Regulations of the Military and Political
Committees (Draft)

(November 7, 1940)

To Peng, Yang, and Luo, Lu, and Zuo:¹

Please discuss and make suggestions regarding the following document so that we
can make the final announcement.

1. The guerrilla warfare environment and the separate operations of various
military units demand a certain degree of collective leadership and a certain degree of collective command.

2. For this purpose, a military and political committee is to be set up at army,
division, brigade, regiment, and column, detachment, and subdistrict levels (all
military and political committees organized in the past jointly by the military and
the local Party and administration must be renamed as the Party military and political committee so as to distinguish them), to serve as the organ of collective
leadership at each level.

3. The military and political committee at each level is to be made up of the
commander, the political commissar, the political director, and the chief of staff,
as well as the main leaders at the next lower level, the total number of people not to
exceed nine or ten. Suggestions are to be put forward at each level, and appointments made by higher levels. Chairmanship of the military and political committee is generally to be held by the political commissar.

4. The military and political committee is the planning organ for carrying out
instructions from higher levels, deciding on the main policies of a given unit, and
arranging as well as discussing work tasks. It may discuss and decide upon all
military, political, Party, and logistical tasks having to do with its own unit. The

Our source for this text is *Mao Zedong junshi wenji*, Vol. 2, pp. 576–78, where it is reproduced from a copy held in the Central Archives. These regulations were formally promulgated on February 7, 1941. The changes in the final version as compared to this draft were
relatively slight, and, unlike the text which appears here, it does not bear Mao's signature,
so we have not included it in this volume.

1. This telegram was addressed by Mao, Zhu De, and Wang Jiaxiang to Peng Dehuai;
Yang Shangkun, then secretary of the Northern Bureau of the Central Committee; and Luo
Ruiqing, Lu Dingyi, and Zuo Quan, who were, respectively, head and deputy head of the
Political Department of the Eighth Route Army in the field and deputy chief of staff of the
Eighth Route Army.


military and political committee, on the other hand, is not the executive body, and
its decisions should be handed over to the various departments to be carried out.
Decisions regarding military work, for example, should be handed over to the
commanding headquarters to be carried out, and decisions regarding political work
should be handed over to the political department for execution, and so on. The
military and political committee should be discussing the more important issues; it
is wrong to hand over all the minutiae and minor issues to the military and political
committee for discussion.
5. The military and political committee should approve the promotion and transfer of cadres. Punishment of Party members, acceptance of membership into the
Party, and other such matters, however, are still to be discussed and decided upon
by the Party Affairs Committee.
6. Decisions of the military and political committee are not to be issued in the
name of the military and political committee but, rather, should be issued by the
commanding organs or the political organs, depending on the nature of the respective decision. Reports from lower levels to higher levels should, likewise, not be
made in the name of the military and political committee, but should rather be
made separately by each department.
7. When, in discussion of certain issues, the military and political committee
encounters debate and cannot reach an agreement, a report should be submitted to
higher levels for decision. With regard to urgent matters, however, the commanding officer and the political commissar still retain final decision-making authority,
although they should report the various dissenting opinions to higher levels.
8. The military and political committee at each level is to meet at least once a
month and at most twice a month. Failure to convene a meeting without good
reason is not permitted.
9. It should be explained to the cadres that the military and political committee
is established for the purpose of adapting to the scattered circumstances of guerrilla warfare and achieving the result of collective leadership and unity among the
cadres, but that the army is still a centralized organization, and subordinates should
absolutely carry out orders from their superior commanders, political commissars,
and higher-level departments. Lower-level military and political committees do
not have the right to discuss refusing to carry out orders, and different departments
at the same level should, likewise, carry out orders from above. The phony democratic sentiment, which holds that absolutely everything must go through the military and political committee, is wrong and should be prevented and corrected. The
establishment of the military and political committee by no means weakens the
system of individual responsibility.
10. The authority to explain and revise these regulations rests with the Central
Military Commission.
11. These regulations are approved by the Secretariat of the Central Committee.

Mao [Zedong] Zhu [De] Wang [Jiaxiang]