Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai at the Seven Thousand Congress
Mao’s power position on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, from the trough to the peak
On the eve of the Cultural Revolution, did Mao Zedong’s power fall away? Perhaps at the top of the Communist Party, some of Mao’s speeches were not as lucrative as in the past, but in the whole party and the whole army, Mao’s power was at its peak since 1949. This is certainly a phenomenon that deserves to be studied but has not been adequately studied so far: in 1958, Mao launched the General Line, the Great Leap Forward, and the Three Red Flags of the People’s Commune campaign, which resulted in the greatest man-made famine in human history, causing the unnatural deaths of more than 30 million people. It is unbelievable that Mao Zedong, the great tyrant, did not collapse because of this, but what is even more unbelievable is that three or five years later, Mao’s personal prestige rose instead of falling, and even reached the highest point, so much so that he had saved enough money to launch the Cultural Revolution. This is too unreasonable. How did such an amazing reversal happen? What was the logic behind it?
Originally, in 1961, faced with the severe situation of famine, Mao Zedong had to temporarily retreat, let Liu Shaoqi and other pragmatic leaders step in, abandoned some absurd claims and practices, adjusted the economic policy, and brought China out of the canyon of death. According to the party constitution adopted at the 8th CPC Congress in 1956, the party congress was to be held once every five years, and the 9th Congress was to be held in 1961. Mao Zedong knew that if the Ninth Congress was held as scheduled, the issue of the three red flags and the famine would inevitably be on the agenda, and his mistakes would inevitably be subject to some kind of criticism and prosecution, and even if he did not step down, his power would certainly be significantly weakened or hollowed out. Therefore, Mao Zedong cheated and threw the party constitution aside, just do not open the ninth Congress.
But not meeting is not a solution, because there is pressure within the party. So in January 1962, a conference of 7,000 people was held. The 7,000-member conference mainly reviewed the shortcomings and mistakes of the Great Leap Forward. Liu Shaoqi made a written report and speech on behalf of the Central Committee, admitting that the economic difficulties were “three parts natural disaster and seven parts man-made disaster”; Mao Zedong made a long speech on democratic centralism in the Party, and at least did a little self-criticism, and Mao encouraged everyone to speak freely to create a lively political situation. “Let people talk and the sky will not fall.” Emphasis on the need to “promote democracy”, but also more or less let the participants out of the air.
The 7,000-member conference was not held in public, there was no re-election, and no communiqué or resolution was issued. There was not a word in the media about the entire meeting, and there was no change in Mao Zedong’s position. In society, the general public was unaware of it, so Mao’s status and image did not seem to change either; but within the Party, especially in the upper echelons of the Party, the pragmatic faction led by Liu Shaoqi gained enormous prestige, and Mao’s personal prestige dropped to its lowest point since the Seventh Communist Party Congress. Next, Liu Shaoqi and other pragmatists held the West Building Conference and the Guangzhou Conference to rehabilitate the right-leaning opportunists who were defeated after the 1959 Lushan Conference (except for those led by Peng Dehuai), to discuss the screening of rightists who were defeated in 1957, and to prepare for a more lenient policy in economic and cultural aspects, etc.
However, the most incredible thing happened: less than eight months after the 7,000-member conference, at the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th CPC Central Committee held in September 1962, Mao Zedong turned passive into active, recapturing the power of speech, that is, the dominant power over the Party, re-enforcing his position as leader, and changing the Party’s focus from economic construction to “never forget the class struggle”.
So. How did Mao Zedong win this turnaround battle? An analysis of his speech at the meeting will make it clear.
In fact, at the Beidaihe meeting in August, Mao Zedong set the tone for the next plenary session of the 10th Central Committee. At the central group meeting on August 9, Mao said right away, “Today we will talk about the question of whether the Communist Party can collapse or not.”
As you can imagine, many people who came to the meeting were puzzled when they heard Mao’s words: Didn’t the Seven Thousand People’s Congress agree to further adjust policies and restore the economy? It was said that we should promote democracy, let people speak and let people criticize? How did it suddenly become a question of whether the Communist Party would collapse or not?
But they soon came to understand. Yes, the Communist Party has made such a big mistake, it can’t be changed; but because the mistake is too big, it really needs to be changed, to be changed completely, to be changed? The Chinese people have suffered such a great disaster, really want to promote democracy to let people speak, they can spare the Communist Party?
Yes, on the surface, the rule of the Communist Party still seemed solid in China at that time. Because of the long period of brainwashing and the blockade of information to conceal the truth, most of the people were unaware of the severity of the disaster they were in and the seriousness of the mistakes of the Communist Party, and therefore did not seem to see any strong discontent or willingness to have the Communist Party step down. But what the people did not know, the Communist Party hierarchy did. As Wan Li later said, “If these circumstances were known to the workers, peasants and intellectuals, it would be strange if they did not overthrow the Communist Party!” Therefore, the top echelons of the CCP could not help but have a sense of crisis, and they knew that Mao’s speech was not alarmist.
