The Lushan Conference was a meeting of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) held between July and August 1959.

The Lushan Conference saw the political purge of the Defense Minister, Marshal Peng Dehuai, whose criticism of some aspects of the Great Leap Forward was seen as an attack on the political line of CCP Chairman Mao Zedong,[1] resulting in a massive "Anti-Right Deviation Struggle" within the CCP.

[2][3] The Lushan Conference also marked the first time since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 that disagreement over the direction of policy spilled into open conflict between party leaders.

[7] As academic Alessandro Russo writes, the party's former strength of coordinating peasant political power had now created a major obstacle.

In Spring 1959, PRC Defense Minister Peng Dehuai led a Chinese military delegation on a visit to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

In the letter, he cautiously framed his words and did not deny the "great achievement" of Mao, but meanwhile showed his disapproval for elements like the "winds of exaggeration" (i.e., over-reporting of grain production), the communal dining, and also the establishment of commune militia, which he felt would undermine the strength of the People's Liberation Army.

[11] By the time of the Plenum, which immediately followed the Lushan Conference, Peng had become politically isolated and stripped from his position as Defence Minister, replaced by Marshal Lin Biao.

[13] Mao nonetheless agreed that specific objectives had to be made more realistic and that the absurd bureaucratic boasting regarding production quotas had to be stopped.

"[5] Although the criticism of Peng Dehuai resulted in a victory for Mao Zedong, it also led the leadership to conclude that he had been treated unfairly and that the party's norms had been violated.

Zhou Xiaozhou, along with Huang Kecheng and Zhang Wentian, who lent their support to Peng Dehuai in questioning the wisdom of the Great Leap Forward, were also branded as traitors, stripped of their positions, and sent to re-education through labour.

Li Rui, one of Mao's private secretaries, was also stripped of party membership and sent to a labor camp for refusing to denounce Peng.