The Ninth National Congress of the Party is convened at an important moment in the historical development of our Party, at an important moment in the consolidation and development of the dictatorship of the proletariat in our country and at an important moment in the development of the international communist movement and world revolution. Among the delegates to the congress are proletarian revolutionaries of the older generation and also a great deal of fresh blood. In previous congresses of our Party there has never been such great numbers of delegates from Party membership among the industrial workers, poor and lower-middle peasants, and women delegates. Among the delegates from the Party membership in the People's Liberation Army are veteran Red Army fighters as well as new fighters.

The delegates of the Party membership from among the Red Guards are attending a national congress of the Party for the first time. The fact that so many delegates have come to Peking from all corners of the country and gathered around the great leader Chairman Mao to discuss and decide the affairs of the Party and state signifies that our congress is a congress full of vitality, a congress of unity and a congress of victory. Chairman Mao teaches us: the unification of our country, the unity of our people and the unity of our various nationalities -- these are the basic guarantees of the sure triumph of our cause.

Through the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution our motherland has become unprecedentedly unified and our people have achieved a great revolutionary unity on the broadest scale under the great red banner of Mao Tsetung Thought. This great unity is under the leadership of the proletariat and is based on the worker-peasant alliance; it embraces all the fraternal nationalities, the patriotic democrats who for a long time have done useful work for the cause of the revolution and construction in our motherland, the vast numbers of patriotic overseas Chinese and our patriotic fellow-countrymen in Hong Kong and Macau, our patriotic fellow-countrymen in Taiwan who are oppressed and exploited by the U.S.-Chiang reactionaries, and all those who support socialism and love our socialist motherland. We are convinced that after the present national congress of our Party, the people of all nationalities in out country will certainly unite still more closely under the leadership of the great leader Chairman Mao and win still greater victories in the struggle against our common enemy and in the cause of building our powerful socialist motherland.