The Ninth National Congress

Date: April 1-24, 1969

Place: Beijing

Number of delegates: 1,512

Party membership: 22 million

Major contents: The congress was held in unusual circumstances because the CPC had suffered a lot during the "cultural revolution", the Party committees of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities and various grass-roots Party organizations had not been restored or established and the majority part of the Party members had not returned to regular Party activities. Lin Biao delivered the political report, in which he applied the "theory of continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat", expounded the formation and importance of this theory, reviewed the preparation and execution of the "cultural revolution" under the guidance of this theory, and extravagantly lauded the "great achievements" scored in the "cultural revolution". In the new Party Constitution adopted at the congress, Lin Biao was put down in the general program as "Comrade Mao Zedong's successor". The congress legitimized the theory and practice of the "cultural revolution" and solidified the position of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing in the Party Central Committee. The ideological, political and organizational guidelines of the Ninth Congress were utterly wrong.

The congress elected 170 members and 109 alternate members to the Central Committee, of whom, only 53 had been members or alternate members of the Eighth Central Committee. At the First Plenary Session of the Ninth CPC Central Committee, Mao Zedong was elected chairman, and Lin Biao vice chairman, of the Central Committee. The members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee were Mao Zedong, Lin Biao, Chen Boda, Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng.