Opening Speech Delivered at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China

#PUBLICATION NOTE

This edition of Opening Speech Delivered at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China has been prepared and revised for digital publication by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism under the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Switzerland on the basis of the following edition: Speeches at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China, in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, First English Edition, Vol. 5, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1977.

#INTRODUCTION NOTE

This is the opening speech delivered by Comrade Mao Zedong at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, China on the 21st of March, 1955.

The National Conference of the Communist Party of China was held in Beijing, China between the 21st and 31st of March, 1955.

#Workers and oppressed people of the world, unite!

#OPENING SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CHINA

#Mao Zedong

#21st of March, 1955

#★

Comrade Delegates to the National Conference of the Communist Party of China:

There are three items on the agenda of our present National Conference:

• First, the First Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy and a report on this plan.
• Second, a report on the anti-Party bloc of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi.
• Third, the establishment of the Central Control Commission.

Basing itself on Lenin's teachings on the transitional period, the Central Committee summed up the experience gained after the founding of the People's Republic of China and in 1952 put forward the Party's general line for the transition period at the time when the stage of the rehabilitation of China's national economy was coming to an end. This general line means the accomplishment step by step of the socialist industrialization of the country together with the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce in a period of roughly three five-year plans and thus the attainment of the goal of building a socialist society in China. Practice has borne out the correctness of the Party's general line and of the important policies and measures adopted to implement it. There have been great achievements in our work thanks to the efforts of all comrades in the Party and of the people of the whole country. But there have also been shortcomings and mistakes. It is impossible for many of the measures we devised to be appropriate in all respects, and they have to be supplemented and revised in the light of new experience in the process of being carried out.

The First Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy is a major step towards the realization of the Party's general line. The present National Conference should discuss this draft plan conscientiously in the light of our practical experience, so as to make it relatively sound in content and therefore workable.

It is no easy job to build a socialist society in a large country like ours with its complicated conditions and its formerly very backward economy. We may be able to build a socialist society over three five-year plans, but to build a strong, highly industrialized socialist country will require several decades of hard work, say, 50 years, or the entire second half of the present century. Our task requires us to handle the relations among the people well, particularly those between the working class and the peasantry; it requires us to handle the relations among our different nationalities well. At the same time, it requires us to do a good job in furthering close cooperation with the Council Union, which is a great and advanced socialist country, and with the People's Democracies, and also to promote cooperation with all the peace-loving countries and people in the capitalist world.

We often say that we should not become conceited because we have done well in our work and that we comrades should remain modest and learn from the advanced countries, from the masses, and from each other, so as to make fewer mistakes. I think all this still needs to be repeated at the present Party conference. We can see from the anti-Party case of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi that conceit and complacency do exist in our Party and indeed to a serious extent among certain comrades. Failure to overcome them will hinder the accomplishment of our great task of building a socialist society.

As you comrades all know, the emergence of the anti-Party bloc of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi was by no means accidental, but was an acute manifestation of the intense class struggle in our country at the present stage. The criminal aim of this anti-Party bloc was to split our Party and seize supreme power in the Party and the State by conspiratorial means, and thus pave the way for a counter-revolutionary comeback. Under the unified leadership of the Central Committee, our Party has smashed the anti-Party bloc and become still more united and consolidated. This is an important victory in our struggle for the cause of socialism.

The case of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi serves as an important lesson for our Party, and all the members should take warning and make sure that similar cases will not recur in the Party. Gao Gang and Rao Shushi schemed and conspired, operated clandestinely in the Party, and surreptitiously sowed dissension among comrades, but in public, they put up a front to camouflage their activities. These were precisely the kind of vile activities the landlord class and the bourgeoisie usually resorted to in the past. In the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels say: «The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.»¹ As Communists, let alone as high-ranking Party cadres, we must all be open and aboveboard politically, always ready to express our political views openly and take a standpoint, for or against, on each and every important political issue. We must never follow the example of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi and resort to scheming.

For the purpose of building a socialist society, the Central Committee deems it necessary at this juncture to set up a Central Control Commission in accordance with the Party Constitution to replace the old Discipline Inspection Commission. Its aim is to tighten Party discipline in the new period of intense class struggle, step up the struggle against all kinds of violations of the law and of discipline, and in particular guard against the recurrence of cases like the Gao-Rao anti-Party bloc, which seriously jeopardizes the interests of the Party.

In view of the various lessons of the past and the fact that only through being integrated with collective wisdom can individual wisdom be turned to better account so that fewer mistakes are made in our work, the Central Committee and the Party committees at all levels must adhere to the principle of collective leadership and continue to oppose two deviations, personal dictatorship and decentralism. We must understand that collective leadership and personal responsibility are two aspects which are not opposed, but are linked to each other. And personal responsibility and personal dictatorship, which violates the principle of collective leadership, are two entirely different things.

Internationally, conditions at present are favourable to our socialist construction. The socialist camp headed by the Council Union is strong and its ranks are united, while the imperialist camp is weak and beset by numerous insurmountable contradictions and crises. Even so, we should realize that we are still surrounded by imperialist forces and must be prepared against all possible emergencies. If the imperialists should unleash a war in the future, very likely they would launch a surprise attack, as in the Second World War. Therefore, we must be prepared, mentally and materially, to avoid being caught unawares by such a sudden turn. This is one aspect of the matter. The other aspect is that the remaining counter-revolutionary forces inside the country are still very active, and, basing ourselves on the facts, we must deal them more blows in a planned and discriminating way, so as to further weaken these hidden counter-revolutionaries and ensure the safety of our socialist construction. If we take proper measures with regard to these two aspects, we can prevent our enemies from doing us serious harm; otherwise, we may make mistakes.

Comrades, we are now in a new historical period. For a country in Asia with a population of 600'000'000 to make socialist revolution, to change its face and the course of its history, to accomplish its fundamental industrialization and the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce in a period of roughly three five-year plans, and to catch up with or surpass the most powerful capitalist countries in the world in several decades — in doing all this, it will inevitably encounter difficulties as numerous as or perhaps even greater than those encountered in the period of the democratic revolution. Nevertheless, comrades, we Communists are known for our dauntlessness before difficulties. Tactically, we must take all difficulties seriously. We must adopt a serious attitude toward each specific difficulty, create the necessary conditions, study the methods for coping with them, and overcome them one by one and batch by batch. Our experience over the past decades shows that we did succeed in overcoming every difficulty encountered. Every kind of difficulty has to give way before Communists, just as in the saying: «Mountains bow their heads and rivers make way.» The lesson derived from this is that we can scorn difficulties. Here, we are talking of strategy, of the situation as a whole. However great the difficulty, we can readily take its measure. Difficulties are nothing but what both our enemies in society and nature put in our way. We know that the imperialists, the domestic counter-revolutionaries, their agents in our Party, and so on, are mere moribund forces, while we ourselves constitute the newborn forces with truth on our side. Against them, we are always invincible. A review of our history will enable us to see the point. When our Party was first founded in 1921, it was very small and had only a few score members, yet later, it grew in strength and succeeded in overthrowing its powerful domestic enemy. Nature as an enemy can be conquered, too. In nature as in society, all newborn forces are intrinsically invincible. Conversely, all the old forces, however numerous, are bound to be eliminated. Therefore, we can and must scorn all the difficulties we encounter in this world, however immense they may be, and regard them as beneath contempt. Such is our optimism. It is based on scientific grounds. Provided that we know more about Marxism-Leninism and the natural sciences, in short, more about the laws of the objective world and make fewer mistakes of a subjectivist kind, we are sure to attain our goals in revolution and construction.