Talk at Yinian Tang

Date: 1957-02-16
Source: Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao: From the Hundred Flowers to the Great Leap Forward
Talk at Yinian Tang
16 FEBRUARY 1957
thought and so on, and how to treat shortcomings in literature and art.
Wang Meng wrote a story. Those who approve of him do so very
vigorously. Those who refute him also do so very vigorously. The attitude of those who refute him, however, is not quite appropriate.
<Wang Meng’s “Young newcomer to the Organization Department” is currently under discussion. The question at issue is critical
attitudes. The story exposes bureaucratism. Very good. Although the
exposure is not profound, still it’s very good. Liu Binyan’s story does
not criticize bureaucratism in its entirety.* Wang Meng’s story has its
one-sidedness: he has not written sufficiently about the positive
forces. This should be criticized. There should be criticism, but there
should also be protection. The positive character, Lin Zhen, appears
weak, whereas the negative characters come through as having quite
a bit of initiative. >
Our bureaucratism has not yet been demolished [lit. rectified out
of existence]; it still needs criticism. In the past, the film (.e., “To
Whom Does the Honor Belong”) was not screened. This was not because it criticized old cadres and old cadres should be protected, but
because in that film the bureaucratism was not demolished.
In Xing Xing (the Sichuan poetry magazine)> there are a few
‘NB: In our translation angle brackets indicate the location of square brackets in the Chinese text. Figures in bold indicate Chinese text page numbers.
This editorial note from the Chinese text appears at the end of the alternate text, 7:17. Otherwise, the two texts appear almost identical.
3Translated under a slightly different rendering of the title in Hualing Nieh, ed., Literature
of the Hundred Flowers, vol. 2, (New York, Columbia Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 473-511.
4Presumably refers to Liu Binyan’s “The inside news of the newspaper,” abridged and translated in Nieh, vol. 2, pp. 411-64.
>Xing Xing (Star Star) was a poetry magazine founded in January 1957, which lasted only
for a short period. One of its editors was Liushahe (pseudonym of Yu Xingtan, b. 1931). Immediately following the publication of the first issue, he and the magazine were severely criticized, especially for his five short prose poems, “Pieces on plants” (Caomu pian). Liushahe
was made a “rightist” and suffered much humiliation for two decades, until he was rehabilitated in 1978. See “Liushahe zi zhuan” (Autobiography of Liushahe) in Liushahe shi ji
(Poetry of Liushahe) (Shanghai, Wenyi chubanshe, 1982), pp. 1-10; and the biographical notice in Nieh, vol. 2, p. 580.
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poems that are relatively good and a few that are not good. We
should deliberate a bit and not condemn in haste.
< Xing Xing is shouting out. [But there’s] no hurry, calm down.
Deliberate a bit and don’t meet the enemy attack in panic; don’t fight
a war unprepared. In the case of “critical” articles in the past, those
among the masses who voted for us were few. >
The authors who've written bad works need help, need investigation.
Even General Fu Zuoyi who revolted and crossed over to us and
[people like] Rong Yiren, we helped, remolded (gazzao), so that they
could cooperate with us.¢
So long as the authors of bad stories, even if they contain bourgeois thought and idealism, cooperate with us politically, they
should be distinguished from Hu Feng’ and should not be clubbed to
death with a single blow.
[35] Wang Meng doesn’t know how to write. He can write negative characters, but he can’t write positive characters well. Not writing well has its root in one’s life, in one’s viewpoint.
Li Xifan® says that the location of Wang Meng’s story is not right,
that it’s not a typical environment. He says that the Center? is in
Beijing. Could it be that it is impossible [for the Center] to produce
this kind of problem? This is not convincing. It is precisely the Center which has produced bad people, such as Zhang Guotao, Gao,
°Fu Zuoyi was the Nationalist general in charge of North China during the Civil War. His
surrender of Beijing (then Beiping) enabled the capital to escape destruction. He was at this
time Minister of Water Conservancy and a vice chairman of the CPPCC. See BDRC 2, pp.
47-51, and C. P. Fitzgerald, Revolution in China (London, Cresset, 1952), pp. 108-14.
Rong Yiren was a leading Shanghai businessman, who had been a strong supporter of
the communist regime from its inception. In 1986, over 200 of his family members from all
over the world gathered in Beijing for a reunion with him and met Deng Xiaoping.
