(Omitted from the beginning) You propose that, in the newly liberated areas, a Poor Peasants’ Group should be established first to raise the class consciousness and organizational level of poor and hired peasants, consolidate their prestige, and, in the struggle against the Kuomintang and landlords, to bring medium-sized farmers into the movement. After the Poor Peasants’ Group has been operating for several months, a Farmers’ Association embracing all farmers can then be set up. I am in full agreement with this approach; it has already been stipulated in the Central Committee’s Instructions on Key Points of Land Reform in the Newly Liberated Areas. In organizing both the Poor Peasants’ Group and the Farmers’ Association, strict precautions must be taken to prevent landlords, rich peasants, and other opportunist elements from infiltrating their ranks. At least two-thirds of the members of the Farmers’ Association and of its committee must be poor and hired peasants, so as to ensure that leadership remains firmly in the hands of the poor and hired peasants. This is also entirely necessary.

The struggle strategy in the newly liberated areas must be divided into two major stages: first, struggle against the landlords; second, struggle against the rich peasants. The former stage itself should be further subdivided into several steps. We should begin by targeting large landlords, local tyrants, and reactionary elements, and, according to the degree of the masses’ revolutionary awareness, gradually expand the scope of the struggle. In general, the overall target range should not exceed ten percent of the population. However, if there are reactionary baojia chiefs or local tyrants who happen to be rich peasants or landlords (or even, in个别 cases, medium-sized farmers) and are deeply hated by the masses, and if the masses demand that they be dealt with first, we should allow the peasants to do so. This is especially true in those villages where there are no large landlords—only medium- and small-scale landlords and rich peasants—where such action should certainly be permitted. Permitting the suppression of reactionary baojia chiefs and local tyrants among the rich peasants and medium- and small-scale landlords is by no means contradictory to our strategy for the first stage, which calls for narrowing the target range and refraining, for the time being, from disturbing the majority of rich peasants and medium- and small-scale landlords.