Comrade Enlai, please read and return to Xiaoping for handling.

I believe it is appropriate to speak in this way [1], with only a few words revised.

[!]
Deng Xiaoping, then serving as Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

Mao Zedong
September 18

[2]
In the explanatory draft of the resolution on convening the Party’s Eighth National Congress, Deng Xiaoping focused on explaining the reasons why the Eighth National Congress could not be held earlier, its main agenda, the election of delegates, and the timing of the congress. He stated:
The Party’s Seventh National Congress was held in 1945, and by the time the Eighth National Congress is convened in 1956, 11 years will have elapsed. It must be said that this is a very long interval. However, it must be pointed out that there are reasons for the delayed convening of the Eighth National Congress. From 1945 to 1949, these four years, we were in the midst of a tempestuous revolutionary war; from 1950 to 1952, these three years, we devoted our full attention to carrying out the extremely arduous and immense tasks of completing democratic reforms, restoring the national economy, and consolidating the people’s democratic dictatorship, and we were also intensely engaged in the struggle to resist U.S. aggression and aid Korea. That no Party congress was held during these seven years is entirely understandable. In 1953, our country began the construction of the First Five-Year Plan. At the end of 1952, while the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat were considering convening the National People’s Congress, they also considered the issue of convening the Party’s Eighth National Congress, and at that time it was decided to first convene a National Party Conference. Subsequently, in the latter half of 1953, following the National Financial and Economic Conference and the National Organizational Work Conference, the Party Central Committee detected the Gao Gang–Rao Shushi anti-Party alliance. Consequently, this incident was seriously dealt with, first through the Fourth Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee in February 1954 and then through the National Party Conference in March of this year. Clearly, after resolving such a major incident as the Gao–Rao anti-Party alliance, it was undoubtedly more appropriate to then consider the issue of convening the Eighth National Congress. In these years, the Party formulated the General Line for the Transition Period, the National People’s Congress adopted and promulgated the Constitution, and more valuable experience was gained in socialist construction, socialist transformation, and work in all other fields. At the same time, through Party rectification and Party building, the examination of cadres, the propagation of the General Line, and a series of practical struggles in education for socialist construction and socialist transformation, the Party organization became more united and consolidated, and the political consciousness of Party members was raised. All of this, in fact, constituted more thorough political and organizational preparations for the Party’s Eighth National Congress. Looking at it today, although the delay of several years in convening the Eighth National Congress is indeed a shortcoming, whether politically or organizationally speaking, holding the Eighth National Congress in 1956 will make it more complete and satisfactory.

From September 20 to 28, 1955, the National Congress of Activists for Socialist Construction Among Youth was held in Beijing. The picture shows Mao Zedong and others receiving the delegates of the congress.