"Hu Feng was a leading CCP writer who came under strong attack in 1955 led by Mao personally; see Merle Goldman, Literary Dissent in Communist China (Cambridge, Harvard
Univ. Press., 1967), Ch. 7; and SW5, pp. 176-83.
*Li Xifan was a young literary critic who sprang to prominence in 1954 when still a student
with a joint article (with Lan Ling) attacking Yu Pingbo, the most prominent authority on
the Chinese classic novel, Hong lou meng (usually known as The Dream of the Red Chamber,
most recently translated as The Story of the Stone); see Goldman, pp. 115-25.
’The “Center” (zhongyang) is used loosely by Chinese communists. It may signify the
CCP’s Central Committee, its Politburo, the Politburo Standing Committee, leading members of those bodies like Mao himself, or more generally central party or government departments in Beijing. In this context, it probably signifies the Central Committee, formally
the CCP’s supreme organ.
Rao, Li Lisan, Wang Ming.’° What do we do if there are more such
bad people? According to their opinion they should be boiled in oil.
<Li Xifan’s article is not convincing. The view that no bureaucratism could exist in any district committee in the place where the Center
is located is incorrect. Even the Center produced Gao and Rao, so it’s
not strange that district committees (have bureaucratism); this is the
“theory of inevitability.” (In Lin Zhen" the theory of inevitability also
applies). !2
Many comrades actually have not understood the policy on how
to handle mistakes among the people. Out of every ten ministers [or
department heads, lit., buzhang] probably nine oppose this policy.
<The problem is that the author (Wang Meng) does not understand clearly contradictions among the people. Consequently his
story has a negative impact. We haven’t understood clearly, either.
Just because it’s written about Beijing and (the location) is too concrete, and thus is not a typical character in a typical environment,
this kind of (criticism) will not convince people. >
There is bourgeois ideology in Wang Meng’s story. He doesn’t
have enough experience, either. But he represents a new-born force;
he should be protected. The articles criticizing him have had no intention of protecting him.
Sure, there's bureaucratism. Our party has high prestige, yet
bureaucratism plays the tyrant and violates the law by taking advantage of the party’s prestige. Should this be exposed or not?
10Zhang Guotao, like Mao a founding member of the CCP, lost the struggle with him for
the leadership in the mid 1930s, left the party’s Yan’an base, and was expelled from party
membership; see his autobiography, Zhang Guotao, The Rise of the Chinese Communist
Party, 2 vols., (Lawrence, Univ. of Kansas, 1971, 1972).
Gao Gang and Rao Shushi were purged in 1954 after their abortive attempt to ensure
that the former (and not Liu Shaoqi or Zhou Enlai) succeeded Mao; see Frederick C.
Teiwes, Politics and Purges in China (White Plains, M. E. Sharpe, 1979), Ch. 5.
Li Lisan’s “leftist” line dominated the CCP in 1928-30; see Benjamin I. Schwartz, Chinese
Communism and the Rise of Mao (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1951), Chs. 9 and 10.
Wang Ming (Chen Shaoyu) was the Moscow-trained official whom Mao defeated in the
struggle for the leadership of the CCP in the late 1930s and early 1940s; for a succinct account, see Richard C. Thornton, China: A Political History, 1917-1980 (Boulder, Westview
Press, 1980), pp. 105-10, 119-21. Both Wang Ming and Li Lisan had been re-elected to the
Central Committee at the CCP’s Eighth Congress in September 1956.
11Lin Zhen is the “young newcomer” in Wang Meng’s story.
'2The open parenthesis mark is misprinted in the main text; this sentence is taken from the
alternate text, 7:9.
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China is a great kingdom of the petty bourgeoisie. In all there are
as many as 550 million [members of the] petty bourgeoisie... 1° and
this is an objective reality.
<China is a great kingdom of the petty bourgeoisie; [so] it’s impossible for there to be no petty bourgeoisie in the party. >
The view that says that the shortcomings of the Communist party
can’t be exposed is incorrect.
Actually very few people endorse the party’s United Front policy.
Very few truly understand this policy. [36] Punishment cannot convince people.
