Several paragraphs added while reviewing Yang Er's\[1\] draft of "Critique of Wu Xun and the Propaganda about Wu Xun"
(June 1951)

The central undertaking of Wu Xun was the so-called begging and running of "righteous" schools. This matter has deluded many naive, childlike, unthinking, good-natured people, but it is in fact a swindle. Wu Xun may have thought of running schools for poor children, but in reality he could only run schools for the children of the rich; it was impossible for genuine poor children to attend schools like his. Schools controlled by those *juren* and *jinshi* degree-holders would absolutely never permit genuine poor children to set foot in them. Wu Xun's "righteous" schools were in fact unrighteous schools. The money was ruthlessly extorted. First, it was forcibly demanded—Wu Xun was a vicious beggar who threatened good, honest people by eating the five poisons to coerce them into giving money; second, he engaged in usury (at three percent monthly interest); third, he relied on official influence to solicit donations. The sources of these three kinds of money were all illegitimate. The schools he ran were not, as alleged, for "poor children"—"for poor children" was merely empty talk; in reality, they were for rich children. Only those utterly naive people would believe that in Wu Xun's "righteous" schools there really seemed to be a crowd of "poor children" leaping and bounding about.

Now, let us set aside for the moment the methods and results of Wu Xun's running of schools, and speak only of his motives in doing so—that is, let us assume he genuinely wanted to enable poor children to become literate, and thereby change the miserable

\[1\]
Yang Er, i.e., Xu Liqun, then Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese New Democratic Youth League.

station of the poor. Could such an idea be considered illegitimate? We say, what Wu Xun himself thought is one matter; what Wu Xun's later followers propagandize on his behalf is another matter. That Wu Xun alone thought incorrectly is an extremely minor matter, of no consequence. The propaganda by his later followers on his behalf is different—this is using Wu Xun to propagandize their own views, and moreover making films, writing books or essays, and carrying out large-scale propaganda directed at the Chinese people. This raises a fundamental problem.

Wu Xun only suffered before he put forward the slogan of "righteous" schools. Ever since he put forward this beautiful and stirring slogan of "righteous" schools, he was respected more and more with each passing day, until he became the darling of the reactionary government. The more he begged, the more vigorous he became, and he suffered not the slightest hardship at all.

Look, Wu Xun played the part very convincingly; he understood the hierarchical order of feudal society. The more convincingly he played the part, the more he could win the favor of those *juren* and *jinshi*, and the greater his fame became. He was already very rich, yet he still insisted on begging. The more he begged, the greater his fame, and the richer he became. Wu Xun was a man full of cunning and ruthlessness; therefore he became the "uniquely strange beggar through the ages." Only those utterly naive people were deceived by him. The old reactionary writers, moreover, deliberately portrayed Wu Xun's swindling tricks as "admirable tales." The incident of Wu Xun's saying, "I, a beggar, dare not stand on ceremony with the teacher," is also recorded with great flourish in the "Biography of Wu Xun" in the *Draft History of the Qing*.

\[!\] Yang Er's article discusses: "How then is the problem of the illiteracy of the poor to be solved? It is not by starting with the struggle to secure the basic social conditions under which poor children can study, but rather by adopting the 'ascetic practices' of a Wu Xun, kowtowing and begging for money to establish 'righteous' schools." When Mao Zedong reviewed this draft, he added this passage in parentheses after "ascetic practices."