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Lushan Conference & the Fall of Peng Dehuai (1959)

July 2–August 16, 1959: the CCP Central Committee met at Lushan to correct the "left" errors of the Great Leap Forward. On July 23 Mao abruptly reversed course into an anti-rightist purge, branding Peng Dehuai's letter of opinion an anti-Party manifesto. The door to correction slammed shut; disastrous Great Leap policies continued and intensified, leading directly into the three-year Great Famine. This was the decision point of the famine — not an ordinary inner-Party struggle, but a turn that sealed the fate of tens of millions.

Time

July 2–August 16, 1959 (46 days); 8th Plenum of the 8th Central Committee, August 2–16, 1959

Place

Lushan, Jiangxi (enlarged Politburo session, followed by the 8th Plenum)

Decision-makers

Mao Zedong (engineered the reversal); Peng Dehuai (author of the letter, purged); Lin Biao (came to Lushan, set the tone, replaced Peng as Defense Minister); Kang Sheng (orchestrated the attacks); Ke Qingshi (collected Peng's speeches as ammunition); Zhang Wentian, Huang Kecheng, Zhou Xiaozhou (labeled members of the "anti-Party clique")

Background: the Great Leap's disaster was already visible

In 1958 Mao launched the Great Leap Forward and the people's commune movement, proclaiming "overtake Britain, catch up with America" and "running into communism." Exaggeration swept the nation: grain output was inflated layer by layer in "satellite-launching" campaigns; backyard steel furnaces consumed forests and household ironware; communal canteens offered "free meals" while cadres' fabricated harvest figures devoured peasants' real rations.

By early 1959 the signs of disaster could no longer be hidden: markets were strained, hunger and abnormal deaths appeared in some regions, industry was grossly unbalanced and agriculture drained of labor. Mao himself admitted to having "fought a losing battle" and was in low spirits. That summer he convened an enlarged Politburo session at Lushan, intending a relaxed "conference of immortals" — summing up lessons, correcting "left" errors, finalizing economic targets, then pressing on.

Peng Dehuai was then Vice Premier, Defense Minister, Politburo member, one of the ten founding marshals and commander of the Chinese People's Volunteers in Korea — a figure of immense prestige. Born to a poor peasant family, Peng had always cared about the economy and people's livelihood. Before Lushan he investigated Hunan, Guangdong, Gansu and elsewhere, gathering extensive firsthand evidence: hunger in the villages, cadres' fabrications, the waste of communal dining halls. He came to the mountain determined to speak plainly.

Who decided

Mao Zedong was the supreme decision-maker. July 14, 1959: Peng Dehuai's "letter of opinion." July 16: Mao circulated it as a political question and extended the conference. July 18–22: Khrushchev's criticism; Ke Qingshi urged "hold the line"; Peng accused of "colluding with foreign powers" (unverified). July 23: Mao's speech flipped the conference — Peng's letter a "right-opportunist anti-party program"; "whom will the PLA follow?" July 31–August 1: Lin Biao's "careerist, conspirator, hypocrite." August 2–16: the 8th Plenary Session's resolution on the "Peng-led anti-party clique." August 7: the directive launching the nationwide anti-rightist campaign.

Who decided

Mao Zedong was the supreme decision-maker. The conference had two parts: July 2–August 1 (enlarged Politburo meeting), August 2–16 (8th Plenary Session). Key decisions:

• July 14, 1959: Defense Minister Peng Dehuai wrote to Mao (the "letter of opinion"), affirming the 1958 line but warning that "boastful wind is widespread" and "petty-bourgeois fanaticism makes us prone to leftist errors," disrupting worker-peasant relations — "therefore political." Peng had tried to speak in person on July 12 but Mao was asleep.
• July 16: Mao circulated the letter to all as "Comrade Peng Dehuai's Opinion Letter," ordered discussion of its "nature," and extended the conference. Peng demanded it back as a private letter.
• July 18–22: Khrushchev publicly criticized the communes (July 18); Ke Qingshi told Mao "hold the line or the ranks will scatter"; Peng was accused of "colluding with foreign powers." (Evidence for that charge — unverified.)
• July 23: Mao's long speech flipped the conference from correcting "left" to fighting "right." He called Peng's letter a "right-opportunist anti-party program" and posed "whom will the PLA follow?": "If the PLA won't follow me, I'll organize the Red Army again." From here, the criticism of Peng began.
• July 31–August 1: two Politburo Standing Committee sessions attacked Peng; Lin Biao called him "careerist, conspirator, hypocrite."
• August 2–16: the 8th Plenary Session resolved that the "Peng Dehuai–led right-opportunist anti-party clique" (including Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian, Zhou Xiaozhou) launched "a frenzied attack against the general line, the Great Leap Forward and the people's communes."
• August 7: the Central Committee's "Directive on Opposing Rightist Thought" — the nationwide anti-rightist-opportunism campaign began.

