Comments and Revisions on the Speech Outline
(February 28, 1954)
Comrade Shaoqi, and comrades of the Secretariat:
Comrade Enlai’s speech outline dated February 25 has been revised by Comrades Hu Qiaomu and Chen Boda. I approve these revisions; please consider them and make a decision as you see fit.
Mao Zedong
February 28, 1954
Chuan
Refers to Zhou Enlai’s summary speech outline delivered at the symposium on the Gao Gang issue on February 25, 1954.
The outline points out: At this symposium concerning the Gao Gang matter, based on Gao Gang’s own remarks and his attempted suicide, together with the combined statements of forty-three comrades and the materials they have brought to light, we can arrive at the following understanding—that Gao Gang’s extreme individualist errors had escalated into conspiratorial activities aimed at splitting the Party, in order to realize his personal ambition of seizing leadership of the Party and the state. After his ambitions were exposed and his attempts failed, he resorted to an act of despair by attempting suicide, thereby cutting himself off from both the Party and the people. The outline exposes Gao Gang’s conspiratorial efforts 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 that should be learned from the Gao Gang incident.

Throughout the long revolutionary struggle, although Gao Gang did possess certain correct and meritorious aspects that earned him the trust of the Party, his individualistic ideology—most notably manifested as arrogance and complacency when things went well, coupled with overbearing and reckless behavior, while in times of adversity he would become anxious, fearful of loss, disheartened, and wavering—and the corruption in his private life remained uncorrected and unchecked for a long period. Moreover, after the nationwide victory, these tendencies significantly intensified, constituting his dark side. The progressive 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 actions in recent times were the inevitable outcome of this dark side’s escalation, and at the same time reflected the bourgeoisie’s attempt during the transitional period to split, undermine, and corrupt our Party.
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This is one section of Zhou Enlai’s speech outline that underwent extensive revision by Mao Zedong during his review. The text typeset in Song typeface represents additions made by Mao Zedong.