Dear Chairman:
    This Lushan Meeting is important. In the discussions in the Northwest Group, I commented on other speakers' remarks several times. Now I am stating, specially for your reference, a number of my views that I have not expressed fully at the group meetings. I may be as straightforward as Zhang Fel, but I possess only his roughness without his tact. Therefore, please consider whether what I am about to write is worth your attention, point out whatever is wrong, and give me your instructions.

    A. The Achievements of the Great Leap Forward in 1958 Are Indisputable.
    According to figures verified by the State Planning Commission, total industrial and agricultural output value in 1958 increased 48.4 percent over 1957.  The increase in industry was 66.1 percent, and that in agricultura and sideline production, 25 percent (it is certain that grain and cotton registered a 30 percent increase). State revenue rose 43.5 percent. Such a rate of increase is unprecedented in the world; it exceeds the established speed of socialist construction. In particular, the Great Leap Forward has basically proved the correctness of the General Line for building socialism with greater, quicker, better, and more economical results in a country like ours, hampered by a weak economic foundation and by backward technology and equipment. Not only is this a great success for China, it will also play a long-term positive role in the socialist camp.
    But as we can see now, an excessive number of capital construction projects were hastily started in 1958. With part of the funds being dispersad, completion of some essential projects had to be postponed. This is a shortcoming, one caused mainly by lack of experience. Because we did not have a deep enough understanding, we carne to be aware of it too late. So we continued with out Great Leap Forward in 1959 instead of putting on the brakes and slowing down our pace accordingly. As a result, imbalances were not corrected in time, and new temporary difficulties cropped up.But these projects are after all needed for national construction. They will gradually -in a year or two or a little longer- bring us returns. Gaps and weak links exist in production, making it impossible to put some projects to use. Also, the serious shortage of essential reserves of certain types of supplies makes it difficult to correct in time the disproportions and the newly created imbalances. These are the difficulties confronting us. In working out the plan for 1960, we should give it more serious consideration on a practicar and reliable basis. Some capital construction projects started in 1958 or in the first half of 1959 which cannot be completed must be suspended with the utmost resolution. We have to give up one thing in order to gain another. Otherwlse the serious disproportions will be prolonged, and it will be impossible to extricate ourselves from out passive position in certain fields, and that would hamper our speed in the effort to catch up with or surpass Britain in the next four years. Although the state planning commission has set guidelines on the proper balance, it has difficulty in making the final decision because of various reasons.
    The people's communes which emerged in rural China in 1958 have great significance. They will free the peasants in out country from poverty, and have set the right path along which we can speed up the building of socialism and march towards communism. On the issue of ownership, there was some confusion at one time, causing shortcomings and mistakes in our practicar work. Though this was a serious problem, the shortcomings and mistakes have been basically corrected and the confusion basically eliminated after a series of meetings were held in Wuchang, Zhengzhou and Shanghai. The people's communes are gradually shifting to the normal course of distribution according to work.
    The problem of unemployment was solved during the Great Leap Forward in 1958. The quick solution of this problem was no small matter; it was a matter of great importance to a country like ours with an enormous population and a backward economy.
    In the nationwide campaign for the production of iron and steel, too many small blast furnaces were built with a waste of material, money, and manpower. This, of course, was a rather big loss. On the other hand, through the campaign we have been able to conduct a preliminary geological survey across the country, train many technicians, temper the vast numbers of cadres and raise their level. Though we paid a steep tuition (we spent over 2,000 million yuan to subsidize the effort), there were gains as well as losses in this endeavor.
    Considering the above-mentioned points alone, we can say that our achievements have been really great, but we also have quite a few profound lessons to learn. It would be to our benefit to make an earnest analysis.

    B. How to Review the Experience and Lessons in Our Work.
    At this meeting, the participants are making many valuable suggestions in the discussions on the experience and lessons in our work last year. Our party's work will benefit greatly from these discussions. The party will be able to free itself from a passive position in some fields and take the initiative, acquire a better understanding of the laws governing the socialist economy, readjust the imbalances which always exist, and realize the correct meaning of achieving a rapid development.
    In my view, some of the shortcomings and mistakes that emerged in the Great Leap Forward were unavoidable. All the revolutionary movements led by our party in the past thirty years or so have had some shortcomings accompanying their great achievements. These are the two aspects of the same question. The outstanding contradiction confronting us in construction is the tension in various fields caused by disproportions. Such a development has in essence affected the relationship between workers and peasants and between the various strata in the cities and the rural areas.  Thus the contradiction takes on a political nature. It is the key link which affects our mobilization of the masses of people for continuing the leap forward.
    There are many reasons for the shortcomings and mistakes in our work during the past period. The oblective reason is that we are unfamiliar with socialist construction and do not have a comprehensive knowledge based on experience. We do not have a deep understanding of the law of planned and proportionate development of the socialist economy, and we have not implemented the principle of walking on two legs in various fields of work. In handling problems in economic construction, we are not as competent as we are in dealing with political problems like the shelling of Jinmen [Quemoy] and the putting down of the rebellion in Tibet. As for the objective situation, our country is in a backward state of being "poor and blank" (some of our people still do not have enough food, and last year each person was rationed six meters of cotton cloth, enough to make only a suit and two shorts) and the people are eager to change this situation. A second reason is the favorable internacional situation. These have been important factors contributing to our launching the Great Leap Forward. It was entirely necessary and correct for us to accelerate our construction work to try as soon as possible to put an end to poverty and backwardness and to create a more favorable internacional situation by taking this good opportunity and acting on the demands of the people.
    A number of problems that have developed merit attention in regard to our way of thinking and style of work. The main problems are:

