Annotations and Revisions to Zhou Enlai’s Outline of Speech at the Symposium on the Gao Gang Affair (February 28, 1954)

Comrade Shaoqi, and comrades of the Secretariat: Comrade Enlai’s outline of speech dated February 25 [1], after certain revisions made by Comrades Hu Qiaomu and Chen Boda [2], has been approved by me. I request that you consider and decide accordingly. Mao Zedong February 28, 1954 Printed from the manuscript.

II. Throughout the long revolutionary struggle, although Gao Gang possessed certain correct qualities and rendered meritorious service to the revolution, thereby earning the Party’s trust, his individualistic ideology—most conspicuously manifested in arrogance and self-satisfaction during times of success, coupled with overbearing and tyrannical behavior, while in adversity he became preoccupied with gain and loss, losing heart and wavering—and the corruption of his private life remained uncorrected and unchecked for a prolonged period. Moreover, following the nationwide victory, these tendencies significantly intensified, constituting his dark side. The development of this dark side gradually transformed Gao Gang into a de facto agent of the bourgeoisie within our Party. Gao Gang’s anti-Party activities in the recent period were both the inevitable outcome of the escalation of his dark side and a reflection of the bourgeoisie’s attempt, during the transitional period, to split, undermine, and corrupt our Party. [3]

Printed according to Mao Zedong’s revised version. Notes

[1] Refers to Zhou Enlai’s outline for his concluding remarks at the symposium on the Gao Gang affair held on February 25, 1954. The outline states: At this symposium concerning the Gao Gang affair, based on Gao Gang’s own statements and his attempted suicide, as well as on the combined testimonies of forty-three comrades and the materials they brought to light, we have reached the following understanding: Gao Gang’s extreme individualist errors had escalated to the point of engaging in conspiratorial activities aimed at splitting the Party, in order to realize his personal ambition to seize leadership of the Party and the state. After his ambitions were exposed and his plot failed, he resorted to the desperate act of taking his own life, thereby severing himself from the Party and the people. The outline exposes Gao Gang’s conspiratorial schemes to split the Party and seize Party and state power from ten different angles, analyzes the ideological, social, and historical roots of his mistakes, and summarizes the lessons to be learned from the Gao Gang incident. [ ] Hu Qiaomu, then Deputy Minister of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong’s secretary. Chen Boda, then also Deputy Minister of the CPC Central Committee’s Publicity Department. The revisions made by Hu Qiaomu and Chen Boda to Zhou Enlai’s speech outline primarily served to strengthen the analysis and criticism of Gao Gang’s errors, and additionally included provisions emphasizing the need to inform all senior Party cadres of Gao Gang’s mistakes, to publicly announce the Central Committee’s resolution on reinforcing Party unity, and to publish the main contents of the Fourth Plenary Session in the press. [ ] This is a section that Mao Zedong substantially altered when reviewing Zhou Enlai’s speech outline. The text typeset in Song typeface represents words added by Mao Zedong.