Ten Major Relationships

thumb|The book cover of the bilingual version of On the Ten Major Relationships published as a single volume.

On the Ten Major Relationships () is a speech by Mao Zedong which outlines how the People's Republic of China would construct socialism different from the model of development undertaken by the Soviet Union. It was delivered by Mao during an enlarged session of a Politburo meeting of the Chinese Communist Party on April 25, 1956, and further elaborated in the 7th Supreme State Conference on May 2 the same year.

In official account, the speech is celebrated as the landmark of the search for an alternative mode of socialist development that fit the specific conditions in China and it also marks the beginning of Mao's denouncement of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s. Covered in the speech are the economic, social, political, and ethnical aspects of building socialism in China. Mao further charted a strategy of forming alliance and splitting enemies in international sphere.

The speech was made in front of the party secretaries of various provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, and was subsequently circulated among the middle and top cadres for political study.

After listening to the first round of reports, from April 12 to 17 Mao visited an exhibition of mechanics to see the latest development in the industry. Then from April 18 onwards, Li Fuchun reported to Mao on the Second Five-year Plan. The entire process was Mao's longest and most comprehensive investigation on economic affairs after 1949. In the enlarged Politburo meeting from April 25 to 28, Mao made the speech on its first day. As the original agenda was about issues like agricultural cooperative, attendants did not expect Mao to make such a speech on the ten major relationships and it became the focus for the rest of the meeting.

In terms of economic development, China had followed the Soviet model of socialism ever since Mao's decision to lean on the side of the Soviet Union. As his speech On the People's Democratic Dictatorship () in June 1949 states,<blockquote>"We must learn to do economic work from all who know how, no matter who they are. We must esteem them as teachers, learning from them respectfully and conscientiously. We must not pretend to know when we do not know. We must not put on bureaucratic airs. If we dig into a subject for several months, for a year or two, for three or five years, we shall eventually master it. At first some of the Soviet Communists also were not very good at handling economic matters and the imperialists awaited their failure too. But the Communist Party of the Soviet Union emerged victorious and, under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, it learned not only how to make the revolution but also how to carry on construction. It has built a great and splendid socialist state. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union is our best teacher and we must learn from it. The situation both at home and abroad is in our favour, we can rely fully on the weapon of the people's democratic dictatorship, unite the people throughout the country, the reactionaries excepted, and advance steadily to our goal."</blockquote>Following Mao's visit to Moscow from late 1949 to early 1950, on February 14, 1950, the two countries signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance () which promised the Soviet Union's commitment to help build socialism in the newly founded People's Republic of China. From 1950 to 1956, a total of 5,092 Soviet experts were sent to China for technical assistant and the total number of visits of the Soviet experts was over 18,000 throughout the years. The areas they provided assistance included government bureaus, military, large enterprises, and higher institutions. In the countryside, from late 1955 to early 1956, China's agricultural sector completed the Socialist High Tide, transforming from having only 14.2% (16.9 million out of 120 million) of peasant families collectivized to 91.2% of them joining the co-operatives and 61.9% joining collectives. Likewise in the cities, private factories and shops were either turned into cooperatives or nationalized in the name of joint public-private ownership.

International sphere

Regarding to the Soviet Union's leadership in the socialist camp, the Tito-Stalin Split broke out in 1948, followed by the Informbiro period that ended at 1955, signaling the end of the Soviet Union's intolerance of alternative socialist development. In Moscow, a dramatic event happened during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956, as Nikita Khrushchev made the "Secret Speech" of denouncing the personality cult and dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Chinese Communist Zhu De and Deng Xiaoping attended the congress and were surprised by the length that Khrushchev went into denouncing Stalin. Furthermore, the Soviet Union had begun to implement its 6th Five-year Plan for 1956–1960. On the geopolitical scene, China had since 1954 began to foster relations with her Asian neighboring countries like India and Burma. Mao stated that China should not be like the USSR, which Mao described as having a central government that was not flexible enough for local governments to operate.

