Mao Zedong (hereinafter referred to as Mao): Since ancient times, inexperienced people
have always defeated experienced armies; those without guns have defeated those with
guns; a small number of people have defeated a large number of people. Isn't it the same
with you? How many people were there during the August Revolution?
Ho Chi Minh (hereinafter referred to as Ho): There were over 5,000 party members, not
many troops.
Mao: Your army was probably only a few hundred at first, but you'll have a handful later.
Before 1927, weren't you helping us? Back then, we workers and peasants numbered tens of
thousands, organized in trade unions and peasant associations. Peasants had peasant selfdefense forces, and workers had pickets, but we weren't prepared for the enemy's killing. By
the first half of 1927, in just four months, they were wiped out, similar to the situation in
Indonesia today. Of 50,000 party members, fewer than 10,000 remained. Only two out of
ten remained. Where did the other 40,000 go? Some were killed; some surrendered; and a
large number quit, terrified and afraid to move, leaving the village. Only eight or nine
thousand continued to work. I was forced to join the Liangshan movement. I had no
previous preparation for war and was teaching elementary school. That was the year I was
forced to join the Liangshan movement. I did this over and over again for ten years, losing
some battles but mostly winning them. The army grew to 300,000, including guerrilla units
that had been withdrawn from production. However, within a decade, we encountered
three instances of "Left" opportunism. The first was Qu Qiubai; the second was Li Lisan and
Xiang Zhongfa; and the third was Wang Ming. Consequently, the Fifth Anti-"Encirclement
and Suppression" Campaign failed. During that time, we were expelled from the army. I was
"expelled" from the Party once and three times. Actually, I was expelled from the Central
Political Bureau. Rumours spread that I was expelled from the Party and became a
democratic person. I was the secretary of Jinggangshan and the regional special committee
secretary, and I was no longer allowed to join the Party branch. They tried every possible
means to persecute me, but later they said I could become a division commander. That's
how I was, a democratic personage for over six months. Later, after the truth was revealed
and I wasn't expelled, I became a Party representative and a political commissar again. That
was in 1928. They said my mistakes were, first, that I didn't burn enough houses; second,
that I didn't kill enough people; and third, that I said, "Political power comes from the barrel
of a gun." They distributed circulars everywhere, accusing me of being a "Left" opportunist,



saying, "Political power can come from the barrel of a gun." Later, several times, I was
misunderstood by comrades within the Red Army and expelled from the army. I became an
ordinary citizen, doing local work in Fujian. At that time, Comrade Lin Biao stood with me
and supported me. He was in the team led by Zhu De, and his team supported me. But my
own team, involved in the Autumn Harvest Uprising, removed me. Those with whom I had a
long-standing relationship removed me, while those I barely knew supported me. Isn't that
strange?
Ho: There are all kinds of strange things.
Mao: Do you have that kind of experience? You've had smooth sailing, having been a Party
leader from the start.
Ho: You're right. I've had smooth sailing, never facing opposition.
Mao: You have Marx's blessing. You have more Marxism than I do.
Ho: I don't admit it.
Mao: Why don't people oppose you?
Ho: Our Party is small, our country is small, and our army is small. Other leaders in the Party
and the army are younger than me, which is also a reason.
Mao: You have a lot of experience, but that has its drawbacks: you haven't experienced
setbacks, and you lack experience.
Ho: That's right.
Mao: Everyone greets you with "Long Live”3. That's one thing I differ from you on.
Ho: Precisely because of that, you have a lot of experience.
Chairman Mao: They have tried to overthrow me many times. One time was in Jiangxi. We
won the first, second, third, and fourth counter-"return suppression" campaigns, but they
accused me of mistakes, saying I had consistently taken a Rightist opportunist line and lacked
a single shred of Marxism-Leninism. A little bit is fine, but not a shred. They think they are
100% Marxist-Leninist. They say my fighting was also opportunistic. They say we should
attack the big cities, but I won't. It's like you saying that not attacking the big cities now is
also Rightist opportunism. If you attack, they'll have to retreat once they attack. Of your
800,000 enemy troops, only 200,000 are mobile. The other 600,000 must defend the roads,
airports, seaports, and cities. It's precisely on this point that you will prevail.
