The Working Policy of the Seventh National Congress

The Working Policy of the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China

Delegate comrades! Today we are able to hold a very good congress. The moment is favourable: we have great strength, and our Party is more united than ever before in its history.

What is the working policy of our congress? It should be: unity and victory. To put it simply, one is unity and one is victory. Victory refers to our goal; unity refers to our front, our ranks. We must have a united ranks to strike down our enemies and win victory, and the most important, leading element in those ranks is our Party. Without our Party, it would be impossible for the Chinese people to win victory.

The Chinese people's struggle for liberation — not to speak of the distant past, but only of the more recent history — has gone on for over a hundred years. From the Opium War against the British in 1840 to 1945, it is already one hundred and five years. Within this century and more there have been many great changes, and the greatest is the change from the old-democratic revolution to the new-democratic revolution. Before, there was no leadership of the proletariat. When the bourgeoisie had just begun to arise, or had grown somewhat, or later had grown bigger still, when the proletariat had not yet its own vanguard and its level of consciousness was still not high, the bourgeoisie enjoyed every advantage — in culture, in economics, in political experience; it had a political party, it had slogans, it had its own goal of struggle. The proletariat had none of these; it followed the bourgeoisie. Only in the last twenty-odd years has the proletariat had its own party, its own slogans and its own goal of struggle.

The most famous struggles of modern China include the Opium War, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom movement, the Sino-French War, the war of 1894 (the twentieth year of Guangxu), then the reform movement of 1898 and the Boxer movement, and after them the 1911 Revolution. The revolution was directed against two things: one called the oppression of the foreign powers, and one called the oppression of the feudal system. The Chinese people were always dissatisfied with these two things and always rose in revolt. They rose once and were beaten down; rose again and were beaten down again — such history continued for about eighty years. Under what circumstances did the May Fourth Movement of 1919 arise? It arose after the First World War. Human history is said to go back five hundred thousand years. Of these five hundred thousand years, one stretch is the history of savagery and one the history of civilisation; the history of civilisation is only some five thousand years or a little more. Our own Chinese history is counted very long, yet it too is only some four thousand to five thousand years. From the beginning of the Yellow Emperor's reckoning to the 1911 Revolution is four thousand six hundred and nine years; add the thirty-four years since the 1911 Revolution and it is still only four thousand six hundred and forty-three. Indeed the so-called age of the Yellow Emperor was not yet a civilised society; civilised society, counting from slave society, should in China — on the reliable evidence at present available — be reckoned from the Shang and Zhou. In five thousand years of civilised society, the First World War alone had occurred. That world war came in the age when world capitalism had reached the twentieth century: capitalist clashed with capitalist, the markets grew short, some had seized broad ground and some narrow, and so they fought. This is what is called the era of imperialism. The first world-wide war in the whole of human history broke out in 1914 — everyone here over thirty will know of it and remember it. This war, as I have just said, was the reflection of the development of the world economy: the world economy having reached that stage, such problems were bound to arise. Marxists foresaw this long before. This war was a destructive war, an unjust war, a war that injured the interests of mankind, a war for the seizure of markets — that is its negative side. But it also produced a positive side: there appeared the Russian October Revolution, Communist Parties arose in many countries, the proletariat of many countries produced its own vanguard — and our China was one. With the world war came an epoch of world revolution. First the October Revolution broke out in Russia; then came the German revolution, the Hungarian revolution, the Italian revolution — but these were all beaten down, because the proletariat of those countries was still split (Communist Parties and Social-Democratic Parties) and its consciousness was still insufficient. Only Russia's October Revolution was victorious. After the First World War and the victory of the October Revolution, the face of the world and the direction of history changed. World history has been developing and progressing for thousands of years, but only after the First World War and the October Revolution did a new direction appear. Slave society, and the feudal and capitalist societies after it, were all societies in which man exploited man. The new direction of history after the October Revolution is the abolition of the system of man's exploitation of man. The Russian people have won victory. Many countries now have Communist Parties. Our Party was founded in 1921 and this year completes twenty-four years. The Communist Party of Japan was founded in 1922, the Communist Party of India in 1920. So it was in the great countries of the East; and the Communist Parties of France, Germany, Italy, Britain and the United States, broadly speaking, all arose in this period. In 1919 Lenin organised the Third International.