Mao viewed the policy of learning from the other countries (implying the Soviet Union) had been right so far. Yet since that every nation had its weak points, China "mustn't copy everything indiscriminately and transplant mechanically" and "pick up their shortcomings and weak points." The speech was credited for setting the tone for the 8th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party to be held in the second half of 1956, the first national congress after the founding of the new country in 1949. During the drafting process for the political report for the congress, Mao's original idea was to set "anti-rightist conservative thought" as the guiding thought. After the speech was delivered, the ten major relationships became the guiding thought instead and it was followed up by Liu Shaoqi, Hu Qiaomu, and other top leaders in their preparation for the congress. During the congress Zhou Enlai reported on the proposal for the Second Five-year Plan (1956–1962) and issues highlighted by Mao in the speech, like the ratio of investment between heavy and light industries and decentralization, were addressed.

After the speech was distributed to local level, "bearing in mind lessons drawn from the Soviet Union" was understood differently. In early 1957, it was reported that many local units began to lose enthusiasm in Soviet experts, did not learn from them, and even became rude to them. Soviet experts were not assigned works and leaders in some bureaus did not form a close relationship with them. Some bureaucrats even refused to work with them. In response, the experts reported back to Moscow their observations and dissatisfaction with the Chinese counterparts.

Ten Major Relationships, along with On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People, was an important part of the theoretical efforts to incorporate Marxism into the Chinese context and China's efforts to develop socialism.

Analysis

Soviet model of development and Sino-Soviet relations

Many considered the speech the beginning of Mao's disagreement with the Soviet path of socialist development. Political scientist Frederick C. Teiwes believes that the thorough investigation of China's situations in 1956 had urged top Chinese leaders to examine the shortcomings of the Soviet model critically and raise doubt about its applicability in China. Despite having a more mature industrial base, the Soviet economy grew slower than the Chinese one. A central change effected by the speech was the ratio of investment between heavy industry on one hand and light industry and agriculture on the other. In June 1956, the ratio of heavy industry to light industry was reduced from 8:1 to 7:1 and a few months later the proposed investment in agriculture had also increased from 7% to 10%. Also, the State Council planned to decentralize the administration of economic organizations and the use of indirect planning and market mechanisms were proposed and experimented in late 1956. Yet the attempt was soon curtailed because of the difficulties involved and opposition from economic planners. However, historian Shen Zhihua suggests that for adjusting the ratio of investment between heavy and light industries, altering the plan for industrial development, and improving people's living standard, Mao's development strategy in the speech did not differed significantly from the one in Khrushchev's speech made in the party congress in the same year and their 6th Five-year Plan as well. In Shen's view, China and the Soviet Union were both searching for the path for furthering socialist development.

Mao's view on the state purchase of grain

In part four, Mao said that the party "did make a mistake on the question of grain."

{| class="wikitable sortable"

Figures on the grain shortage in spring (chunhuang, 春荒) The party constitution in the congress did not mention Mao Zedong Thought and all top party leaders did not mention it as well, which was different from the party constitution in the last congress which stated Mao Zedong Thought as one of the guiding principles, alongside Marxism and Leninism, for the Chinese Communist Revolution. Since Mao himself had more than once opposed the use of the term in internal communication, so its removal in the 8th party congress did not necessarily indicate that Mao's status had been challenged as argued by some historians like Roderick MacFarquhar.