Ho: I'm reporting that we have several battalions around Saigon.

3 The Chinese words are “wan sui” and were used repeatedly towards Mao during the Cultural Revolution.



Mao: But don't attack Saigon or the shipping ports. Don't occupy other provincial capitals for
the time being. If you do, you'll recover, only to have to flee again.
Ho: We currently have a special forces unit that will attack the US embassy and airports in
urban areas. We are not planning to attack major cities right now.
Chairman: That's good. It's good to go in and out occasionally, like when attacking a shipping
port. Because you have your people acting as secret agents, the barbed wire, the earth pits,
and so on, have to be sabotaged. Send a few hundred people in for a surprise attack; then
fire artillery from outside. A few hours later, a few hundred more people emerge. This is
good. We've done this many times before. By capturing some small towns, we can gather a
lot of information, including enemy newspapers and maps. We can also expand our forces,
expanding by thousands within a few days. For example, we attacked Ji'an in Jiangxi. We had
30,000 men, and the enemy had only a brigade of a few thousand men. We stayed there for
ten days and expanded our forces by 10,000 to 20,000. Later, we attacked Zhangzhou in
Fujian. I sent Lin Biao there. We annihilated an enemy division and obtained a large amount
of weapons and ammunition, as well as a lot of rubber shoes from Tan Kah Kee, a wealthy
Singaporean Chinese businessman who was in the rubber business. We also obtained a
collection of Marxist-Leninist books. Why did the Kuomintang have Marxist-Leninist books?
They had them in their library, too, for research purposes. Such works include Lenin's "State
and Revolution" and "Two Strategies," as well as world economic geography, the history of
social development, and Deborin's philosophy of history.
Chairman Mao: I'm very familiar with Deborin. Stalin criticized him as a Menshevik. He
disagreed with Stalin and Lenin's claim that he had ushered in a new era in philosophy.
Khrushchev awarded him a medal after he turned eighty, and he died only in the past year or
two. Those who criticized Deborin in the past have now become revisionists, such as Midin,
Yu Yu, and Rosenthal. Revisionism has also emerged in the Communist Party of China. Peng
Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi, and Yang Shangkun are all your friends, as well as my friends.
Didn't you ask if we knew about this before? We did. Peng Zhen made a series of mistakes,
and I wanted to remove him several years ago. Beijing is an independent kingdom; no one
can interfere. It's worse than Hanoi. I can't interfere, and Comrade Liu Shaoqi can't interfere,
Comrade Zhou Enlai can't interfere, and Comrade Deng Xiaoping can't interfere. Regarding
Luo Ruiqing, when Peng Dehuai was being purged in 1959, someone proposed that he be
made Chief of the General Staff, but some of us disagreed. Later, the comrade who
nominated him for the position was persecuted, and this lasted for six years. The person
who nominated him was his superior, and now he's the one who's being persecuted. I advise
you: not all of your people are loyal to you. The majority may be loyal, but a small minority
may only pay lip service to you, wishing you a quick death. When they say "Long live," pay
attention and analyze. The more they flatter you, the less reliable they are. This is a natural
law. A party without division? That's not the case. Everything is divided into two. This wasn't
invented by me; it was invented by Lenin. What's my invention? It's clearly stated by Lenin in



his Philosophical Notebooks. Lenin didn't talk about the three principles of dialectics. Marx
and Engels copied Hegel's concepts of "unity of opposites," "mutual transformation of
quality and quality," and "negation of the negation," but Engels primarily copied them; Lenin
did not. He said that the unity of opposites is the core of dialectics, but it needs to be
explained and developed. According to this law, everything is divided into two, a unity of
opposites. Everything always has two opposites. If your party only has complete unity and
no opposites, it would be unrealistic. Parties all over the world are splitting. Marx and Engels
did not anticipate that their successors, Bernstein and Kautsky, would become anti-Marxists.
