Speech at the Group Leaders Forum of the Enlarged Meeting of the Military Affairs Committee (Excerpts)
1958-06-28
Source: Chairman Mao Talks to the People (Stuart Schram, ed., 1974)
collecting folk poetry, Peking University has done a lot of work.
If we do this job it is possible that we may discover millions and
millions of folk poems. This will not involve much work,
and they will be much easier to read than the poems of Tu Fu
and Li Po.*4
comrades at army and divisional level to speak and write be
should not criticize
5 Speech at the Group Leaders’ Forum of the
Enlarged Meeting of the
Military Affairs Committee
Excerpts. 28 June 1958
This has been a good conference. Some comrades’ speeches
were very good.* Comrade Chang Tsung-hsiin’s speech was
very good. I agree with it. He wrote it under pressure from the
fourth-grade cadres conference of the Military Training Headquarters. This proves that when you compel people, they can
write good stuff. There is just one point I don’t agree with.
Chang Tsung-hsiin says that the reason he made mistakes was that he had not studied Mao Tse-tung’s writings properly. This is not correct. He should have said that it was
primarily because his Marxist-Leninist level was not high
enough. Comrade Ya-lou’s speech is also pretty good. This illustrates the point that the army comrades’ level is high and that
they can write. The best thing would be for us to have our own
work. In our articles and speeches we
cause they are the people who do the practical work, and they
have contact with the lower echelons. The stuff they write can
achieve unity of theory and practice. The content of conferences should be rich and varied and should introduce advanced experience of
the Soviet Union. Dogmatism is a problem
in our own study; it is not just a question of whether the Soviet
Union is advanced or not.
From the beginning there has existed in our army a struggle
between two lines in military construction. We had a struggle at
* XX asked the Chairman especially to read the speeches of nine comrades.
The Chairman read the speeches of Comrades Chang Tsung-hsiin and Liu
Ya-lou1.
the Kut’ien Conference,? but we were unable to convince the
comrades who held incorrect ideas. Some comrades still adhere
to their incorrect line right up to today. Comrade Hsiao K’e?
was not only guilty of dogmatism, but had a warlord mentality
marked by bourgeois ideology, dogmatism and feudal ideology.
regulations. I don’t know how much Marxism-Leninism there
is in the Military Academy and the Military Training Com-mand. Marxism-Leninism should be a guide for action, yet they
use it as a dogma for recitation. If Marx and Lenin were still
alive, they would certainly criticize these comrades as being
dogmatic. Today the dogmatists advocate copying the Soviet
Union. Whom, I would like to know, did the Soviet Union copy
in the past? In the resolutions of the Eighth Congress there is a
passage dealing with the problem of technological reform. From
the point of view of present conditions this is inappropriate because it over-emphasizes Soviet aid. It is very necessary to study
Soviet aid, but the most important thing is self-reliance. If we
over-emphasize Soviet aid, the question I would like to ask is,
on whom did the Soviet Union depend for aid in the past?
The Great Leap Forward in industry and agriculture has destroyed blind faith. We can catch up with Britain in — years,
and in from — to — years catch up with America. Next year our
steel output will reach from — to — tens of thousands of tons. It
is reported that the north-east will produce — tens of thousands
of tons by 1962. This is all the result of rectification. The Nanning Conference and the Chengtu Conference broke down
blind faith, liberated our thinking and resulted in the Great
Leap Forward in industry. Yet we have been training armies for
over eight years and have not produced even one book of
combat regulations. Now we must gather together some comrades who have rich experience in work and combat to produce
a book of combat regulations of our own. Some people mentioned that when the Soviet comrade advisers saw that we were
not copying theirs, they made adverse comments and were displeased. We might ask these Soviet comrades: Do you copy
In wartime it will not do to implement orders according to
China’s Military Doctrines 127
Chinese regulations? If they say they don’t, then we will say: If
you don’t copy ours, we won't copy yours.
Why is it that XX hasn't performed well since the victory of
the revolution? Apart from the fact that he has not made a
sufficiently deep appraisal of his experience in the former
period and learned the historical lessons, the reasons are: first,
he has blindly accepted old things and old dogmas; second, he
has put blind faith in foreign dogmas and in the Soviet Union;
third, he has blind faith in himself. He has been very active,
hard-working and conscientious, but his direction was haywire
and he was not strong enough on politics. The main aim of this
conference is to overthrow the slave mentality and to bury dogmatism; also to use the methods of rectification. With a great
airing of views and booming, to break down blind faith,
raise our ideological level, absorb the lessons of experience and,
above all, to educate the whole Party and whole army and to
unite the whole Party and whole army. Therefore during the
conference we can criticize people. But I would suggest
that when we are formulating resolutions, we only need to distinguish between right and wrong and clarify problems. We do
not have to put in the names of those comrades who have made
mistakes. After all, in the resolutions of the Kut’ien Conference
no names were mentioned.
With X it is mainly a case of blind faith in foreigners. He has
an inferiority complex. He hasn’t been able to rid himself of
this blind faith. He doesn’t regard our own experience as of
primary importance. Nowadays even a cooperative has to summarize its experience, otherwise it would lag behind. The five
cooperatives of Hsinchou in Hupei Province did pretty well,
Mach’eng was not so good. But Hsinchou paid no attention to
summarizing its experience. Mach’eng sent people round to
Hsinchou to study their experience so that they could summarize and extend their own work. In the end the work in
Mach’eng went into the lead. When the army went into battle in
the past, did it not summarize the experience of its various units,
re-train them, and then go into battle again? In all our work we
must pay attention to the summing up of our good experience.
