The Beidaihe Conference of 1958 () was an enlarged meeting held by the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee from August 17 to 30 1958. It also involved a conference of provincial industrial secretaries and other relevant local leaders from the 25th to the 31st.
The conference was held in Beidaihe District, a seaside retreat for the CCP in Qinhuangdao City, Hebei province. In 1953, the CCP Central Committee formed the summer office system (). Beidaihe is regarded as the summer capital of China, because almost all the important conferences of the CCP Central Committee in summer were convened here from 1953 to 1965.
The major topics of the Beidaihe Conference in 1958 were the national economic plan in 1959, current problems of industrial and agricultural production, and rural work. The conference adopted a whole series of critical documents, including the Communique of the conference, the Resolution of Establishing People's Communes in Rural Areas, the Directive on Launching Socialist and Communist Education Campaign, and so on.
In the conference, the CCP raised the 1958 steel production target to 10.7 million tons and the grain target to 350 million tons. By 1959, they planned to produce 30 million tons of steel and 500 million tons of grain. Meanwhile, the conference called for a mass movement to increase industrial production and supported building people's communes nationwide. It led the Great Leap Forward to reach its culmination in the next two months.
Background
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. In 1957, steel production had been 5.35 million tons. 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.
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. Besides, Bo Yibo, Chairman of State Economic Commission, proposed a new method of economic planning called "Two Plans" (). It meant that there would be one plan which must be fulfilled and another plan which was expected to be fulfilled. 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. On Nanning Conference, Mao was irritated with "Anti-Rash-Advance" (), and labelled the "Anti-Rash Advance" as "vulgar dialectics and Marxism."
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. 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."
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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)," which earned Mao's approving "correct, very correct!" 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." 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. 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.
The seeds of the communes sprouted during the water conservancy campaign of winter 1957–1958. In the certain areas threatened by floods in summer, some of the small collectives merged into larger units. In Chengdu Conference, Mao Zedong put forward the idea of merging agricultural production cooperatives and endorsed the winter mergers.
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." 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. 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.
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, and first mentioned the term "people's commune." 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. 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.
Mao did not accept the term until he inspected rural areas on the spot in August 1958. On his tour, Mao permitted communes ahead of any formal documents adopted by the Central Committee. 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)."
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. 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. He told Yudin that the Soviet Union tried to control the atomic energy because they did not believe that China could make it. 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."
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. 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). 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.