Speech at a Conference of Cadres in the Shanxi-Suiyuan Liberated Area

Speech by Mao Zedong at the Cadres Conference of the Central Shanxi-Suiyuan Branch Bureau held in the Shanxi-Suiyuan Liberated Area on April 1, 1948.

This speech was published in the issue 2,807 of Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Daily on May 6, 1948 and the issue 2,817 of Jin-Sui Daily on May 11, 1948. It was included in the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 4.

The speech is divided into five parts, mainly focusing on issues related to the work in the Shanxi and Suiyuan Liberated Area and also on some problems related to the work in the country as a whole.

(1) It affirms the work of agrarian reform and Party consolidation in Shanxi-Suiyuan Border liberated area and sums up the basic successful experience of the liberated area.

Mao Zedong said that the Party organizations in Shanxi and Suiyuan opposed the Right deviation, launched mass struggle, completed or are completing the agrarian reform and Party consolidation work, and corrected several "Left" deviations in the movement, so as to put all the work on the track of sound development.

He says that he consider the work of agrarian reform and of Party consolidation in the Shanxi-Suiyuan Liberated Area to have been successful. The basic experience of the success of the liberated area of Shanxi and Suiyuan lies in the following:

Firstly, to decide the working policy according to the actual situation, which is the most basic working method that all communists must firmly remember.

Secondly, in accordance with the instructions of the Central Committee on agrarian reform and Party consolidation, the Party and the people should be closely linked.

Thirdly, in the struggle against the feudal system, the experience of setting up people's representative conferences at district and village (or township) levels on the basis of the poor peasant leagues and peasant associations is extremely valuable.

(2) Analysis of the situation and tasks after the Party consolidation, army consolidation and agrarian reform.

Mao Zedong stressed that the impure composition or style of work of the Party and the government during the Anti-Japanese War, as well as the resulting adverse phenomena, should be completed during the War of Liberation. The task before the Shanxi-Suiyuan Party organization is to make the greatest effort to complete the agrarian reform and Party consolidation, to continue and support the People's War of Liberation, to refrain from any further increase in the people's burden but appropriately to lighten it, and to restore and develop production.

He pointed out that the work of Party consolidation, army consolidation and agrarian reform is of great historical significance. It enables the whole Party, army and people to closely integrate, effectively implement all the policies and strategies stipulated by the Party Central Committee, successfully carry out the People's War of Liberation, and inevitably lead the enemy to extinction.

This is the whole situation of revolution versus counter-revolution in China.

(3) Accurately summarize and systematically elaborate the general line of the New-Democratic Revolution.

Mao Zedong pointed out that the revolution led by the proletariat and by the masses of the people against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism is China's new democratic revolution and the general line and policy of the Communist Party of China at the current historical stage.

The state and the government to be founded by the broad masses of the people will be the People's Republic of China and the democratic coalition government of the alliance of all democratic classes under the leadership of the proletariat. The enemies to be overthrown in this revolution can only be and must be imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism.

The concentrated expression of all these enemies is the reactionary regime of Chiang Kai-shek's KMT.

(4) Accurately summarize and systematically elaborate the general line of the Agrarian Revolution.

Mao Zedong pointed out that feudalism is the ally of imperialism and bureaucrat-capitalism and the foundation of their rule. Therefore, the reform of the land system is the main content of China's New-Democratic Revolution.

The general line in the Agrarian Reform is to rely on the poor peasants, unite with the middle peasants, abolish the system of feudal exploitation step by step and in a discriminating way, and develop agricultural production.

Mao Zedong emphasized that the abolition of the feudal system and the development of agricultural production will lay the foundation for the development of industrial production and the transformation of an agricultural country into an industrial one. This is the ultimate goal of the New-Democratic Revolution.

(5) The dialectical relationship between general line, general policy and specific line and policy was expounded.

Mao Zedong said that If we actually forget the Party's general line and general policy, then we shall be blind, half-baked, muddle-headed revolutionaries, and when we carry out a specific line for work and a specific policy, we shall lose our bearings and vacillate now to the left and then to the right, thus our work will suffer, greatly. This speech further cleared the political direction for the victory of the People's Liberation War.