It's a little nippy right now, but I think it's going to become nice and hot today, and I'm just getting this recording out of the way before I have a long day of, um, lecturing and classes and just, you know, overall educating the young people, broadening their horizons, getting them to question the world around them and to transform the world around them, because that's what I love.

To quote Young Jeezy: "If Drew is what they want, then Drew is what they gettin'." They ask me what I do, I tell them teaching for a living. That's all I gotta say, I gotta say. Well, hey guys, um, no real updates on the personal front, so let's just cut the chitchat and get straight into it.

So, here we are, we're going into a really interesting time of the Cultural Revolution, because the Ninth Congress happens and the Sino-Soviet border conflict begins, and that gets pretty wild and wooey, so let's get into it. Here we are, beginning the wild and gnarly year of 1969. In the summer of '69, a global year of continuing change, continuing radicalism, and of course in China the Cultural Revolution was continuing, all but in a very different way than the first three years. So let's start with the cold light of day on New Year's Day.

So on New Year's Day, the front page editorial in the People's Daily and other newspapers announced joylessly that the CPC was going to be holding its Ninth Party Congress this upcoming year, and that it would cement the glorious victory of Chairman Mao's line on a nationwide basis and would reconstitute the party entirely on a Mao Zedong-Thought basis.

However, what's interesting is that it did not specify when the Congress would happen; all it said is, "It's going to happen this year." Indeed, it was decided ahead of time at the plenum back in October and November that the Congress would be held at a secret time so as not to give the Soviets the ability to kill off the entire Chinese leadership in a nuclear strike on Beijing.

Sounds a bit paranoid, maybe, but with the Soviets amassing large amounts of troops, missiles, and long-range nuclear bombers on the Sino-Soviet and Sino-Mongolian border, eh, I think the authorities in Beijing had, uh, had right to be a little cautious.

Newspapers that month were also filled with a noticeable ramping up of the Mao cult. It was reported that in Shaanxi Province alone there were now 3,149 shrines to the Little Red Book. The Xinhua News Agency that week reported that 740 million little red books and 150 million copies of Mao's selected works had been published and would continue to be published and proliferated around China and around the world.

And also at that time that year, the spring festival, the Chinese New Year, was revolutionized to be centered around praising Chairman Mao as the new spring, as the morning sun.

And of course, my favorite thing, Mao badges were still being churned out at an obscene rate. Indeed, if you want to know more about the jaw-dropping amount of Mao badges that were being made at that point, go back to episode 24 for our special episode about Mao badges. Every day, people around the country would take part in loyalty dances or sing Chairman Mao's quotations in ways that were set to music.

The personality cult around Mao was bigger than ever, and to outsiders it seemed to have taken an almost religious dimension.

Again, if you want to learn more about this as well, if you want to learn more about the Mao cult more broadly, um, refer back to episode 18, my special episode about the Little Red Book, where I dive a little more deeply about how the Mao cult went from 1969 to, let's say, 1971, and like the question of how much of it was, you know, genuine popularity, how much of it was Mao doing it, how much of it was Lin Biao doing it.

It's - it’s a tricky thing, it's a tricky thing. But yeah, one thing that's interesting is that it's really after the Red Guard movement subsides that the Mao cult gets really intense. But things were about to get real ugly and real fast. In the middle of the Ussuri River, right on the border between Russia and Heilongjiang Province, sits a tiny little island.

Russians call it Damansky Island, while Chinese people call it Zhenbao Island. This tiny, seemingly meaningless piece of land became the flashpoint for a conflict that would push the Soviets and the Chinese into a full armed conflict and almost to nuclear war. On the morning of January 4th, Soviet troops arrived on Zhenbao Island for what should have been a routine patrol.

After all, both sides viewed it as their own territory, as the border between Russia and China had been a source of contention dating well back to the 1800s. When they arrived on the island, they immediately confronted the Chinese People's Liberation Army outpost on the island, and in the ensuing scuffle, four Chinese troops were wounded.

The next day, two Chinese fishermen who used Zhenbao Island as a place to catch their fish were seized on the island by Soviet troops and were beaten mercilessly with rifle butts.

