2. Treat all questions analytically; do not negate everything. The question concerning the line of the central leadership during the period from the Fourth Plenary Session  to the Tsunyi Meeting,  for example, should be analysed from two aspects. It should be pointed out on the one hand that the political tactics, the military tactics and the cadres policy which the central leading body adopted during that period were wrong in their main aspects, but on the other hand that on such fundamental issues as opposing Chiang Kai-shek and carrying on the Agrarian Revolution and the struggle of the Red Army there was no dispute between ourselves and the comrades who committed errors. And even the tactical side needs to be analysed. On the land question, for instance, their error consisted in the ultra-Left policy of allotting no land to the landlords and poor land to the rich peasants, but these comrades were at one with us on confiscating the land of the landlords for distribution among peasants who had little or no land. Concrete analysis of concrete conditions, Lenin said, is "the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism".  Lacking an analytical approach, many of our comrades do not want to go deeply into complex matters, to analyse and study them over and over again, but like to draw simple conclusions which are either absolutely affirmative or absolutely negative. The fact that our newspapers are lacking in analytical articles and that the habit of analysis is not yet fully cultivated in the Party shows that there are such shortcomings. From now on we should remedy this state of affairs.
3. On the discussion of the documents of the Sixth National Congress of the Party. It should be stated that the line of the Sixth National Congress was basically correct, since that Congress defined the character of the present revolution as bourgeois-democratic, defined the situation at that time as an interval between two revolutionary high tides, repudiated opportunism and putschism and promulgated the Ten-Point Programme.  All this was correct. The Congress also had its defects. For instance, among its other shortcomings or mistakes, it failed to point out the very protracted nature of the Chinese revolution and the very great importance of rural base areas in the revolution. Nonetheless, the Sixth National Congress played a progressive role in the history of our Party.
4. On the question of whether the provisional central leadership that was formed in Shanghai in 1931 and the Fifth Plenary Session  which it subsequently convened were legal or not. The Central Committee holds that both were legal, but it should be stated that the procedures for the election were inadequate and that this case should be taken as a historical lesson.
5. On the question of factions in the history of the Party. It should be stated that as a result of the series of changes since the Tsunyi Meeting the factions which formerly existed and played an unwholesome role in the history of our Party no longer exist. In our present study of the two lines within the Party, it is absolutely necessary to point out that those factions did exist and did play an unwholesome role. But it would be wrong to think that factions with the same erroneous political programmes and organizational forms still exist in the Party, after all the changes brought about by so many inner-Party struggles--the Tsunyi Meeting of January 1935, the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee in October 1938, the enlarged session of the Political Bureau in September 1941,  the Party-wide rectification movement in 1942 and the campaign begun in the winter of 1943 for the study of the past struggles between the two lines within the Party. The old factions are gone. What is left is only the remnants of dogmatist and empiricist ideology, which can be overcome by continuing and intensifying our rectification movement. But what still exists in our Party to a serious extent, and almost everywhere, is a more or less blind "mountain-stronghold" mentality. For instance, there is a lack of mutual understanding, mutual respect and unity among comrades of different units, which arises from differences in their background of struggle, differences in the areas in which they work (as between one base area and another and as between the Japanese-occupied areas, the Kuomintang areas and the revolutionary base areas) and differences in their departments of work (as between one army unit and another and as between one kind of work and another); this phenomenon seems quite commonplace but in fact it seriously obstructs the unity of the Party and the growth of its fighting capacity. The social and historical roots of the mountain-stronghold mentality lie in the fact that the Chinese petty bourgeoisie is particularly large and that for a long period our rural base areas have been cut off from one another by the enemy, while the subjective cause is the insufficiency of inner-Party education. The important task now confronting us is to point out these causes, to persuade our comrades to get rid of their blindness and raise the level of their political awareness, to break down the ideological barriers that separate comrades and to promote mutual understanding and respect, so as to bring about unity throughout the Party.
A clear understanding of these questions by the whole Party will not only assure the success of our present course of study within the Party, but will also assure the victory of the Chinese revolution.
