Notice Regarding the Experience of Taking
Over Enterprises in Beiping and Tianjin1
(May 26, 1949)
To the East China Bureau, Central China Bureau, and Northwest China Bureau,
and the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee:
Based on our experience in Beiping and Tianjin, after we occupy cities, if
the personnel who take over enterprises are only prepared to take them over and
are not prepared to manage them, and if we wait until after these enterprises are
taken over to send people to manage them, the personnel who take them over
will have an attitude of “being at the post for at most five days”; they will not be
motivated to manage and will waste resources, and this will result in severe production losses in those enterprises. Consequently, those initially responsible for
dispatching personnel to take over enterprises should, when at all possible, select
people who can be entrusted with management and inform them that they must
not only do well in taking over enterprises but also in managing them to ensure
that there are no production losses. Please pay attention to this point. Furthermore,
the resources of the enterprises (including those kept in the factories, those given
to the Guomindang government, and those for which the government has yet to
pay) are not to be treated as war trophies to be confiscated, distributed, and consumed. If we treat the resources of the enterprises (gauze, bedding and clothing,
and other manufactured products) as spoils of war to consume, our government
will then have to compensate the enterprises in order for them to continue producing; otherwise, the enterprises will cease operations and will not be able to continue production. Such has been the experience in Beiping and Tianjin. The East
China Bureau has already been informed of this point, but we now repeat it again.
Please draw the attention of your subordinates to all of this.


The Central Committee


Our source for this document is Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 5, pp. 301–2, where it is reproduced from Mao’s handwritten manuscript.
DOI:  10.4324/9781315719436-277