The people of Heilongjiang were outraged, quite understandably, and many demonstrations against Soviet social imperialism were held on the river, calling for the Soviet troops to put down their arms and to work to topple the Brezhnev-Kosygin revisionist clique.

On January 23rd, the situation was even further exacerbated. A Soviet jeep intercepted a PLA patrol between Zhenbao Island and the Russian bank of the frozen Ussuri River.

The Soviets, aided by three trucks of reinforcements and attack dogs, battered the PLA patrol into a hasty retreat, leaving nine comrades wounded. A Russian officer broadcasted to Chinese radio stations on the river that if he has to eject the Chinese troops from Zhenbao Island again, he will use deadly force.

The Chinese people were no longer simply directly confronting revisionism within their own ranks, but were now forced to directly and physically confront Soviet revisionism.

Meanwhile, back in Beijing on January 28th, Mao approved a new policy called ‘Reeducation and Offering a Way Out’, which emphasized that bourgeois academic authorities and others in society who had been deemed revisionists or capitalist roaders could redeem themselves through education.

This was important at this point because Mao had begun to see the need to scale back the brutal and bloody class cleansing of the class ranks campaign, and as a need to promote the May 7th Cadre Schools, where intellectuals and party cadres were educated through labor and intensive Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong-Thought education classes. Mao firmly believed that the time for destruction was over, and it was time to rebuild the newly red society before the Ninth Congress.

Meanwhile, in Washington, in the first week of February, newly inaugurated President Richard M. Nixon instructed his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, to use his contacts to give every encouragement to the idea that the U.S. is open to rapprochement with China.

The Chinese and Americans had been in contact with each other for about a year via each other's embassies in Warsaw, but with the Chinese and Soviets now on the cusp of open conflict, and with Vietnam still raging just south of China, Nixon thought now would be an opportune time to fully negotiate with the Chinese. Kissinger ordered aides and advisors in the White House to launch a study into U.S.-China relations, particularly both with Beijing and Taipei, and an evaluation of possible alternate U.S. approaches to China.

In just a few years, these studies would pay off on both sides. And honestly, the Americans had every reason to think that the Chinese would be conducive to coming to the negotiating table, as fighting between the Chinese and Soviets was getting worse.

On February 6th, around 100 Chinese and Soviet troops came into contact on Zhenbao Island, but the Chinese decided to avoid an escalation and withdrew immediately. The next day, Soviet soldiers launched a sporadic amount of machine gun fire at Chinese troops upon sighting them across the river, but both sides withdrew once again.

Thankfully, nobody was killed or wounded on either side at this time, but it showed that the Soviets were in no mood to play nice. Indeed, the Soviets opened fire on the PLA once more on the 9th and again on the 16th, although once again with casualties on neither side.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, on February 7th, Mao assigned Lin Biao to develop, deliver the CPC Ninth Congress political report, and called for Chen Boda to draft it alongside Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan.

I'll tell you guys a little more about that process around this report in a few minutes, but needless to say, it was the subject to the clash of many different lines and very different personalities.

On February 19th, the Foreign Ministry and PLA leadership approved a Zhenbao Island counter-interference struggle plan from the Heilongjiang PLA command.

Later that day, Chen Yi, Ye Jianying, Nie Rongzhen, and Xu Xiangqian, some of the marshals of the PLA who had been toppled, were recalled from manual labor or from their May 7th Cadre Schools and were brought to a meeting with Mao, Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, and others from the Central Cultural Revolution Group.

Mao asked Chen Yi to lead the group of out-of-favor marshals in studying international strategic issues, emphasizing the skirmishes at Zhenbao Island and the recent talks with the USA in Warsaw. Zhou Enlai told Chen Yi to convene an international relations study group once a week, but to not be bound by, as he said, "the old frame of thinking."

While this was happening, yet more bloodless skirmishes between the Soviets and Chinese happened on the 22nd and 25th. Then, in the wee hours of the morning on March 2nd, the shit really hit the fan on Zhenbao Island. Under the cover of darkness, several PLA platoons entered Zhenbao Island undetected. They set up a telephone link with the shore, dug in, and began to wait.