From the May Fourth Movement, China passed from the old-democratic revolution to the new-democratic revolution. The May Fourth Movement was set in motion by the masses; it was the masses' ranks openly opposing their own enemy in the streets. At first only awakened, advanced students took part; by the time of “June the Third” those taking part in Shanghai were not only students — broad masses of workers and merchants had joined in; later Hankou, Changsha, the whole Yangtze valley and the Pearl River valley were drawn into the current. The May Fourth Movement had in it China's most awakened elements — at that time Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao. Within the May Fourth Movement there were a left wing and a right wing, and Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao represented the left wing. At that time there was not yet a Communist Party in China, but already a few people had rudiments of communist thinking.

The single crack of the October Revolution's guns gave the proletariat of the whole world, and the other advanced elements, a lesson in communism. Marx and Engels founded the doctrine of Marxism in 1843 (three years after the Opium War), but for seventy-four years, from 1843 to 1917, its influence was mainly confined to Europe, and most people in the world did not know that there was such a thing as Marxism. Marxism arose in Europe and began walking in Europe, and walked rather slowly. At that time in our China, apart from a very few students returned from abroad, ordinary people did not know of it — nor did I know that there was anyone in the world called Marx; nowadays even children of fourteen or fifteen know of him. So I say, comrades, you are fortunate. When I had grown quite big, I still did not know how high the sky was or how thick the earth, and did not know at all that there was such a thing in the world as imperialism or Marxism. In school I knew only a few bourgeois heroes — Washington, Napoleon. Earlier some, such as Liang Qichao and Zhu Zhixin, had mentioned Marxism in passing; and it is said that someone translated Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific in a magazine. In any case I never saw it then; and even if I had seen it, it would have slipped by in a flash, unnoticed. Zhu Zhixin was a member of the Kuomintang — so it appears that in speaking of Marxism the Kuomintang was actually first. But before that, no one in China really knew Marxism and communism. The single crack of the October Revolution's guns travelled faster than an aeroplane. A plane from Moscow to here takes more than a day, but this news took only one: that is to say, the revolution broke out in Russia on 7 November, and on 8 November China knew of it. At that time the Russian revolutionaries were called the “extremist party.” For seventy years and more Marxism had walked so slowly; after the October Revolution it walked so fast. And because it walked so fast, the mental face of the Chinese people in 1919 was different; after the May Fourth Movement the slogans “overthrow imperialism” and “overthrow the feudal forces” were quickly known. Before that, who knew to raise such slogans? No one! Such slogans, such a clear programme, have been raised ever since the Chinese proletariat produced its own vanguard — the Communist Party.

In 1921 our Party held its First Congress. Of the twelve delegates, those still living and still Communist Party members (counting out such renegades as Zhang Guotao) are one, Chen Tanqiu, now imprisoned by the Kuomintang in a Xinjiang jail, and one, Dong Biwu, now flown to San Francisco — and I am one too. Of the twelve delegates, two are now traitors in Nanjing: one is Zhou Fohai and one is Chen Gongbo. The congress was held in July, and we now fix 1 July as the Party's anniversary. It was first opened in Shanghai; because the police wanted to make arrests, it moved to Nanhu in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, and was held on a boat. Was a manifesto issued? I do not remember. At the time we knew little of how much Marxism there was or how the world's affairs should be conducted. The so-called delegates were nothing like so capable as you comrades now, who understand this and understand that — economics, culture, party affairs, rectification and the rest; we knew none of it. That was how I was, and the others were much the same. At the time Chen Duxiu did not attend; he was director of education in Guangdong. Our Chinese book Zhuangzi has a saying: “Its beginning is small; its end will surely be great.” We have not yet reached the “end,” and we are already very great. The opening line on the first page of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union says that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union developed from Marxist study circles into the party leading the Soviet federation. We too went from a study circle to founding the Party, and from base areas grew to the whole country — we are still in the base areas and have not yet reached the whole country. In the beginning we too were a very small study circle. This congress sent me a form on which one item asks who introduced me into the Party. I said I had no introducer. At that time we did it ourselves; we did not know much — truly young and ignorant, knowing nothing of the world. But in the twenty-four years since, what has happened is tremendous — heaven and earth have been turned over! The whole world too has been turned over. China's twenty-four years have been twenty-four years of turning heaven and earth upside down; the world's twenty-eight years likewise; and our Party's twenty-four years are twenty-four years entirely unlike the past. This is something the broad masses must be told.