The Soviet Union defeated the intervention of fourteen imperialist countries. That was a long time ago. The Soviet Union
has had the experience of the Second World War. We defeated
Chiang Kai-shek, Japanese imperialism, American imperialism.
We have rich experience, more than the Soviet Union. We
should not regard our own experience as worthless. This is
wrong. (Chief Lin* interjected: ‘Our experience is very rich. We
must not throw gold away as though it were yellow dust.’) We
must think of our experience as of primary importance, while
studying other people’s advanced experience. We must also
study the conditions of enemy countries and of friendly countries. In the past we did study conditions in enemy and friendly
countries as well as our own. We translated American and
Japanese things. In future wars in the East, America won't get
anywhere without depending on Japan, so we must make a
thorough study of Japanese conditions. We must study the
Soviet army’s experience. Weapons technology is continually
developing and evolving. Therefore in studying the Soviet
army’s technical experience, we must do so from the standpoint
of development. In the past the Russians were very much afraid
of Napoleon because he led his army to Moscow. In the end the
Russians defeated him and so the Russians often boasted that
they were more formidable than Napoleon. Nowadays the stuff
produced by the Soviet military advisers (combat plans and
ways of thinking) all deal with the offensive and are all concerned with victory. They have no defensive material and do
not provide for defeat. This does not conform with real situations. Some people say that summing up the Resist America,
Aid Korea War constitutes empiricism, but we know that the
Korean War was a big war in which we defeated America and
obtained valuable experience. This experience must be summed
up. As for their calling us empiricists, well, we can say to them:
Your stuff about the Soviet Union in the Second World War is
also empiricism.
The errors committed by Comrade Hsiao Ke are serious
ones. In the past we had no chance to convene such a big conference. Now that we have that chance we can dig out the roots
of dogmatism.
China’s Military Doctrines 129
As regards learning from the Soviet Union, for internal use
we say ‘study critically’. In speaking publicly, in order to avoid
misunderstanding, it would be better to put it: ‘Study the advanced experience of the Soviet Union analytically and selectively.’ It is most important that in studying the advanced
experience of the Soviet Union, we should combine it with our
own independent creative achievements. The universal truth of
Marxism must be combined with Chinese practice. We must
not eat pre-cooked food. If we do we shall be defeated. We
must clarify this point with our Soviet comrades. We have
learned from the Soviet Union in the past, we are still learning
today, and we shall learn in the future. Nevertheless our study
must be combined with our own concrete conditions. We must
say to them: We learn from you, from whom then did you
learn? Why cannot we create something of our own? Moreover,
there have recently been changes among Soviet experts.
Changes took place after the Twentieth Congress and the Zhukhov incident. (Chief Ch’en [vice-premier Ch’en I] interjected:
‘Soviet comrades who have returned home said that when they
came, they brought their experiences with them; now they are
returning they are taking our experiences back.’) This shows
that the situation of the Great Leap Forward inspired not only
us in China, but also our Soviet comrades. (Chief Lin said: ‘In
political matters, such as Party leadership and in political work,
our army has a fine tradition of its own. Our Party’s Marxist-
Leninist level is very high, not to speak of the Chairman's.
The Chairman has said that our editorials are at a higher level
than those of Pravda. When it comes to the superstructure, in
military science, in problems of strategy, we have our own fully
developed system. Lenin died too early. He did not have time to
attend to this question. Stalin had no developed system. We do
not have to learn from the Soviet Union. As regards tactics, we
can learn half and leave half. Their tactics are questionable
both ideologically and as regards their attitude to the masses.
The half we learn would consist of the use of naval and air
forces and the coordination of the services. As for the half we
don’t learn, such as tactical thinking, we have Chairman Mao’s
So we don’t need to learn theirs. We should study technology
and science and also the organization of modern warfare, but
we should use the methodology of the mass line to study it. We
should take advantage of the fact that our generation is still
alive to organize a group of cadres to put together our own
system properly, and to pass it on.’) That’s the way.
Li Shih-min, Ts’ao Ts’ao® etc., all knew how to fight wars.
China’s past has quite a lot to offer. Comrade K’ai Feng® said
that the Sun-tzu ping-fa’ contained no Marxism, but when we
asked him whether he had read it he could not answer. Obvi-ously it is quite wrong to make categorical statements without
having read it. (Chief Lin interjected: ‘Sun-tzu ping-fa does
contain both materialism and dialectics. It is a collective work.
The authors included Sun-tzu, Sun Pin, Ts’ao Ts’ao, Tu Yii,
etc.’)
The elimination of blind faith was brought up at the Chengtu
Conference. It has progressed very rapidly in the last four
months. Since the second session of the Eighth Congress it has
further developed in every domain throughout the country. For
example, Anshan, which originally planned to produce — tens of
thousands of tons of steel, has now revised its target and next
year will reach an output of from — to — tens of thousands of
tons. They have also gone in for the combination of large, small
and medium plants and of native and foreign methods. According to a letter from Comrade XXX in the north-east, in the
second five-year plan the north-east can reach an output of —
tens of thousands of tons. If we have steel and modernized industry, then we can easily develop a modernized defence industry. I am in favour of producing more light weapons so that
we can arm a mass militia. (Chief Lin interjected: ‘The militia is
very important.’) In the past others have looked down on us.
The main reason for this was that we were short of food, steel
and machines. Now we have produced some things for all to see.