Chengdu Conference

From March 8 to March 26, 1958, the CPC Central Committee held a working conference in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, attended by the heads of relevant departments of the Central Committee and the first secretaries of the Party committees of some provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government. Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai and other leaders of the Central Committee and some heads of the departments of the Central Committee, and the first secretaries of the Party committees of the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions attended this Conference. The central theme of the Conference was to summarize the work done in the past eight years since the founding of the country, to study the problems related to economic construction, to establish the idea of high-speed of economic construction, and to establish the general line of building socialism with more speed and better economy. Mao Zedong emphasized the need to dispel superstition, emancipate the mind, think independently and explore China's own construction route. The Conference continued to criticize the "anti-adventurous progress" and focused on the issue of speed of construction.

The Conference discussed and adopted the "Opinions on the Second Account of the 1958 Plan and Budget", "Opinions on the Development of Local Industries", “Opinions on the Appropriate Merger of Small Agricultural Cooperatives into Large Cooperatives", "Opinions on the Mechanization of Agriculture", "Several Provisions on Collaboration and Balance under the Policy of Simultaneous Development of Central and Local Industries", "Opinions on Continuing to Strengthen the Socialist Transformation of Remaining Private Industries", "Individual Handicrafts and Small Traders", etc. The Conference adopted more than 40 documents, mainly on economic construction, such as "Instructions on Continuing to Strengthen the Socialist Transformation of Remaining Private Industries, Individual Handicrafts and Small Traders" and "Opinions on the Three Gorges Water Conservancy Hub Project and Yangtze River Basin Planning". The second book of plans and budgets for 1958 adopted by the Conference was: The growth rate of the total industrial output value is 33%, the total agricultural output value is 162%, the financial growth is 207%, the capital investment is 415%, the steel and coal products are 30%-35%, the grain is 166%, the cotton is 248%. These indicators had begun to seriously deviate from objective reality. During the Conference, the CPC Central Committee issued the "Instruction on Anti-Waste and Anti-Conservative Campaign", considering it as a campaign of "Great Leap Forward" in production and "Great Leap Forward" in culture. The party committees at all levels were asked to grasp this movement well and believed that as long as this movement was grasped well, the same human, financial and material resources could be used to make undertakings that were tens of percent or even several times more than the original plan. So that the "anti-rightist" campaign in all walks of life was quickly launched. In the spring of 1958, under the impetus of the anti-right-leaning conservative ideology, the mass movement of water conservancy and fertilizer accumulation was formed. The "Great Leap Forward" movement in the countryside had already begun, and the Party's “Left” errors of impatience and adventurism in economic work had thus begun to develop.