
will go to different places. Last year, Wang Shoudao and Wang Zhen went to
Hunan, and Dai Jiying and Wang Shusheng went to Henan.42 I said these things
to them when they were about to set off. Don’t be afraid to talk a lot, don’t be
afraid to talk so much that you scorch your tongue and lips, but now it looks like
it did not happen, we have not done enough talking. Everyone in the world has
shortcomings, and Bolsheviks are not so perfect either, each having more or less
some shortcomings. What is this called? This is called Bolsheviks with
shortcomings. If you say he is not a Bolshevik, that’s very hard to say. “I have
fought heroically for the Party. How come I am still not a Marxist-Leninist?” We
cannot talk like that. On this point, I think I myself am included. If you say I am a
complete Bolshevik, that is not necessarily the case, but if you say there is not a
trace of Bolshevism in me, this is not correct either. Many comrades when
writing to me still write “with Bolshevist salutations.” I thought about it a bit and
concluded that we may be called Bolsheviks with shortcomings. One of the
shortcomings is that we are carrying something on our shoulders. For example,
we have walked farther than others, 25,000 li more, and this has added a burden
to our shoulders. I am not saying every comrade is like this, neither am I
referring to certain specific comrades, so I ask that you comrades do not take me
wrong on this. But there are indeed quite a few comrades for whom the 25,000-li
long trek has become a burden, it has increased the weight on them, and they
have turned into camels, for they carry too big a burden on their shoulders.
Though you have walked a long way, you lost the base area. Now Jiangxi base
area is no more; others have not walked these distances, but there is still a base
area in northern Shaanxi. Comrades! You have walked these distances, but you
have lost the base area. If they should ask you for a base area, can you afford to
repay this? You can’t. Neither can I. If we could repay this in cash or in border
region script, we could still think of a way somehow, but if we should be asked to
give back the Jiangxi base area, that we simply cannot do. These others have not
walked these distances, but they have a base area; we have walked these 25,000 li

but have lost the base area. Think about it, walking with your feet, one foot after
another, has turned into a burden. There is also the Earth’s walk, the number of
rotations of the Earth around the sun is the number of years it adds to its life; the
older it is, the bigger the burden. Older comrades, don’t blame me for saying this,
I am fifty-two this year, and the miles the Earth has walked have also become our
burden. Younger comrades also have their own burdens. Oh, they have sharp
eyes and keen ears; sharp eyes and nimble hands are their strength, but it will not
do if the younger comrades call the old ones “senile and confused.” The younger
comrades should not call others “senile and confused,” and the old ones should
not call others “young and ignorant.” Everybody was once young, and the young
know fewer things, but they gradually come to know more. Other people may
know fewer things than you do, but that does not make you omniscient. If you
talk about farming, you will not be as good as Wu Manyou; if you talk about
doing factory work, you will not be as good as Zhao Zhankui; and if you talk
about being a soldier, you will not be as good as Zhang Zhiguo. Out of the
millions of things that exist, we can only work at one or two, we have
limitations, and there are numerous things that we cannot do. If we improve our
attitude, then when we go to some place, we become one with the people and
respect the comrades there, and by raising Communist consciousness, we will be
able to reduce the problem of mountaintopism. If we are to eliminate factions, we
must recognize the existence of factions and accommodate them, and in this way
we may reduce the factions and eliminate them. That is why we need to
recognize the existence of factions, and it will not do not to recognize them. After
recognizing their existence, we need to accommodate the various elements,
groups, and elements with different histories and different problems. If they are
spiritually crushed by stones—some of which we put on them with our own
hands—then we need to lift them off for them. All stones, be they big ones,
medium-size ones, or small ones, as long as they are crushing them spiritually,
we need to lift them off. Those stones which were put on them by our own hands
need to be taken off by our own hands so as cheer their spirits, liberate them, and
engage their initiative. Only in this way can we unite the whole Party and people
of the whole country to strive for victory. For this goal, wherever we go, we
should not behave as the emissary sent by the emperor; rather, we need first to
see others’ strong points. We all belong to the new democratic liberated areas, we