PLA Captain Sun Yuguo led a patrol around Zhenbao Island but was immediately intercepted by Soviet troops. At that point, Sun's men opened fire without hesitation and immediately killed seven Russians.

The Soviets scrambled to counterattack but were aided by a large force. Hidden on Zhenbao Island, Sun Yuguo's troops destroyed the rest of the Soviet patrol in 20 minutes of intense fighting.

Reinforcements from a nearby Soviet border post made their way to Zhenbao Island under rifle and mortar fire, but a well-placed rocket from the PLA forces across the river destroyed their command car. The Soviet relief force inflicted heavy casualties but failed to retake the island.

After two hours, both sides withdrew from the Ussuri River, with the Chinese declaring themselves the victors of the day. But that day, uh, after two hours, both sides withdrew from the Ussuri River, with the Chinese declaring themselves as having won the day and 31 Soviet soldiers laying dead in the snow. Uh-oh.

When the news hit Beijing, protesters surrounded the Soviet embassy because Xinhua and the People's Daily had spun it that the Soviets had attacked first. Demonstrators screamed, "Fry Brezhnev, hang Kosygin!" for yesterday's border clash. Under the headline "Down with the new Tsars," the People's Daily said that the PLA would wipe out any invaders from the "fascist USSR." Anti-Soviet demonstrations took place in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and other big cities.

Meanwhile, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk held anti-China demonstrations. Speakers at a gigantic rally in Harbin and Heilongjiang called on the population to make every home a guard post to defend China's sacred territory.

That day, the protests, which was surrounding the Soviet embassy on Beijing's anti-revisionism road, swelled to a million people. The People's Daily continued to publish story after story and editorial after editorial about the crimes of the Soviet revisionists, both in the USSR against their own people, against the Chinese people, and Soviet social imperialism in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The editorial staff accused the Soviet Union of conspiring with Chiang Kai-shek against the People's Republic of China and called for increased war preparedness. The Soviets responded in kind. In Moscow, a crowd of 50,000 threw rocks, ice, and paint at the Chinese embassy in one of the biggest protests the city had seen in decades.

The Soviet press referred to Mao as a fascist with severe mental health issues. Some newspapers began to armchair diagnose Mao with everything from paranoid schizophrenia to antisocial personality disorder, and said that Maoism was a Nazi ideology that could destroy the international communist movement from within.

Mao replied by saying that such attacks would be responded tit for tat, and he accused the fascist USSR leadership of betraying Lenin's legacy and betraying the Soviet people. On March 14th, things got even worse.

A Soviet armored vehicle, on a routine patrol, onto Zhenbao Island while PLA troops were laying down landmines on the island. Um, a second PLA squad crossed the frozen Ussuri River and took up positions. Four more Soviet armored personnel carriers landed on the island in hopes to expel the PLA forces. The Chinese sent out a radio message to all Soviet troops that they were to leave immediately, and then they themselves withdrew.

The next morning, PLA artillery began shelling Zhenbao Island. Infantry crossed the river and forced the Soviets to withdraw after 90 minutes of fighting, led by four cutting-edge T-62 tanks. Soviet forces mounted a counterattack a few minutes later. Their artillery remained silent to avoid hitting the Chinese bank. Then the T-62s shrugged off RPG hits from the Chinese, but one was knocked out by a mine in front of the Chinese shore.

The crew abandoned it but were gunned down immediately. On direct orders, telephoned in from Moscow, a new Grad rocket artillery system fired a huge salvo at Chinese reserves, massing far inland, wiping out many Chinese troops and wounding hundreds of others. Top Soviet leaders in Eastern Europe for a Warsaw Pact meeting put the nation's strategic rocket forces Far East section on high alert.

After hours of fighting, both sides finally retreated from exhaustion. After the smoke cleared, 100 Chinese troops were dead, and 20 Soviet troops lay dead alongside them. Hundreds more were wounded on both sides.

The Soviets tried to counterattack again on the 16th and 17th, but were repelled without any further deaths, but several dozen wounded. Both sides claimed the other side shot first, and for several years, who shot first, 'did Han or Greedo shoot first', was a major subject of heated debate among Chinese, Russian, and American scholars.