The next two sentences worried the participants even more. Next Mao said, “Who will come after the Communist Party collapses? The two major parties anyway, when we collapse, the Kuomintang will come.” As we all know, there is a deep blood feud between the two parties, especially after the Communist Party came to power in ’49, it spared no effort to brutally suppress the remaining KMT forces. The return of the Kuomintang to power was undoubtedly the biggest nightmare for the Communist Party. Because the three red flags had been defeated so badly, internally, the Party cadres and the masses were full of complaints and grievances; externally, the West was fiercely attacked, the Soviets were mercilessly ridiculed, and Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan vowed to “counter-attack the mainland” and “relieve the people of their suspension”. Not only the personal power of Mao Zedong, but also the power of the whole Communist Party, was facing the greatest crisis since 1949. The deep sense of crisis provoked a sense of oneness in the upper echelons of the Communist Party. Under such circumstances, Mao Zedong’s proposal to “never forget the class struggle” had the effect of reinforcing the deterrent effect of the regime, and was therefore supported by his colleagues in the party. Under such circumstances, who would dare to further criticize the three red flags, and who would dare to hold the three years of famine responsible? Who would dare to discuss the rights and wrongs of Mao Zedong? Thus, not by anything else but by a common sense of guilt, the top echelon of the CCP reached a new unity. And the culprit, Mao Zedong, rightly became the unquestioned supreme leader of the criminal gang again.
If, at the Beidaihe Conference, Mao had raised the question of whether the Communist Party could collapse or not, the participants would have said: “Yes, our Party has caused a great disaster, we have committed a great crime against the people, and we cannot thank the world unless we bow down. Or, let the people decide whether the Communist Party will step down or not, we have no reason to continue with one-party dictatorship, we must practice democracy. Then, Mao’s next play could no longer be sung. In turn, since no one in the party dared to say such a thing, the party had to obey Mao’s logic. In this way, Mao came out of the trough and won back the initiative. A great evil, after committing a heinous crime against the people, instead of falling, rose again after a short retreat and gained even more power than before.
Hayek wrote a chapter entitled “Why the Worst Are in Power” in his famous book “The Road to Slavery”, a critique of totalitarianism. Hayek writes: “We have good reason to believe that what seems to us to constitute the worst features of the existing totalitarian system is not an accidental by-product, but a phenomenon that must sooner or later arise from totalitarianism. The democratic politician who sets out to plan economic life will soon be faced with the choice of arrogating to himself dictatorial powers or of abandoning his plans, and the totalitarian dictator will soon have to choose between disregarding general morality and suffering defeat. It is for this reason that the shameless and the licentious have more hope of success in a society that tends toward totalitarianism.”
Hayek is still talking about those “democratic politicians who set out to plan economic life,” and since the CCP is already a totalitarian party, the tendency for the “worst to be in power” is even more pronounced and powerful within it. The Communist Party uses force to promote its “great ideal” of the Great Leap Forward, and its methods are so bad and barbaric that the more good people are in a dilemma within the Communist Party, the more the bad people are in a dilemma, and the more the bad people are in a position to take advantage of it. Because of the fallacy of this ideal itself, it soon led to a disastrous defeat. Thus, the Communist Party was faced with a major choice: either it would honestly admit its mistakes and take the blame, which would probably lead to the collapse of the entire one-party dictatorship; or it would forcefully argue, make mistakes out of mistakes, or even intensify them (as it did at the 1959 Lushan Conference); or it would make limited adjustments and reforms to certain practical policies while maintaining its authoritarian power, which would necessitate maintaining and strengthening the Party’s A high degree of unity, on the one hand, to make a mockery of the text and continue to deceive the world with lies, and on the other hand, to show an iron fist to deter and suppress all those who dare to expose its evil and challenge its authoritarian power. Obviously, only the bad guys are the most eager and comfortable to do such things, so it is easiest to seize the initiative; but anyone who still has a conscience can only be reluctant to do so, so they are reduced to subordinates. So the situation is formed that the worst people are in power.
It is true that there are good people in the Communist Party, but in the Communist Party, good people are always unable to eat, and good people are always kidnapped by bad people. The bad guys did bad things, the government forced the people to rebel, the good guys to maintain the unity of the party, to maintain the party’s power can not be challenged, it is necessary to maintain political pressure to deter the people, it is necessary to endorse the bad guys, it is necessary to acquiesce and even support the bad guys to suppress the people. This allows the bad guys to drag down the water, which allows the bad guys to dominate the situation, which is complicit with the bad guys, thus also makes himself become and the bad guys almost.
The reason why Mao Zedong was able to win the dominant power at the 10th Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee is, in the final analysis, because the Communist Party is such a party that internally, the party’s interests are paramount and the party’s power is paramount, which is a self-evident and unquestionable first principle. With this first principle, many things can not be said. If at the Beidaihe Conference, when Mao raised the question of whether the Communist Party could collapse or not, the participants said, “Yes, our Party has caused a great disaster, and we cannot thank the world unless we bow down. Or, let the people decide whether the Communist Party should step down or not, we have no reason to continue with one-party dictatorship, we must practice democracy. Then, Mao’s next play could no longer be sung. In turn, since no one in the party dared to speak in this way, they had to go along with Mao’s logic, i.e., the logic of totalitarianism.
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