Never before has there been such a people; never before has there been such a Communist Party. In these twenty-four years, through the communist study circles and through the Northern Expedition, we grew up in a blaze. But in the midst of it we were shot in the waist and knocked to the ground; we picked ourselves up and fought again — this was called the agrarian revolution. From 1921 to 1927 it was mainly the Northern Expedition; from 1927 to 1937 the civil war; from 1937 to now, eight years of the war of resistance. Not many of today's comrades have lived through all three periods; very many have lived through two. That is speaking of the Party as a whole. Among the delegates here no such count has been made — whether the veterans of three reigns are more numerous, or of two, or of one, is not yet known. This is the road we have walked in these twenty-four years: seven years from the founding of the Party to the Northern Expedition, ten years of civil war, eight years of the war of resistance. Our Party has tasted every hardship, has fought in a blaze, has struggled heroically. Never in Chinese history has there been a group like the Communist Party, ready to sacrifice everything — to sacrifice however many people — to carry out so great an undertaking.

In the seven years of the First Great Revolution the number of Party members never exceeded sixty thousand at its height. Then we were struck down with one blow, like a basket of eggs dashed to the ground — many were smashed, but not all; we picked them up again and hatched the chicks. That was a great lesson. We were shot, we grew angry, and we fought again, and fought well — to overthrow the feudal forces, to overthrow imperialism; that was right. When Chiang Kai-shek colluded with the imperialists and the feudal forces, we raised the revolutionary slogan “Down with Chiang Kai-shek,” and fought him for ten years. Fighting Chiang Kai-shek was right; but how to organise the ranks, and once organised how to fire the gun — on this there arose many differing opinions, as set out in our “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party.” Broadly speaking, the differing opinions came down to three questions: first, who are the enemy and who are the friends; second, how to organise the ranks; third, how to fight. In the disagreements over these three questions, the opinions of some comrades were comparatively appropriate, suited to China's conditions and comparatively correct, somewhat better on organising the ranks and on how to fight — though not perfect in every way. At that time the comrades in the Party were scattered north and south; apart from the few with a price of tens of thousands of dollars on their heads, most did not know one another. Yet opinions could agree — on this question or on that.

I have met Sun Yat-sen; some comrades here saw him too. He died in 1925. I met him when he had devoted thirty-nine years to the national revolution, and he was then nearly sixty. At that time the Kuomintang was holding its First National Congress, and Elder Lin here was one of those attending. We attended the Kuomintang's congress in our capacity as Communist Party members — the so-called “cross-party people”: members of the Kuomintang and at the same time members of the Communist Party. The Kuomintang organisations in all the provinces were organised with our help. At that time we had no choice but to set to work, for the Kuomintang did not know how to organise itself: thirty-nine years devoted to the national revolution, and never once a congress. Only after we joined the Kuomintang did it hold its First Congress in 1924. The manifesto was drafted by us, and many things were done well for it by us; there was Borodin as adviser, a member of the Soviet Communist Party, and Qu Qiubai, a Chinese Communist who had joined the Kuomintang. Sun Yat-sen had one good quality: when he came to his wits' end he would look for us. Whatever Borodin said, he would hear. It was called “taking Russia as our teacher,” because in thirty-nine years of revolution he had met failure after failure. When we put forward “overthrow imperialism, overthrow the feudal forces, overthrow the corrupt officials, overthrow the local bullies and evil gentry,” many opposed us, saying the members of the Central Committee were the thirty-six stars of heaven. In building the army too there was Kuomintang-Communist cooperation: among the main cadres then, military and party, were men of both parties. The First Army had Chiang Kai-shek as commander, with comrade Enlai (Zhou Enlai) as political commissar; the Second Army's commander was Tan Yankai with comrade Li Fuchun as political commissar; the Sixth Army's political commissar was Elder Lin. That was a joint government even then — the army being the main part of the government — so the joint government existed before.

