To the Central-South Bureau, the South China Branch, with copy to the East China Bureau and the Fujian Provincial Committee, as well as to the Southwest and Northwest Bureaus:  We have received the telegram dated January 19 sent by Comrade Du Runsheng [1] and forwarded by the Central-South Bureau on January 26. We concur with the approach proposed by Du Runsheng, namely, first to broadly mobilize the masses in all counties to carry out struggles for rent reduction, return of security deposits, suppression of local tyrants, and repression of counter-revolutionaries; to rectify the grassroots organizations; and to treat this as one stage, following which to proceed to the stage of land distribution.


This course of action is entirely necessary and also the most expeditious.


The proper sequence for land reform should indeed be just as described.


In many areas of East China and Central-South China, those where the land reform work has been most successfully carried out have all followed precisely this sequence.


The experience of land reform in North China, Northeast China, and Shandong has likewise demonstrated this point.


When we say that Guangdong’s land reform work should be accelerated, we do not mean that Guangdong comrades should violate this established sequence—undertaking a hasty and premature distribution of land while the masses have yet to rise up and the grassroots organizations remain unreliable. Rather, we call for an acceleration of mass mobilization and the consolidation of grassroots organizations, after which land can be distributed.


Over the past year and more, Guangdong has failed to focus on the most fundamental step of mobilizing the masses and strengthening the grassroots organizations. Consequently, whenever the issue of land distribution is raised, it now feels particularly difficult. Nevertheless, it is still not too late to act in this manner; such an approach remains both appropriate and necessary.


Printed on February 7 by the Central Committee, based on Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

--- Notes

Note [1]: Du Runsheng, born in 1913 in Taigu County, Shanxi Province. At that time he served as Secretary-General of the Central-South Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Deputy Director of the Central-South Land Reform Commission.