One can only speculate about Mao's “real” motivations: hitherto suppressed resentment toward Liu's speech to the conference of 7,000 cadres; a paranoid fear of losing power to Liu, who exercised dynamic leadership on the “first front”; or a latent distrust of someone who was a rough contemporary, but who had never been personally close to him. The main reason could be that Mao perceived Liu as a threat and believed that he was promoting revisionist policies to assert himself. Finally, Liu was not to take responsibility for the negative tendencies of the regime and society, even his fate would be sealed in the early stages of the Culture.