<Not many among cadres truly understand the United Front policy. We should help others remold in order to achieve true unity. [We
have done] far from enough to help remold everybody’s thought in
this way. The usual method is to resort to punishment. It’s quite easy,
but it’s not a good method. We shouldn't use “punishment” [zheng].
It cannot unify. >
Now Wang Ming can still vote. Isn't he still a citizen of the
People’s Republic of China? He has not been summarily kicked out.
“To kick out summarily” is the old way. That’s easy. Those who
like to use this method might as well fire guns, fire machine guns,
since this is the method of the Nationalists [Kuomintang].
<That China is a great kingdom of the petty bourgeoisie is an objective reality. The working class is only 24 million, half of whom are industrial workers and the other half of whom are cadres. This is one pole.
The other pole is about 30 million landlords, rich peasants, and bourgeoisie. The 550 million between these two poles are all petty bourgeoisie.
Even the 12 million cadres have not all been proletarianized. Perhaps
around 2 million have authentically changed. Thus, the problem of literature and art must be viewed from the perspective of this reality. >"
This is a time of great turbulence. Some people are dissatisfied. In
the collectivization of agriculture, the well-to-do middle peasants are
dissatisfied.
<The children of the landlords, rich peasants, and bourgeoisie
make up 80 percent of the university students. All are non-working-
'SEllipsis dots appear in the original Chinese version. 7
‘4A condensed version of the preceding, which includes the figure 12 million for the number of true proletariat, appears in the related talk with scientists and writers; see 6A:38.
class people. That young people have more problems is not at all
strange. Very few amongst them want to produce a Hungarian incident; the majority support communism. >
However, even those who were dissatisfied in the past supported
the war of resisting the United States and aiding Korea [i-e., China’s
intervention in the Korean War]. They don’t [want to] produce a
“Hungary.” Of course, some individuals who wish to produce a Hungarian incident do indeed exist.
Our comrades are simply afraid; they fear a Hungarian incident.
In my view the Hungarian incident was not necessarily bad. We must
talk about dialectics, we must understand the dualism of all things.
Without a disturbance like this, there would be no truly good Hungary.
[37]... <Contradictions will sooner or later become apparent,
so it’s good to create a disturbance. A disturbance is one-sided. If we
oppose one-sidedness with one-sidedness we can’t resolve problems. >
Our comrades use dogmatism. They use one-sidedness to oppose
one-sidedness and use metaphysics to oppose metaphysics.
Wang Meng’s story has its one-sided qualities, it also has its antibureaucratism side. I think his article is quite well written, though
not superlatively.
He exposes our shortcomings. Criticism like Li Xifan’s can’t be
used on him.
< Many critical articles are correct in their standpoint, but they
oversimplify matters. >
Li Xifan is now in a high-level organ, a member of the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Congress. He is fed by the party and
follows party orders, and [so] he’s become an authority figure.!>
[Therefore] his articles are no longer lively and are hard to read. The
first half of his article [that I just mentioned] is hard to understand.
Who's Ma Hanbing?!* He’s also some sort of official. Perhaps a
cadre of army-commander rank. His article in the Wenhui bao is not
well written; it’s dogmatism.
<The standpoint of the article written by Chen Qitong and three
19] iterally “grandmother” or “mother-in-law”; used as a metaphor for an authority figure,
as in an extended family.
16One of a group of four army writers who collaborated on an article critical of the Hundred
Flowers policy in RMRB on 7 January 1957. Mao dealt with this article at some length in his
“Contradictions” speech; see Text 3, under “Blooming flowers and contending schools.”
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others,!” is good. It was OK for the People’s Daily to publish it. But
it’s not convincing. It seems to say that since the adoption of the Hundred Flowers policy everything has gone wrong. This is dogmatism.
It is impossible that every flower be fragrant.'® Dogmatism has no
force. One of the reasons why it has developed is because the Communist party has come into power. Marx and Engels criticized
Dühring, and Lenin criticized Lunacharsky.'? They had to exert
great effort to outargue them. Stalin was different (he was in power).
