--- Notes



Comrades Shushi, Zihui, Xiaoping, and Dewei [1]: Please reply by telegram on the following points:  (1) What is the current situation regarding spring plowing?
Have the provincial and regional party committees under your jurisdiction concentrated their main attention on organizing and leading spring-plowing production?
Can the problems of farmers’ shortages of seeds, fertilizers, and food be resolved?
Is there any prospect this year of achieving a bumper harvest?
This matter is of utmost importance; please give it careful consideration.   (2) The East China Bureau and the Central-South Bureau are each to draft a preliminary version of a land law.
Have you already begun work on this?
We hope that you will complete the drafts by May 10 and submit them to the Central Committee before May 15.
Is this feasible?
In addition to a general land law, is it also necessary to issue an instruction on land-reform work, setting forth numerous specific measures to be followed in carrying out the reform?
Are you currently preparing to draft such an instruction?
Furthermore, would it be preferable for each regional military-government commission to issue this instruction independently, or for it to be promulgated uniformly by the Government Administration Council?
In short, whether it concerns the land law or the land-reform instruction, we request that you submit both to the Central Committee no later than May 15, so that the Central Committee and the Government Administration Council may make decisions in the latter half of May and announce them on June 1. Moreover, the East China Bureau has already assembled 72,000 cadres for use in the land-reform campaign and plans to convene them for intensive training and study of land-reform procedures within a few months after the land law is promulgated.
What is the situation with regard to cadre preparations in the Central-South and Northwest Bureaus?  (3) The retraining of cadres has become an extremely urgent task.
There is considerable and widespread dissatisfaction among all strata of the people with the coercive, commandist, and abusive style of many of our cadres, particularly as manifested in grain requisitioning, tax collection, and the collection of government bonds.
Unless this is promptly rectified, we risk losing touch with the masses.
Are you making plans for this retraining effort?
Do you have any concrete plans (steps) and instructions concerning the streamlining and retraining of cadres?

Mao Zedong, April 28. Printed from the manuscript.

Notes [1] Shushi refers to Rao Shushi, who at the time was First Secretary of the East China Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
Zihui refers to Deng Zihui, who at the time was Third Secretary of the Central-South Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
Xiaoping refers to Deng Xiaoping, who at the time was First Secretary of the Southwest Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.
Dewei refers to Peng Dehuai, who at the time was First Secretary of the Northwest Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.