7,000 Cadres Conference

From January 11 to February 7, 1962, the CPC held an expanded central working conference in Beijing. The Conference was attended by 7,118 people, including the main officials of the Central Committee, provincial, prefectural and county committees, as well as the heads of some large factories, mines and the military. It is commonly referred to as the "7,000 Cadres Conference". The main purpose of the Conference was to further summarize the lessons learned since the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958, unify the Party's thinking, enhance unity, and mobilize the Party to more resolutely implement the adjustment policy and struggle to overcome serious difficulties. Mao Zedong presided over and spoke at the Conference, Liu Shaoqi made a written report and speech on behalf of the CPC Central Committee, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping made important speeches, and Lin Biao also spoke at the Conference.

The Conference was divided into two stages: the first stage was from January 11 to 29, 1962, mainly to discuss and revise the draft report presented by Liu Shaoqi on behalf of the CPC Central Committee. This draft, as Mao Zedong proposed, was issued directly to the Conference for revision. After discussions among the participants, the final version of the "Report at the Enlarged Central Working Conference" was formed as the official document of the Conference. On January 27, Liu Shaoqi made additional explanations to this written report.

From January 29 to the closing of the Conference on February 7 was the second stage of the Conference. On January 30, Mao Zedong addressed the Conference, systematically elaborated on the implementation of democratic centralism and the development of democracy within and outside the Party and took the initiative to take responsibility for the mistakes that had occurred in the work over the past few years. Mao's speech pointed out the right direction and created a good atmosphere for the successful holding of the 7,000 Cadres Conference.

Led by Mao Zedong, some central leaders took the lead to seriously summarize the lessons learned in the past few years and made self-criticism on the problems that occurred in the past few years. On February 6, Deng Xiaoping spoke on the work of the Party. At the same time, on behalf of the Central Secretariat, he made self-criticism and also took responsibility for the shortcomings and mistakes in the work over the past few years. In the afternoon of February 7, Zhou Enlai spoke at the Conference, analyzing in detail the economic situation at that time, explaining the serious situation of the domestic economy and proposing the main ways to overcome these difficulties; at the same time, he made self-criticism from the perspective of the work of the State Council and took responsibility for the problems over the past few years.

This Conference summed up the lessons learned from the "Great Leap Forward" and carried out criticism and self-criticism, which played a very good role in unifying the Party's thinking, pace and action, and taking strong measures to overcome the serious difficulties.