The Gutian Meeting

The Gutian Meeting——古田会议

The Gutian Meeting was another reference to the Ninth Congress of the CPC in the Fourth Army of Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. It was held in Gutian Village, Shanghang County, Fujian Province in December 1929.

The Fourth Army was founded in 1928 after the “Union of the Zhu-Mao Red Army”. Under the leadership of Zhu De, Mao Zedong, and Chen Yi, the Fourth Army grew stronger and established revolutionary bases in southern Jiangxi Province and western Fujian Province. However, non-proletarian ideologies such as ultra-democracy, placing military strength above political strategies, ignoring the importance of establishing solid bases, banditry mentality, and militarism were prevalent then, and expanding within the army.

The Ninth Congress passed several resolutions, the most important of which was the Resolution on Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party drafted by Mao Zedong. It stipulated that the Red Army was an armed body designed to carry out the political work of the revolution; it should follow the leadership of the CPC and perform its three missions of fighting, raising money, and doing mass work for the Party.

The Gutian Meeting reviewed the successes and failures experienced in creating the Red Army and its rural revolutionary bases. It also determined the principles of building the Party inwardly and building the army politically. Subsequently, a system of proletarian ideology would be adopted for Party development and army building.

Given the fact that most of the Party members in the army were peasants, the Gutian Meeting solved the issue concerning keeping the advanced nature and purity of the Party and building a new type of people's army under the leadership of the CPC by strengthening ideological awareness.

The Resolution of the Gutian Meeting provided a program for building the Party and the army, the spirit of which is still relevant even today, Gutian village is regarded as the site where the Party strengthened its ideological base and established its political principles in the military, and also the revolutionary base which dealt with military political work to develop the new people’s army.

On October 30, 2014, an important meeting on the political work of the army was held in Gutian Village, Shanghang County, Fujian Province,85 years after the landmark Gutian Meeting was held. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, president of China, and chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended the meeting and delivered an important speech. Xi stressed the crucial role of political work in building up the army in the modern age. Overall, the New Gutian Meeting was another milestone in building the ideology and the political stance of the PLA on the road to a better country and a stronger army.