To the Central Bureaus, Central Sub-bureaus, Party Committees of all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, and to all Prefectural Party Committees:

We hereby transmit Comrade Gao Gang’s report on the production cooperation and mutual assistance movement in Northeast China [1] for your reference, and it may also be published in Party publications.  The Central Committee deems the principles set forth by Comrade Gao Gang in this report to be correct.  All Party committees in areas where the land reform has already been completed should study this issue and lead the peasant masses to gradually establish and develop various forms of agricultural production mutual assistance and cooperation organizations based on private property, while at the same time refraining from belittling or excluding individual farmers who are unwilling to participate in this movement.  Each province and region is to set up state-owned factories for the production of modern agricultural implements, so that peasants may purchase such equipment.  Provinces, administrative prefectures, and counties are each to establish at least one publicly owned farm as a model demonstration unit.  The Central Committee has drafted an instruction (draft) on developing the agricultural production mutual assistance and cooperation movement, which will be issued to you shortly.  Printed on October 17, 1951, by the Central Committee of the CPC, based on Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

Note [1]: Refers to Comrade Gao Gang, Secretary of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, whose report dated October 14, 1951, to Mao Zedong concerned the production cooperation and mutual assistance movement in rural Northeast China.  The report proposes that the rural production cooperation and mutual assistance movement should be actively supported and developed in accordance with the masses’ voluntary participation and actual needs, and that it should be progressively advanced from lower to higher forms.  The key here lies in assessing the practical effectiveness of the leadership of cooperative and mutual assistance groups—namely, whether they have enhanced agricultural productivity, increased grain yields, and raised peasants’ incomes.  Various types of cooperative and mutual assistance groups must achieve relatively outstanding results in order to actively mobilize and attract independently farming households to join them voluntarily; however, voluntariness must be emphasized, and there must be no coercion or discrimination against those who continue to farm individually.  Likewise, the difficulties faced by individual farmers in production and daily life should also be helped to resolve.  The People’s Government should extend preferential treatment to these mutual assistance groups in all respects, particularly with regard to agricultural tools, technical guidance, and marketing and supply services.