ABSTRACT
Mao’s crushing of opposition by means of the rectification movement was followed immediately by a rush in the party to acknowledge his leadership. Considering the low ebb in his fortunes in the early 1930s at Jiangxi, Mao’s rise to dominance in little more than a decade was a remarkable achievement. In his own assessment of his elevation, which he presented objectively as an account of the ‘inner-party struggles’ of the CCP, Mao highlighted the Zunyi conference and the rectification campaign as the key stages in the CCP’s movement towards correct thinking.1 Yet his success was not simply a matter of his influential teachings or his successful military and political record, important though these were. A critical factor was that Mao had gained control of the essential component in the party machine – the Secretariat, the body responsible for administration.