    1. A growing tendency towards boasting and exaggeration on a fairly extensive scale.  At the Beldaihe Meeting last year, the grain output was overestimated. This created a false impression and everyone thought that the food problem had been solved and that we could therefore go all out in industry. In iron and steel, production was affected with such extreme one-sided thinking that no serious study was conducted on equipment for steel making and rolling and ore crushing as well as for coal mining and other mineral ores and for making coke, on the source of pit-props, on transportation capacity, on the expansion of the labor force, on the increase in purchasing power, on the distribution of market commodities, etc. In sum, we did not have a balanced overall plan. It was also a lack of realistic thinking that gave rise to these errors. This, I am afraid, was the cause of a series of our problems.
    The exaggeration trend has become so common in various areas and departments that reports of unbelievable miracles have appeared in newspapers and magazines to bring a great loss of prestige to the party. According to what was reported, it seemed that communism was just around the corner, and this turned the heads of many comrades. Extravagance and waste grew in the wake of reports of extra-large grain and cotton harvests and a doubling of iron and steel output. As a result, the autumn harvest was done in a slipshod manner, and costs were not taken into consideration. Though we were poor, we lived as if we were rich.
    What is particularly serious in all this is that it was very hard for us to get to know the real situation for a fairly long period. We did not have a clear idea of the situation even at the time of the Wuchang Meeting and the meeting of secretarios of provincial and municipal party committees held in january this year. The tendency towards boasting and exaggeration has its social cause, which is worth studying. It also has to do with our practice of fixing production quotas without corresponding measures to meet them. Though Chairman Mao reminded the party last year of the need to combine soaring enthusiasm with a scientific approach and the principle of walking on two legs, it seems that his instructions have not been grasped by most leading comrades, and I am no exception.
    2. Petty-bourgeois fanaticism which makes us vulnerable to "left" errors. In the Great Leap Forward of 1958, I, like many other comrades, was misled by the achievements of the Great Leap Forward and the zeal of the masa movement. As a result, some "left" tendencies developed in our heads. We were thinking of entering a comrnunist society in one stride, and the idea of trying to be the first to do this gained an upper hand in our minds for a time. So we banished from our minds the mass line and the working style of seeking truth from facts, which had been cultivated by the party for a long time.
    In our way of thinking, we have often muddled up the relationship between strategic goals and concrete measures, between long-term principles and immediate steps, between the whole situation and art of it, and between big collectives and small collectives. The Chairman's calls such as "strive for a high yield on a smaller area and bring in a big crop," "catch up with Britain in fifteen years," etc., are long-term strategic goals. But we have not studied them carefully and have not paid enough attention to the specific current conditions so as to arrange our work on a positive, safe, and reliable basis. Because they were raised at every level, some quotas, which could only be met after severas or a dozen years, became targets to be fulfilled in one year or even a few months. By so doing, we divorced ourselves from reality and lost the support of the masses. For example, the law of exchange at equal values was negated and the slogan of "giving free meals to all" was raised much too early; in some arcas, state monopoly purchase and marketing of grain was abolished for a time when the slogan of "eating as much as you like" was raised on the grounds of bumper harvests of grain. Some techniques were popularizad hastily even before they were tested and approved. Some economic and scientific laws were rashly neglected. All this was a "left" deviation. In the eyes of comrades showing such a deviation, everything could be done by putting politics in command. They forgot that the aim of putting polit'cs in command was to raise political consciousness in work, guarantee the increase in the quantlty of products and improvement in their quality, and bring into play the enthusiasm and creativeness of the masses to speed up our economic construction. Putting politics in command cannot replace economic laws, let alone concrete measures in economic work. We must stress both putting politics in command and taking effective measures in economic work; we should not emphasize one thing at the expense of the other. Generally, correcting "left" tendencies is more difficult than elirninating "right" conservative ideas.  This has been proved in the history of our party. During the latter half of last year, there seemed to be an atmosphere in which people paid attention to combating "right" conservative ideas but ignored the "left" tendencies of subjectivism. Thanks to a series of measures adopted after the Zhengzhou meetings held last winter, some "left" tendencies have been basically corrected. This is a great victory, which has educated comrades of the whole party without affecting their enthusiasm.
    By now we have got a basically clear picture of the domestic situation.  Particularly because of the recent meetings, most comrades within the party basically hold the same view. The present task for the whole party is to unite and keep up the effort. In my opinion, it will be very beneficial to review in a systematic way the achievements and lessons in our work since the latter half of last year to further educate the comrades of the whole party. The aim is to make a clear distinction between right and wrong and to raise our ideological level. Generally speaking, we should not go about trying to affix blame; this would be harmful to our unity and our cause. Basing ourselves on our experience and research since the latter half of last year, we can clarify some problems arising from unfamiliarity with the laws governing socialist construction.  Other problems can also be grasped after a longer period of study and experiment. As for our way of thinking and work style, the profound lessons we are learning this time help us to realize the problems in them more easily. But we'11 have to try very hard before they can be thoroughly rectified. Just as the Chairman has instructed us at the present meeting: "The achievements are great, the problems are many, the experience is abundant, and the future is bright." It is up to us to grasp the initiative. So long as the whole party is united and works hard, the conditions for continuing the leap forward are present. The plans for this year and next and for four more years will surely be fulfilled successfully. The aim of catching up with Britain in fifteen years can be basically achieved in four years, and we can surely surpass Britain in the output of some important products. Hence our great achievements and bright future.

With greetings,
Peng Dehuai
July 14, 1959

(EBREY, Patricia (ed.), Chinese Civilization, New York: The Free Press, 1993, pàgs. 436-439)