are all members of the Communist Party, we are all comrades, and there is no
need to look down upon others. During the Civil War, we suffered a great deal
from this problem. Most of the comrades in Yan’an have been to the Party
School, and the comrades present here all attended the Seventh Party Congress,
so you know even more things, and this is very good. When you leave this place,
others will definitely respect you a great deal, they will need you to convey to
them the spirit of the Seventh Congress because people look to Yan’an and
believe in Yan’an. But comrades, we must adopt the above-mentioned attitude
and not behave as if we are imperial emissaries. Wherever we go, we need to “do
our utmost and only rest when after death.” In view of the great sufferings we
have been through in history, we must carefully guard against unconscious
blindness; we need consciousness, we need consciously to pay attention to this
point. Everywhere we go, we need to respect the local people, the local armed
forces, and the local government and to establish good relations with them. This
is the duty of a Communist Party member.
5. Cadres involved in economic and logistic work. There is logistic work in the
armed forces and a great deal of economic work throughout the base areas and
the liberated areas. There are a lot of comrades involved in this work. Since in the
past we did not sufficiently advocate or engage in propaganda work on economic
endeavors, many comrades feel that work in such departments is looked down
upon by others and has no status. I have said before that I was told by a comrade
in Yan’an when asked to be the chief of the administrative department that he
would not be willing to do it. Why was this? Because others looked down upon
this position. When others asked him what his job was, he said that he did
general work. Why did he say he was doing general work? Because it was not
popular to do administrative work, so now we need to make it popular. Some
comrades hold that military and Party work are popular, and within the armed
forces that military and political work are popular, while logistic work is not
popular. Because these jobs are not popular, we should give them a certain status
that makes them popular.
6. Cadres doing democratic movement work and cadres in departments for
workers, youth, and women. These cadres also feel unpopular. Some people call
them “miscellaneous troops,” while in fact they are all “core troops.” There are no
miscellaneous troops. When the major cities have been opened, broad workers

movements, youth movements, and women’s movements need to be launched.
Our Party is a workers’ Party, and too many comrades of worker background in
our ranks have already lost their lives. Now there are not many cadres left who
engage in the workers movement, perhaps a few dozen or a few hundred, so we
need to take care of them and respect them. At the same time, it will not do
without cadres doing youth and women’s work.
7. Cadres who joined the Party during the War of Resistance. Now we still call
these cadres new cadres as if old cadres can only refer to those from the Long
March, in which case there are only a few of them, merely ten thousand to
twenty thousand. Comrades, most of the comrades present here are old comrades,
for you have rich experience, exercised correct leadership, and have been elected
as representatives. This is very good. Though the number of cadres who started
work during the Great Revolution and the Civil War is small, we cannot do
without them, for they have a lot of experience. But if that is treated as a burden,
that is no good; one should be light and fast. Comrades, let me tell you some
figures! Now, there are more than 1. 1 million cadres who joined the Party during
the War of Resistance, while there are at most only 20,000 left of the cadres from
the Northern Expedition and the Civil War. Let us add them up, the total is
around 1.2 million. The eyes of these 20,000 people should not be just on
themselves, but also on those over 1.1 million people. Otherwise, you look at me,
and I look at you. How great! You look into the mirror again and again, feeling
like you are very handsome. Ah, that is no good; we are older and not so very
handsome, but those who are younger are more handsome. Most of those who
joined the Party during the War of Resistance are young comrades, though, of
course, there are also older ones. We have our strong points, and they have their
strong points; it cannot do without us, and we cannot do without them either.
The eyes of these 20,000 people should be on those more than 1.1 million people;
we should respect them, we should not give them the feeling that these 20,000
people are difficult to approach and not easy to talk with, and that before they
can talk with you, they need to think over for several days and nights how to do
it. We need to enable them, in the words of Hu Shi, to “say whatever they want
to say and to say it in a truthful way.”43 In other words, we need to become one
with them—the new and the old should unite. The War of Resistance has been a
long period, we cannot indiscriminately call those who have joined the Party