Personally, I think the Chinese shot first. Yes, I'm gonna say it, the Chinese shot first. Lyle J. Goldstein, in his report about the Zhenbao Island incident, says that it is possible the Chinese PLA had their own reasons for shooting first.

There was hopes that upping the prestige of the PLA on the battlefield would help solidify Lin Biao's place as Chairman Mao's successor in the upcoming Ninth Congress and overall military control of the Revolutionary Committees.

There was also the possibility that leftist or, you know, very hardline Maoist officers within the PLA Heilongjiang command wanted to continue the class struggle against revisionism, only this time against the Soviet social imperialists rather than the revisionists at home.

However, this is just a theory, albeit one that makes a bit of sense, especially because Goldstein points out that despite amassing dozens of army divisions and long-range nuclear bombers on the border with China, the Soviets did not have a technological or even numerical superiority over the Chinese at that point.

Goldstein and other Western scholars essentially say that while the Chinese shot first, they do admit the Soviets kind of started the matter by repeatedly provoking the Chinese for years prior.

Kind of one of those, like, it's like when a little kid bothers their sibling by going, "I'm not touching you, I'm not touching you," kind of like hovering the finger just over you, just like threatening to poke you but never poking you, and you finally slap, slap their finger away, and they're like, "Ow, you hit me!" Yeah, it was kind of one of those situations.

On March 21st, Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin attempted to speak to Mao and Zhou at Zhongnanhai by telephone, but the switchboard operator in Beijing refused to connect that dirty revisionist.

Zhou Enlai declined a second attempt by Kosygin to telephone him and replied that such informal channels were no longer advantageous. Mao approved a memo closing informal communication channels with the Soviet Union but told Zhou Enlai to be prepared to negotiate with them in the future.

The next day, despite their last effort overtaken by other events, Mao asked Chen Yi's group of marshals for a second broader report on international relations. Mao told the radicals in the party that he was protecting Chen Yi in hopes that he could use him to liberate Zhang Pinghua and Zhao Ziyang once the masses' anger had subsided. Oh, remember the problem with Mao badges wasting too much aluminum, like I talked about in episode 24?

Well, on March 24th, Zhou Enlai closed the National Planning Conference and criticized the use of 5,000 tons of aluminum to cast bigger and bigger Mao badges. Mao co-signed the criticism, saying that, uh, saying that it was wasteful of army and air force technology to, uh, use so much aluminum. He called for the end of large-scale manufacturing of badges, and Mao said, gave the directive, quote, "Give us back our airplanes."

And from then on, you really see the Mao badge factories slowly start to close, and by, I'd say, yeah, by January 1970, all the big Mao badge factories had closed. You still see a lot of badge sets for the Ninth Congress, um, come around. I have some Mao badges from summer and autumn of '69 in celebration of the Ninth Congress, but overall, by January of 1970, Mao badges were no longer being produced. But it was okay, 'cause there was literally billions of them. Um, so there you go.

Well, the next day, exchanging planning notes for the Ninth Congress, Mao told Zhou Enlai that he and Lin Biao would be chairing the Congress with Zhou acting as Secretary General through the whole thing. But the question of the political report remained. Mao and Lin Biao received Chen Boda's first draft and Zhang Chunqiao and Yao Wenyuan's second draft for Lin's political report to the Congress.

But Mao, uh, felt that Chen Boda's draft was too economistic and was too preoccupied with building up the productive forces and stabilizing the economy. Mao said it reminded him too much of Eduard Bernstein's old idea of "the movement is everything, the final goal is nothing." The Zhang and Yao draft, however, was much more to Mao's liking. He felt it was more balanced, with a radical thrust of keeping politics in command while still promoting the stabilizing of the economy. Essentially, Zhang and Yao centered their report on the idea of "grasp revolution, promote production."

On March 27th, Zhou Enlai drafted up a list of 115 names for Mao to, uh, to Mao for election to the Central Committee at the upcoming Congress. Mao was okay with the list but felt that maybe the Central Committee needed to be expanded.

