The 9th National Congress

Date: April 1-24, 1969

Place: Beijing

Number of delegates: 1,512

Party membership: 22 million

After 1957, "Left" deviations occurred in the Party's leadership on the issues of class struggle and the speed of economic construction. As a result, the cause of socialist construction suffered a serious setback, and the country experienced economic difficulties for three consecutive years.

The Party therefore took measures to correct the "Left" mistakes and adopted the principle of "readjustment, consolidating, filling out and raising standards" for the national economy. At the same time, large-scale readjustments were made in policies concerning politics, ideology, culture and education. The new measures enabled the country to win continuous achievements in its socialist construction. A large number of qualified personnel were trained. Rich experience was gained. All this laid the material and technological foundation for the subsequent cause of socialist modernization construction.

However, the "Left" mistakes in the guiding ideology of economic work were not totally corrected, while the "Left" mistakes in political, ideological and cultural areas were worsened, eventually leading to the outbreak of the "cultural revolution" in May 1966.

The 9th National Congress was held in unusual circumstances because the CPC had suffered a lot during the "cultural revolution", the Party committees of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and various grass-roots Party organizations had not been restored or established and the majority part of the Party members had not returned to regular Party activities. Lin Biao delivered the political report, in which he applied the "theory of continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat", expounded the formation and importance of this theory, reviewed the preparation and execution of the "cultural revolution" under the guidance of this theory, and extravagantly lauded the "great achievements" scored in the "cultural revolution". 9th National Congress In the new Party Constitution adopted at the congress, Lin Biao was put down in the general program as "Comrade Mao Zedong's successor". The congress legitimized the theory and practice of the "cultural revolution" and solidified the position of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing in the Party Central Committee. The ideological, political and organizational guidelines of the Ninth Congress were utterly wrong.

The congress elected 170 members and 109 alternate members to the Central Committee, of whom, only 53 had been members or alternate members of the Eighth Central Committee. At the First Plenary Session of the Ninth CPC Central Committee, Mao Zedong was elected chairman, and Lin Biao vice chairman, of the Central Committee. The members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee were Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng.

The "cultural revolution" was wrongly launched by the leadership and was exploited by counterrevolutionary cliques. It was a domestic turmoil that brought serious disasters to the Party, the state and people of all nationalities. However, during the "cultural revolution", the Party and people waged hard struggles against the "Left" mistakes and the two counterrevolutionary cliques headed respectively by Lin Biao and Jiang Qing. As a result, the damage of the "cultural revolution" was somewhat limited. Although the national economy and other causes suffered great losses, a certain amount of progress was still made.

The nature of the Communist Party, the people's government and the people's army, as well as the society as a whole, remained unchanged. In the end, the Party, relying on its own strength, defeated the counterrevolutionary cliques headed by Lin Biao and Jiang Qing, overcame the turmoil and started a new historical era.