Lushan Conference of 1959
루산 회의 (1959)
The enlarged Politburo meeting and Eighth Plenum held at Lushan, Jiangxi, in July–August 1959. In an atmosphere inclined to correct the Great Leap, Peng Dehuai’s private letter to Mao criticising “petty-bourgeois fanaticism” was made public by Mao and condemned as “right opportunism”; Peng, Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian and Zhou Xiaozhou were purged as an “anti-party clique”. The nationwide “anti-right-deviation” campaign that followed reversed the retreat and worsened the famine.
In depth
The conference began loosely enough to be called a “meeting of immortals”. Mao himself acknowledged the overheating of 1958 and discussed lowering targets, and Peng Dehuai wrote to him on 14 July about the hunger he had seen in his native Hunan and the waste of the backyard furnaces. The letter recognised the achievements of the Leap but said that “the gains are great and the problems not few”, and blamed politics taking the place of economics.
In his speech of 23 July Mao branded the letter a rightist attack and tested the army’s loyalty by saying that if he were forced out he would “go to the countryside, lead the peasants and overthrow the government”. Most of the leadership sided with Mao, and the Eighth Plenum adopted a resolution condemning Peng and the others. Lin Biao replaced Peng as minister of defence.
The conference had two consequences. Criticism of the Great Leap inside the party became impossible and radical policy continued into 1960, and the trust between Mao and the veterans broke down, sowing the seeds of the Cultural Revolution. This is why the 1965 attack on Wu Han’s Hai Rui Dismissed from Office was read as an allegory of the Peng Dehuai affair.