Seven Thousand Cadres Conference
7천인 대회
The enlarged central work conference of the Chinese Communist Party held in Beijing from 11 January to 7 February 1962, at which 7,118 cadres from the centre and the localities, enterprises and the army summed up the experience of the Great Leap. Liu Shaoqi said publicly that the disaster was “three parts natural disaster, seven parts human error”, and Mao Zedong made a self-criticism, saying the primary responsibility for the Centre’s mistakes was his. Mao then withdrew to the “second line”, but the rift with Liu became a seed of the Cultural Revolution.
In depth
The conference was run by issuing Liu Shaoqi’s draft report directly to the participants for comment without first discussing it in the Politburo, and a 21-member drafting committee under Liu produced a second draft over eight days. On the committee Peng Zhen said that the three-to-five-year transition and the canteens had been approved by Mao and that even one per cent or one per mille of Mao’s errors should be examined, while Zhou Enlai shielded Mao, blaming those who had supplied wrong information. In his report of 27 January Liu admitted that agriculture had fallen sharply in 1959–1961 and industrial output by over 40 per cent in 1961, and, borrowing the words of Hunan peasants, called it “three parts natural disaster, seven parts human error”.
On 30 January Mao spoke on democratic centralism. He rebuked cadres afraid of criticism from the masses and said that responsibility for the shortcomings and mistakes of the past few years lay first with the Centre, at the Centre first with himself, and then in turn with the provincial, prefectural, county and commune party committees. But he cited the judgement of Liu’s report that the line of the past four years had been correct, and kept the “Three Red Banners” off limits. Lin Biao praised Mao Zedong Thought without mentioning the failures of the Leap. After the conference, at the West Building meeting in February, Chen Yun revealed the true budget deficit, and Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping, Deng Zihui and others backed the “three freedoms and one contract”. Mao raised class struggle again at Beidaihe in August and at the Tenth Plenum in September, and returned to the centre of power through the Socialist Education Movement of 1963 and the Cultural Revolution of 1966.