The Northern Expedition was victorious, in a blaze. But in the closing stretch of that period our Party fared badly, and a “Chen Duxiu-ism” appeared. Later Chen Duxiu turned against us and formed the Trotskyist-Chen “liquidationist” group. But about Chen Duxiu the man, we may speak today: he had merits to his credit. He was the commander-in-chief of the May Fourth period; the whole movement was in fact led by him, and he and the group around him, such as comrade Li Dazhao, played a great part. In those days, when we learned to write in the vernacular, we heard him say that punctuation marks should be added to writing — a great invention — and heard him say that there was such a thing in the world as Marxism. We were the students of that generation. The May Fourth Movement prepared cadres for the Communist Party of China. There was then the magazine New Youth, edited by Chen Duxiu. Of those roused to wakefulness by this magazine and by the May Fourth Movement, part entered the Communist Party later; these people were greatly influenced by Chen Duxiu and the group around him — one may say the Party was formed by their gathering together. I say that in certain respects Chen Duxiu resembles Plekhanov in Russia: he did the work of an enlightenment movement and created the Party, though in thinking he was not Plekhanov's equal. Plekhanov did very good Marxist propaganda in Russia; Chen Duxiu did not — he even said some quite incorrect things — but he created the Party, and that is a merit. Plekhanov later became a Menshevik; Chen Duxiu was China's Menshevik. After the German-Soviet war began, Stalin in a speech put Lenin and Plekhanov together, and the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union speaks of him too. As for Chen Duxiu, when the Party's history is written in future, he must be spoken of. As for comrade Li Lisan, who made “Left” errors in the civil-war period: before the First Great Revolution he did trade-union work at Anyuan together with comrade Shaoqi (Liu Shaoqi), and later in the May Thirtieth Movement he played a great part in Shanghai — he too has merits.

The base text is the Wikisource version, and the piece is the 'Working Policy of the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China'. The history it describes runs: from the founding of the Party to the Northern Expedition war, through the ten-year civil war, to the War of Resistance.

Now let me speak of the “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party.” This resolution has been discussed in detail by the comrades. The comrades proposed that this question be handled by the Seventh Plenum and not submitted to the congress, so that the congress might be a congress of unity, a congress of victory. That opinion is very good — it looks to the whole Party, to the people of the whole country, and to the Party's future. The resolution was basically passed by the Seventh Plenum yesterday, and is handed to the new Central Committee elected by the congress to adopt and revise.

The working policy of the congress is unity and victory. The eyes of the congress must look forward, not backward — otherwise the success of the congress will be affected. The eyes of the congress must look to the four hundred million, so as to organise our ranks.

We have not yet won victory; our strength is still small, and there are difficulties ahead. We have an army of over nine hundred thousand, but it is not concentrated — it is split up, fighting the “sparrow war.” Our base areas have a population of over ninety million, but they too are not one solid block — they too are split. Our enemies are still very strong: the powerful Japanese imperialism, and the Kuomintang besides — two enemies of different kinds, one guarding the front door, one the back. So we must be prudent and modest, not proud and impatient; we must guard against pride and against restlessness. Modesty means no pride, and so pride can be guarded against. The ancients said, “The great merchant hides his wealth as if he had none”: when the trader's capital was large he hid it away, as if it were not there. We too must keep modest. In our history there is also this lesson: we must not get big — when small we were comfortable and untroubled, but once big we swelled, our heads swelled big, we grew proud, and restless at heart too, very restless. Impatience and pride go together: the proud grow impatient, and the impatient are invariably proud, imprudent, slapdash. Now we have learned prudence. We drew up a historical resolution, and it went back and forth before how many pairs of eyes — the few dozen pairs of the Central Committee alone were not enough; seven or eight looks would not reveal many problems, but when everyone looked and studied, many problems came out. Many things you raised in the discussions — that is very good; it is called acting with prudence. Take it slowly; the sky will not fall. From ancient times the sky has never fallen. There was once the little state of Qi, and someone feared the sky would drop, worrying every day — hence “the man of Qi feared the falling sky.” Several thousand years have passed since, and none of the twenty-four histories says the sky ever dropped — and even if it dropped, a few of our very tall comrades could hold it up; never mind. The resolution on the historical questions, studied back and forth three and four times, is now basically passed; after the new Central Committee is elected, it will be carved and polished again. But might there still be loopholes? There may be. Ten or twenty years from now, when the history of the Party is written, they will show: if there is a loophole, then there is one — and one will say “this item of history was dropped wrongly; it must be put back in.” That is nothing. As when firewood is piled, the later comes on top — we do the same to our predecessors. Where there is a loophole, correct it; the principle is to uphold truth and correct error.