So his criticism was not balanced and was very similar to a father
scolding his son. [It’s like the saying:] “As soon as he has power in his
hands, he rules by fiat.” Criticism should not rely on state power; it
should use truth. If you use Marxism, if you apply effort, you can
prevail. >
<You can’t use dogmatism to criticize others, because it has no
power. See how Lenin wrote his empirio-criticism. Later on Stalin
was different. He didn’t discuss problems [with others] on an equal
footing. He didn’t air his opinions only after collecting large quantities of materials. Some of the things he wrote were good, others he
wrote as if he were sitting on a hillock and picking up stones to hit
people. One is uncomfortable after reading [such writings]. >
[38] The article jointly signed by four people, including Chen Qi-
tong and Ma Hanbing, didn’t clearly state the issues; it’s too bad.
Chen Yi,2° how many articles have you written? Do you have dogmatism or not? Put out a volume of selected works! Let’s have a complete check-up.
Dogmatist articles are dull, oversimplified, and unconvincing.
17 Another of the four army writers; see previous note.
'8The current text lacks the negative, which makes this sentence out of step with the paragraph. The alternate text, 7:11, gives the sensible version, “duoduo xianghua shi bu
kenengde,” which we use here.
'?Mao is referring to Anti-Dühring, Engels’ 1877 attack on a German positivist, to which
Marx contributed a chapter on political economy. Anatoly Vasilievich Lunacharsky
(1875-1933), was a devoté of Avenarius’ philosophy of empirio-criticism and the first Commissar of Education in the Soviet Union. He crossed swords with Lenin over revolutionary
tactics in 1908, before either man was in power, and Lenin produced Materialism and
Empirio-Criticism in part to refute Lunacharsky. See Isaac Deutscher, “Introduction,” in
Lunacharsky, Revolutionary Silhouettes (New York, Hill and Wang, 1967), pp. 14-5.
*°See note 16, above. Chen Yi (b. 1912) was at that time in charge of cultural affairs in the
General Political Department of the PLA. He is not Marshal Chen Yi who later became
Foreign Minister. This Chen Yi suffered, was condemned as a “rightist” because of his opposition to Mao at this time, but emerged as an unpopular “leftist” propaganda chief in
Shanghai in 1979, stepping down in 1982.
Dogmatism has developed because [we] have come into power.
Marx and Engels put a lot of thought into refuting Dühring. But
Stalin in power was different. He cursed people, was inequitable, so
he couldn’t be convincing.
We should study articles that analyze other people.
Once in power, to curse people like dressing down a son is no
good.
The relationship between the people and the party in power
shouldn't be one between the people and their master. We shouldn't
curse.
Dogmatism is not Marxism.
The criticism of Hu Shi in the past was very successful.?! At the beginning we said Hu Shi couldn't be completely negated. He served
his purpose in the Enlightenment Movement in China. Nor can
Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao be negated.?2
Hu Shi said I was his student.2? He was a professor, and I was a
petty clerk. Our salaries were different, but I was not his student.
71Hu Shi was a dominant literary and academic figure in the May Fourth Movement. Although never close to the KMT, he served as China’s ambassador to the U.S. from 1938 to
1942. In early 1957, he was in retirement in New York, but eighteen months later he went
to Taiwan to take up the presidency of Academia Sinica. His ideas and influence are explored in Jerome B. Grieder, Hu Shih and the Chinese Renaissance: Liberalism in the Chinese
Revolution, 1917-1937 (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1970).
*2Kang Youwei was a leading advocate of thoroughgoing reforms in the last decades of the
Qing dynasty. After he had passed the examination for the third and highest degree (jinshi)
under the imperial system, his reform proposals began to reach the Emperor. In 1898, he
reached the apogee of his power and influence, when he became the Emperor’s principal adviser during the abortive “100 days reform.” For a brief account of his life and a translation
of his principal work, see Lawrence G. Thompson, “Ja Tung Shu’: The One World Philosophy of Kang Yu-wei (London, Allen and Unwin, 1958); also Kung-chuan Hsiao, A Modern
China and a New World: Kang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858-1927 (Seattle, Univ. of
Washington Press, 1975).
Liang Qichao was originally a follower of Kang Youwei and another influential reformer of the late Qing and early Republican period. See Philip C. Huang, Liang Ch’i-chuo
and Modern Chinese Liberalism (Seattle, Univ. of Washington Press, 1972); and Joseph R.