The present situation has two characteristics: one is that the anti-fascist front is growing stronger and the fascist front is declining, and the second is that within the anti-fascist front the people's forces are growing stronger and the anti-popular forces are declining. The first characteristic is quite obvious and can readily be seen. Hitler will be defeated before long, and the Japanese aggressors, too, are heading for defeat. The second characteristic is not so obvious and cannot readily be seen, but it is daily becoming more manifest in Europe, in Britain and the United States and in China.
The growth of the people's forces in China has to be explained with our Party as the centre of the picture.
The growth of our Party during the War of Resistance Against Japan can be divided into three stages. The first stage was from 1937 to 1940. In 1937 and 1938, the first two years of this stage, the Japanese militarists took the Kuomintang seriously and the Communist Party lightly; therefore they threw their main forces against the Kuomintang front, and, in their policy towards the Kuomintang, military attack was primary and political blandishments to bring about capitulation were supplementary; they did not take the Communist-led anti-Japanese base areas seriously, believing that these amounted to only a handful of Communists engaged in guerrilla actions. But after occupying Wuhan in October 1938, the Japanese imperialists began to change their policy and to take the Communist Party seriously and the Kuomintang lightly. In their policy towards the Kuomintang, political blandishments to bring about capitulation became primary and military attack supplementary, while at the same time they gradually shifted their main forces to deal with the Communists. For the Japanese imperialists now felt it was no longer the Kuomintang, but the Communist Party, that was to be feared. In 1937 and 1938, the Kuomintang put rather more effort into the War of Resistance, its relations with our Party were comparatively good and it permitted rather more freedom, although imposing many restrictions on the people's anti-Japanese movement. After the fall of Wuhan, however, because of its defeats in the war and its increasing hostility towards the Communist Party, the Kuomintang gradually became more reactionary, more active against the Communists and more passive in the war against Japan. In 1937, as a result of the setbacks in the civil war period, the Communist Party had only about 40,000 organized members and an army of 30,000 men; hence it was taken lightly by the Japanese militarists. But by 1940 the Party's membership had risen to 800,000, our army had grown to nearly 500,000 and the population of the base areas, including those paying grain tax only to us and those paying it both to us and to the Japanese and puppets,  totalled about 100,000,000. In the course of several years our Party had opened up such an extensive theatre of war, namely, the Liberated Areas, that for no less than five and a half years we were able to prevent any strategic offensive by the main forces of the Japanese invaders against the Kuomintang front, draw these forces around ourselves, extricate the Kuomintang from the crisis in its theatre of war and maintain the protracted War of Resistance. But during that stage some comrades in our Party committed an error; they underestimated Japanese imperialism (and so did not see the protracted and ruthless nature of the war, maintained that mobile warfare with large formations should be primary and belittled guerrilla warfare), placed reliance on the Kuomintang, and failed to pursue an independent policy soberly (hence their capitulationism towards the Kuomintang and their vacillation in applying the policy of boldly and freely arousing the masses to establish anti-Japanese democratic base areas behind the enemy lines and greatly expanding the armed forces led by our Party). Meanwhile our Party had recruited large numbers of new members who were still inexperienced, and all the base areas in the enemy's rear were newly established and not yet consolidated. During this stage, a kind of conceit appeared within the Party because of the favourable development of the general situation and the growth of our Party and armed forces, and many members became swelled-headed. During this stage, however, we overcame the Right deviation in the Party and carried out an independent policy; we not only hit Japanese imperialism hard, created base areas and expanded the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies, but also repulsed the first large-scale anti-Communist onslaught by the Kuomintang.
