Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, China, Volume III

264. Memorandum From the Director of the Office of Chinese Affairs (Clough) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Robertson)¹

Washington, June 20, 1957.

SUBJECT

• Mao Tse-tung’s Speech of February 27 “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”²

The most significant features of Mao Tse-tung’s speech of February 27 “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People”, a full text of which was broadcast June 18 by Peiping radio, are summarized below:

1. Mao addressed himself almost wholly to the domestic situation in China. There is no evidence of strained relationships with Moscow. In fact there is less implied advice to or dissatisfaction with Moscow than in the “People’s Daily” article of last December. Also, there is no reference to peaceful negotiation with the GRC, a subject in the forefront of Communist propaganda in February when this speech was delivered. The only reference to the GRC is to the “Chiang Kai-shek clique”, which with “United States imperialists” is, according to Mao, sending secret agents into China to carry on “wrecking activities”.

2. The speech contains a striking reaffirmation of the dictatorial principles by which the Chinese Communists govern. “Classes, strata, and social groups” which support the cause of “socialist construction” are defined by Mao as constituting “the people”. Those who oppose are defined as “enemies of the people”. Dictatorship is used to suppress enemies of the people; “democratic centralism” is applied among the people. In resolving “contradictions” among the people both “administrative orders” (i.e. force) and persuasion and education are used. Mao makes the point that people cannot be compelled to give up their religion or alter their ideology by force; “persuasion” is needed, but this can be “complemented” by administrative orders.

Mao’s concern throughout the speech with evidences of popular dissatisfaction with the Communist regime is quite marked. The “turbulent class struggles” of the early days are over, he says, but “time is needed for our socialist system to grow and consolidate, for the masses to get accustomed to the new system, and for government workers to study and acquire experience”.

3. Mao reveals in his speech that many people in Communist China were in sympathy with the Hungarian uprising of last year. “Certain people” were “delighted” when the events in Hungary occurred and hoped that “something similar” would happen in China and that “thousands upon thousands of people would demonstrate against the People’s Government”. Others took a “wavering attitude” because they were ignorant of the “actual world situation”. These people felt that there was “too little freedom” under “our people’s democracy” and asked for the adoption of the “two-party system of the West”. Mao then proceeds to explain how wrong such views are.

4. The speech is quite defensive about the peasant’s attitude toward collectivization of agriculture. A “miniature typhoon” was whipped up, Mao says, by critics of the cooperatives who failed to make a “comprehensive study of the achievements and shortcomings of the cooperatives”. Significantly, Mao claims only that 70% of the rural population are “staunch” supporters of the cooperatives. Although he states that most of the rest “cherish hopes” for the future of the cooperatives, this amounts to an admission of considerable lack of support for the collectivization program.

5. Mao also admits to difficulties in Tibet. Conditions there, he says, are not yet “ripe” for the carrying out of “democratic reforms”. This can be done “only when the great majority of the people of Tibet and their leading public figures consider it practicable”. Mao goes on to say that it has been decided not to proceed with democratic reform in Tibet during the period of the second five-year plan (1958–1962). Whether it will be done during the third five-year plan will depend, he says, on the situation at the time.

6. Mao devotes considerable space to the policy of “letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend”. He makes it clear that the Chinese Communists have particularly in mind the need to promote the “flourishing of the arts and the progress of science”. From this it would appear that Mao is afraid of the intellectual sterility in these fields which authoritarianism often produces. Mao also advances the thesis that more discussion of ideas is needed to strengthen the ideological hold of the Communist Party. “Fighting against wrong ideas”, he says, “is like being vaccinated—a man develops greater immunity from disease after the vaccine takes effect.” But he warns that the “hundred flowers” policy does not give “counter-revolutionaries and wreckers of the socialist cause” freedom to advance “non-Marxist ideas”. This danger is dealt with easily. “We simply deprive them of their freedom of speech”.

To enable people to distinguish between bad ideas and good ones Mao supplies six criteria. The gist of these is that words and actions which support the regime and the Communist bloc as a whole are “fragrant flowers”; those which hinder are “poisonous weeds”.

7. Toward the end of the speech Mao gives further significant evidence of discontent among the people. “In 1956”, he says, “small numbers of workers and students in certain places went on strike”. Also members of “a small number” of agricultural cooperatives “created disturbances”. These outbreaks Mao ascribes to failure to satisfy demands for material benefits and to “bureaucracy” on the part of leaders. The solution to the problem, as he sees it, is to stamp out bureaucracy and improve the education work of the regime.

8. No reference appears in the speech to the liquidation of 800,000 persons as reported in Sydney Gruson’s story of June 12 in the New York Times.³ This and other details which were reported by Gruson may have been edited out of this version of the speech or they may have been contained in Mao’s March 12 speech, the text of which has not yet been released.⁴

1. Source: Department of State, Central Files, 793.11/6–2057. Drafted in CA by Bennett.

2. For additional information on this speech, see Document 238. An overall assessment of the speech, as released on June 18, was circulated in the Department on July 1 in an “Intelligence Report” produced in the Office of Intelligence Research. The summary of this assessment reads, in part:

   “Mao Tse-tung’s ‘secret’ February 27, 1957 speech, published by Peiping on June 18, 1957, is his major ideological statement since 1949 and will have important repercussions in the Communist bloc. Although in revising the speech for publication, Mao has blunted somewhat the novelty of his thesis that ‘contradictions’ can exist in a socialist state between the people and their Communist leaders, he makes major admissions of weakness in the Chinese Communist system. He acknowledges serious difficulties in agriculture and states that it will take at least five years to persuade the peasants of the superiority of the collective farm system that was instituted in Communist China in 1955–56. He concedes problems with intellectuals and technically trained personnel, only a few of whom have become Communists. Among students, he admits, Marxism seems now to be ‘not so much in fashion.’ “ (Department of State, PPS Files: Lot 67 D 548, China)

   A contrasting assessment of the overall significance of the speech was offered by the Consulate General in Hong Kong in telegram 2307, June 22:

   “Text of Mao’s February 27 speech released June 18 contains little not previously covered by ChiCom commentaries and we wonder if it does not come as something of anti-climax to Chinese people as it does to Consulate General. Essentially defensive in tone and curiously lacking in anticipated international appeal.” (Ibid., Central Files, 793.00/6–2257)

   The Embassy in Moscow weighed the significance of the speech for Communist bloc politics in telegram 2769 from Moscow, June 21:

   “Mao’s disclaimer that Chinese experience is mandatory for other Communist parties together with assertion that Chinese will borrow from Soviet experience on that which fits Chinese conditions comes closer to Yugoslav views than Soviet and we do not doubt that Belgrade will regard these statements as support for its line.” (Ibid., 693.00/6–2157)

3. Grason’s article was datelined from Warsaw and was based upon the text of Mao’s speech of February 27. (New York Times, June 13, 1957)
4. The text of Mao’s March 12 speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work is printed in Selected Readings from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967) pp. 388–401.