Ten Major Relationships
It was delivered by Mao during an enlarged session of a Politburo meeting of the Chinese Communist Party on April 25, 1956, and further elaborated in the 7th Supreme State Conference on May 2 the same year.[1] In official account, the speech is celebrated as the landmark of the search for an alternative mode of socialist development that fit the specific conditions in China and it also marks the beginning of Mao's denouncement of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s.[2] In fewer than 13,000 words in Chinese (10,000 in English translation), Mao stressed that China had to avoid repeating "certain defects and errors that occurred in the course of their [the Soviet Union] building socialism.The speech was made in front of the party secretaries of various provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, and was subsequently circulated among the middle and top cadres for political study.Other top leaders including Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Chen Yun, and Deng Xiaoping had also participated in these meetings and expressed their opinions.As the original agenda was about issues like agricultural cooperative, attendants did not expect Mao to make such a speech on the ten major relationships and it became the focus for the rest of the meeting.But the Communist Party of the Soviet Union emerged victorious and, under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, it learned not only how to make the revolution but also how to carry on construction."[6]Following Mao's visit to Moscow from late 1949 to early 1950, on February 14, 1950, the two countries signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance (中苏友好同盟互助条约) which promised the Soviet Union's commitment to help build socialism in the newly founded People's Republic of China.In Moscow, a dramatic event happened during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, as Nikita Khrushchev made the "Secret Speech" of denouncing the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin.Chinese Communist Zhu De and Deng Xiaoping attended the congress and were surprised by the length that Khrushchev went into denouncing Stalin.The following are the synopses of the ten relationships, many of which were Mao's urge for balanced development and open criticism of the situations in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.Unlike in the Soviet Union and some Eastern European countries, where the disequilibrium resulted in "a shortage of goods on the market and an unstable currency",[3] the supply of grain, raw materials, and daily necessities were stable in China.Similar to last part, Mao suggested that the threat posed by the United States since the Korean War had subsided and the Chinese armed forces had grown.Workers should be given improved working conditions and welfare, and increased and more equal wages as a reward for their political consciousness and over-fulfillment of production quotas.The party hence needed to keep reviewing their own policy to eliminate the influences of the old time and devise systems of economic management and finance for the minority nationalities.In this section Mao focused on those who made mistakes in the past, which include "dogmatists headed by Wang Ming" who led the party "picking up the bad aspect of Stalin's style of work".In Mao Zedong's own works, "in the first eight years we copied foreign experiences, but since the ten major relationships was proposed in 1956, [the party] had found a path suitable for China.After the speech was delivered, the ten major relationships became the guiding thought instead and it was followed up by Liu Shaoqi, Hu Qiaomu, and other top leaders in their preparation for the congress.During the congress Zhou Enlai reported on the proposal for the Second Five-year Plan (1956–1962) and issues highlighted by Mao in the speech, like the ratio of investment between heavy and light industries and decentralization, were addressed.An instance of such influence was the use of Soviet machine tractor for spreading the mechanization of agriculture but it was questioned by the Chinese side due to its insufficiency.[15] However, historian Shen Zhihua suggests that for adjusting the ratio of investment between heavy and light industries, altering the plan for industrial development, and improving people's living standard, Mao's development strategy in the speech did not differed significantly from the one in Khrushchev's speech made in the party congress in the same year and their 6th Five-year Plan as well."[3] In 1954, a decrease in production was accompanied by an increase in state purchase, making the peasants "disgruntled, and there were a lot of complaints both inside and outside the Party."[3] Shen Zhihua suggests that the criticism of personality cult of Stalin led to the removal of Mao Zedong Thought from the 8th party congress.Hu Qiaomu explained that not mentioning Mao Zedong Thought was related to the Soviet Union who refused to accept the idea.At local level, cadres started to raise doubt about the excessive praise given to Mao and internationally socialist countries also became cautious about personality cult.On the last day of the meeting, the article was published on People's Daily in full text and a nationwide learning campaign followed.The speech was also included in the fifth volume of Mao's Selected Works, with the following editorial:"Bearing in mind lessons drawn from the Soviet Union, Comrade Mao Tsetung summed up China's experience, dealt with ten major relationships in socialist revolution and socialist construction and set forth the ideas underlying the general line of building socialism with greater, faster, better and more economical results, a line suited to the conditions of our country.
Mao ZedongEarly lifeFormer ResidenceDeath and state funeralMemorial HallMaoismTenureRevolutionLand Reform MovementProclamationKorean WarCampaign to Suppress CounterrevolutionariesThree-anti and Five-anti CampaignsFirst five-year planFive Principles of Peaceful CoexistenceBandung ConferenceSufan movementHundred Flowers CampaignAnti-Rightist CampaignCanton FairGreat Leap ForwardGreat Chinese FamineTwo Bombs, One SatelliteSeven Thousand Cadres ConferenceSocialist Education MovementThird FrontCultural RevolutionUN representationRichard Nixon visitBombard the HeadquartersA Critique of Soviet EconomicsOn ContradictionOn Guerrilla WarfareOn New DemocracyOn PracticeOn Protracted WarOn the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the PeopleOn the People's Democratic DictatorshipOppose Book WorshipQuotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tungReply to Li ShuyiReport on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in HunanSelected Works of Mao Tse-TungThe Shian Kian Weekly ReviewPoetryChangshaThe Double NinthLoushan PassCult of personalityChairman Mao en route to AnyuanPortraits overlooking Tiananmen1989 vandalism incidentFuzhouChengduLong Live the VictoryNorth Park Commune inspectionAgrarian socialismAntagonistic contradictionAnti-imperialismAnti-revisionismCapitalist roaderCompradorContinuous revolution theoryFour OldsMarxism–LeninismMass lineNewborn socialist thingsNew DemocracyOne Divides into TwoPeople's warProbable defeatRevolutionary base areaSeek truth from factsSelf-criticismSocial imperialismThree Worlds TheoryMaoism–Third WorldismMao-spontexMarxism–Leninism–MaoismGonzalo ThoughtPrachanda PathFaiz AhmadLouis AlthusserSamir AminBob AvakianAlain BadiouMohan BaidyaAfzal BangashCharles BettelheimBiplavBo XilaiChen BodaChin PengPushpa Kamal DahalSaroj DuttaNorm GallagherAbimael GuzmánHarry HaywoodTed HillGeorge Jacksonİbrahim KaypakkayaJiang QingKang ShengLi MinqiLin BiaoCharu MajumdarPierre MuleleHuey P. NewtonNie YuanziQi BenyuMuppala Lakshmana RaoNarayan SanyalSiraj SikderJose Maria SisonWang HongwenYao WenyuanAkram YariZhang ChunqiaoReport on an Investigation of the PeasantMovement in HunanOn the Correct Handling of ContradictionsAmong the PeopleHistoric Eight DocumentsChinese Soviet RepublicJiangxi SovietLong MarchChinese Communist RevolutionPeople's Republic of China