Oh, and this is a fun aside, off-topic, I know, but on March 29th, in the Philippines, a few dozen Maoists from the Communist Party of the Philippines, which had been, um, refounded a couple of months prior, um, formed a new People's Army commanded by veteran Communist Party insurgent Bernabe Buscayno. Hey, uh, could any of my Filipino, uh, ND listeners help me with that name? I probably just butchered it. So anyways, happy birthday, NPA. Much love to all the Kasamas down there.

Um, then on March 30th, provincial delegates from all around the country were secretly carried into Beijing. Yeah, it was super secret, at night, by PLA aircraft for the big shebang. The Ninth Congress was to begin. Let me tell you how secret it was.

They were transported from the air force base in blacked-out armored vehicles to their hotels, which they were not allowed to leave until the morning of the first, and they had the telephones in their rooms confiscated. The party center wanted to risk absolutely no chances of Soviet or American intelligence finding out anything about this.

Now, one question I've had for many years is, if the party was still being reconstituted, how did they elect the delegates to Congress? Well, Yang Jisheng finally answered that for me. When, uh, in his text, um, it says,

"The delegates attending the Congress weren't elected, um, by party committees, but were designated by the core party groups of the Revolutionary Committees at various levels. At that time, the party organization had yet to be restored in the provinces, so military-dominated core party groups played a decisive role," end quote.

The next day, on March 31st, Mao approved the final draft of the political report for Lin Biao to deliver to the Ninth Congress the next day. Against Mao's advice, Lin still had yet to read it, possibly because, well, frankly, he deeply resented that Zhang and Yao, not Chen, had been the ones who headed the finalizing of the final draft, although that's just my personal speculation.

The next day, the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China opened in Beijing. At 5:30 p.m., 1,512 delegates from across China crowded into the Great Hall of the People and took their seats. The People's Liberation Army band began to play "The East is Red," and Chairman Mao, the man of the hour, strolled onto the stage, flanked by Lin Biao, Zhou Enlai, and Jiang Qing. Everyone gave Mao a rapturous welcome, waving their little red books in a chopping motion, clapping frantically, and yelling,

"Long live Chairman Mao! Long live the great proletarian cultural revolution! Long live the Communist Party of China!" at the top of their lungs. Getting straight down to business, a 167-strong Congress presidium, led by Mao and Lin Biao and comprising a delicate mixture of CCRG radicals, PLA loyalists, and rehabilitated party veterans, was elected by the delegates to preside over the Congress.

When it came time to elect the chairman, vice chairman, and secretary general of the presidium, uh, quite the scene followed. Mao said, "I nominate Comrade Lin Biao as chairman of the presidium. Do you all agree?" Lin Biao rushed to the microphone and said, "La-li-li, no, no, please, I refuse. Our great leader, Chairman Mao, must be chairman of the presidium."

Mao said again, "Comrade Lin Biao, I want to be chair, I want to be vice chairman, and I want you to be chairman, all right?" Lin Biao stood up once again, smiled at the crowd, and said, "Our great leader, Chairman Mao, will be chairman of the presidium. All who agree, please raise your hands."

Of course, the delegates all smiled, all 1,510 of them, raised their right arms high in the air, and Lin Biao said, "Passed!" The conference hall once again rang with thunderous applause and shouts of, "Long live Chairman Mao!" Mao said, "Okay, if you insist, I can be chairman."

He then nominated Lin Biao as vice chairman and Zhou Enlai as secretary general, and both were readily elected by a show of hands and applause. There were 1,000, you know how I said there was 1,512 delegates? Well, actually two requested leave, so in the hall, there were 1,510 delegates, and Mao was elected unanimously by a full 1,510 to zero, while Lin Biao had 1,508 votes.

An authoritative source said afterward that Lin and his wife, Ye Qun, were the ones that voted against Lin to ensure that Mao would have the largest number of votes. Zhou Enlai received 1,509 votes and Jiang Qing 1,502 votes. Resentful of missing eight votes, Zhang later alleged mischief and demanded an investigation into who voted against her. Jeez, Jiang Qing, calm down. Don't take it so personally, girl. It's just eight votes.

