Lushan Conference

Lushan Conference
Site of the Lushan Conference
Traditional Chinese	廬山會議
Simplified Chinese	庐山会议
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Lúshān Huìyì

The Lushan Conference was a meeting of the top leaders of the Communist Party of China held between July and August 1959. The Politburo met in an "expanded session" (Kuoda Huiyi) between July 2 and August 1, followed by the 8th Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China from August 2 – 16. The major topic of discussion was the Great Leap Forward.

The Lushan Conference saw the political purge of the Defence Minister, Marshal Peng Dehuai, whose criticism of some aspects of the Great Leap Forward was seen as a personal affront on Mao. The Conference also marked the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 where disagreement over the direction of policy spilled into open conflict between party leaders. Mao's response to Peng was also seen as an indication that for the first time, his personal authority trumped the principles of collective leadership of the Central Committee and the Politburo.

The conference's name is derived from the meeting place, a resort on Mount Lu in the district of the same name in Jiangxi Province, in southeastern China.

The original objective of the conference was to review the events in China during 1958 and solve some practical issues brought forth by those events. Mao Zedong also intended to use the conference to contain the "leftist tendency" (zuoqing) elements in the Great Leap Forward.

On July 14, Peng Dehuai, then PRC's defense minister, 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 "epidemic of bragging" in the Great Leap Forward.