Comment on the Report of the Military Commission Administrative Group on Conveying Mao Zedong’s Instruction to Criticize Chen Boda and “Rectify the Style of Work”

(March 1, 1971)

Read. Very good. Having gained the initiative, strive to carry it through.

March 1, 1971

[1] Chen refers to Chen Boda.
[2] This report, submitted by the Central Military Commission Administrative Group to Mao Zedong and others on February 28, 1971, recounted the situation of the meeting convened on the evening of February 22 with principal leaders from the various headquarters, services and arms, the National Defense Science and Technology Commission, academies directly under the Military Commission, and the Beijing Garrison to convey and discuss Mao Zedong’s instruction that “the focus of criticizing Chen and rectifying the style of work is on criticizing Chen.” The report said that the Military Commission forum that began on January 9 had, because we failed to seize criticizing Chen as the focus, lasted a month without criticizing Chen at all — a serious political error, a major loss to the political and ideological construction of the entire army, and a deeply painful lesson. Several comrades in our Military Commission Administrative Group committed errors of direction and line at the Second Plenary Session of the Ninth Central Committee; they should have, at the forum, linked up with their own errors and used the criticism of Chen to educate themselves and clarify their thinking, but they did not do so, resulting in passivity and repeated mistakes. “These several comrades, at this meeting to convey the instructions, engaged in self-criticism regarding their past superstitious belief in the anti-Party element Chen Boda, having been deceived and taken in by him, quoting sayings he produced, and other serious mistakes, and stated that they would earnestly examine themselves during the campaign to ‘criticize Chen and rectify the style of work.’” At that time, the head of the Central Military Commission Administrative Group was Huang Yongsheng, the deputy heads were Wu Faxian, and Ye Qun, Li Zuopeng, and Qiu Huizuo were members. During the “Cultural Revolution,” they, together with Chen Boda, actively participated in the Lin Biao counterrevolutionary clique’s conspiratorial activities to seize supreme power in the Party and the state, and they were the principal culprits in this counterrevolutionary clique case.