Though the trend of anti-personality cult was prevalent in the socialist camp after 1953, Shen argues that Mao only opposed the public use of Mao Zedong Thought, but not saw it as a problem itself. Hu Qiaomu explained that not mentioning Mao Zedong Thought was related to the Soviet Union who refused to accept the idea. And since China still relied on the Soviet Union in the early 1950s, so that was Mao's policy to downplay the idea. The Soviet-Yugoslavia conflict in 1948 had signaled that Stalin would not tolerate alternative socialist path and the Soviet Union remained dominant in the socialist world. After Stalin's death in 1953, however, the pressure from the Soviet Union lessened, yet Mao still had not put forward the use of Mao Zedong Though publicly because of the possible backlash due to the anti-personality cult in the Soviet Union. The development led to the concerns from top Chinese leaders. After the 20th Soviet party congress, personality cult became an even more sensitive issue and invited the speculation of whether there was personality cult in China. At local level, cadres started to raise doubt about the excessive praise given to Mao and internationally socialist countries also became cautious about personality cult. Yet the personal worship of Mao within the party already began in the Yan'an era, so it had a long historical root in the party. Though the criticism of Stalin relieved Mao of the pressure from the Soviet Union, it also made the personality cult of his own problematic. That is the reason why he highlighted that "in China some people are following their example" as a reminder that Mao was supportive of his own cult, but critical of that of Stalin.

Subsequent development

Chris Bramall opines that in actual practice Mao did not follow what he stated in the speech and such view was echo by columnist Li Kwok-sing who claims that "China has never followed the theory of the ten relationship." During and immediately after the Great Leap Forward, Mao went further on the repudiation of the Soviet development model through thoroughly criticizing two Soviet books, Political Economy: A Textbook and Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR.

As for the development of the interior regions and defense construction, in response to the military threat posed by the escalation of the Vietnam War and the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s, China had significantly increased the investment in the interior regions through the Third Front construction projects. Eventually China developed her own nuclear weapons in the mid-1960s.

In 1995 Jiang Zemin delivered a speech on "twelve major relationships" of socialist development, echoing what Mao had stressed nearly 40 years earlier, though much less significance was attached to the speech. Jiang's twelve relationships overlap with some of Mao's.

{| class="wikitable"

|+A comparison between the major relationships of Mao and Jiang

!Mao's ten major relationships

!Jiang's twelve major relationships

|between heavy industry on one hand, and light industry and agriculture on the other

|between reform, revolution, and stability

|between industry in the coastal regions and industry in the interior

|between speed and effectiveness

|between economic construction and defense construction

|between economic construction on one hand, and population, resources, environment one the other

|between the state, the units of production, and the producers

|between the primary, second, and tertiary sectors

|between the central and the local authorities

|between the eastern region and the central-western region

|between the Han nationality and the minority nationalities

|between market mechanism and macro control

|between Party and non-Party

|between the state economy and other economies

|between revolution and counter-revolution

|between state, enterprises, and individual under income distribution

|between right and wrong

|between open outward expansion and preserving self-sufficiency

|10

|between China and other countries

|10

|between central and local

|11

|between defense construction and economic construction

|12

|between constructing material civilization and constructing spiritual civilization

Circulation and edition

On the Ten Major Relationships and On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People () were two important speeches that Mao delivered after 1949. The latter, delivered in February 1957, was revised by Mao himself and soon published on People's Daily in June the same year, but the former was only circulated among the middle and top cadres and remained unpublished until after Mao's death.

Contrary to his usual practice of editing his own drafts, Mao had left the speech untouched after 1956. In 1965, Liu Shiqi suggested to Mao the publication of the speech due to its importance but Mao was dissatisfied with it and opined that further revision was needed. It remained for circulation among cadres only and was not for publication. In December, the party central instructed cadres to study the speech and express their views on it. In summer 1975, Deng Xiaoping directed the editorial work of the fifth volume of the Selected Works of Mao Zedong and suggested the inclusion of the speech. A further revision of the draft based on the original sound recording was prepared. After reading the revised draft, Mao agreed with its part-wide distribution, but still not its publication.

Mao had twice commented on the importance of the speech, in 1958 and 1960 respective, each stressing the search for alternative socialist development. Yet in other occasions, Mao did not value it as highly. In September 1956 when he received the representatives from Yugoslavia, he said that for the speech he just summarized others' opinions and that was not his own creation. In May 1957, he mentioned that if he was not satisfied with some drafts even after revision, they would remained unpublished, indicating that the speech was not up to his standard.