Levenson, Liang Chi-chao and the Mind of Modern China (Berkeley, Univ. of California
Press, 1967). In his late teens, Mao Zedong posted an article on the wall of his school advocating that the Qing dynasty be overthrown and that, under the presidency of Sun Yatsen, Kang Youwei should become Premier and Liang Qichao Foreign Minister. See Edgar
Snow, Red Star Over China (London, Gollancz, 1937), p. 136.
**For a discussion and dismissal of this claim, see Grieder, pp. 298-9. Mao later admitted,
however, to being an admirer of Hu Shi during the early Republican period; see Snow,
p. 146.
Yinian Tang
It isn’t necessary to rehabilitate Hu Shi’s reputation now. In the
twenty-first century we can look into the problem again.
(In the past, because we were engaged in struggle, we talked about
Hu Shi’s shortcomings. Today it still isn’t necessary to rehabilitate
him. Today he is a running dog of imperialism. Wait till the twentyfirst century; history should make this clear.)
((We] make arrangements for and transform the landlords, rich
peasants, and bourgeoisie. Why not the petty bourgeoisie? We often
show no mercy in our articles. The techniques of dogmatism are putting on caps, cursing people, one-sidedness. Their starting point is
not unity, their goal is not unity. [39] They do not help transform
shortcomings to reach true unity.)
< We must strictly distinguish the way we handle mistakes among
the people from the way we handle the mistakes of the enemy (essays
that are wrong [in their approach] do not make this distinction).
Ruthless struggle against the enemy, but towards the people we start
from unity, go through struggle, and arrive at a new unity. Otherwise we could easily kill people. >
We should “stay the execution as the axe is raised.”
During the Rectification [Movement] in Yan’an, didn’t we say
“learn from past mistakes to avoid future ones, cure the illness to save
the patient”? Some of our comrades don’t like to cure the illness to
save the patient. Rather, they act like quacks killing patients. We
should apply proper methods towards the petty bourgeoisie to transform them. <We depend for food on so many of the petty bourgeoisie, that we need to transform them into the working class. >
About 50 to 60 percent of our comrades do not understand this policy of the Center: Criticize to unite, cure the illness to save the patient.
They simply fear disturbances,
A student at Qinghua University spoke of the need to kill tens of
millions of people. This is too many.?* This student should not be expelled from the school.
Students have reasons to cause disturbances. But [no one] advocates a general student strike. They have developed a habit [of opposition] from their opposition to the Nationalists.
*Mao is being ironic. See below his similar treatment of the same incident in his “Contradictions” speech, Text 3, p. 134.
It is incorrect not to allow workers to strike. The constitution
does not ban strikes. Putting up posters is the freedom of speech;
holding meetings is the freedom of assembly.
We shouldn't have all those who caused disturbances write a statement of repentance; neither should they all be made to write articles
of self-criticism.
Since there are problems, it’s good to have a bit of disturbance.
Students making a disturbance is not equivalent to rebellion.
In a population of 600 million, to have one million cause trouble
in a year is normal; one out of six hundred.
Those who create disturbances cannot be called counterrevolutionary at all. Possibly one or two of them may be counterrevolutionaries.
[40] The best way to deal with bureaucratism is to strike, to hold
student strikes, and to brandish shoulder poles, because problems remain unsolved for so long!
Of course, I am not putting up posters calling for a national strike.
These contradictions are temporary in nature, not basic contradictions.
When problems occur, both sides should be looked at. (Those
who create disturbances also have a dual character. They give us warnings. A pustule will be all right once the pus has been discharged.)
If you say, “I am a ‘veteran revolutionary,’ I can’t be opposed,”
[well,] the Nationalists are also “veteran revolutionaries,” more veteran than we are. We can’t adopt the same attitude as the Nationalists
use towards the people.
Marxism has always developed through struggle with the enemy,
through struggle with bourgeois ideology, by extracting the rational
elements of bourgeois ideology. Only in this way has Marxism been
shaped.
The current danger is the belief that everything in the garden is
lovely.25 So when you read Wang Meng’s criticisms, you are unhappy.
Only striking [people down] cannot steel literature and art.
Should we or shouldn’t we permit only fragrant flowers to exist
and not permit poisonous weeds?
(Under [the policy of] “Let a hundred flowers bloom,” we should
permit poisonous weeds to exist, permit styles to be different.)
