In the last couple of years before Chairman Mao's death he said that the "Cultural Revolution" had been wrong on two counts: one was "overthrowing all", and the other was waging a "full-scale civil war". These two counts alone show that the "Cultural Revolution" cannot be called correct. Chairman Mao's mistake was a political mistake, and not a small one.

Reform is Chinas second revolution.

Chairman Mao was after all a principal founder of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China. In evaluating his merits and mistakes, we hold that his mistakes were only secondary. What he did for the Chinese people can never be erased. In our hearts we Chinese will always cherish him as a founder of our Party and our state.

So far as Chairman Mao's own hopes were concerned, he initiated the "Cultural Revolution" in order to avert the restoration of capitalism, but he had made an erroneous assessment of China's actual situation. In the first place, the targets of the revolution were wrongly defined, which led to the effort to ferret out "capitalist roaders in power in the Party". Blows were dealt at leading cadres at all levels who had made contributions to the revolution and had practical experience, including Comrade Liu Shaoqi.

If the masses feel some anger, we must let them express it.

Keep a cool head and maintain a low profile. Never take the lead - but aim to do something big.

It should be pointed out that some of the things done after the arrest of the Gang of Four were inconsistent with Chairman Mao's wishes, for instance, the construction of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. He had proposed in the fifties that we should all be cremated when we died and that only our ashes be kept, that no remains should be preserved and no tombs built.