Lushan Conference and Dismissal of Peng Dehuai

Peng Dehuai's Letter

At the Lushan Party plenum in July 1959, Defense Minister Peng Dehuai wrote a private letter to Mao Zedong expressing measured concerns about the Great Leap Forward — grain production statistics were being falsified, the steel campaign was disrupting agriculture, and widespread famine was developing. Peng's letter was respectful and couched in Party language; he sent it only to Mao and did not circulate it publicly.

Mao's Reaction

Mao chose to circulate Peng's letter to all conference participants, framing it as a factional attack. He presented Peng as a "right opportunist" who had formed an "anti-Party clique" with supporters including Zhang Wentian and Huang Kecheng. In the charged atmosphere of the conference, other participants who had privately shared Peng's concerns chose silence or public denunciation of him. Peng was stripped of his ministerial position and replaced by Lin Biao.

Consequences

Peng's dismissal had catastrophic consequences. The crackdown on "right opportunism" silenced the only voices within the Party capable of challenging the Great Leap Forward's false statistics. Local cadres, fearing punishment for reporting crop failures honestly, continued to file inflated production figures. The result was continued grain procurement from a countryside already experiencing severe famine, dramatically worsening the death toll. Peng was imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution and died under detention in 1974.