25Literally, tianxia taiping le: all is peaceful under heaven.
Yinian Tang
Poisonous weeds can poison people, but fragrant flowers can grow
only through struggling with poisonous weeds.
There are many weeds in the grain fields. The crops grow only by
struggling with the weeds. The Soviet Union has been undergoing
socialist construction for decades, and it still has weeds in its fields.
Never mind the weeds: turn them in and they'll become fertilizer.
If it’s a poisonous weed, you can say so. Some people advocate writing: “This is a poisonous weed. Don’t try it.” The Soviet way is to
have only fragrant flowers and no poisonous weeds. In reality many
poisonous weeds live in disguise under the name of fragrant flowers.
We advocate that “poisonous weeds and fragrant flowers blossom together, that rosy clouds in the sunset and the solitary duck fly
together.”
[41] Stalin had his Idealism and his materialism; he had a onesided character.
<Metaphysics has Idealism as well as materialism. Stalin had
both. He had dialectics as well as metaphysics. Precisely for this reason he had both merits and demerits; his merits surpass his demerits. >
Soviet comrades find it difficult to change; they like to use highhanded methods.
The methods of dogmatism are the methods of metaphysics.
Both praise and denunciation of Wang Meng’s writing are onesided in nature.
Wang Meng has a dual nature: One is his good points; the other is
his shortcomings.
One point contains two points,?” and one material thing contains
two different aspects.
Commodities have a dual nature, so does Wang Meng.
Yao Wenyuan’s article in the Wenhui bao is very good. (“Dogmatism and principle” is very convincing.)?®
*®Mao is evidently doing a take-off of a piece of parallel prose celebrated down the centuries: “Rosy clouds in the sunset and the solitary duck fly together; the autumn water meets
the horizon in one color.” The original, from an essay by Wang Bo (648-675), had purely
scenic significance.
ne dian you liang dian.
Published in January 1957; reprinted in Yao Wenyuan, Lun wenxue shangde xiuzhengzhuyi sichao (On the revisionist thought tide in literature) (Shanghai, Xin wenyi chubanshe,
1958), pp. 3-11. Yao's article is subtitled: “A discussion with Mr. Yao Xueyin,” and refers to
We cannot say that everything in the past was dogmatism. The Nationalist party was once the only school. After we overthrew them,
the Communist party was for a period the only school. Having a
sole school was necessary. But now it is different.
(Disturbances have emerged in Eastern Europe for precisely this
reason. Now circumstances have changed, and it is necessary to let a
hundred schools contend. If we want to contend, then we must prepare.
It is through contending that we obtain education and transformation,
not through liberalism. Nothing should be disposed of with one kick.
We should criticize mistakes, but should recognize their dual character.)
We can explain to everyone that we do not want to meet an enemy
attack in a hurry, we don’t want to write articles in a hurry. When
fighting, don’t we say we fight no battle unprepared and fight no battle we are not sure of winning? Uncertainty is the same as unpreparedness. Our present battle is simply an unprepared battle.
There are vestiges of the bourgeoisie, the landlords, and the rich
peasants. There are petty bourgeois intellectuals who come from
these. We have the responsibility to carry out ideological struggle and
educational work with them.
What we have now is the minority educating the majority.
Don’t use simplistic methods to expel people.
[42] They can become teachers; such teachers are hard to find.
Ma Hanbing’s and Li Xifan’s articles also have dual characteristics.
They’re dogmatist, but they can alert [people]. They actually don’t endorse the policy of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred
schools contend.
In reality, there will still be non-Marxist ideas ten thousand years
from now.
What’s more, Marxism itself will come to an end some day. What
can be imagined for five hundred years from now? Nowadays five hundred years counts for as much as tens of thousands of years in the past.
In the world of the future, class struggle will end. Some aspects of
Marxism will become useless.
a veteran left-wing writer. Yao Wenyuan was a young Shanghai literary critic who later became a leading polemicist of the “Gang of Four,” and whose attack on the historian Wu
Han initiated the Cultural Revolution. This article may have first brought him to Mao’s
attention.
Yinian Tang
Anyone proclaiming himself as [expounding] eternal truth is no
Marxist.
In the future there will be no class struggle, but there'll be new
struggles. By then new theories should have emerged in the field of
social science.
