Central Committee Telegram Approving Du Runsheng’s Proposal for a Phased Land Reform (February 7, 1951)

To the Central-South Bureau, the South China Sub-Bureau, with copy to the East China Bureau, the Fujian Provincial Committee, the Southwest Bureau, and the Northwest Bureau:

We have received the telegram dated January 19 forwarded by the Central-South Bureau on January 26 from Comrade Du Runsheng. We concur with his proposed approach: first, broadly mobilize the masses in all counties to carry out struggles for rent reduction, return of deposits, suppression of local tyrants, and repression of counter-revolutionaries; at the same time, rectify the grassroots organizations. This is to be regarded as one stage, after which we shall proceed to the stage of land distribution.

Such an approach is entirely necessary and, moreover, the most expeditious. The proper sequence of the land reform should, in fact, be just this. In many areas of East China and Central-South China where the land reform has been most successfully implemented, it has followed precisely this sequence. The experience of North China, Northeast China, and Shandong likewise confirms this.

When we stated that the land reform in Guangdong should be accelerated, we did not mean that our comrades there should disregard 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 urged them to speed up the mobilization of the masses and the rectification of the grassroots structures, and then to move on to land distribution. Over the past year or so, Guangdong failed to focus on the most fundamental step of mobilizing the masses and consolidating the grassroots organizations. Consequently, whenever the question of land distribution arises now, it feels burdensome. Nevertheless, it is still not too late to act in this way; indeed, it remains essential to do so.

Issued by the Central Committee on February 7, based on Mao Zedong’s manuscript. Note [1]: Du Runsheng was at that time Secretary-General of the CPC Central Committee’s Central-South Bureau and Deputy Director of the Central-South Land Reform Committee.