After their deaths, the parties they founded and led—the German Social Democratic Party,
the French Socialist Party, and others—would become bourgeois forces. Failure to heed this
principle will lead to harm. Although Lenin anticipated the emergence of oppositionists like
Zinoviev, Trotsky, and Bukharin, his solution was to avoid execution. From 1917 to 1924,
Lenin held power for less than eight years before his death. During this period, he primarily
engaged in theoretical work. He did a little work with the trade unions, but not much. He did
absolutely nothing with the peasants, and he didn't even develop a program for the peasant
movement. During the October Revolution, the Narodnik program was temporarily adopted
as the Bolshevik program. At a meeting of the Soviets of Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers'
Deputies, Lenin warned against excessive discussion of this program. The Narodniks were
unable to implement their own program, and their call to "go to the people" was
inappropriate. Later, the Narodniks became the spokesmen for the rich peasants. You
previously said we made mistakes, that land reform shouldn't have gone too far to the left,
and that too many people were killed. I think we killed too few. You published Humanities
and Fine Products. You were afraid of mass demonstrations and asked us for tear gas.
Humanities and Fine Products are nothing more than the Beijing Daily and Beijing Evening
News. All is equal. As long as we understand, we are prepared, and the majority of the Party
is prepared. We are not afraid. We are all over seventy years old, and one day we will be
invited by Marx. Who will be his successor, Bernstein, Kautsky, or Khrushchev, is unknown.
We must prepare; there is still time. In short, we must look at things from two perspectives
and not just look at the current chants of "Long live the Communist Party."
Ho: Right now, four Chinese provinces are helping seven Vietnamese provinces, such as
Guangdong helping our Quang Ninh Province.
Mao: Help with what?
Ho: They help with agricultural production, water conservancy, improving rice and cattle
breeds, and also help build small power plants and factories, improve farm tools, and so on.
Mao: Is your steel mill up and running?
Ho: It has already begun production. Enemy planes have also begun bombing nearby.
Mao: How much steel is produced annually?



Ho: Very little. We don't have any rolling equipment yet.
Mao: Do you have coal or iron ore there? Where does the iron ore come from? Does it come
from China?
Ho: Vietnam has coal and iron. China also sends some.
Mao: Without steel and the machinery industry, the country would lack a complete
industrial system.
Ho: You may remember that it was after meeting you and, inspired by your efforts, that I
built the steel plant.
Mao: I care most about the steel and machinery industries.
Ho: The equipment and experts at our Taiyuan Steel Plant are all Chinese.
Mao: We can start small and develop gradually. In a dozen years, we'll be able to accomplish
this. Small rolling mills can be obtained from China, and new steelmaking technologies can
be adopted. We've already begun developing oxygen steelmaking. Some new technologies
can also be learned from them. Initially, don't rush things. We've suffered from overdoing
things. We launched 1,700 capital construction projects a year. After a few years, they didn't
work out, so we scaled back to just over 700. You see, we've reduced the number by 1,000.
Some have already been completed. The remaining capital construction units are like lungs
or diseased heads. Back then, people were greedy for size, quantity, and completeness. It's a
pity you didn't visit Jinzhou. There were many small industries there. Without funds, cadres
and workers each chipped in. Without money to build houses, they built straw huts. Now,
many new products have been introduced. Some large factories are quite backward. For
example, Anshan Iron and Steel, with 160,000 workers and an annual output of 5 to 6 million
tons of steel, has its own backward aspects.
Mao: ...Chen Duxiu ruled from 1921 to 1927, a total of seven years; later he deserted and
joined the Trotskyists. Cui Qiubai, a "leftist" figure, served in the second term for only three
or four months. I was expelled from the Politburo, as I just mentioned. Someone spread
rumors that I was expelled and became a democratic personage during this period. Li Lisan
and Xiang Zhongfa, the third term, served for a few months and were very "leftist," wanting
to attack the big cities. Wang Ming, the fourth term, reigned the longest, for four years. He
never visited the base areas, but his people did. He sent people to all five base areas; he also
had people in the Kuomintang-controlled areas. Peng Zhen implemented Wang Ming's line.
