Central Committee Directive
Forwarding the Northwest Bureau’s Report on Rectification Experience
(August 26, 1950)

To: The East China Bureau, the Central-South Bureau, the Southwest Bureau, the North China Bureau, the Northeast Bureau, and for transmission to their subordinate branch bureaus and provincial, municipal and regional Party committees and military region Party committees:

Below is the Northwest Bureau’s rectification experience. We consider it to be correct. Please take note of it, and where there are elements that may be adopted in your regions, please do so.

The Central Committee
August 26

The main experiences mentioned in the Northwest Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s report to Mao Zedong and the Central Committee on rectification issues, dated August 15, 1950, are:

(I) All provinces and municipalities adopted the method of summing up work, running rectification training classes and holding three-level cadre meetings to train and rectify county, district and township cadres. (II) The method of rectifying the leadership from the top down, combined with examining work from the bottom up, to overcome bureaucracy and a commandist style of work. (III) On problems that have already come to light, the leadership should adopt a clear attitude, unequivocally distinguish right from wrong, and resolve them in a timely manner, so as to eliminate misgivings, strengthen confidence, and bring the masses’ initiative into play. (IV) The leadership should concentrate its efforts on solving the main problems in each unit, make a concrete analysis of the situation, study methods for improvement, establish work systems, overcome irrational phenomena, and enable cadres to achieve ideological improvement through the improvement of concrete work. (V) In order to overcome the phenomena of muddling and disorder in work, it is necessary to create a set of new work systems and methods by summing up practical work experience. It is also necessary to step up the training of the 90 percent of new cadres, enabling them to know how to do their work. (VI) Rectification is mainly to rectify the leadership. Non-Party cadres should also be welcomed to voluntarily examine their work and raise their ideological level, taking the Common Program as the standard, but it is primarily through the exemplary conduct of Party member leading cadres that they should be influenced and propelled forward.