during this period new cadres, because if you call all of them new cadres, that
suggests it is only I who is an old cadre, I, the senior, am number-one under
heaven, and you, the junior, you are number-two under heaven.
8. Non-Party cadres. This is also a major problem. Even if we had 4.5 million
Party members in all of China, they would only constitute 1 percent of the
population and our present percentage, by contrast, is less than 1 percent. Even if
we had 4.5 million Party members, there would only be one Communist Party
member for every one hundred people. What is his task? His task is to unite the
other ninety-nine non-Party personages. We must do this if we want to organize
the armed forces to defeat the enemy. If a Communist Party member cannot
unite the majority of people, unite workers, peasants, intellectuals, petty
bourgeoisie, and other democratic elements, then, he is not a good Communist
Party member. Why does the world need Communist parties? What do we want
Communist parties to do? Is it necessary to have Communist parties? Ye Qing
said that there was no need for the Chinese Communist Party to exist, but his is
the formulation of the reactionaries, and we do not approve of it. We ourselves
may also raise the question of whether we need the Communist Party. Is it
because there is too much millet in the world that cannot be fully consumed and
we are forced to eat it, hence the need for the Communist Party? Or perhaps is it
because there is too much housing available, a certain portion of which has to be
specially allocated to the Communist Party? Of course, none of this is true. The
reason the world needs the Communist Party is to unite the majority of the
people, organize the armed forces, defeat the enemy, and build a new China.
What else is there to do besides these things? Nothing. That is, we eat some
millet, eat some rice, and wear some clothes, all in order to work for the people,
unite the broad masses, organize the armed forces, defeat the enemy, and build a
new China. If the revolution is not carried out in this way, then this revolution
can only be the kind that takes the Finance Department as its target. Some people
carry out revolution for no other purpose, they spend all their time and energy,
even a few decades, to carry out a revolution with the Finance Department as its
target. This is no good. Comrades, don’t get me wrong, I am not referring to any
particular person or a few people, but I have always had the feeling that if we
want to get things done, we need to understand the situation and we need to do a
little research, especially with regard to various small things, such as concrete

work in production, hygiene, culture, mass organizations, and government work.
We need to learn many things from the common people, since our knowledge is
lacking; primarily, my knowledge is lacking. How is salt transported? I don’t
know. How is a cooperative run? I don’t know; I have never before run a
cooperative. Therefore a task is given to us—that is to learn.44 If we lack
experience, we need to study, and we need to work, we need to study through
work.
Non-Party people make up 99 percent, so it is only by working with them that
the revolution can triumph; it would be hopeless to rely only on Party members.
Isn’t this so? Isn’t this the truth? It is the complete truth. There are leaders and
cadres among them. We must help them and bring up the outstanding elements
among the people, and, at the same time, we must respect them and cooperate
with them. Concerning these non-Party cadres, in the future, our leading organs
and organization departments in various places will carry out some investigation
and research; we need some methods, educational methods, and methods to unite
them, such as holding seminars and having heart-to-heart talks, and so on, to
help them and to cultivate them.
The last question is to speak the truth. The other day I said that we need to be
modest and prudent, guarding against arrogance and impetuosity. Today I want
to return to that point: tell the truth, do not steal, do not put on pretenses, and do
not exaggerate. To steal is to steal things, to pretend is to be pretentious, “putting
spring onions in the pig’s nose to pretend it is an elephant,” and to exaggerate is
to brag. Speaking the truth—every ordinary person should be like this, and every
Communist Party member should be like this all the more.
What is meant by not stealing? I once witnessed an event in which one person
changed several nouns in an entire pamphlet written by someone else and called
it his own writing, he affixed his own name to it and had it published. [To take
what is] not your own work, grab it from someone else, and call it your own, is
this not stealing? Thief! There are also thieves in our Party, but only a few
individual cases. Such events have occurred in history—this is called “plagiarism.”
This is dishonesty. Marx’s are Marx’s, Engels’ are Engels,’ Lenin’s are Lenin’s,
Stalin’s are Stalin’s. If Commander-in-chief Zhu says something, it is by him; if
Liu Shaoqi says something, it is by him; if venerable old Xu says something, it is
by him. If a certain comrade says something, it is by him,45 so don’t steal. What is