Zhang Wentian, the fifth term. Peng Zhen, Luo Ruiqing, and Lu Dingyi were members of the
Kuomintang.
Ho: Did they join the Kuomintang in the past?



Mao: During the period of the KMT-CCP cooperation during the First Great Revolution, that
doesn't count. I also joined, but the Party asked us to. There's no definitive evidence against
them; it's just a suspicion. They all worked in KMT-controlled areas for a period of time.
Ho: Were they bribed by the KMT?
Mao: Peng Zhen was arrested by the KMT, but we don't know how he got out. Why didn't
we notice them infiltrating the Party for so long? We've noticed their mistakes. For example,
Peng Zhen made mistakes while running the Party School in Yan'an. He also made mistakes
while in Jin-Cha-Ji, but they're only now being exposed. We didn't know about them before.
Nie Rongzhen knew about them; he was the commander and political commissar of Jin-Cha-
Ji. Yang Chengwu was also from Jin-Cha-Ji. Peng Zhen had been in Jin-Cha-Ji for less than two
years, implementing Wang Ming's line. This line differed from the one during the ten-year
civil war. During the war, Wang Ming's line was "leftist," advocating attacking large cities.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wang Ming's line was rightist
and capitulationist. Later, Wang Ming fled, going to Moscow. We sent him there. He still
writes articles under a false name, criticizing us. Also fleeing was Zhang Guotao, then a
member of the Central Political Bureau and leader of the Red Fourth Front Army, who is now
a spy in Hong Kong. The Director of the General Political Department in Jinggangshan, my
successor as Political Commissar, and Minister of Logistics, all defected and joined the
Kuomintang. You see, several dynasties were traitors. Chen Duxiu defected, and Qu Qiubai
surrendered after being arrested. Xiang Zhongfa (actually a Li Lisan-affiliated leader) was
arrested and led the enemy to capture others; after the enemy captured them, they killed
him too—quite foolishly. Wang Ming also became a traitor after his arrest. He was arrested
several times, and we don't know how he was released. In Northeast China, he was captured
by the Japanese; in Shanghai, he was captured by Chiang Kai-shek! Then he was released.
Rao Shushi was arrested while serving in the New Fourth Army, but how he was released is
unclear. Peng Dehuai was the head of the Kuomintang. He fought against us, then later
became opportunistic, and he consistently made mistakes related to his leadership. Luo
Ruiqing collaborated with Peng Dehuai. Peng Dehuai, Luo Ruiqing, Peng Zhen, Lu Dingyi, and
Yang Shangkun—they were all in the same group. Why did it take so long to expose them?
We need to take a look at them. They were also colluding with foreign countries.
Ho: Wouldn't it be very dangerous for them to stay?
Mao: It is very dangerous. But unless the right opportunity arises and they expose
themselves, we won't punish them. Take Peng Dehuai, for example. He made mistakes over
and over again, and we simply criticized him, but he held a grudge. During the Korean War,
he was commander, and after returning to China, he served as Minister of Defense for seven
years. How many generals did he pull away? He pulled away fewer than ten generals and
civilian officials. Throughout our Party's five successive dynasties, each leader was
incompetent, and the revolution failed. There were two major failures: the failure of the
Great Revolution under Chen Duxiu's leadership in 1927, and the Long March in 1934, when



an army of 300,000 was reduced to 25,000. Wasn't that also a failure? But the Party was not
destroyed; the army still had 25,000 men, and after the eight-year War of Resistance Against
Japan, it grew to one million. By this time, we had gained experience. Having gone through
Chen Duxiu's Right opportunism, Wang Ming's "Left" opportunism, and three waves of "Left"
opportunism by Qu Qiubai and Li Lisan, we had gained experience, enabling us to draw
conclusions. Therefore, we must thank these people for educating us. First, we must thank
the Kuomintang and imperialism. Second, we must thank the Right opportunists, "Left"
opportunists, and traitors. Otherwise, Marxism alone would not have educated us.
