During Chairman Mao’s lifetime, we united under his banner and fought victorious battles. Since he passed away, loyalty to his banner has become a gu… - Hua Guofeng

Over the last few days, the whole party, the whole army and the people of all nationalities throughout the country have been immersed in boundless sorrow at the passing of Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The cause that our great leader devoted his whole life to is linked by flesh-and-blood ties with the masses of the people. It was under Chairman Mao’s leadership that the Chinese people who had long suffered oppression and exploitation won emancipation and became masters of the country. It was under Chairman Mao’s leadership that the disaster-plagued Chinese nation rose to its feet. The Chinese people love, trust and esteem Chairman Mao from the bottom of their hearts. The international proletariat and progressive mankind all deeply mourn the death of Chairman Mao.

In the new historical period of Socialist Revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat in China, Chairman Mao summed up both the positive and the negative experience of the international Communist movement, and made a penetrating analysis of the class relations in socialist society by applying the Marxist-Leninist theory of the unity of opposites, and pointed out that the principal contradiction in a socialist society is the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. For the first time in the history of the development of Marxism, Chairman Mao explicitly pointed out that there are still classes and class struggle after the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production has in the main been completed, put forward the thesis that in socialist society there are two types of contradictions--those between ourselves and the enemy and those among the people themselves, and advanced the great theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Socialist China will surely flourish and become powerful; the goal of the four modernizations will certainly be attained! Together with the people of all nationalities in our country, let us hold high the great banner of Chairman Mao, continue the revolution and make concerted efforts to achieve this great goal!