p Communists throughout the world are
following the developments in China with growing anxiety. Although the struggle in that country has not abated and the policy of the Mao group is meeting with strong resistance, the gains of the Chinese revolution remain in danger. This danger is mounting owing to the efforts of the Mao group to change the very substance of the Communist Party of China and form a party of the Maoist type.

p The offensive of the Mao group on the Communist Party of China is now in its decisive stage. During the past ten years more than two-thirds of the members and alternatemembers of the C€ CPC, elected in 1956 at the Eighth Congress of the CPC, have been removed from political activity. In August 1966, with the beginning of the "cultural revolution”, the Army and the hungweipings were ordered to "open fire at the headquarters”. The Party leadership in the provinces, counties, factories, government offices and educational institutions was paralysed and systematic Party work in primary organisations was rendered impossible. But since the resistance of the most politically-conscious section of the Party members to the encroachment on their very existence and on the political system in China does not relax, the Mao group has openly declared that the Party must be "completely reorganised”.

p The Mao group seeks to form a Party consisting of " devoted soldiers of Mao”, a Party free of all the foundations of Marxism-Leninism, a Party with the "thought of Mao Tse-tung" as its ideology. Since the close of 1967 reports 34 have been coming in that preparations are under way for the Ninth Congress of the CPC. It is planned as the first congress of the Maoist party.

These facts alone must induce Marxists-Leninists to make a thorough-going analysis of the essence of the "thought of Mao Tse-tung”, especially as the Mao group is serving Maoism up not only as the ideological basis on which to “reorganise” the Party, not only as the official ideology of Chinese society, but as the "summit of Marxism-Leninism”. Official propaganda speaks of the "thought of Mao Tsetung" as of the "third stage" of the development of Marxism. For instance, in Chinese press reports on the Second Congress of Students of Courses for the Study of the "Thought of Mao" in the Air Force, it is stated that "the world has entered a new revolutionary era with the thought of Mao Tse-tung on its banner. The thought of Mao Tse-tung is the Marxism-Leninism of the era when imperialism moves towards fatal defeat, while socialism advances to victory on a world-wide scale”. According to the Chinese propagandists, the entire world revolutionary movement accepts the "thought of Mao”. This Maoist claim to universal recognition requires that Communists and all other progressive forces in the world should forthwith scrutinise the "Maoist thought" in order to understand its real content and orientation. Maoism’s brazen demagogy and its distortion of Marxist propositions frequently make it difficult to understand the substance of Mao Tse-tung’s outlook. True, the "thought of Mao" has been rejected by the world communist movement long ago as being non-Marxist, but the fact that the Mao group speaks in the name of socialism is used by bourgeois propaganda with the objective of discrediting Marxism-Leninism and vitalising anti-communist propaganda.