Mao: Our recent struggle began last November, and it's been over seven months. Initially,
Yao Wenyuan, a young man, launched the attack, discussing issues such as clean officials.
Aren't you in favor of clean officials? You say there are clean palaces in the world, but I
haven't seen one. There's no palace without corruption; it's just a matter of degree. There's
no truly clean palace.
Ho: My father was a county magistrate, and he wasn't corrupt.
Mao: Not necessarily. You were young then, so you didn't know he was corrupt. Being a
county magistrate was quite a feat.
Ho: He was dismissed after just a few months.
Mao: That was because he didn't have time to be corrupt. After a year or two as county
magistrate, I don't think he was corrupt at all, but to a lesser extent.
Kang Sheng: No official is without corruption; officials and corruption are inseparable.
Mao: Now we are no longer dealing with the issue of honest and corrupt officials. We are
carrying out the Cultural Revolution, targeting the educational, literary, academic,
philosophical, historical, publishing, and journalistic communities. The literary and artistic
world is divided into many sectors, including theatre, film, music, fine arts, and sculpture.
The theatrical world is further divided into Peking opera and hundreds of local operas.
Mao: Today, I only slept for two hours because I have something on my mind. I want to see
you, Uncle Hu. I asked what time you get up and found out you get up at five. Okay, I'll see
you at seven. I slept eight hours the day before yesterday and eight hours yesterday. Two
hours will be enough for today. In the summer, I sometimes go days without sleep. During
the Lushan Conference, I didn't sleep. After giving a speech, I went swimming and came back
to talk about persecuting Peng Dehuai. Now, the main thing is to read the big-character
posters; the newspapers are also very lively. The big-character posters are very powerful,
with a mass appeal and a vigorous atmosphere. You can go to Zhejiang University and take a
look. Go at night, in disguise, and wear a mask. It's a good way to mobilize the masses to
persecute reactionaries.
Ho: I also saw big-character posters in China in 1957.



Mao: It wasn't as deep-rooted or widespread as this time. This time, hundreds or even
thousands of people, big and small, were targeted, especially in academia, education,
journalism, publishing, the arts, universities, middle schools, and elementary schools.
Because we had no resources at the time, we accepted all the Kuomintang teachers. We had
very few teachers in universities, middle schools, and elementary schools, as well as
newspaper publishers, opera singers, novelists, painters, and filmmakers, so we took in all
the Kuomintang teachers. These people infiltrated our party. That way, you understand the
logic of the Cultural Revolution.
Ho: China has it, and Vietnam has it too. What China is doing, Vietnam is also doing,
although on a smaller scale. The situation in Vietnam is the same as in China.
Mao: It's probably the same. You also have teachers in elementary schools, middle schools,
and universities, and they're all old intellectuals. People in the Party come from all corners of
the country, and there's a mix of all kinds of people. Eighty percent of our Party members
joined after 1949. They haven't experienced any storms or struggles, and among them there
are both good and bad.
Ho: So there are contradictions.
Mao: Yes, there are contradictions. I have contradictions with many people.
Ho: Judging from the historical situation you've described, the issue is truly complex.
Mao: The struggle is complex, but the Party has not perished.
Ho: After listening to the talks of Chairman Mao, Chairman Liu, and other comrades, I've
learned some lessons and am now more worried than before.
Mao: On the one hand, we should be worried, but on the other hand, we should be
optimistic. The Party will not perish, the sky will not fall, the trees will continue to grow on
the mountains, the fish will continue to swim in the water, and women will continue to give
birth. If you don't believe it, just wait and see. Does Khrushchev's emergence mean that the
sky will fall, the trees will stop growing on the mountains, the fish will stop swimming in the
water, and women will stop giving birth? I don't believe it. The development of things
constantly turns to their opposites. After the deaths of Marx and Engels, their successors
became anti-Marxists. After Lenin's death, there was Stalin's generation. Stalin didn't
anticipate that after his death, Khrushchev would oppose him, and with such brutality.