Letter to Huang Yanpei [1] (January 6, 1951)  Respected Elder Huang:  One copy of the East China Bureau’s directive telegram of January 4 to its subordinate party committees concerning land reform [2] is hereby sent for your review; please return it after perusal.
With respectful greetings,  Mao Zedong  January 6

Printed from the manuscript.
Notes  [1] Huang Yanpei, with the courtesy name Renzhi, was a leading figure in the China Democratic National Construction Association.
At that time he served as a member of the Central People’s Government and Vice Premier of the Administrative Council.  [2] Refers to a telegram dated January 4, 1951, from the East China Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to the Shandong Sub-bureau, the provincial and regional party committees, and the municipal committees of Shanghai and Nanjing, with a copy also sent to the Central Committee, on the issue of land reform.
The telegram pointed out that since the Second Typical Trial Conference on Land Reform in East China, various localities had boldly mobilized the masses with notable results: millions had been set in motion, middle peasants had become involved in the movement, wealthy peasants were actively seeking to draw closer to us, illegal landlords were being severely suppressed, and the landlord class had been completely isolated—indeed, even large numbers of Catholics had joined the struggle.
In some areas where basic land reform had largely been completed, efforts were already being integrated with the campaign to enlist in the army, and many peasant activists were voluntarily taking the lead in signing up.
However, in certain regions “left” deviations had begun to emerge, primarily manifested in indiscriminate arrests, beatings, and killings in individual villages.
Moreover, there were instances in some localities of smashing statues of bodhisattvas and destroying church crosses, as well as tendencies toward overstepping class boundaries and settling old scores.
The telegram urged party committees at all levels, during the period of full-scale implementation of land reform, to concentrate their efforts on strengthening leadership, to conduct timely inspections of the work, to promptly identify problems, to resolve them without delay, and to correct any deviations in the movement in a timely manner, so as to ensure the smooth progress of land reform.