Detailed timeline: from "conference of immortals" to anti-rightist purge

Phase one: July 2–16 — the "conference of immortals" correcting "left" errors. Delegates split into six regional groups to discuss 18 questions Mao had posed. The mood was relaxed: meetings by day, mountain walks, opera and dancing by night. Provincial chiefs laid out conditions and lessons — Hubei's Wang Renzhong admitted 1,500 dead and 150,000 cases of edema in his province; Henan's Wu Zhipu apologized to other provinces for Henan's fabricated figures; Hunan's Zhou Xiaozhou said grain output had risen only 8%, not "doubled." Zhu De said peasants should be made rich, not poor; Liu Shaoqi said 1958's "greatest achievement was the lesson learned." Mao himself spoke at length about correcting "left" errors, admitting "we did something stupid last year." On July 14 the conference circulated a draft "Record of Decisions on Lushan Questions" reaffirming the "Three Red Banners" while noting deviations in Great Leap policy. Everyone assumed they would sum up the lessons and go back down the mountain to work.

July 14: Peng's letter. As the conference neared its end, Peng — having repeatedly failed to secure a private talk with Mao — wrote down his views in a letter to Mao, later known as the "letter of opinion" (see below).

July 16: the letter is circulated. Mao had the letter printed for all attendees under the title "Comrade Peng Dehuai's Letter of Opinion," with the note "distribute to comrades for reference." Simultaneously Mao raised "commenting on the nature of this letter" within the Politburo Standing Committee and extended the session. Peng was stunned: at his regional group meeting he asked to withdraw what had been a "private letter" — "How did it become an 'opinion letter'? Why must it be specially discussed?" But discussion of the letter was already underway.

July 17–22: voices of support. On July 17 Mao told Zhou Xiaozhou, Zhou Hui, Hu Qiaomu, Tian Jiaying and Li Rui that "the current situation is essentially anti-rash-advance, and I am the chief of anti-rash-advance." On July 19, PLA Chief of Staff Huang Kecheng told his group that beyond the problems in the decision record, agricultural achievements had been overestimated, economic proportions were unbalanced, and 1959 targets too high — warning of the consequences; he added that people's communes "could be set up or not; beneficial in the long run, but more flexible not to rush them in the short term." The same day Zhou Xiaozhou backed Peng: "the general spirit of Peng Dehuai's letter is good" and "after affirming achievements this conference should focus on summing up experience — it is necessary to lay the shortcomings bare"; he linked grassroots coercion and exaggeration to "excessively high plans from above." On July 21 former General Secretary Zhang Wentian delivered a three-hour group speech systematically analyzing the Great Leap's defects and their ideological roots — the conference's most thorough critique. Li Rui and others also spoke for correcting the "left."

Phase two: July 23 — the sudden reversal. Mao delivered an extraordinarily harsh speech branding Peng's letter a "right-opportunist attack" and pinning the class-struggle label on it. The conference's direction reversed 180 degrees: from that day no one dared mention the Great Leap's problems; everyone threw themselves into denouncing Peng Dehuai. Ke Qingshi — who had earlier quietly collected and annotated Peng's speech drafts — jumped out accusing Peng of "long opposing Chairman Mao," dredging up alleged historical and line questions. On July 26 Mao escalated further: "deal with the matter, and also with the person." Lin Biao's arrival set the tone in a few words; Kang Sheng orchestrated the attacks at length.

Phase three: August 2–16 — the 8th Plenum seals the verdict. The Plenum adopted two resolutions: one condemning the "Peng-Huang-Zhang-Zhou anti-Party clique" — Peng as "careerist," "hypocrite," head of a "military club," Zhang Wentian as "deputy commander"; the other calling the whole Party to "oppose right opportunism" in a nationwide campaign. Peng was stripped of the Defense Ministry; Lin Biao took over.

Peng Dehuai's letter

On July 14, 1959, Peng Dehuai wrote to Mao Zedong. The letter first affirmed that the 1958 Great Leap line was correct, then listed problems: "the wind of exaggeration has grown fairly widespread" and "petty-bourgeois fanaticism makes us prone to 'left' errors." It stated: "The outstanding contradiction we now face in construction work is tension on all sides caused by disproportionality. In nature, this development has already affected relations between workers and peasants, among urban strata, and among peasant strata — it is therefore also political in character… Correcting these 'left' phenomena is generally harder than combating right-conservative thinking, as our Party's history proves."

