--- Notes



Comrade Dehuai [1], Northwest Bureau:  (1) According to repeated reports from the Qinghai Provincial Party Committee, remnants of Ma’s [2] bandit forces are inciting the masses and organizing resistance in many localities.  This matter should be given serious attention at the current Lanzhou Conference [3].  In addition to vigorously suppressing banditry, the provincial, prefectural, and county party committees should concentrate on carrying out painstaking mass work and consistently uphold policies of ethnic equality and unity in all their activities. Furthermore, government organs at all levels ought to allocate seats in proportion to the population of each ethnic group, and extensively recruit Hui and other minority personnel who are willing to cooperate with us to participate in government work.  For the present period, unified governments—i.e., united-front governments—should be established without exception.  Through such cooperation, a large number of cadres from minority groups should be trained.  Moreover, the provincial party committees of Qinghai, Gansu, Xinjiang, Ningxia, and Shaanxi, as well as the prefectural party committees in all areas where minority populations reside, should all set up training classes or schools for minority cadres.  Please pay close attention to this point: achieving a thorough resolution of the ethnic question and completely isolating ethnic reactionaries is impossible without a substantial contingent of communist cadres drawn from minority backgrounds.  (2) Have the comrades of the Northwest Bureau already arrived in Lanzhou? When will your meeting begin? The agenda for this conference is quite extensive; it is likely that the meeting will need to last about a week.  It is also necessary to decide whether Xi’an or Lanzhou will henceforth serve as the political center of Northwest China.  We would appreciate it if you could inform us of the main items on the agenda.  (3) Please instruct Wang Zhen [4] to keep us apprised of developments.

Mao Zedong, November 14. Printed from the manuscript.

Notes  [1] Dehuai refers to Peng Dehuai, who at that time was First Secretary of the CPC Northwest Bureau and Commander and Political Commissar of the First Field Army of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.  [2] “Ma” refers to Ma Bufang (1903–1975), a native of Linxia, Gansu. He formerly served as Chief of the Northwest Military and Political Office of the Nationalist Government and Chairman of the Qinghai Provincial Government.  [3] This refers to the enlarged meeting of the CPC Northwest Bureau held in Lanzhou in November 1949.  [4] Wang Zhen (1908–1993), a native of Liuyang, Hunan, was at the time Secretary of the CPC Xinjiang Sub-Bureau and Commander and Political Commissar of the First Corps of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.