meant by do not put on pretenses? That is, “if you know it, you know it, and if
you don’t, you don’t.” Zilu, a student of Confucius, was a very straightforward
type of person, and Confucius once said to him: “If you know it, you know it; if
you don’t, you don’t. This is knowledge.” If you understand it, you understand it;
if you don’t, you don’t. If you understand an inch, you should say so and not
claim to understand more. Why is there pretentiousness in the world? Why do
some people feel that it is no good not to pretend? This is a social phenomenon.
Stealing is a social phenomenon, and so is pretense. Now this phenomenon is
prevalent, and within our Party, too. Why? Such people who love to put on airs;
did his mother want him to put on pretenses at birth? When he was in her belly,
did she swear and pray in front of Bodhisattva Guanyin to give birth to a son
who could put on pretenses? Of course not, this is a social phenomenon. In our
Party, we have never permitted such pretense. It does not matter if you do not
know something; it does not matter either if you only know a little bit of
something, even if you know very little Marxism-Leninism and have read very
few works by them; it does not matter either if you know that much, that is what
you know. I suggest that we read five Marxist-Leninist works. The book by Marx
is the Communist Manifesto, which he coauthored with Engels but it was mainly
written by Marx. The book by Engels is Socialism from Fantasy to Science. The
two books by Lenin, one is On Two Tactics of the Social Democratic Party in the
Democratic Revolution, and the other is The Leftist Infantile Disorder in the
Communist Movement. These two books by Lenin are very well written, as are
the two books by Marx and Engels. These four books are pretty thin, it does not
take long to read them. In addition, there is the Short History of the CPSU, it is
thicker. This book is historical as well as theoretical, it has history and theory, for
it is the history of a victorious socialist country, it is the history of the success of
Marxism in Russia; you should read this book. The four previous books are also
both theoretical as well as historical. There are numerous books by Marx, Engels,
Lenin, and Stalin, but if you first read these five, that will be more or less enough.
In addition, there is “don’t exaggerate,” that is, report real figures, “report real
figures and settle accounts with real figures.” The comrades present here have
discussed Party history, right? Some comrades in their presentations said that
during the Civil War they got into the habit of putting emphasis on the good side
of things and exaggerating a little in reporting work to their superiors, for that

seemed to make things more presentable. In reality, this does not resolve any
problem. Our work is part and parcel of the work of the whole people and is part
and parcel of the work of the whole Party, every one of us has a share in it, each
of the people has a share in it. How come I am the leader now? It so happened
that I was called upon to be the leader—there is no other reason. Originally,
Zhang San and Li Si46 could both have become leaders, but after talking about it,
the job fell to me; I was asked to do it. To whom does this job belong? Does it
belong to Zhang San or Li Si? Neither. It belongs to the whole Party; it belongs to
the people of the whole country. To whom does Yan’an belong? Yan’an is the
Yan’an of the people of the whole country. Once, when talking with a non-Party
personage I said some people said that Yan’an belonged to the Communist Party,
but this is incorrect. If you say the Communist Party exercises a leadership role
here, this is correct, for we have led the common people to fight for this territory.
“To report real figures and to settle accounts with real figures” require that our
intelligence be based on facts and not on lies. We need to reveal publicly the
shortcomings in our leadership work to everyone and invite anyone to come to
visit, to come to see if in this brigade of mine, is there horse manure, donkey
manure, or microbes? If there is, sweep it up, wash it out, sweep away the
bureaucratism. I advocate that people can challenge us. For certain things, we
will never do them without pressure.47 Mr. Lu Xun once said that essays are the
outcome of pressure; if there had been no pressure, they would not have been
written. But we do not use the “pressure” of forced confessions.
On telling the truth, we have issued an order that the guns captured in battles
at various places should be reported accurately and no fabricated figures should
be submitted. If you know it, you know it, and if you don’t, you don’t; one gun is
one gun, and two guns are two guns—that is knowledge. Once this problem is
resolved, the style of work of our Party will be more down to earth. We must be
honest and down to earth.
Our Communist Party now is already a very large Party, a Party with a lot of
experience acquired during the past twenty-four years, and a Party which is
preparing for victory. We shall be victorious in the whole country, we have this
ambition. The whole Party must unite to fight for the liberation of the people in
the whole country!

