Yan'an Rectification Movement

A Chinese Communist Party campaign conducted from 1942 to 1945 that used study, criticism, and organizational discipline to reshape the party and establish Mao Zedong’s ideological leadership.

整风运动: A Chinese Communist Party term for rectification campaigns intended to correct conduct and thought within the party. The campaign’s Chinese name captures its stated method: correcting party members through ideological and organizational reform.
Long March: The Chinese Communist Red Army’s 1934–1935 strategic retreat, which ended with its forces reaching northwest China. The retreat brought the party leadership to the region where the rectification campaign later developed.
Mao Zedong: A Chinese Communist revolutionary who led the People’s Republic of China from its founding in 1949 until his death in 1976. He designed the campaign’s ideological direction and emerged with dominant authority over the party.
Seventh National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party: The Chinese Communist Party’s 1945 congress that adopted Mao Zedong Thought as its guiding ideology. The congress formalized the ideological leadership consolidated during rectification.
Yan'an literature debate: A debate in the 1940s over literature’s social purpose and its relationship to revolutionary politics in Yan'an. The debate exposed competing cultural positions that the rectification campaign sought to bring into line.
Party rectification: A campaign to correct a political party’s practices, discipline, or ideological line. The Yan'an campaign became a defining example of rectification as a method of party control.
Yan'an: A city in Shaanxi province that served as the Chinese Communist Party’s base from 1937 to 1947. The city was the movement’s headquarters and the party’s wartime political center.
Liu Shaoqi: A Chinese Communist Party leader who became the People’s Republic of China’s head of state in 1959. He helped articulate Mao’s ideological authority during the campaign and became a leading party theorist.
Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party: A 1945 Chinese Communist Party document that assessed past political disputes and affirmed Mao Zedong’s leadership. It codified the campaign’s interpretation of party history and its judgment of earlier leaders.
Mass line: A Chinese Communist Party method of gathering popular views, interpreting them through party theory, and returning them as policy. The mass line emphasized learning from the public, unlike rectification’s focus on disciplining party members.

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