The Gutian Congress or Gutian Conference () was the 9th meeting of the 4th Red Army and the first after the

Nanchang Uprising The Nanchang Uprising () was the first major Nationalist Party of China–Chinese Communist Party engagement of the Chinese Civil War, begun by the Chinese Communists to counter the Shanghai massacre of 1927 by the Kuomintang. The Kuomi ...

and the subsequent southward flight of the rebel troops. It was convened in December 1929 in the town of Gutian in Shanghang County,

Fujian Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its ...

Province. Most of the delegates to this congress were army men (the insurrectionists having been renamed ''the 4th Army of the Chinese Workers' & Peasants' Red Army'').

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

, voted out six months earlier but moving from his success at the little-known Jiaoyang Congress (also in Shanghang), addressed the ''Zhu-Mao'' 4th Army () as its

Comintern The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by ...

-anointed political commissar and chaired the congress. The Gutian Congress Resolution (), also titled ''On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party ''(henceforth ''Mistaken Ideas''), has its ostensible source at the Gutian Congress. One of the selections from this significant text later included in Mao's '' Little Red Book'' is as follows: ::In the sphere of theory, destroy the roots of ultra-democracy. First, it should be pointed out that the danger of ultra-democracy lies in the fact that it damages or even completely wrecks the Party organisation and weakens or even completely undermines the Party's fighting capacity, rendering the Party incapable of fulfilling its fighting tasks and thereby causing the defeat of the revolution. Next it should be pointed out that the source of ultra-democracy consists in the

petty bourgeoisie ''Petite bourgeoisie'' (, literally 'small bourgeoisie'; also anglicised as petty bourgeoisie) is a French term that refers to a social class composed of semi-autonomous peasants and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological ...

's individualistic aversion to discipline. When this characteristic is brought into the Party, it develops into ultra-democratic ideas politically and organisationally. These ideas are utterly incompatible with the fighting tasks of the

proletariat The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...

. ''Mistaken Ideas'' also defined the Red Army as a "mass propaganda" (''qunzhong xuanchuan'') organ in addition to being a military fighting force. It entrenched the absolute leadership position of the Communist Party over the Red Army. The purpose of the Red Army, the resolution stated, "was chiefly for the service of political ends." The resolution further called for the criticism of what was seen as excessive democratic deliberation and discussion in the fighting force ("ultra-democracy"), preferring

democratic centralism Democratic centralism is a practice in which political decisions reached by voting processes are binding upon all members of the political party. It is mainly associated with Leninism, wherein the party's political vanguard of professional revo ...

whereby the minority agreed to abide by the decisions of the majority, lower levels unquestioningly implemented decisions made by the leadership, and that mistaken ideas must be "corrected through ideological criticism."

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* ''

Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung ''Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung'' () is a book of statements from speeches and writings by Mao Zedong (formerly romanized as Mao Tse-tung), the former Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, published from 1964 to about 1976 and widel ...

'',

Lin Biao ) , serviceyears = 1925–1971 , branch = People's Liberation Army , rank = Marshal of the People's Republic of China Lieutenant general of the National Revolutionary Army, Republic of China , commands ...

, ed., East is Red Publishing (Beijing, 1964, April), pp. 309–11. {{coord, 25.2228, N, 116.8328, E, source:wikidata, display=title Military history of Fujian 1929 in China 1929 in politics 1929 conferences Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Fujian Assemblies of the Chinese Communist Party

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