Continuously Rising Production Targets

The background of Beidaihe Conference in 1958 was firstly manifested in the continually increasing economic targets.

During the 8th National Party Congress in 1956, Zhou Enlai gave the speech about the second Five-year Plan. He suggested that by 1962, the annual steel production should reach 10.5 million tons to 12 million tons. Meanwhile, the annual grain output should reach 250 million tons.^[6] In 1957, steel production had been 5.35 million tons.^[5] In December, the 6th National Planning Meeting was convened to draw up the economic plan of 1958. According to the goal of catching up with the U.K. in fifteen years, China would produce 6.1 million tons of steel and 196 million tons of grain annually.^[7]

On Nanning Conference held in January 1958, the CCP confirmed to produce 6.2 million tons of steel and 196 million tons of grain in 1958.^[3] Besides, Bo Yibo, Chairman of State Economic Commission, proposed a new method of economic planning called "Two Plans" (Chinese: 两本账). It meant that there would be one plan which must be fulfilled and another plan which was expected to be fulfilled.^[8] Later this method was endorsed by Mao and included in "Sixty Points on Working Methods." Mao revised it as "three production plans": two are central plans - the one which must be fulfilled would be published, and the other which was expected to be fulfilled would not be published. Meanwhile, two are local plans - the first local plan was the second central plan which from the local view must be fulfilled. The second central plan was the basis of comparison.^[9] On Nanning Conference, Mao was irritated with "Anti-Rash-Advance" (Chinese: 反冒进), and labelled the "Anti-Rash Advance" as "vulgar dialectics and Marxism."^[8]

On March 8, the CCP called up Chengdu Conference. This conference changed the production target of Nanning Conference to the first production plan, and set up a higher target as the second production plan. The steel production of 1958 would be 7 million tons, and the grain would be 251.8 million tons.^[10] The document adopted in Chengdu Conference said "if we implement Chairman Mao's directives, our speed of socialist industrialization might be faster than the Soviet Union, and overtake the United Kingdom in less than fifteen years."^[3]

After Chengdu Conference, Mao went to Chongqing and Wuhan in April to inspect the countryside and factories. In Wuhan, he called all the leaders of provinces and municipalities who had not attended Chengdu Conference to report their work. Tian Jiaying, the secretary of Mao, said that Wuhan Conference was a supplement to Chengdu Conference.^[11] At that time, Mao had some pragmatic aspects. He asked local governments to be down-to-earth. They should not drive peasants intensively, but alternate work with rest.^[11] The policy of local industry was "serve the agricultural, serve the large-scale industry and serve the consumers (Chinese: 为农业服务，为大工业服务，为消费者服务)."

Things changed rapidly in summer. From May 5 to 23, the CCP held the Second Session of 8th National Party Congress, which formally adopted the General Line - which was suggested by Mao - "go all out, aim high, and build socialism with greater, faster, better, and more economical results (鼓足干劲，力争上游，多快好省地建设社会主义的总路线)." Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, Bo Yibo and Li Xiannian criticized themselves because of their errors on Anti-Rash Advance.^[10] Half month after the conference, on June 7, Ministry of Metallurgical Industry reported to the Central Committee that the steel production target had been raised to 8.2 million tons in 1958 and 60 million in 1962.^[11] In mid-June, Li Fuchun, the leader of State Planning Commission, put forward the key points of the second Five-year Plan, which set the steel production target in 1958 to 8.5-9 million tons.^[8] The first plan of grain output in 1959 came to 300 million tons, which was an increase of 65 thousand tons over the expected output of 1958.^[8] At that period, Ke Qingshi, the top leader of southeast China and Shanghai, arrived in Beijing. His enthusiasm for local steel production apparently influenced Mao.^[12]

When the Politburo convened a meeting on June 17 (Mao did not attend), Bo Yibo said the steel production was expected to be 9 million tons. However, when he met with Mao on June 18, he agreed with Mao to further raise the steel production to 10 million tons.^[8] After the meeting, Mao told Bo that the agriculture had found the approach leading to the Great Leap Forward, which was called "take grain as the key link and achieve overall development (Chinese: 以粮为纲，全面发展)." Mao asked Bo what the people in industry was doing. Bo answered that the industry would "take steel as the key link and drive everything (Chinese: 以钢为纲，带动一切),"^[13] which earned Mao's approving "correct, very correct!"^[12] The next day, Mao again asked Wang Heshou why they could not double the steel production target. Wang, while indicating this would be difficult, could only reply "it should be alright."^[12] Thus the steel target of 1958 was set at 11 million tons.

