Memorial speech by Hua Kuo-Feng, First Chairman of Central Committee of Communist Party of China and Premier of State Council, At Mass Memorial Meeting for Great Leader and Teacher Chairman Mao Tsetung

Comrades and friends:

Today, representatives of the Party, government and army organizations, workers, peasants, soldiers and other circles in the capital are here at Tienanmen Square holding a solemn Mass Memorial Meeting and, along with the people of all nationalities throughout the country, mourning with the most profound sorrow Chairman Mao Tsetung, our esteemed and beloved great leader and great teacher of the international proletariat and the oppressed nations and oppressed people.

Over the last few days, the whole party, the whole army and the people of all nationalities throughout the country have been immersed in boundless sorrow at the passing of Chairman Mao Tsetung. The cause that our great leader devoted his whole life to is linked by flesh-and-blood ties with the masses of people. It was under Chairman Mao's leadership that the Chinese people who had long suffered oppression and exploitation won emancipation and became masters of the country. It was under Chairman Mao's leadership that the disaster-plagued Chinese nation rose to its feet. The Chinese people love, trust and esteem Chairman Mao from the bottom of their hearts. The international proletariat and progressive mankind all deeply mourn the death of Chairman Mao.

Chairman Mao Tsetung was the founder and wise leader of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese People's Liberation Army and the People's Republic of China.

Chairman Mao tempered and nurtured our Party in the struggles it carried out under his leadership against class enemies at home and abroad and inside and outside the Party, in hard, long, acute and complex class struggles and two-line struggles. The history of the Chinese Communist Party is a history of struggle between Chairman Mao's Marxist-Leninist line and the right and "left" opportunist lines in the Party. Under Chairman Mao's leadership, our Party defeated the opportunist lines in the Party. Under Chairman Mao's leadership, our Party defeated the opportunist lines perused by Chen Tu-hsiu, Chu Chiu-pai, Li Li-san, Lo Chang-lung, Wang Ming, Chang Kuo-tao, Kao Kang, Jao Shu-Shih and Peng Teh-huai and again, during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, triumphed over the counter-revolutionary revisionist line of Liu Shao-chi, Lin Piao and Teng Hsiao-ping. Guided by Chairman Mao's Marxist-Leninist line, our Party has steadily grown in strength. It has developed from small groups of a few dozen communists into a party with a membership of over 30 million which now leads the People's Republic of China, into a disciplined Party armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and closely linked with the masses of the people, and into a great, glorious and correct Marxist-Leninist Party.

Chairman Mao tempered and nurtured our Party in protracted revolutionary wars. He long ago put forward the famous thesis that "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun". He led the Autumn Harvest Uprising, founded the First