Letter to XXX

(February 17, 1948)

After reading your report, I offer the following opinions on the issues you raised:

In old areas where land has already been equally distributed and the economic foundation of landlords and rich peasants has been eliminated, though not yet thoroughly enough and some land adjustments are still needed, there should be no further equal distribution of land. Instead, reasonable measures of supplementation and adjustment should be adopted to satisfy the land demands of some peasants who lack sufficient land. In such areas, it would be wrong to carry out another round of equal land distribution. In these areas, poor peasant groups should be organized only within the peasantry to safeguard the interests of poor peasants and hired hands. In peasant committees, peasant representative conferences, and the government, it is very good practice to ensure that poor peasants, hired hands, and new middle peasants together occupy two-thirds of the positions, thereby securing their leadership in the villages, while at the same time allowing old middle peasants to occupy one-third of the positions. In areas where poor peasants and hired hands are a minority and new and old middle peasants form the majority, organizing poor peasant leagues and insisting that they command everything runs counter to the line of the National Land Conference and is an extremely adventurist form of commandism. If any work teams or working groups in your area are still doing this, they should stop immediately and be recalled for training. Only after proper training should they return and start anew according to specific conditions. Please pay close attention to this matter.

Secondly, besides old areas and new areas, there are also semi-old areas that lie between the two. In such semi-old areas, the land problem has not been resolved as thoroughly as in old areas, but the situation is still better than in new areas where the problem has not been solved at all or has been solved only in broad outline. The working policy in such semi-old areas should differ from that in both old areas and new areas. I hope you will study this and inform me by letter of the results of your study.