Conversation with Yuan Renyuan[1]

(July 1943)

Do not engage in forced confessions and blind belief. When you coerce him, he has no choice but to talk wildly, and once he talks, you believe it. Then you go and coerce those he has named, and those people talk in turn, and as a result the matter grows bigger and bigger. We have had very painful lessons in the past during the elimination of counterrevolutionaries. This time we must by all means avoid forced confessions and blind belief; we must conduct investigation and research, and we must stress evidence. If there is no material evidence, there must at least be witness testimony. Do not believe something to be true just because someone says it; you must make a concrete analysis and not lightly trust oral confessions. As for those with problems, do not execute a single one, and do not arrest the majority. Killing people must be handled with extreme caution. If you kill someone, and in the future there is evidence proving it was truly a mistake, although you can correct it, the person is already dead, and the dead cannot be brought back to life; you can only restore their reputation. Furthermore, do not arrest people casually. Why arrest him? Where could he possibly run off to?

[1] This is part of Mao Zedong's conversation with Yuan Renyuan regarding the situation of the "Rescue Movement" being carried out in Suide.