Notes
Our source for this document is Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 3, pp. 303–55, which is reproduced from a transcript
of Mao’s speech preserved in the Central Archives. A version of this text from the Cultural Revolution Mao
Zedong sixiang wansui can also be found in Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 7, pp. 271–92. Textual differences of
note between the texts are indicated in the notes to this text.
1. Mao Zedong submitted a written report to the Seventh Party Congress, see above, the text of April 24,
1945, titled “On Coalition Government,” in addition to giving this oral political report to the congress.
2. Zuo Shunsheng (1893–1969) was chair of the Secretariat of the Democratic League. On March 18, 1945
Zuo announced that the Democratic League would not participate in the Guomindang’s proposed national
congress.
3. Lin Boqu, who was at this time on the Central Committee and chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia
Border Region Government; see also Vol. V, p. 269, n4.
4. These meetings each produced writings by Mao. The first, on May 3, 1937, was “The Tasks of the
Chinese National United Front Against Japan at the Present Stage,” translated in Vol. V, pp. 637–50. The
Luochuan Conference was an expanded session of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee that
passed the “Resolution on the Present Situation and the Duties of the Party” and the “Ten Great Programs to
Resist Japan and Save the Nation.” For the second meeting, see Vol. VI, p. 22.
5. Also known as the New Fourth Army Incident of December 1940–January 1941, in which the
Communist army in Central China was surrounded and destroyed by Guomindang forces. For related
writings by Mao, see Vol. VII.
6. General Okamura Yasuji (1884–1966) was in charge of the Japanese army in China from July 1941 until
November 1944. Mao is recounting the stages of the invasion of the Japanese army by referring to Okamura’s
various residences.
7. This is the famous last line of Lu Xun’s short story “My Old Home” (Guxiang) (1921).
8. Mao is playing on the Chinese for “Long Live,” which is wansui, literally “[live] 10,000 years.”
9. This was the founding meeting of the United Nations on April 25, 1945.
10. The Chinese Communist Party delegate to the first UN meeting was Dong Biwu.
11. Zhang Naiqi (1897–1977) was a noted liberal leader of the National Salvation Association. For more
nformation and Mao’s August 10, 1936, letter to Zhang and the National Salvation Association, see Vol. V, pp.

95–302.
12. Contrasting models of femininity from the classical novel Dream of the Red Chamber. Xue Baochai is
ensible and tactful, a model Chinese feudal maiden; Tanchun in well known for her resolute personality and
utstanding management capacity.
13. Georgi Dimitrov was a leading figure in the International Communist Movement and had been the
eneral secretary of the Communist International. Most recently his ideas figured in the Yan’an rectification
ocuments of 1942 in which his “Cadre Policy and Cadre Education Policy” was one of the core documents.
Mao and Wang Jiaxiang also included Dimitrov’s remarks from the Seventh Congress of the Comintern on a
ist of “reading materials for theoretical study” on November 1, 1941, see Vol. VII p. 833. See also Vol. V, pp.
xix–lxx, and Vol. VI, p. xlix.
14. Mao is referring to the 1935 Seventh Congress of the Communist International, headed by Dimitrov.
15. It appeared in the April 23, 1945, issue of Yan’an’s Jiefang ribao.
16. This makes sense in Chinese: Mao is asking his listeners to attend to the li (power) in lizheng (striving).
17. Lt. Gen. Sir Ronald Scobie was commander of the British III Corps, which had been sent to Greece in
all 1944 as the Nazis pulled out, but became involved in the Greek Civil War against the Communists.
18. These were passed at the Enlarged Meeting of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee at
Luochuan, Shaanxi, in August 1937 and are enumerated in Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 3, p. 353, n21.
19. These are enumerated in Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 2, p. 102, n15. The text of the Resolution of the Sixth
Congress of July 9, 1928, in Saich, ed., Rise to Power, pp. 341ff., has more than ten items.
20. The following text appears in the Cultural Revolution Wansui version: “But am I taking a partial
pproach here when saying Sun Yatsen was very good-looking, very handsome, almost as handsome as Lin
Daiyu and Yang Guifei were pretty? No.” Mao is being wicked, comparing Sun Yatsen to two famous female
eauties of dubious character—Lin, from Dream of the Red Chamber, as Mao mentions in the text, above, and
Yang, the ill-fated consort to the Tang emperor during the An Lushan Rebellion.
21. This quotation comes from the 1924 declaration of the First National Congress of the Guomindang.
22. Another fragment translated from the alternate text: “In the past, the peasants of Jingdezhen of Jiangxi
rovince called the Communist Party the Gongsandang [the Party Sharing the Same Umbrella]. This is also
uite a nice name. Because they did not have umbrellas, several people shared one. The peasants liked this
name.”
23. This story, known as “Yugong yishan” comes from the Liezi; another version of Mao telling it, credited

