ABSTRACT
The development of rectification theory and practice in the early 1940s was both an extension of and reaction to the earlier history of the Chinese Communist Party. With Party leadership fragmented, any effort to correct errors by rectification measures would have floundered in disagreement over the nature of those errors and the failure of dissident factions to carry out the campaign. Apart from a precarious external environment, the period of ruthless struggle was marked by bitter factional divisions within the Party leadership. By April 1948 at the latest, however, the Party leadership determined that there had been serious mistakes of a leftist nature during the land reform and rectification drives. When the National Land Conference decided to launch Party rectification in conjunction with intensified land reform, the decision was based on several misperceptions. In many respects the excesses which appeared during Party rectification mirrored those of land reform.