The years 1941 and 1942 formed the second stage. In order to prepare and prosecute the war against Britain and the United States, the Japanese imperialists more actively pursued the policy to which they had switched after the fall of Wuhan, the policy of concentrating on the Communist Party and not on the Kuomintang. They massed a still larger part of their main forces around all the Communist-led base areas, conducted one "mopping-up" operation after another, and executed the ruthless policy of "burn all, kill all, loot all", concentrating their attacks on our Party. As a result, in the two years 1941-42, our Party was placed in an extremely difficult position. During this stage its base areas shrank in size, the population fell to under 50,000,000, the Eighth Route Army was reduced to 300,000, the loss of cadres was very great, and our finances and economy were very heavily strained. Meanwhile, the Kuomintang, finding its hands free, moved against our Party in a thousand and one ways, unleashed its second large-scale anti-Communist onslaught and attacked us in co-ordination with the Japanese imperialists. But this difficult position served to educate us Communists and we learned many things. We learned how to combat the enemy's "mopping-up" operations, his policy of "nibbling" our territory, his "tighten public security" campaign,  his policy of "burn all, kill all, loot all" and his policy of extorting political recantations. We learned or began to learn how to carry out the "three thirds system" in the state organs of the united front, how to carry out the land policy, the rectification movement to correct our style of study, style in Party relations and style of writing, the policy of better troops and simpler administration, the policy of unified leadership, the movement for supporting the government and cherishing the people, and the development of production. And we overcame many shortcomings, including the conceit of many people that had arisen during the first stage. Although our losses in the second stage were very heavy, we held our ground; we repulsed the offensives of the Japanese invaders on the one hand and the second large-scale anti-Communist onslaught of the Kuomintang on the other. The Kuomintang's attacks on the Communist Party and the struggles we had to wage in self-defence gave rise to a kind of ultra-Left deviation in the Party, one example being the belief that Kuomintang-Communist cooperation would soon break down, with the result that excessive attacks were made on the landlords and unity with public figures outside the Party was neglected. But we overcame this deviation also. In the struggle to counter the friction created by the Kuomintang we affirmed the principle of waging struggles "on just grounds, to our advantage, and with restraint", and in united front work we pointed out the necessity of "unity, struggle, unity through struggle". Thus we maintained the Anti-Japanese National United Front throughout the country as well as in the base areas.
The third stage extends from 1943 to the present. Our various policies have become more effective and, in particular, the rectification movement and the development of production have yielded results of a fundamental nature, thereby making our Party invincible both ideologically and materially. Moreover, last year we learned, or began to learn, how to carry out our policy on the examination of the histories of cadres and our policy on combating secret agents. It is in those circumstances that our base areas have again expanded, that the population has risen to over 80,000,000, including those paying the grain tax only to us and those paying it both to us and to the Japanese and puppets, that our army has grown to 470,000 and our people's militia to 2,270,000, and that our Party membership has reached 900,000 and more.
In 1943 the Japanese militarists made no appreciable change in their policy towards China and continued to direct their main attacks at the Communist Party. For more than three years, from 1941 to the present, over 60 per cent of the Japanese troops in China have been pressing hard on the anti-Japanese base areas led by our Party. During these years the several hundred thousand Kuomintang troops who were left behind the enemy lines have been unable to withstand the blows of Japanese imperialism; about half surrendered, about half were wiped out, and only a small number-survived and withdrew. Those Kuomintang troops who surrendered have turned and attacked our Party, which has consequently had to resist over 90 per cent of the puppet troops. The Kuomintang has only had to resist less than 40 per cent of the Japanese forces and less than 10 per cent of the puppet troops. For fully five and a half years since the fall of Wuhan in October 1938, the Japanese militarists have not launched a single strategic offensive on the Kuomintang front; there have been only a few relatively big operations (in Chekiang-Kiangsi, Changsha, western Hupeh, southern Honan and Changteh), and even these were mere raids, while they concentrated their main attention on the anti-Japanese base areas led by our Party. In this situation, the Kuomintang has pursued the policy of "retreating into the mountains" and "watching others fight", simply staving off blows when the enemy advanced and looking on with folded arms when he withdrew. In 1943 the Kuomintang became even more reactionary in its domestic policy and made its third large-scale anti-Communist onslaught, which we again repulsed.
From 1943 to the spring of this year, the Japanese aggressors have been steadily losing ground in the Pacific theatre, the United States has been intensifying its counter-offensive, and now, in the West, Hitler is tottering under the heavy blows of the Soviet Red Army. In an effort to avert their doom, the Japanese imperialists have conceived the idea of forcing the Peiping-Hankow and Hankow-Canton Railways open for through traffic and, since they have not yet succeeded in their policy of inducing the Kuomintang in Chungking to capitulate, they have found it necessary to deal it another blow; hence their plan for a large-scale offensive on the Kuomintang front this year. The Honan campaign  has been going on for over a month.
