Comment on a Situation Briefing
(August 27, 1960)

This document is to be distributed to all central bureaus and the Party committees of provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions for reference, and also distributed to all Party groups at the central level.

Central Committee
August 27
[!]
1. Carry the socialist revolution through to the end, correctly handle contradictions among the people, and adjust the contradictions between the relations of production and the productive forces, and between the superstructure and the economic base.
2. Strengthen the study of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought; train and expand the ranks of theoretical workers, resolutely wage struggle against revisionism; strengthen ideological education work for the second and third generations, and train successors.
3. Persist in the annual rectification campaign.
4. Strengthen the Party’s organizational construction, uphold democratic centralism, and enhance the Party’s combat effectiveness.
On September 4, 1960,
the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China transmitted this document.

--- Notes

Refers to the report of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, dated August 24, 1960, on the first stage of the enlarged meeting of the Provincial Party Committee Standing Committee, submitted to the Central Committee and the Shanghai Bureau. It states therein:
We began convening the enlarged meeting of the Standing Committee on August 16. The first stage discussed the international situation. After hearing the spirit of the Beidaihe meeting, the participants were somewhat shaken, felt sudden surprise, and also felt indignation. They unanimously held that our Party delegation at the Bucharest meeting elucidated our Party’s principles and positions on a series of issues in the international communist movement, raised the banner of righteousness in opposing the revisionist line, exposed the features of revisionism, and achieved a major victory in the first round of the struggle. Everyone expressed satisfaction with and support for the serious and flexible struggle waged by the delegation, and resolved to unite even more closely around the Party Central Committee, withstand the rampant attacks of revisionism, and strive for even greater victories on all fronts. The meeting held that:
The emergence of a revisionist adverse current in the international communist movement at present is not accidental, nor is it a question of the ideological character of particular individuals, but has its profound class roots and ideological roots. In the Soviet Union and some Eastern European socialist countries, the struggle against the influence of bourgeois ideology has long been relaxed, bourgeois right has been gladly accepted, and a high-salaried stratum has gradually taken shape;
in the rural areas there,
because the socialist revolution was not thorough, a stratum of wealthy peasants is still preserved and even developing;
in some old colonialist countries of Western Europe,
a labor aristocracy exists. These strata all wish only to preserve their vested interests, fear war,
and fear revolution. This is the class foundation giving rise to revisionism. On a worldwide scale,
a period of peace lasting 15 years has already passed. The imperialists and revisionists do their utmost to threaten the masses with nuclear terror and spread pacifism;
hence, among a section of the unawakened masses,
a fear of war is widespread.
This is the ideological foundation for the revisionists’ begging for peace. The struggle between us and revisionism will be protracted, arduous, and complex.
The following lessons must be drawn: