The recipients of this letter were Rao Shushi, Deng Zihui, Deng Xiaoping and
Zhongxun. For Rao Shushi, see text Jan. 10, 1951, source note. and text Mar,
1955, note 7. For Deng Zihui (1896-1972) (the source indicates that Deng wax at tM
time of this letter second secretary of the Central-South Bureau of the Central Camm
tee of the CPC), see text Oct. 11, 1955(1), note 34. Xi Zhongxun (b. 1903) joined
the Communist Youth League in 1926 and the CPC in 1927, In the late 1920s and early
1930s Xi was active in organizing communist military forces in northern Shaanxi
subsequently joined the Twenty-sixth Army under Liu Zhidan as political commissar
In 1937 Xi became the political commissar for the Second Independent Regiment of the
20th Division of the Eighth Route Army under He Long and the commander of the
Rearguard Garrison of the Eighth Route Army. 1 1945 he become u deputy director!
the Organization Department of the CPC und sion thereafter the deputy seorenit

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wo Gang. af the Northwest Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPC, He
ft Gao as First Secretary of that Bureau in 1949. He was also the political
commissar of the First Field Army and a member of the People’s Revolutionary Military Council. At the time of this letter, he also held the position of the director of the
TY pefurm Committee uf the Northwest Military and Administration Committee, For
information on Xi, see Zhonggong renming lu, p. 688, and D. Klein and A.
(19704, pp. F134,

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Comrades Shushi, Zihui, Xiaoping, and Zhongxun:
if there are democratic personages and university professors who wish to go

and see land reform [in action}.’ we should let them go and see for themselves. We must not make any preparations beforehand. Let them go and see
as they wish; don't just let them see the good parts, but let them also see some
of the bad things. We can educate them in this way. Wu Jingchao and Zhu
Guanggian’ and others went to the vicinity of Xian to watch the land reform;
this has had a very good effect, We must use such examples to educate our
cadres and dispel the ideas of closed-door-ism.”

Mao Zedong

March 18

Notes

1 See text Feb. 18, 1951, note 2,

2. Wu Jingchao (1901-1968) was at the time of this letter professor of sociology at Qinghua
University. For more on Wu see text Oct. 13, 1957, note 51. Zhu Guangqian (b. 1898) was at the
time of this letter chairman of the Foreign Languages Department of Beijing University. After
graduating from Hong Kong University in 1923, he studied literature and philosophy in Britain
and eventually in France where he received his D. Litt. degree. On returning to China in 1931, he
taught first at Wusong Zhongguo gongxue; then in 1932 at Qinghua University and in Beijing
University and the College of Arts and Science for Women at Beiping University in 1935. Zhu
was in Sichuan during the years of the War of Resistance against Japan, and taught in several of
the colleges and universities that were moved there from other provinces during that time. In 1945
he returned to Beiping (later Beijing) and resumed teaching there, as well as becoming engaged in
the publication of literary periodicals, chiefly the Wenxue zazhi (Literary Gazette). Zhu is the
author of many books on literature, aesthetics, and psychology, and he commanded a great deal
of respect among the younger readers of the 1930s and 1940s. He was always a prolific translator,
publishing in Chinese the works of Hegel, Benedetto Croce, and Plato. In 1958 he was criticized
by students of Beijing University for his “bourgeois ideological line” in aesthetic philosophy.

he quite disappeared from the political scene during the Cultural Revolution. In 1974 Hong
ati (in particular un article in Xin waw bue an Jan. 20) indicated that Zhu had bee