The enemy forces there amount to only a few divisions, yet several hundred thousand Kuomintang troops have collapsed without a battle, and only the troops of miscellaneous brands have been able to put up some sort of fight. In Tang En-po's command, utter disorder prevails, with the officers estranged from their men and the troops from the people, and more than two-thirds of his total forces have been lost. Likewise, the divisions which Hu Tsung-nan dispatched to Honan collapsed at their first encounter with the enemy. This is wholly the result of the reactionary policies which the Kuomintang has rigorously enforced for the past few years. During the five and a half years since the fall of Wuhan, the theatre of war of the Liberated Areas led by the Communist Party has borne the brunt of resisting the main forces of the Japanese and puppets; and although there may be same change in the future, it can only be temporary because the Kuomintang rendered utterly degenerate by its reactionary policy of passive resistance to Japan and active opposition to the Communists, is bound to suffer serious reverses. When that happens, our Party's task in fighting the enemy and the puppet's will become heavier still. What the Kuomintang has gained from looking on with folded arms for five and a half years is the loss of its fighting capacity. What the Communist Party has gained from fighting and struggling hard for five and a half years is the strengthening of its fighting capacity. This is what will decide China's destiny.
Comrades can see for themselves that in the seven years since July 1937 the people's democratic forces under the leadership of our Party have gone through three phases--a rise, a decline and a new rise. We have beaten back the ferocious attacks of the Japanese invaders, established extensive revolutionary base areas, greatly expanded the Party and the army, repulsed three large-scale anti-Communist onslaughts by the Kuomintang and overcome the erroneous Right and "Left" ideologies in the Party; and the whole Party has gained much valuable experience. This sums up our work over the past seven years.
Our present task is to prepare ourselves for a still greater responsibility. We must prepare to drive the Japanese invaders out of China, whatever the circumstances. To enable our Party to shoulder this responsibility, we must further expand and consolidate our Party, our army and base areas, pay attention to work in the big cities and along the main lines of communication and raise the work in the cities to a position of equal importance with that in the base areas.
As for our work in the base areas, during the first stage these areas were greatly expanded but not consolidated, and so in the second stage they contracted as soon as they came under the heavy blows of the enemy. In the second stage all the anti-Japanese base areas led by our Party went through a hard tempering process and improved greatly as compared with the first stage; the cadres and Party members considerably advanced their ideological and political level, and learned many things they did not know before. But it takes time to clarify thinking and to study policy, and we have still much to learn. Our Party is not yet sufficiently strong, not yet sufficiently united or consolidated, and so cannot yet take on greater responsibility than we now carry. From now on the problem is further to expand and consolidate our Party, our army and base areas in the continued prosecution of the War of Resistance; this is the first indispensable item in our ideological and material preparation for the gigantic work of the future. Without this preparation, we shall not be able to drive out the Japanese invaders and liberate the whole of China.
Our work in the big cities and along the main lines of communication has always been very inadequate. If now we do not strive to rally around our Party the tens of millions of the toiling masses and other people oppressed by the Japanese imperialists in the big cities and along the main lines of communication, and do not prepare armed mass insurrections, our army and rural base areas will face all sorts of difficulties for lack of co-ordination with the cities. For more than ten years we have been in the countryside and have had to encourage people to know the countryside well and to build the rural base areas. During these ten years and more the task of preparing insurrections in the cities, as decided by the Party's Sixth National Congress, was not and could not have been carried out. But now it is different, and the resolution of the Sixth National Congress will be carried out after the Seventh National Congress. This Congress will probably be held soon and will discuss the problems of strengthening our work in the cities and winning nation-wide victory.
The industrial conference of the Shensi-Kansu-Ningsia Border Region, now in session, is of great significance. In 1937 the number of factory workers in the Border Region was only 700, it increased to 7,000 by 1942 and is now 12,000. Those figures are not to be treated lightly. While we are in the base areas, we must learn how to administer the industry, commerce and communications of big cities, or otherwise we shall not know what to do when the time comes.
Thus the second indispensable item in our ideological and material preparation for the future is to organize for armed insurrections in the big cities and along the main lines of communication and to learn how to administer industry and commerce. Without this preparation too, we shall not be able to drive out the Japanese invaders and liberate the whole of China.
