The Lushan Conference was a meeting of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held between July and August 1959. The CCP Politburo met in an "expanded session" (Kuoda Huiyi) between July 2 and August 1, followed by the 8th Plenum of the CCP Eighth Central Committee from August 2–16. The major topic of discussion was the Great Leap Forward.
The Lushan Conference saw the political purge of the Defense Minister, Marshal Peng Dehuai, whose criticism of some aspects of the Great Leap Forward was seen as an attack on the political line of CCP Chairman Mao Zedong. The Conference also marked the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 that disagreement over the direction of policy spilled into open conflict between party leaders.
The conference's name is derived from the meeting place, a resort on Mount Lu in Jiujiang, China.
The conference
The original objective of the conference was to review the events of the Great Leap Forward and solve practical issues brought forth by those events. When the Lushan Conference began, the leadership was divided on questions of how the crisis had developed and what the response going forward should be. Mao was critical of his own role in the failures of the Great Leap Forward. He described the backyard steel campaign he had promoted as a "great catastrophe" and criticized himself for pushing communization so fast. In a July speech before the Lushan Conference, Mao states, "The chaos caused was on a grand level and I take responsibility for it." Mao also defended the policies of the Great Leap Forward in general and communes in particular.
A major specific focus of the Lushan Conference was the distortion created by false production reports. During the Great Leap Forward, lower bureaucratic levels were asked to fulfill unrealistic production quotas. Ignoring the actual conditions at even lower levels, officials frequently claimed that the production goals had been achieved. These behaviors were prompted by higher-level officials who overly emphasized production and addressed the peasants as "rural Stakhanovites." The ensuing false statistics impeded central coordination of the economy. At Mount Lu, addressing these issues implicated a broader political tension over centralization and decentralization. As academic Alessandro Russo writes, the party's former strength of coordinating peasant political power had now created a major obstacle.
Mao Zedong also intended to use the conference to contain the "leftist tendency" (zuoqing) elements in the Great Leap Forward.
Peng Dehuai’s complaints
In Spring 1959, PRC Defense Minister Peng Dehuai led a Chinese military delegation on a visit to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Peng expressed his displeasure with the Great Leap Forward to various communist leaders, including Nikita Khruschev. In his view, the socioeconomic policies of the period undermined the economic development necessary to modernize the army. On his return to China in mid-June, Peng criticized the Great Leap Forward.
Peng's criticism culminated in his "Letter of Opinion." On July 14, Peng wrote a private letter to Mao criticizing some elements of the Great Leap Forward. In the letter, he cautiously framed his words and did not deny the "great achievement" of Mao, but meanwhile showed his disapproval for elements like the "winds of exaggeration" (i.e., over-reporting of grain production), the communal dining, and also the establishment of commune militia, which he felt would undermine the strength of the People's Liberation Army. He expressed his "confusion" towards "rather large losses" and the "epidemic of bragging" in the Great Leap Forward. Peng attributed the problems to "petty bourgeois fanaticism."
For this reason, Mao extended the conference for more than ten days.
Downfall of Peng Dehuai
On July 23, Mao showed Peng's letter to his comrades and asked them to express their views on the issue. Peng made no further substantive argument other than for the party to immediately withdraw from political initiatives in rural areas. Peng's position found no support among other conference attendees, as it amounted to "political suicide" for the party. For example, Zhou Enlai, normally a mediator between the left and right sides of the party, was extremely critical of Peng. Additionally, Peng’s position would mean de facto realignment with Soviet approaches at a time when Mao had been trying to find an independent path in terms of both foreign and domestic policy approaches.