It's, that's, that kind of reminds me of, um, if any of you guys are big fans of the old, uh, sitcom Frasier, I'm a big fan. There was an episode where he, uh, had a sample audience, and all of the sample audience loved him except for this one guy who was just kind of like, "Eh, I don't really like him." And, like, Frasier goes completely bonkers trying to analyze why that one guy didn't like him even though, like, 50 other people said they liked him. So it's, yeah, it's, it's kind of like that.

Um, well, anyways, on a more serious matter, this is interesting because it shows that during this time, it was becoming abundantly clear that there was a growing rift between the PLA faction headed by Lin Biao and the radical rebel faction headed by Jiang Qing and Zhang Chunqiao.

The Ninth Party Congress was supposed to formalize the victories of the cultural revolution and chart the course forward. However, tensions emerged between Lin's military-backed faction and Zhang's radical civilian faction over the future direction of the revolution and the role of the PLA.

You have to understand that Lin Biao's power was obviously rooted in the military, and, you know, it had just been the one that had been sent into more or less, quote-unquote, "restore order" after the factional violence of '66 through '68.

And while Mao had embraced the cultural revolution to secure his position as Mao's successor and had been accepting of the fall of many of the rightists in the PLA, kind of as sacrificial lambs of sorts to divert mass anger at those officers within his camp, his faction favored stability and some level of restoration of top-down bureaucracy.

Jiang Qing and her radical allies, by contrast, saw the military's growing influence as a threat of their vision of continuous revolution and hopes to resume the cultural revolution eventually as once again a series of radical mass movements.

Um, despite the fact that Lin Biao was too timid and unambitious of a man to go head-to-head with Mao so brazenly, this didn't mean that he didn't have his issues with the radical rebels that Mao wanted to grand-alliance with, and this would eventually boil over into very open tensions at the Lushan Conference in 1970.

But we'll get to that when it comes. Um, another thing that I wanted to say, um, before I go on, is that there is kind of in the historiography, um, a lot of debate of, is the Ninth Congress where the cultural revolution ends?

Or at least that's when the radical phase ends. I often see, um, um, some historians say that the cultural revolution lasted from 1966 to 1969, and it's kind of interesting because the, like, if you read Mao's speech and Zhou's speech and Lin Biao's political report and some of the editorials that were in Peking Review, People's Daily, Liberation Army Daily, a lot of them talk about, like, the, uh, the great victory for the cultural revolution.

And, um, you even noticed in a lot of, um, eyewitness accounts of the cultural revolution from, like, 1970, 1971, 1972, um, you see that when, like, foreigners are visiting China and they interview and talk to Chinese people, the Chinese people seem to talk about the cultural revolution in the past tense, although that might not necessarily mean anything because you got to remember that there really is no past tense in Chinese.

Um, so that leaves things kind of ambiguous and lost in translation. Personally, you know, I still think that if you look at what was going on at a grassroots level, um, and at a provincial and county level, there still was a lot of mass struggle and, uh, like, debates around the nature of society.

There was a great revolution in people's thinking. So I think that while I understand why some people say that the Ninth Congress was the end of the cultural revolution, I still go with the traditional historiography of 1966 to 1976.

But we will continue this debate on in further episodes, especially at the season, uh, when we get to the series finale where we're summing up this podcast, so check that out. So after the presidium was elected, Mao made the keynote speech.

In his speech, he called for unity of all factions at this Congress of Victory, saying that the cultural revolution was going on swimmingly and had achieved a great victory, but to remember to never forget class struggle.

Then Lin Biao delivered the political report to the Congress, which was his first look at it, in which he gave a glowing summation of the cultural revolution and said the Chinese people must resolutely stay the course, carrying out the revolution till the end. The next day, delegates had breakout sessions, um, inter-region, and started discussion about the political report that Lin Biao gave the day before.

Every provincial and regional delegation passed the political report. Zhou Enlai warned Mao and Lin Biao that the USSR could make an empty show of strength at the border to coincide with the Congress and that the PLA should be placed on high alert. Mao said he'd put it into consideration.

On April 11th, as the Congress resumed its sessions, the Soviet Union submitted a second request to resume talks over Zhenbao Island in four days, or any time that would be convenient to the Chinese side, but the request was ignored.