Emerging Small Cooperatives

In the first half of 1958, the agricultural sector kept "launching satellites", which meant rural areas in the country constantly reported extremely high production output. On June 16, Qian Xuesen, a famous rocket scientist who returned to China from the U.S. in 1955, published his article in China Youth News and argued that one mu (= 0.0667 hectares) producing 5 tons of grain was possible.^[14] In July, the editorial of People's Daily said "how much grain we need, how much grain we can produce." The forces of production developed dramatically, which influenced the transition of the relations of production to meet the needs of higher production output and communism.^[15]

The seeds of the communes sprouted during the water conservancy campaign of winter 1957-1958.^[5] In the certain areas threatened by floods in summer, some of the small collectives merged into larger units.^[16] In Chengdu Conference, Mao Zedong put forward the idea of merging agricultural production cooperatives and endorsed the winter mergers.^[5]

On April 8, the Central Committee approved a document, which underscored that it was necessary to systematically and adequately integrate small-scale agricultural cooperatives into large cooperatives. The purpose was to "meet the demands of agricultural production and cultural revolution."^[17] As of July 1958, in Liaoning Province, 9,297 agricultural cooperatives merged into 1,461 larger cooperatives. Every cooperative had 1,995 households averagely. Henan Province merged 38,286 cooperatives into more than 2700 larger cooperatives. The average number of households was about 4,000 per cooperative.^[18] However, Henan Province also put an illustration of the resistance. Pan Fusheng, the first secretary of the Party's Provincial Committee, was against the rapid amalgamation of cooperatives and said that the peasants would revolt and reject the leadership of the Communist Party. But he was purged in May 1958.^[19]

On July 1, Chen Boda, the Chief Editor of the party journal Red Flag, released the article named "New Society, New People." Without being discussed by the Central Committee, the article claimed that China had found its way to communism,^[20] and first mentioned the term "people's commune."^[5] On the same day, in his speech to students at Peking University, Chen quoted Mao and said that people needed to gradually and systematically form large communes combining agriculture, industry, commerce, culture, and education, and militia.^[21] Jack Gary argued that the word "communes" referred to Paris Commune, implying that this emerging organization in China was part of the Marxist theory. Also, it was Mao's solution to the problem of the bureaucratic state.^[16]

Mao did not accept the term until he inspected rural areas on the spot in August 1958.^[5] On his tour, Mao permitted communes ahead of any formal documents adopted by the Central Committee.^[5] On 9 August in Shandong Province, Mao conspicuously gave his preference to people's communes. He said that it was good to establish people's communes, which was paraphrased by People's Daily to the famous political slogan "people's communes are good (人民公社好)."^[5]

Khrushchev's Visit

Before Beidaihe Conference, the relations between China and the Soviet Union had been strained. The reasons included whether China should manufacture atomic bombs and whether to build longwave broadcasting stations and combined fleets together.^[22] On 22 July, Mao met with Pavel Yudin, the Soviet Union Ambassador to China. Mao described the combined fleets as "navy cooperatives" and directly repudiated the suggestion.^[23] He told Yudin that the Soviet Union tried to control the atomic energy because they did not believe that China could make it.^[23] He also said,

"I can go to Moscow to talk with Comrade Khrushchev or invite him to Beijing. ... The Soviet Union can be the counselor and help us to build the nuclear submarine, but why do you raise the issue of half the ownership? ... You can tell Comrade Khrushchev that we do not have to talk if he has additional conditions."^[23]

After an increase of the divergence between the two socialist countries, including the revisionism of Yugoslavia and the landing of U.S. Marines in Lebanon, the supreme leaders of the two sides met in the summer of 1958 secretly.^[24] From 31 July to 3 August, Nikita Khrushchev had four formal meetings with Mao in Beijing. In the first meeting, Khrushchev said Yudin to some extent mistakenly conveyed their position. The CPSU had not discussed the idea of combine fleets. It was only raised by the Ministry of National Defense and Malinovsky (then Soviet Defense Minister).^[23] During the summit, Mao allowed building the radar station in China, whose ownership belonged to China and half right of use belonged to the Soviet Union. Khrushchev repeatedly said the Soviet Union could provide loan on building the radar station. However, Mao rejected resolutely and said China would not build it if the Soviet Union offered the money.^[23]

Most records of the meetings have not been disclosed yet. Allen S. Whiting teases out two main points of the sessions: First, Mao did not tell Khrushchev his plan to bombard Kinmen; Second, some Sino-Soviet shared military facilities in the PRC aroused contention and disagreement^[24] Shen Zhihua argues that Mao did not discuss the impending bombardment with Khrushchev on purpose. But Mao insisted that Khrushchev should publicly return to the Soviet Union and gave a speech. Mao intended to create an impression to the U.S. that the military operation was the result of Sino-Soviet negotiations.^[25]

The Communique

On 1 September 1958, People's Daily published the conference communique on the front page. It illustrated the linchpin of developing industry from two perspectives.

