Central Telegram on Explaining to All Sectors the Necessity of Suppressing Counterrevolutionaries (February 28, 1951) To all Central Bureaus and Major Military Regions, with copy to Branch Bureaus, Provincial Committees, Major Municipal Committees, District Party Committees, and Provincial Military Districts:

Please take note of the opportunity presented by the Central People’s Government’s promulgation of the Regulations on the Punishment of Counterrevolutionary Crimes. In conjunction with the specific local conditions of counterrevolutionary activities, you should extensively explain to intellectuals, the industrial and commercial circles, religious groups, democratic parties, and democratic personages the absolute necessity of suppressing counterrevolutionaries, so as to secure their endorsement of our policy.

The article “Resolutely and Correctly Suppress All Counterrevolutionary Activities” written by Minister of Justice Shi Liang [1] is very well done. As Minister of Justice and a democratic personage, it should be carefully utilized in various localities to persuade those members of society who hold erroneous views as well as the timid.

This article by Shi Liang, together with the Central Regulations, Peng Zhen’s report [2], and the People’s Daily editorial of February 22, should be printed as a single booklet, widely disseminated, and used to organize study sessions both within and outside the Party.

Issued by the Central Committee on February 28, based on Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

Notes  [1] Published in the People’s Daily on February 24, 1951.

[2] Refers to the report delivered by Peng Zhen, Vice Chairman of the Political and Legal Committee of the Administrative Council, to the Central People’s Government Committee on February 20, 1951, concerning the suppression of counterrevolutionaries and the Regulations on the Punishment of Counterrevolutionary Crimes, which appeared in the People’s Daily on February 22, 1951.