In fairness, the party center was, uh, you know, a little busy with the Congress. Addressing leaders of the Ninth Party Congress's regional delegations, Mao said that the political report could be altered after being passed, and then he actually did something really interesting.

He said that the ‘cleansing of the class ranks’ campaign had to be put to a halt. He said, quote, "To kill too many people is a bad thing," and he said it had been too far-reaching and had targeted too many people on the basis of unreliable evidence.

This officially, thankfully, put a stop to the terrible campaign, although the campaign did continue on a limited scale on a local level in some isolated parts of China as late as 1971 due to the influence of some factions within the army. But overall, thankfully, the senseless imprisonment and killing of the left that had been done by the cleansing of the class ranks was over.

Two days later, Mao received more delegates, uh, including Sun Yuguo, the troop, the guy who led the troops at Zhenbao Island, and the Dazhai Commune head, Chen Yonghui, in his office at Zhongnanhai. The day after that, Mao returned to the Great Hall of the People to put the new draft constitution of the CPC to vote.

The Ninth Congress voted unanimously to adopt the new constitution, which designated Lin Biao as Comrade Mao Zedong's close comrade in arms and successor. Furthermore, the constitution added a new section to its, uh, article on ideology, stating, "The Communist Party of China takes Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought as the theoretical basis guiding its thinking."

Prior to that, the Communist Party of China simply said Marxism-Leninism. Anyways, “Mao Zedong Thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism is headed for total collapse and socialism is advancing to worldwide victory. For half a century now, in leading China's great struggle for accomplishing new democratic revolution, in leading her struggle for socialist revolution and socialist constructing, and in the great struggle of the contemporary international communist movement against imperialism, modern revisionism, and the reactionaries of various countries, Comrade Mao Zedong has integrated the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practices of revolution, inherited, defended, and developed Marxism-Leninism, and has brought it to a higher stage and completely new stage.”

After the passing of the constitution, Zhou Enlai made a speech praising Mao's universally recognized successor, who elicited great joy, while Chairman Mao elicited boundless joy. Zhou called Mao a genius, which Mao found a bit gratuitous.

Reacting to Zhou Enlai's speech, Lin contradicted all the praise about his wisdom and theoretical understanding and said that all credit was to Mao. Lin Biao went on to tell the Congress that Mao's leadership had made China a more prosperous and more powerful country than any other country in history. Big words.

So on April 15th, delegates broke out into their regional groups once again to discuss who should be elected to the party's new central committee. Kang Sheng said, speaking to one delegate group, that it was good that the CPC Ninth Congress had been held eight years late because otherwise Liu Shaoqi would have wielded power at it.

Five days later, on April 20th, Zhou Enlai chaired a large meeting of leaders to approve a list of candidates for the new central committee, one candidate for each seat. After four days of discussion, consultation, and resolutions being brought to the floor, on April 24th, the Ninth Congress elected a new, 170-strong party central committee from a short list of 170 candidates approved by Mao the night before. More than 80% of the members of the central committee were first-timers.

The PLA ended up clenching a disproportionately large 35% of the seats, the most the PLA had ever had since the founding of the army in 1927. Ex-BeiDa Red Guard leader Nie Yuanzi, released from solitary confinement for the Congress, was also elected to the central committee.

On April 27th, Zhou Enlai gave Mao and Lin Biao the short list of names for the Politburo and Politburo Standing Committee to be elected. On April 28th, the first plenum of the new central committee began in the Great Hall of the People with the task of formally electing the new Politburo. Mao opened the first plenum with a speech. He said that the advanced tanks and planes of China's enemies had yet to be proven, had been proven, sorry, easy to deal with.

In reply to Wang Ming, his exiled rival, who was living in Moscow at the time, claiming that China had a military coup in March of '67, Mao said, "Giving officers civil posts does not imply a military system." Uh, to be more specific, what Mao said is, "The Soviet revisionists are attacking us with their task broadcasts. Wang Ming's materials and tirades in the Communist, uh, journal, which was the theoretical journal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, say we now have a military bureaucratic system."

System is a Japanese term. The Soviet call it, Soviets call it military bureaucratic dictatorship. Although Mao expressed disagreement with the idea that China was now a military dictatorship, that didn't mean he didn't have some similar deep-seated anxieties.