o his closing remarks at the Seventh Party Congress, appears in Mao’s Selected Works, Vol. 3, as “The Foolish
Old Man Who Removed the Mountains,” dated June 11, 1945.
24. This was originally the Shanxi Anti-Japanese Dare-to-Die Corps. After Yan Xishan turned against them
n 1939, the New Army of Shanxi operated as a part of the Eighth Route Army.
25. Lu Junyi is one of the thirty-six rebel leaders in the novel Shuihu zhuan (Water Margin).
26. Mao is playing on a popular saying that draws from ancient Chinese history in which Master Jiang
ures the attention of the future King of Zhou. The saying has the sense of “putting one’s head in the noose”
ut Mao seems to imply an invitation to former competitors to come over to the Communists.
27. Another passage from the alternate text here: “Take Beiping, for example, it won’t do if the dozens of
millions of people in Shanxi, Chahar, and Hebei all go there.”
28. Liangshanbo: The headquarters of the Shuihu zhuan “gallant warriors,” whose exploits included
apturing towns; Magic Traveler Daizong: One of Liangshanbo’s leading warriors.
29. A preparatory meeting for this congress was, in fact, held in Yan’an in July 1945, but the actual
ongress never convened. Mao returns to this idea in his conclusion to the Seventh Congress; see below, the
ext of May 31, 1945, Part III, item 10: “On the Chinese People’s Liberation Federation” and his deleted
omments on a national “Chinese People’s Federal Republic,” in the text above, “On Coalition Government,”
April 24, 1945.
30. Hard bones (ying gutou), or integrity, was at the core of Mao’s fight with Wang Shiwei, the most
notable victim of the Yan’an Rectification movement. See Dai Qing, Wang Shiwei and “Wild Lilies,” esp. p. 96,
nd our introduction, above, pp. xlii–xliii.
31. This is an authoritative example of the popular urban myth; while no such signs apparently existed, the
dea certainly reflects the racial hierarchy of treaty-port Shanghai. See Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Global
hanghai (London: Routledge, 2009), p. 20.
32. The “Resolution of the CCP CC on Certain Historical Questions” was passed by the last session of the
eventh Plenum of the Sixth Central Committee on April 20, 1945; a good scholarly translation of the earliest
vailable version is in Saich, ed., Rise to Power, pp. 1164–79.
33. Mao had raised the case of Wang Shiwei in his comments on April 20, 1945, on the Chinese Communist
arty’s Historical Resolution; see above, the text of April 20, 1945 (Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 3, p. 284). See also
Dai Qing, Wang Shiwei and “Wild Lilies.”
34. The Wansui text has a further line here: “He had put up articles on the bulletin board, also arguing the