The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was published in 1938. The Soviet Union won victory in 1917, yet only in 1938 did the central committee publish that History — twenty years, showing how no easy a matter it is. That in our short historical resolution we should write in the whole twenty-four years of history is harder still. Of course we are not yet writing the Party's history; we deal mainly with the “Left” errors in our Party's history, with the struggle between a line more suited to the Chinese people's interests and a line partly suited and partly unsuited to them, between proletarian thinking and petty-bourgeois thinking. This question was several years in the maturing and is now fairly ripe, so we wrote the resolution and settled it. As for the questions of the war-of-resistance period, they are not yet ripe, so we do not take them up. Seen from the future, this historical resolution may still contain errors, but the policy of curing the sickness to save the patient cannot be wrong.

Do the questions in the historical resolution concern the many or the few? I say they concern the many — the whole Party and the people of the whole country. So we must be modest and prudent, not proud and impatient. It is a question of the many, and it is also our own question. The questions of the few are easily settled: to raise one or two names is not hard; but the questions of the many are not so easily settled. In writing this historical resolution we have been very cautious.

On other questions too we should be the same. We must fight heroically, and at the same time be modest and prudent. The lesson of history is precisely that we must be modest and prudent. In the past some comrades were very impatient, hoping the revolution would win victory tomorrow. But alas there was no victory — it dragged on ten years. With three hundred thousand members and several hundred thousand troops, their heads swelled and they grew impatient; in the end all that remained was northern Shaanxi. Some say northern Shaanxi is a bad place — barren soil, poor people. But I say: without northern Shaanxi we could not have gotten on our feet. I say northern Shaanxi is two points: a foothold and a point of departure. That the Seventh Congress meets in northern Shaanxi is the glory of the people of northern Shaanxi. Northern Shaanxi has become the testing ground of all our work; all our work is first tested there — here we open the Seventh Congress, here we settle the historical questions.

Let me speak again of curing the sickness to save the patient. To cure the sickness to save the patient means to treat the illness for the sake of saving the person. The person is a good person to begin with, but the germs have got in and he has fallen ill; so call the doctor, take some medicine, and he is cured. To save the person without treating the illness will not do; to treat the illness without saving the person will not do either — whichever way one leans is wrong, and both should be corrected. Let all comrades unite under this historical resolution, as the resolution says, united like a harmonious family. We used to say “united as one person” — that was a phrase for writing articles. This time we say: united like a harmonious family. A family has its struggles, and the struggles of the new family are settled by democracy. We must look on comrades as brothers and sisters; from this one gets comfort — tired, one can rest here a while, ask after this and that, in all warmth. As for having made mistakes, it is not one or two people — everyone has made mistakes, and I have made mistakes too. All men have errors, differing only in degree. The resolution credits all the good things to my account, so I must say a word about it. Written as “representative,” that is acceptable; if I were the only one, it would not be a Party at all. You must know that a formation is usually none too orderly, and so we must often call “Dress right! Dress left! Dress centre!” We must dress towards the Central Committee as the benchmark, towards the congress as the benchmark. Dressing is the principle; deviation is actual life — and when there is deviation, call the dress. But officers must not strike soldiers — that is to say, cadres and members must have correct relations. In any formation there are correct ideas and wrong ideas; it is never quite orderly. But toward comrades who have made mistakes we must have a good attitude; in a family, expulsions from the family are rare. What surname Ah Q really had is unclear, but we never heard that he was expelled from the family. Ah Q, when he struggled, was something of a hero. His defects were subjectivism, sectarianism and party stereotype-writing, with not a trace of the spirit of self-criticism: he would pick at other people's sores, but his own sores no one else might touch. As for doctrinairism and the party stereotype — that was dreadful: a bench must be called a long bench and never a slat bench — to call it a slat bench was a line error! Such doctrinairism, such party stereotyping! And yet the writer who wrote Ah Q still liked Ah Q, because the counter-revolutionaries shot him. So with those who have defects and errors, we must unite.