First, the previous success in agriculture laid the foundation for the industry. Mao was ambitious since the CCP transferred the ownership in rural areas peacefully; meanwhile, the agricultural outputs would be promising due to the surprisingly good weather in the first half of 1958.^[24] According to him, agriculture was the "green leaves," and industry was the "red flowers."^[26] The Soviet Union developed agriculture and industry at the same time, but China would take a different approach; Chinese developed the green leaves first then the red flowers.^[26] In another speech, he also said: "we used agriculture to repress industry, checked industry's king."^[26] In all, it was time for the industry to take off.

Second, the first secretaries of all provinces and districts must pay attention to leading the industrial development. To be specific, Mao urged local leaders to take steel production as the crucial task, and when they returned home, they should "establish the proletarian dictatorship with effective regulations."^[26]

Chaos in Industry

Mao designated industry as the principal topic of the conference, with both the 1959 plan and the Second Five-year Plan. Moreover, he repeatedly demanded priority attention to the doubled steel target and feared it might not be met.^[12]

Bo Yibo included more details about Mao's misgivings in his memoir. In early 1958, Mao believed that excessive centralization had restrained economic development. In April, the CCP made provisions on decentralizing enterprises.^[8] Two months later, the party adopted the decision to decentralize heavy and light industry. However, fast decentralization immediately disordered industry in regional areas. Many capital construction projects (Chinese: 基本建设项目) were set up, which dispersed the limited iron and later hindered the national industrial objective.^[8]

In Beidaihe Conference, Mao talked about the problems in industry and his solutions. First, the current industrial production was lack of priority projects. Mao said that the projects impinging on priorities must be centralized.^[26] The Agricultural Production Cooperatives which participated in producing steel exemplified that they dispersed the energy and should be stopped or canceled.^[26] Second, local government did not effectively implement the central policy. Mao emphasized that iron and steel could not be transferred out of localities because of "hundreds of thousands of governments" in local areas.^[26] In this part, Mao described his solutions in many ways: Qin Shihuang, autocracy, proletarian dictatorship and socialist order.^[26]

Ironically, it was Chen Yun, one of the two leading architects of Anti-Rash Advance, who assured the doubled steel target could be met, devised methods to that end and invoked Party discipline to guarantee it.^[12] On 21 August 1958, Chen Yun said that Chairman Mao's critique on Central Finance Group, State Planning Commission, State Economic and Trade Commission and central ministries were correct, which meant everybody was making plans, rather than focusing on producing.^[27] The problems in the industrial sector included omitting the production in 1958 and low output of peasants' backyard furnaces.^[27] Meanwhile, the Central Committee could not transfer raw materials efficiently among areas and sectors, because local governments did not adjust the country's newest production objective. They thought they had finished the task and begun to stock raw materials.^[27] After reporting to Mao, Chen listed out eight solutions. The principal one was that State Economic and Trade Commission should mainly focus on production, and the secretary of the party and the director in each factory should take the production output of 1958 as the core.^[27]

At the end of the conference, Bo Yibo called all the provincial secretaries responsible for steel to meet Mao, and one by one they guaranteed fulfillment of their targets.^[8]

The Resolution

On August 29, the conference adopted the Resolution of Establishing People's Communes in Rural Areas. The Resolution considered people's communes as a natural trend. It said that the people's commune was mainly based on continuously developing agricultural production and peasants' growing political consciousness.^[5] Peasants in rural areas would combine small cooperatives with big cooperatives, and transit to communes simultaneously.^[17] The Resolution also suggested the party and the masses make good use of people's communes as a concrete way to communism.^[17] Besides, the resolution warned against communalizing cooperatives compulsively and insisted on the socialist rather than the communist character of people's communes.^[28]

Prior to this, Mao Zedong added a passage on the draft resolution. He emphasized that local areas should not be rash in changing the collective ownership of people's communes to the ownership by the whole people, aiming to "stave off unnecessary troubles in the transition of ownership."^[29]

