1637 }
Reviving Revolutionary Momentum, 1962–1965
Intensification of the Struggle against Revisionism
The economic collapse produced by the Great Leap Forward led to a brief
leadership consensus that priority should be given to economic recovery. By
late 1960, Mao agreed to “adjustment” of agricultural policies.^1 Communal
mess halls were abolished. Private family plots and rural markets were rein-
troduced. Sideline occupations were again permitted. And the production
team, roughly corresponding to the natural village, was made the “basic ac-
counting unit” that determined remuneration. In terms of diplomacy, with
relations with Moscow at breaking point and with India collapsing, and with
the Nationalists on Taiwan contemplating the implications of the famine
wracking the mainland for a Nationalist “return,” Beijing sought to mini-
mize difficulties with other neighbors. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
authorized to reach definitive boundary settlements with Nepal in March and
with Burma in April. A treaty of friendship and mutual aid was signed with
Mongolia in May 1960. It was also during this period that Zhou Enlai laid be-
fore Nehru the proposal of an east-west swap of territorial claims and turning
the existing line of actual control into an international boundary. Beijing also
moved to reduce conflict with the CPSU. At a conference of eighty-one com-
munist parties in Moscow in December 1960, the CCP agreed with the CPSU
to “confer together on anything that might come up so as to avoid conflict.”^2
President Liu Shaoqi paid a monthlong friendly visit to the Soviet Union in
November–December.
The severe setbacks encountered by Mao’s first attempt to forge socialist
agriculture, the Great Leap Forward, combined with the apparent takeover
of the CPSU by “modern revisionists” who had, Mao concluded, abandoned
class struggle, led Mao to ponder the future of China’s revolution. It had been
clear since Defense Minister Peng Dehuai challenged Great Leap Forward
policies during a CC Plenum in August 1959 that some within the CCP
elite doubted the wisdom of Mao’s Stalinist approach to agriculture. Once