1962 年年初中共在北京召開擴大的中央工作會議，有縣委以上幹部約七千人參加。這是大躍進渡過難關後最重要的一次中共中央會議。傳統說法是，劉少奇在這次會議上承認連續三年的大饑饉是三分天災、七分人禍，而林彪則是一味奉承毛澤東，所以文化大革命後，劉少奇淪為階下囚，而林彪迅速取而代之，成為毛的接班人。中共黨史學者張素華利用檔案文獻和口述訪問，詳細重建這次會議的經過，在原有說法之外，特別強調毛澤東在會議中發揚民主，鼓勵和動員下級幹部抒發不滿，發表想法，所以會議能夠集中意見，統一認識，成功落幕；她同時指出，若毛澤東循此模式處理政事，則中國庶幾可免文革之難。本文則利用張 氏提供的細節，認為七千人大會可說是文革的預演，是毛澤東以其崇高無比的威望，動員下層批評中上層幹部，再經由上層幹部的自我批評來建立黨內共識和鞏固團結；毛澤東沒想到的是，他鼓動紅衛兵來進行鬥爭，並不能達到改造中上層幹部、建立上下共識的目的，反而造成黨國體制的癱瘓，需要援引軍隊的支持才能大體恢復黨國體制的運作。這一個論點，應該有別於其他兩個流行看法，亦即七千人大會毛、劉之間出現的分歧必然導致文革，以及大會沒有徹底清除過左思想，所以引發文革。

In early 1962, the Chinese Communist Party summoned more than seven thousand cadres to a working conference in Beijing. Traditionally, the conference has been interpreted as a forum where Mao Zedong and his successor Liu Shaoqi clashed over their analysis of the three years’ famine, with the former blaming natural disasters and the latter human failures; and thereupon Mao chose Lin Biao to be his successor over Liu, and soon the Mao and Lin collaborated to launch the Cultural Revolution. CCP historian Zhang Suhua has used new textual and interview source materials to recreate the conference in detail. This article uses her findings to argue for a different conclusion, highlighting Mao’s ability to control and guide the conference and to elevate it from the level of implementation to the one of ideological consensus. Rather than the appearance of division between Mao and Liu, it was the success of the conference that led Mao to repeat the same experiences during the Cultural Revolution and bring about political disaster. In the cadres’ conference, Mao was able to mobilize lower cadres to control the higher cadres, but in the Cultural Revolution, he could not control the Red Guards and the radicals, thereby ending up with the inevitable interposition of the army. Contrary to Zhang Suhua’s emphasis on Mao’s democratic techniques to forge consensus at the meeting, this article portrays Mao as a superb manipulator of democratic centralism rather than a genuine practitioner of democratic principles.