In order to win new victories we must call on our Party cadres to get rid of the baggage and start up the machinery. "To get rid of the baggage" means to free our minds of many encumbrances. Many things may become baggage, may become encumbrances, if we cling to them blindly and uncritically. Let us take some illustrations. Having made mistakes, you may feel that, come what may, you are saddled with them and so become dispirited if you have not made mistakes, you may feel that you are free from error and so become conceited. Lack of achievement in work may breed pessimism and depression, while achievement may breed pride and arrogance. A comrade with a short record of struggle may shirk responsibility on this account, while a veteran may become opinionated because of his long record of struggle. Worker and peasant comrades, because of pride in their class origin, may look down upon intellectuals, while intellectuals, because they have a certain amount of knowledge, may look down upon workers and peasants. Any specialized skill may be capitalized on and so may lead to arrogance and contempt of others. Even one's age may become ground for conceit. The young, because they are bright and capable, may look down upon the old; and the old, because they are rich in experience, may look down upon the young. All such things become encumbrances or baggage if there is no critical awareness. An important reason why some comrades are very lofty, isolating themselves from the masses and making repeated mistakes, is that they carry such baggage. Thus, a prerequisite for maintaining close links with the masses and making fewer mistakes is to examine one's baggage, to get rid of it and so emancipate the mind. There have been several occasions in the history of our Party when great conceit manifested itself and we suffered in consequence. The first was in the early half of 1927. The Northern Expeditionary Army had reached Wuhan, and some comrades became so proud and overweening as to forget that the Kuomintang was about to assault us. The result was the error of the Chen Tu-hsiu line, which brought defeat to the revolution. The second occasion was in 1930. Taking advantage of Chiang Kai-shek's large-scale war against Feng Yu-hsiang and Yen Hsi-shan,  the Red Army won a number of battles, and again some comrades became proud and overweening. The result was the error of the Li Li-san line, again causing some losses to the revolutionary forces. The third occasion was in 1931. The Red Army had smashed the Kuomintang's third "encirclement and suppression" campaign and, immediately afterwards, faced with the Japanese invasion, the people throughout the country started the stormy and heroic anti-Japanese movement; and again some comrades became proud and overweening. The result was an even more serious error in the political line, which cost us about 90 per cent of the revolutionary forces that we had built up with so much toil. The fourth occasion was in 1938. The War of Resistance had begun and the united front had been established; and once again some comrades became proud and overweening. As a result they committed an error somewhat similar to the Chen Tu-hsiu line. This time the revolutionary work suffered serious damage in those places where the effects of those comrades' erroneous ideas were more especially pronounced. Comrades throughout the Party should take warning from these instances of pride and error. Recently we have reprinted Kuo Mo-jo's essay on Li Tzu-cheng,  so that comrades may also take warning from this story and not repeat the error of becoming conceited at the moment of success.
"To start up the machinery" means to make good use of the organ of thought. Although some people carry no baggage and have the virtue of close contact with the masses, they fail to accomplish anything because they do not know how to think searchingly or are unwilling to use their brains to think much and think hard. Others refuse to use their brains because they are carrying baggage which cramps their intellect. Lenin and Stalin often advised people to use their brains, and we should give the same advice. This mechanism, the brain, has the special function of thinking. Mencius said, "The office of the mind is to think." He defined the function of the brain correctly. We should always use our brains and think everything over carefully. A common saying goes, "Knit the brows and you will hit upon a stratagem." In other words, much thinking yields wisdom. In order to get rid of the practice of acting blindly which is so common in our Party, we must encourage our comrades to think, to learn the method of analysis and to cultivate the habit of analysis. There is all too little of this habit in our Party. If we get rid of our baggage and start up the machinery, if we march with light packs and know how to think hard, then we are sure to triumph.