Within the Communist Party there are two -isms that make trouble: one is doctrinairism, one is empiricism. This resolution says I suffered so many blows and attacks; I said strike it out. It also says that opposing the Luo Ming line meant attacking me — in fact it was so, but it is better to strike it out; such things need not be written. I too have made mistakes. In 1927 I wrote an article which had the Marxist viewpoint, but on economic questions it lacked the Marxist viewpoint, and so the economic questions were written wrong. Besides, in more than twenty years of work — military, political, party affairs — I have made many errors. None of this has been written in; not writing it is not denying it. According to the true history and the true situation, I have made errors. Take the recent drafting of the resolution: it was drafted how many times — had not everyone offered opinions, it would not have come out so complete. We are all people who came out of a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society, with only so much knowledge and so much ability. To say I have no ability at all and know nothing of Marxism-Leninism — that I also cannot accept. A Trotskyist, once a Party member, named Ye Qing, says that Mao Zedong has not a particle of Marxism-Leninism, that he has only one doctrine called “Mao Zedong-ism,” representing the peasants and the petty bourgeoisie. That I cannot accept — as if I had none here while he had heaps of Marxism-Leninism, almost all of it. But to say my Marxism-Leninism is piled high — that is not so either. When people shout “ten thousand years,” I say I am fifty-two. Of course there cannot and should not be any “ten thousand years,” but it always brings out a task: to advance, to grow a little bigger. To say one understands a little Marxism-Leninism likewise brings out a task: to advance. In all the world since ancient times there has never been any knowledge, any thing, that was complete and never developed further. The earth develops, the sun develops — that is the world. What stopped developing would not be the world. The whole universe, who knows how many millions upon millions of years, is now more advanced than the past. On the earth there came to be living things, animals, mankind. Mankind too has a history of several hundred thousand years; there came civilised society, capitalist society, socialist society. The Marxist view of the universe teaches us to understand that in the future there will be advance to a communist society. China, after passing through a new-democratic society, will advance further still, until classes are gone and parties are not needed — Communist Party and Kuomintang alike gone, the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies gone too. The sun and the earth too, in the far future, will one day perish; when the old is destroyed, the new arises. Whoever has the Marxist viewpoint must look at things this way. But is politics needed today? Yes. What is politics? Sun Yat-sen said politics is the affair of the multitude. Scientifically his statement is not correct; it has only a revolutionary meaning — anti-feudalism — because the politics of feudal society was the autocracy of one emperor. But primitive communist society had the multitude and had no politics; politics began only with slave society. In a certain sense, politics is class struggle. Engels said the class struggle has three forms: political struggle, economic struggle, theoretical struggle; the last two likewise have a political character. Marxists should have this viewpoint — it is the viewpoint of thoroughgoing revolution. Therefore we must go through war, through class struggle; we must develop and expand the Communist Party with a free hand, expand the Eighth Route and New Fourth Armies.

Nothing in this human world is ever quite complete: the son is a little more complete than the father, the grandson a little more complete than the son — the later comes on top.

Some comrades were not elected delegates to this congress and cannot attend, cannot even listen from the gallery, and are much distressed. But it is nothing; it can be explained. Take me: I am “one, three, five — no matter; two, four, six — clear”: at the congresses of even number I was never present. At the Fifth Congress I was present but had no vote. I was then secretary of the agricultural committee and put forward a resolution on the peasant movement; the Central Committee would not pass it, and the Fifth Congress did not adopt it. Now the Party is rather fairer than before, but unfair things will still occur.

That is to say, things are never quite complete — and this gives us a task: to advance toward the more complete, toward relative truth; but absolute completeness can never be reached, absolute truth never attained. So we must strive without limit and without end.

The speech reviews the founding of the Party, the First Congress, and the roles of Chen Duxiu, Qu Qiubai, Bao Luoting and Li Lisan in that period. Most of the figures named are principal actors between 1921 and 1925; the history described runs from 1921 to 1945.

Now there has appeared another “Communist Party” — a “nonordinary committee” which the Kuomintang's secret-service organs gathered out of some renegades. They have issued a declaration, with the slogan “Down with Mao Zedong.” When this historical resolution comes out, the enemy will certainly make use of it. But whether they use it or not, we have still issued this historical resolution. We must listen to no enemy's provocation. Within the Party too there may be some people of crooked ways who make provocation. Do not fear such provocations. In the Party, in the revolutionary ranks, we have one policy: unity — unity on the basis of principle.

To sum up: in twenty-four years our Party has achievements, and rather great ones. We must continue to grip the weapon of Marxism tightly, must have the spirit of self-criticism, and with the whole Party united like brothers and sisters fight for the victory of the whole country — we shall not rest until victory is won!

The closing proposes the policy toward people: comrades should be as united 'as in a harmonious family', and disputes within the family settled by democratic means. The eight characters 'unity and victory' appear many times in the piece and are the policy slogan of this congress.