To Xie Juezai
(August 22, 1941)

Venerable Xie:

I am in receipt of your letter of the 21st. What I asked for is what was drafted by
the departments of finance and construction, per order of Venerable Lin [Boqu],
not any other separate plans. You were right to say that with this year's experience
the plans will be more realistic. This year's experience has been very full and
actually unprecedented. The most significant experience is that problems were
solved through cooperation between public and private (80,000 people cooperating with 1,400,000 others), proving that the policy is correct and that there are
solutions. The mistakes and defects in carrying out the policy (with regard to border region currency, to the production, transportation, and trade of salt, to grain, to
collection of taxes, and to publicly run industry and commerce) all resulted from
lack of experience, and great efforts should be made to correct them in future. The
reasons these policies were adopted this year have to do primarily with the two
basic characteristics of revolution and war and only secondarily with other characteristics of border regions (such as extensive territory, sparse population, poverty,
economic and cultural backwardness, and so on). In speaking, taking action, figuring things out, or making plans, anyone (and this includes Communist Party
members) can take as his starting point or methodology nothing other than what
he himself has seen and heard, which is to say his own experience. It is therefore
very important to pay attention to absorbing new experiences; what one has not
seen or heard one cannot even dream about. Having had this year's experience in
the border regions, many things will be easier to cope with next year. This year's
experience educated 80,000 people, and it educated another 1,400,000 as well (as
is shown by the Luxian report); it educated cadres, and it educated leaders too. It is
the duty of a leader to be good at summing up experiences. In the border regions
there are various highly important matters to work on, such as politics, military
affairs, the economy, finances, elimination of traitors, and culture, but if no major
sudden changes occur in the present situation as it stands, then economic construction is the one central item among all the rest. When there is enough food, cloth-

Our source for this letter is Mao Zedong shuxin xuanji, pp. 186-88, where it is reproduced
from the manuscript.

ing, housing, and articles for daily use, then everything is enlivened, everything
becomes manageable, and democracy or anything else need not be mentioned as
the central work. I have not studied or thought very deeply about these ideas, and
raise them only for your reference. Comrade Gao Gang sent me some material that
merits attention; please give it back to Comrade Gao when you have finished
reading it. I have read the account of Venerable Xu [Teli]'s¹ life and handed it
over to the Organization Department. The Central Committee is planning to deal
with this problem as a whole, and not simply with Venerable Xu as an individual.
Hereby wishing you all the best!

Mao Zedong

P.S. Zhou Wen² may be admitted into the Party group, to total six people; please
raise this with the Central Bureau. The government's Party group is responsible to
the Central Bureau and carries out resolutions of the Central Bureau. Its tasks are
to be in charge of policy and to sum up experiences; important matters must be
cleared with the Central Bureau.

I would say that with regard to salt, supervision by the authorities and transportation by the populace involves partial³ forced labor rather than semi-forced labor, which is similar to your idea in speaking of mutual benefit between the public
and the private. But the necessity of this partial coercion must be recognized. First,
participation during slack seasons is mandatory and not negotiable; second, 60,000
pack animal loads of public salt is mandatory, not only this year but next year as
well, and it should be included in next year's budget. Mobilization for spring plowing
and autumn harvest also involves partial coercion, but the transportation of salt
involves somewhat stronger coercion than spring plowing and autumn harvest,
although all this is very different from completely uncompensated military mobilizations such as for transporting grain, or economic mobilizations such as for
building roads. But transporting grain and building roads are also necessary, and
this too must be recognized. We are only opposed to the sort of mobilization in
which money and manpower are wasted and in which there is all harm and no
good.

1. Xu Teli was then president of the Institute of Natural Sciences in Yan'an.
2. Zhou Wen was then director of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region
government's Department of Education.
3. As in a few other texts in this volume, the words in boldface are those emphasized by
Mao in his handwritten text by the use of dots under the characters.