1. Chen Tu-hsiu was originally a professor at Peking University and became famous as an editor of New Youth. He was one of the founders of the Communist Party of China. Because of his reputation at the time of the May 4th Movement and owing to the Party's immaturity in its initial period, he became General Secretary of the Party. In the last period of the revolution of 1924-27, the Rightist thinking in the Party represented by Chen Tu-hsiu developed into a line of capitulationism. Comrade Mao Tse-tung has observed that the capitulationists at that dime "voluntarily gave up the Party's leadership of the peasant masses, urban petty bourgeoisie and middle bourgeoisie, and in particular gave up the Party's leadership of the armed forces, thus causing the defeat of the revolution" ("The Present Situation and Our Tasks", Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Eng. ed., FLP, Peking, 1961, Vol. IV, p. 171). After the defeat of 1927 Chen Tu-hsiu and a handful of other capitulationists lost faith in the future of the revolution and became liquidationists. They took the reactionary Trotskyist stand and together with the Trotskyites formed a small anti-Party group. Consequently Chen Tu-hsiu was expelled from the Party in November 1929. He died in 1942.
2. The Fourth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in January 1931.
3. The Tsunyi Meeting was the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau called by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China at Tsunyi Kweichow Province, in January 1935.
4. See V. I. Lenin, " 'Communism' ", in which Lenin, criticizing the Hungarian Communist Bela Kun, said that he "gives up the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, the concrete analysis of concrete conditions" (Collected Works, Russ. ed., Moscow, 1950, Vol. XXXI, p. 143).
5. The Sixth National Congress of the Communist Party of China held in July 1928 adapted the following Ten-Point Programme: (1) overthrow imperialist role; (2) confiscate foreign capitalist enterprises and banks; (3) unify China and recognize the right of the nationalities to self-determination; (4) overthrow the Kuomintang warlord government; (5) establish a government of councils of workers, peasants and soldiers; (6) institute the eight-hour day, increase wages, and establish unemployment relief and social insurance; (7) confiscate the land of all landlords and distribute the land among the peasants, (8) improve the living conditions of the soldiers, give land and jobs to ex-soldiers; (9) abolish all exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous levies and adopt a consolidated progressive tax; and (10) unite with the world proletariat, unite with the Soviet Union.
6. The Fifth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was held in January 1934.
7. This session of the Political Bureau in September 1941 reviewed the question of the political line in the past history of the Party, especially during the Second Revolutionary Civil War.
8. The "mountain-stronghold" mentality was a tendency to form cliques and arose mainly out of the circumstances of the protracted guerrilla war in which rural revolutionary bases were scattered and cut off from each other. Most of these bases were first established in mountain regions. Each tended to regard itself as a compact unit, like a single mountain stronghold, so this wrong tendency became known as mountain-stronghold mentality.
9. In the relatively stable parts of the base areas the people paid the regular grain tax only to the anti-Japanese democratic government. But in the outlying parts of the base areas and the guerrilla zones, which were constantly harassed by the enemy, the people were often forced to pay another grain levy to the enemy's puppet government.
10. In March 1941 the Japanese invaders and Chinese traitors in northern China proclaimed a "campaign for tightening public security", which included raiding the people's houses, establishing the neighbourhood guarantee system, making house-to-house check-ups and organizing puppet troops, all for the purpose of suppressing the anti-Japanese forces.
11. In March 1944 the Japanese invaders launched their campaign in Honan Province with a force of 50,000 to 60,000 men. The 400,000 Kuomintang troops under Chiang Ting-wen, Tang En-po and Hu Tsung-nan melted away before the Japanese invaders. Thirty-eight counties, including Chengchow and Loyang, fell to the enemy one after another. Tang En-po lost 200,000 men.
12. This large-scale war between the warlords, with Chiang Kai-shek on the one side and Feng Yu-hsiang and Yen Hsi-shan on the other, was fought along the Luaghai and Tientsin-Pukow Railways. It lasted six months, from May to October 1930. Casualties on both sides reached 300,000.
13. Kuo Mo-jo wrote the essay "The Tercentenary of the 1644 Uprising" in 1944 to commemorate the victory of the peasant uprising led by Li Tzu-cheng in the last years of the Ming Dynasty. He explained that the uprising met with defeat in 1645 because, after the entry of the peasant forces into Peking in 1644, some of their leaders were corrupted by luxurious living, and factional strife arose. The essay first appeared in New China Daily in Chungking and was later published as a pamphlet in Yenan and elsewhere in the Liberated Areas.
14. From Mencius, Book XI, "Kao Tzu", Part I.