Mao's Speeches

During the conference, Mao Zedong gave many speeches on the issue of people's communes, including how to define, organize and benefit from people's communes. In April 1958, the first people's commune, Chayashan Sputnik Commune, was built in Henan Province.^[31] During the conference, Mao read the sputnik commune's trial constitution and wrote: "this constitution seemed to be sent to every province and prefecture for reference."^[23] It defined the people's commune as a social grassroots organization, which aimed to consolidate socialist system, create conditions and prepare for transitioning to the communist system.^[32] In Mao's conclusion, people's communes were based on "socialist system plus communist ideology."^[26] People's communes with socialist nature would eradicate the bourgeoisie vestiges, for instance, private plot and private livestock, step by step, and realize communist society within a few years.^[26] Mao also suggested a specific approach to organize communes. It was put forward by the people's commune in Xushui Prefecture. The slogan is "organize along military lines, working as if fighting a battle, live in a disciplined way (Chinese: 组织军事化、行动战斗化、生产纪律化)."^[26] Mao was conspicuously satisfied with the slogan, though he did not force nationwide prefectures to imitate it. He said that the slogan was virtually about the issue of organization and democracy in people's communes.^[26]

According to Mao, the benefits of people's communes were based on the highly unified planning and management. When Mao was on his ten-day tour in early August, he told the cadres (leaders of Shandong provinces) that they could combine workers, peasants, merchants, students, and soldiers by establishing people's communes.^[23] It means that people's communes should be multifunctional, including producing both means of production and consumption, educating youth and maintaining social order.^[23] As Mao put it, it was the integration of government (administration) and commune (management) (Chinese: 政社合一).^[26]

The characteristic of people's communes was well-known as "one, big, and two, public (yi da, er gong; Chinese: 一大二公)." In Mao's opinion, "big" (largeness) means the communes had a large population and covered huge areas, and "public" (publicness) referred to the socialist nature, manifesting as public mess halls, wage system in combination of the supply system and high labor efficiency.^[26]

The Interrelationship among the People

The relations of production in agriculture and industry included the system of ownership, the interrelationship among the people and the distribution. According to Mao, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin "have heard about these ideas but have not begun to understand them."^[26] In the conference, he further demonstrated his viewpoints on the interrelationship among people and the distribution.

First, the interrelationship among laboring people was the principal element of productive relations.^[26] On the one hand, Mao thought that the bourgeois right had been almost eradicated after the rectification, which manifested that the leading cadres served the people humbly.^[26] On the other hand, Mao took the children of Soviet Union leaders, for example, implying that the CCP leaders' children should not have privileges.^[26]

Second, Mao, to some extent moderately, considered the supply system as the alternative of the wage system.^[26] The bourgeois right in the distribution had not been wiped out, which included eight-grade wage system and the difference between mental work and manual work.^[26] These remnants resulted in severe problems of cadres-masses relationship. For instance, after the CCP succeeded in revolution and entered the cities, they replaced the communist supply system with wage system. The cadres began to wear woolen clothes and shave beards.^[26] All of these were learned from the bourgeoisie and connected with the bureaucratic work style.^[26] Mao repeatedly underscored that the CCP should bring back the rural work style and guerrilla practices, which could prevent the party from being detached from the masses.^[26]

Moreover, Mao was rather zealous in comparing supply system with wage system, promoting the benefits of the former. Mao thought that supply system was related to his health. He said that his body was not well and easy to catch a cold after he moved to Beijing, though he got the salary monthly and lived in bigger houses.^[26] Another benefit of supply system hinged on its communist spirit. Mao unequivocally upheld the utopian socialism and said that living without communist spirit would be boring.^[26]

Practical Strategy

The connection between the bourgeois right and the principal issue of the conference referred to Mao's concern behind his speeches. In the Second Session of 8th National Party Congress, Mao said that the practice of the CCP had surpassed Marx, so he hoped to create another way to develop faster and better than the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.^[44] The "another way" - the Great Leap Forward and the people's communes - caused a "theoretical vacuum," which meant Lenin's New Economic Policy was not suitable to current situations and China's development needed new theoretical basis.^[45] Specifically, it included following points:

First, eradicating bourgeois right was one of the effective political mobilization slogans of people's communes.^[43] In people's communes, the masses cooperated with each other and did not earn piece wage, which represented precisely the germ of communism and the disruption of bourgeois right.^[10] In Mao's mind, people's communes were characterized as "big" and "public."^[26] The "public" precisely advocated collectivism, rather than individualism, implying the eradication of wage system.^[26]

Second, the interrelationship among the masses was the premise of the Great Leap Forward.^[26] Mao attributed the success of revolution to the war communism including rustic and guerrilla work style.^[26] He believed that military tradition had worked so efficiently in the war that it could also function well in building communism.^[26] The essential point was the equal interrelationship advocated by the party, which could mobilize the masses to pay efforts into production.^[43]

At last, eradication of bourgeois right was part of the strategy to demarcate China from the Soviet Union.^[43] The inharmonious relationship between the cadres and the masses, the children of leading cadres and the wage system within material incentives, represented how the leading socialist country in the world degenerated into a bureaucratic state.^[26] Mao tried to find an alternative to break free of the superstition to Soviet Elder Brother.^[43]