Talks at the Beidaihe Conference August 1958

Abstract

Mao’s talks at the Beidaihe conference of the CCP politburo have never been officially published in China. But scholars have long known that this meeting in August 1958 produced the big push for Mao’s utopian scheme, the “people’s communes,” and ushered in the high tide of the Great Leap Forward. This text contains extracts from a “draft transcript” of Mao’s five long, rambling talks given between August 17 and 30 at the beachside party retreat. The transcript appears in a Cultural Revolution period “genius” Mao edition that came to light in the 1980s (see “A Note about the Texts”). The extracts here are taken in chronological order from the forty-five-page text, with an emphasis on Mao’s comments on the people’s communes.