After all, he now, I think he was beginning to realize that the PLA did have a disproportionate influence on society at that point. Mao, in his speech, went on to recount the hardship of the civil war and said that ever since the party had entered the cities and declared nationwide victory, it had deteriorated and it had to be rebuilt, and that this was the beginning point.

After Mao's speech, the new Politburo was elected. Zhou Enlai told returning member Chen Boda, "Hey, I didn't expect to see your name after Mao's comments about him."

The new Politburo met together immediately and in turn appointed members of the Central Military Commission and other military organs. And with that, the Congress was over. All 1,510 present delegates sang the internationale, chanted "Long live Chairman Mao," and dispersed back home to tell their families and comrades of the joyous news.

Now onto my analysis.

In many ways, Mao's vision of establishing a new order had fallen greatly short. I mean, was the Ninth Congress a victory for the left? In some ways, yes, it was. Liu Shaoqi was dying in a prison hospital in Kaifeng while Deng Xiaoping was exiled and working in a factory in a rural village in Jiangxi. Many writers had been expelled or had been frankly killed during the prior three years.

But at the end of the day, the PLA were the real victors of the Congress, and the PLA had not been sufficiently cleared of the revisionist capitalist roaders within its ranks. The PLA officer corps and most PLA cadres may have denounced Liu and Deng, you know, officially, but they, including Lin, as we will later see, were still quietly sympathetic to them.

With the revolutionary committees now highly controlled by these old-school army brass, the victory for the Maoist left around the chairman, in retrospect, was, uh, I wouldn't say a hollow victory, but it was very much a partial victory.

While the entire country was celebrating the success of the Ninth Party Congress with gongs and drums and red flags, the conflict between Mao and Lin was rapidly fermenting. And like I said earlier, 15 months later, during the second plenum of the Ninth Central Committee in autumn 1970, a.k.a. the Second Liu Shan Conference, the conflict between Mao and Lin would burst into the open.

To be continued. Yes, that, my friend, is another, friends is another story for another day. So hey, let's put a bookmark in the story and let's leave it there for now. Um, I'm gonna be busy in the month of May, so most likely I'll be taking time off from a new episode.

I want to have June's, uh, I originally wanted to have June's episode be about the economy during and the politically, the political economy of the cultural revolution, but that's kind of a hefty topic to take on, um, especially during the school year. So I might have to have June be either an interview episode or maybe a book review or, or something like that.

Something that's like neither a thematic or a chronological episode. Um, I don't know. I'll keep y'all in the loop. If you guys have any ideas, send them my way on the Twitter. Um, oh, and a preemptive Happy International Workers' Day, comrades. Let's say it. Long live Revolutionary May 1st. Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.

Yeah. Until then though, be resolute, fear no sacrifice, and surmount every difficulty to win victory, comrades. From the ancient city of Xi'an, the ancient Han, Sui and Tang capital of Chang'an, I bid you a warm and hearty zai jian.

Today's sources for today's episode were

The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Cultural Revolution by Yang Jisheng,

Turbulent Decade: A History of the Cultural Revolution by Yan Jiaqi and Gao Gao,

Mao's Last Revolution by Roderick MacFarquadah and Michael Schoenhals,

The Tragedy of Lin Biao, The Riding the Tiger During the Cultural Revolution 1966 to 1971 by Frederick Hughes,

The Culture of Power: The Lin Biao Incident in the Cultural Revolution by Jin Qiu,

Documents of the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China from Marxist Internet Archives, the Marxist Internet Archives Peking Review Archive,

New Documents on the Sino-Soviet Ussuri River Order clashes of 1969, compiled and published by Dmitry S. Ryabushkin ,

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict 1969 National Security Archives Electronic Briefings, edited and published by William Burr,

The Sino-Soviet Border War of 1969, Volume 1 by Dmitry S. Ryabushkin ,

Return to Jianbao Island: Who Started Shooting and Why It Matters by Lyle J. Goldstein, and

the Chinese University of Hong Kong Cultural Revolution Database.

All right, have a great day, guys.