Of course, certain things can’t be overthrown, such as the earth
turns and the sun does not, that the earth revolves around the sun and
not the sun around the earth. All the same, the earth will rot one day.
Humanity may also be negated. Some day our kind of human will
no longer fit in, and all will be exterminated. But this will be good
for the evolution of the universe.
Three thousand years ago humanity still used stone. Later they
progressed to the use of copper and iron down to using mechanical
machines.
Zhang Tatyan has already discussed the 500 thousand years of human
history in his Qzu shu.?? The bronze age negated the stone age.
Humanity passed its days on earth digging in the dirt. No one ever
elected humanity to be the master of the earth. The multitudes of the
animal kingdom didn’t elect us; neither did the bacteria. Perhaps
only the plants are not against us. When we die, we can provide them
with nourishment. They can also use our excreta.
Humanity itself will evolve; so, too, must Marxists.
How to construct a huge country like this is a new question for
Marxists. How can we reduce the chances of taking roundabout
courses? Marx didn’t envision this huge country of ours with a population of 600 million, and neither did Lenin. He was involved in the
construction of a socialist state for just a few years.
[43] Our population of 600 million will one day in the future
have to line up when we go out in the street. In the future the streets
will be jammed with people. How will we distribute newspapers?
How will we go to the movies? How will we go to the park? All these
will become problems.
We can’t say all problems have been solved. There are still many
questions awaiting identification and solution.
*°Zhang Tatyan [Zhang Binglin] (1868-1936) was a renowned classicist and noted anti-
Manchu racist active in the late Qing reform movement. The book Mao mentions here was
a 1902 exposition of Zhang’s anti-Manchu views based on a study of human evolution
strongly rooted in Chinese interpretations of Darwin. The title is obscure, but can be translated as “Book of raillery.” See Charlotte Furth, “The Sage as Rebel,” in Furth, The Limits
of Change (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1976), pp. 113, 131-2, 375.
Don't be afraid of evil trends. There are always two kinds of
trends, one evil and the other healthy.°°
There has been a great flood in Jilin this year, simply because there
has been too much rain. Two currents, one cold and the other warm,
have met. They didn’t meet above Heilongjiang, nor did they meet
over Liaoning. They just met over Jilin, and they put up a fight and
from this it rained heavily. It’s not good for it to rain too much. But
if it doesn’t rain, there is drought. The two currents need each other.
It won't do for one to be lacking.
The more the struggle, the more enriched [life will become], then
new truth will emerge.
(XX: Currently there has been a trend to write about love.)
[Chairman:] Without love, humanity would become extinct.
(XX: There is the “theory of inevitability” in essays.)
[Chairman:] More “theory of inevitability” should be published.
In this way people’s attention will be aroused.
Holding power has its dual characteristics. Many people simply
fear “blossoming” and “contention” no matter what.
<We should especially (note that) after gaining power we attempt
to use simplistic methods to put down others. Why (do some people)
fear letting a hundred flowers bloom? They fear their rice ladle will
cross the river.*!
Young people are not so afraid of opposing bureaucrats because
they have not yet held

--- Notes

[33] (This talk was given prior to the Central Committee Propaganda Work Conference. The Chairman called this conference to
talk with writers, philosophers, and educators on cultural and ideological problems. He particularly emphasized problems of literary
criticism.
This material was compiled on the basis of three transcripts of relayed reports. Whereas it is based mainly on one transcript [34], it
Sources: 9:33-44; alternate text, 7:8-17. Related text: 6A:38-41, “Discussion with scientists
and writers on contradictions among the people (16 February 1957),” appears to be an abstract taken from this text. Two other related texts, based on the January 1957 Conference of
Provincial and Municipal Party Secretaries, give related material. They appear in 1:169-187,
but are not here translated because they appear in Wansui (1969), pp. 73-90, and are translated
in JPRS 61269-1. An official version exists in SW5, pp. 350-83. Yinian Tang is a hall inside the
Zhongnanhai compound in Beijing, where many top CCP officials live and work.
uses square brackets! to supplement the main transcript with materials
from the other two transcripts. This is for reference only, no copying
is permitted.)
Today I will talk about problems regarding the policy of letting a
hundred schools contend in literature and the arts and in academic