Mao Zedong made an important speech at the meeting. He systematically expounded the party's principle of democratic centralism, made self-criticism, and stressed the need to correctly understand the objective laws of socialist construction. The meeting preliminarily summarized the experience and lessons of the Great Leap Forward, and held that the fundamental reason for our mistakes in our work was that many leading comrades were not modest and prudent, which violated the traditional style of seeking truth from facts and the mass line, and weakened the principle of democratic centralism in party life, state life and mass life to varying degrees. Before and after the meeting, most comrades who were wrongly criticized in the "anti-Rightist" movement were screened and rehabilitated.
Although the 7,000-member Congress has not completely overcome the left guiding ideology existing in the Party, it is very important to correct the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward and the anti-Right deviation.
The failure of the "Great Leap Forward" movement and the rural people's commune movement since 1958 is the most fundamental reason for the convening of the 7,000-person conference.