Peng added: "Looking back, some 1958 capital-construction projects were too hasty and too numerous, dispersing funds and delaying projects that should have been completed — this is a shortcoming"; "in 1959, instead of slowing the pace somewhat with proper controls, we continued the Great Leap, so the imbalance was not adjusted in time and new temporary difficulties were added." He closed: "I feel a systematic summing-up of our achievements and lessons since the second half of last year, to further educate the whole Party, would be most beneficial. The aim is to distinguish right from wrong and raise ideological level, generally without pursuing individual responsibility. The opposite would harm unity and the cause."

The language was restrained: it affirmed the Great Leap's direction, discussed only work shortcomings, and explicitly said "generally without pursuing individual responsibility." Peng's intent was simple — the conference was ending and the shortcomings had not been fully aired; "if not said now, it would be too late." He never imagined the letter would be treated as an "anti-Party program."

Notably, Peng's criticisms closely resembled those voiced a year earlier by Soviet leader Khrushchev — at a time when Sino-Soviet relations were already fraying, which in Mao's eyes made the letter's "nature" all the more suspect.

July 23: the irreversible turn

Mao's July 23 speech was the irreversible turning point of the whole affair. Before it, the conference was correcting "left" errors; after it, the conference became an anti-rightist purge. Mao's core logic: the historic status of the "Three Red Banners" (the General Line, the Great Leap Forward, the people's communes) was untouchable — shortcomings could be discussed, but the line itself could not be questioned. Peng's letter touched his most sensitive nerve: not criticism of specific shortcomings, but doubt about his personal judgment and leadership authority.

From that day, the space for open correction shrank drastically. Provincial chiefs pivoted, denouncing Peng to demonstrate loyalty. Ke Qingshi produced the long-prepared materials from Peng's speeches and led the escalation. The "conference of immortals" became a struggle session.

The cruelty of the turn lay in this: it punished precisely those who told the truth. Peng had said what provincial chiefs had already said at the meeting — Wang Renzhong on deaths, Wu Zhipu on fabrications, Zhou Xiaozhou on inflated targets. But once those words were written into a letter and labeled "right opportunism," everyone fell silent. Lushan established a rule that held for the next three decades: before the supreme leader, telling the truth carried the price of political death.

Who executed

Chain: Mao → conference critics (Lin Biao, Kang Sheng, Hu Qiaomu, Wang Renzhong, Liu Yalou) → the Plenary resolution → the enlarged CMC meeting → the nationwide campaign. Lin replaced Peng as Defense Minister. The August 7 directive swept villages, factories and universities for half a year — worsening the famine; the 1981 Historical Resolution named it a main cause of the "three difficult years."

Who executed

Execution chain: Mao's verdict → conference criticism (led by Lin Biao, Kang Sheng, Hu Qiaomu, Wang Renzhong, Liu Yalou) → the 8th Plenary Session resolution → the enlarged CMC meeting → the nationwide anti-rightist-opportunism campaign.

• Lin Biao: led the character assassination — Peng was a "careerist, conspirator, hypocrite"; Lin replaced Peng as Defense Minister.
• Kang Sheng: pressed Peng on a "club" conspiracy to "protect" Huang Kecheng and Zhou Xiaozhou.
• Hu Qiaomu: condemned Zhang Wentian for relaying Peng's remark comparing Mao to "Stalin in his later years" as "a great insult to Chairman Mao and malicious slander."
• The enlarged CMC meeting after Lushan was even fiercer — "forcing Peng Dehuai to bang the table."
• The nationwide campaign: the August 7 directive had party organizations "check and overcome rightist thought" in August–September; it swept villages, factories and universities for about half a year — and worsened the nationwide economic collapse and famine. The 1981 Historical Resolution named the anti-rightist error a main cause of the "three difficult years."

The decision point of the Great Famine

This page's central argument: Lushan was not an ordinary inner-Party struggle — it was the decision point of the Great Famine.

Before July 1959, the Great Leap's errors could still have been corrected: Mao himself admitted to "something stupid," provincial chiefs dared to lay out problems, and conference documents acknowledged policy deviations. Had Lushan ended as planned — summing up lessons, lowering targets, rectifying the communes — the catastrophe of late 1959 could have been greatly mitigated.

The July 23 reversal changed everything. Under the slogan "oppose right deviation, drum up energy," the suppressed "left" errors resurfaced with a vengeance: whoever mentioned shortcomings was a "right opportunist." After the 1959 autumn harvest, high procurement quotas continued to seize peasants' food and seed grain; communal canteens kept "eating with open bellies"; exaggeration ran wilder under the cover of "drumming up energy." The signal of Peng's fall could not have been clearer: it was not the policies but those who spoke of the disaster who were to blame.