need for rectification.” The wall newspaper was Qingqidui (Light Cavalry), which Wang Shiwei edited. Mao
mentions Qingqidui in his comments on the historical resolution, Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 3, p. 284, and Dai
Qing discusses Wang’s editorship of it in Wang Shiwei and “Wild Lilies,” esp. p. 119.
35. Three notable labor heroes extolled by the Chinese Communist Party in the Yan’an production
ampaigns associated with the Rectification Campaign.
36. Kirkun (Kpиkyн—“Shouter”—in Russian, known to Chinese readers as “Kelikong”) was the journalist
who believed hearsay and mixed up the truth in the Soviet drama “The Front,” by Aleksandr Korneichuk,
which had been published in Chinese translation in 1942. “Kelikong” became the negative role model in the
ampaign held in the Chinese Communist Party–controlled areas in 1947 to improve journalism.
37. Wang meant the three classes of food and five grades of clothing that privileged high cadres; he raised
his issue famously in his “Wild Lilies” essay in Jiefang ribao in 1942; see Dai Qing, Wang Shiwei and “Wild
Lilies,” p. 20.
38. Mao is mockingly quoting a famous line from The Analects.
39. “Dacheng yipian” is Mao’s beloved phrase for cultural and emotional unity between the elite and the
working people, famously raised in his May 1942 “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art.” The
entral significance of the yangge dances is analyzed in Holm, Art and Ideology.
40. These are all heroes in the popular traditional novel, Water Margin.
41. Zhuge Liang was the master strategist extolled in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms; Liu Bowen was
supporter of the Ming founder, Zhu Yuanzhang.
42. Wang Zhen and Wang Shoudao were at this time commander-in-chief and commissar of the Hunan
eople’s Anti-Japanese National Salvation Army, respectively. Mao would write to both of them; see below,
he text of July 22, 1945. Wang Shusheng (1905–1974) was a general and the commander in the Shanxi-Hebei-Henan Military Region. Clearly all had recently been in Yan’an.
43. Mao is quoting the famous May Fourth intellectual leader, Hu Shi (1891–1962) and Hu’s well-known
918 essay promoting vernacular Chinese, “Constructive Literary Revolution” (Jianshe de wenxue
eminghua).
44. The alternate text has an additional sentence here: “Otherwise, we could only go to sleep. If we adopted
resolution to sleep for three years and do nothing, then our knowledge would still be inadequate.”
45. The alternate text adds: “If Zhang San said it, it is by Zhang San. No matter if you are Zhao, Qian, Sun,
Li, Zhou, Wu, Zhen, Wang, or Feng, Chen, Zhu, Wei, Jiang, Shen, Han, Yang….”

46. Literally, “Zhang Three” and “Li Four,” equivalent to the English “Smith” or “Jones,” though names of
ome of Mao’s failed competitors do come to mind: Zhang Guotao and Li Lisan.

--- Notes

# Oral Political Report at the Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party
# Date: 1945-04-24
# Source: en:MRP


for foreign journalists, Zuo Shunsheng2 made another statement with his
independent point of view. Now, the position of the Democratic League accords
with that of the Communist Party on the question of forming a coalition
government, so the Guomindang says that the Democratic League is a fraternal
party of the Communist Party. We do need to unite with it and pull together with
it, however, it has its own independent point of view. It is now “attacking Left
and Right” so as to distinguish itself from both the Chinese Communist Party and
the Guomindang; it is engaged in a two-front struggle. On the one hand, it does
not endorse the single-party dictatorship of the Guomindang, while, on the other
hand, it does not agree completely with the Chinese Communist Party, so it says
that it stands in the middle, between the Guomindang and the Chinese
Communist Party. This language is lucid, it is correct, and it defines its own
character, which is as a middle force.
During the latter part of the Great Revolution, our Party did make mistakes in


but also in the North. Was this Marxism? The venerable old Lin3 put it very well
yesterday when he said that there was Marxism then; Marxism had come to
China, and the Chinese people had taken it and adopted it, but it also seemed
there wasn’t much Marxism, even none at all. That is, at that time there were
some who did not understand Marxism; at that time, within the leadership of our
Party some who held a dominant position, such as Chen Duxiu, found that when
it came to the latter part of the Great Revolution, they no longer wanted
Marxism.
What constitutes not wanting Marxism? It is forgetting the leadership of the
proletariat, forgetting the great popular masses, and forgetting the peasants.
When the landlords cried foul, they poured cold water on the heads of the
peasants. Since they wanted the leadership of the proletariat, but they did not
want the peasants, do you think they had the right to proletarian leadership? In
China, now we follow Marxism. How do we follow it? They did not have
proletarian leadership; they did not want this leading position. Then, who else

47. Instead of this sentence, the alternate text gives the following, with the Lu Xun sentence in the middle:
Someone said you Mao have bureaucratism. I said: Comrade, you have put it very well. It turned out that
wo to three years after he came, I the old master had not met him even once nor had I talked with him. Of
ourse, I would acquire the label of bureaucratism. It is this bureaucratism that we want to eliminate. I
dvocate that people check on me. For certain things, if you don’t put pressure on me, I won’t do them… [Lu
Xun]… Today you have given me a lot of pressure and have given me a hard time. I feel really tired standing
here for a long time.”