ABSTRACT
In 1956-57, the retreat from the Great Leap Forward from mid-1960 through to the summer 1962 Beidaihe meeting and subsequent Tenth Plenum is clearly an 'un-Maoist' period. Mao Zedong's policy stance after the dismissal of Peng Dehuai still retained the elusive ambivalence of the period from fall 1958 to the Lushan conference. When Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and especially the nuclear industry test areas suffered from severe grain shortages beginning in late spring 1960, Zhou Enlai called on Zeng Xisheng to transfer grain from the deeply affected Anhui to these areas. Moreover, when Anhui reported to Ke Qingshi about his role as first secretary of the East China Bureau in late February, then Ke's response was that the method should not be popularized, only experimented with. Ironically, given his normal pattern of extreme caution, Chen Yun might have been better advised to back quietly the Tao Zhu-Wang Renzhong proposal, although we cannot be sure he was aware of it.