Over the next three years (1959–1961), China plunged into the deadliest famine in peacetime human history. Lushan's relationship to this famine is not a loose link of "background" and "outcome" but a direct causal chain: the conference could have applied the brakes, and chose to accelerate; the man who reached for the brakes was destroyed, the man who pressed the accelerator was promoted (Lin Biao replacing Peng). As researchers have noted: without the July 23 turn, correcting the Great Leap could have spared tens of millions of lives.

This is why this page treats Lushan as a standalone event, not a biographical footnote to Peng Dehuai: what was decided was the direction of policy — a question of life or death for tens of millions.

Scale & Methodology

Who opposed

At the time: Huang Kecheng, Zhang Wentian, Zhou Xiaozhou spoke for Peng's views — all purged alongside him; a private July 23 grumble about "Stalin in his later years" was exposed. Rehabilitation: 1962 appeal rejected; December 1978 full rehabilitation — four years after Peng's death (1974); the 1981 Historical Resolution declared the whole affair wrong. Irony: Huang Kecheng returned to the Central Committee in December 1978 as discipline-inspection chief.

Who opposed

At the time: scattered open support — but no one could publicly defend Peng without being purged alongside him.

• Huang Kecheng (Chief of General Staff): on July 19 supported Peng's views — overstated farm output, disproportions, inflated 1959 targets, and the style of "only achievements, no shortcomings."
• Zhang Wentian (alternate Politburo member): insisted on speaking his own views; his July 12 private remark — "Chairman Mao is very wise, but also very harsh — like Stalin in his later years" — became key evidence against him.
• Zhou Xiaozhou (Hunan party chief): on July 19 said Peng's letter was "right in its overall spirit."
• Huang, Zhou, Zhou Hui, Li Rui: on the night of July 23, grumbled privately that Mao's speech "was very much like Stalin in his later years — personal dictatorship, no real collective leadership" — soon exposed.

All four (Peng, Huang, Zhang, Zhou) were labeled an "anti-party clique."

Rehabilitation:

• June 1962: Peng's 80,000-word appeal — rejected; token post in 1965.
• December 1978: the Central Committee rehabilitated Peng, restoring his full honors — four years after his death (November 29, 1974); approved by the 3rd Plenary Session.
• June 1981: the Historical Resolution declared Mao's criticism of Peng and the anti-rightist struggle wrong — a main cause of the "three difficult years."

History's irony: among the Central Committee members added in December 1978 was Huang Kecheng himself — one of the "anti-party clique" — restored as executive secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission.

Impact

Death of the correction mechanism. Before Lushan, the Party retained some capacity for self-correction: provincial cadres dared to speak truth, conference documents dared to admit deviations. After July 23, that space vanished completely. For the next two decades, until Mao's death, no one in the Party dared substantively question supreme decisions — "Peng Dehuai's fate" was everyone's warning.

Continuation and intensification of the Great Leap disaster. Under "oppose right deviation, drum up energy," policies from late 1959 through 1961 grew more radical than 1958's. High procurements, communal canteens and exaggeration intensified under political cover, making the famine far more devastating than the crisis already visible in early 1959.

Lin Biao's rise and the politicization of the army. Peng's fall and Lin Biao's takeover as Defense Minister marked the PLA's turn from "professionalization" to "politicization." Lin's campaigns of "putting politics first" turned the army into a model of the Mao personality cult, foreshadowing its role in the Cultural Revolution.

Class struggle brought inside the top leadership. Lushan was the first time "class struggle" was introduced into the Central leadership itself. Previously its targets were social enemies — landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, rightists; henceforth, differing opinions inside the Party could also be labeled "class struggle." That road led straight to the Cultural Revolution.

Peng Dehuai's personal tragedy. After dismissal Peng was demoted and imprisoned. His 1962 "80,000-word letter" of appeal went nowhere. During the Cultural Revolution Red Guards dragged him back to Beijing for over a hundred struggle sessions and 200+ interrogations; suffering rectal cancer, he was tormented until his death in custody on November 29, 1974. The 3rd Plenum of the 11th Central Committee rehabilitated him in 1978.

Videos

"Truth of a Century": Peng Dehuai — the most brutally persecuted marshal. Telling the truth at the 1959 Lushan Conference, he was branded head of an "anti-Party clique": 15 years of denunciation, 8 years of imprisonment, 100+ struggle sessions, dying in agony.

From Lushan to the Cultural Revolution: Peng Dehuai's dismissal and imprisonment — why did Mao stand by? Tracing the Mao-Peng relationship from Jinggangshan to the Lushan rupture.

Related images (external links)

• Peng Dehuai image category — Wikimedia Commons (historic photos; check license notes on each page)
• Lushan image category — Wikimedia Commons