Conscientiously Implement the Central Committee’s Directive on the Examination of Cadres[1]

(November 5, 1943)

According to Comrades Peng and Luo[2] and others, in the anti-espionage struggle in the Taihang and Taiyue areas, many people have been arrested and killed in numerous localities. We believe this is a phenomenon that merits your serious attention, and you must immediately investigate such occurrences. Within the basic base areas, you must conscientiously study and resolutely implement the Central Committee’s August 15 directive on the anti-espionage struggle (originally titled the Directive on the Examination of Cadres), closely guiding cadres at all levels to carry out the correct line of: responsibility borne by the leading chiefs, doing things oneself, integrating the leading backbone with the broad masses, integrating general calls with specific guidance, investigation and study, distinguishing right from wrong and the serious from the minor, winning over those who have taken a misstep, training cadres, and educating the masses; and abolish the erroneous line, handed down from history, of making many arrests and many killings and of extracting confessions by compulsion and believing them. Within the basic base areas, on the question of anti-espionage, you should not overemphasize the particularities of the front, nor should you overemphasize the differences between the environment at the front and the environment in Yan’an. If emphasis is to be made, then it should be understood that precisely in the wartime environment of the front, it is all the more necessary to implement the policy of fewer arrests and fewer killings, and fewer arrests and no killings, so as to correctly ensure victory in anti-espionage under harsh circumstances. The number of espionage agents arrested for the purpose of clarifying leads must not exceed five percent of the total number of local espionage agents (out of a hundred persons, at most only five may be arrested), and as soon as they confess, they must be

[1] This is the main content of a telegram from Mao Zedong to all comrades of the Northern Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, to be forwarded to the Party committees of the Taihang, Taiyue, and Jinan areas.

[2] Peng and Luo refer to Peng Dehuai and Luo Ruiqing. Peng Dehuai (1898–1974), a native of Xiangtan, Hunan, was then Acting Secretary of the Northern Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Eighteenth Group Army. Luo Ruiqing (1906–1978), a native of Nanchong, Sichuan, was then Director of the Field Political Department of the Eighth Route Army.

released immediately. Immediately cease killings; for the present period of one year, a policy of not killing a single person must be implemented, and no organ is permitted to kill any espionage agent. When and if killings are to be carried out in the future, approval must be obtained from the Central Committee. Do not use public trial meetings, but use methods of investigation, study, explanation, persuasion, struggle, and holding confession meetings to clarify all hidden espionage agents; use great zeal and many methods (by every possible means) to win them over and transform them into good people. Even the biggest and worst espionage ringleaders must also be won over to serve us. When the masses do not understand the function of this lenient policy, clear explanations must be made to the masses.