Comments on the Report and Reply Telegram
(November 2, 1949)
To the Central China Bureau, the South China Branch, the Southwest Bureau, the Northwest Bureau, and Comrade Dehuai:
We are hereby transmitting to you the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee’s views dated October 27 concerning several policy-related issues.ii These issues are common to all provinces and deserve careful attention. Please forward them to the provincial, regional, municipal, and prefectural party committees under your jurisdiction, together with any materials you have gathered from your own campaigns against local tyrants and for rent reduction, for their study. We look forward to receiving their opinions in a report to the Central Committee.
The Central Committee
November 2
(1)
Refers to the telegraph sent by the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee on October 27, 1949, to the East China Bureau, with copies to Mao Zedong and various local party committees, outlining its views on eight policy-related questions arising from the campaign against local tyrants and for rent reduction. These eight questions are: (1) the issue of reducing cattle rents; (2) the question of raising wages for hired laborers; (3) whether large and small rents should be reduced simultaneously; (4) how to handle the businesses and industries owned by notorious tyrant landlords; (5) how to deal with cases where key tyrant landlords, under the pressure of a powerful peasant movement, voluntarily surrender to the government; (6) the disposition of grain stored in communal granaries, public granaries, temple granaries, and ancestral hall granaries; (7) the management of forests confiscated during the anti-tyrant campaign, as well as other public forests; and (8) whether all public fields and lands should be subject to rent reduction.

To Comrade Rao Shushi1 1 1, with reference to the Zhejiang Provincial Committee:
Recently, several policy-related issues in the countryside, along with earlier reports, have been forwarded by the East China Bureau for our review. We have carefully studied them and subsequently transmitted them to all localities for consideration and implementation. In my view, these reports from the Zhejiang Provincial Committee are well written and highly useful.
[1]
Rao Shushi was then First Secretary of the CPC Central Committee’s East China Bureau.
Mao Zedong
November 2