Comments on a Summary Report

(January 24, 1952)

To the various central bureaus, and forward to sub-bureaus and provincial, municipal, and district party committees, with notice to the various greater military regions:

The Shanxi Provincial Party Committee’s report[1] is extremely good. Comrades are earnestly requested to read it over several times with care, pay attention to following its example in practice, and publish it in party journals so that the broad ranks of cadres may see it.

Mao Zedong
January 24

[1] Refers to the summary report on the situation of the Three-Anti struggle, dated January 20, 1952, from the Shanxi Provincial Party Committee, forwarded by the North China Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. The main contents of the report are as follows: (1) The Three-Anti movement has been universally launched throughout the province. The sequence has been first to rectify the organs and units in non-financial and economic departments, and then to draw large numbers of leading backbone cadres from these organs and units to throw them into the financial and economic departments and industrial and commercial circles, while organizing large numbers of inspection teams to conduct mutual inspections from above and below. (2) Judging from the major corruption cases already uncovered, most were carried out by several corrupt elements, sometimes even in collusion with unscrupulous merchants, and pacts of mutual defense were formed both before and after the start of the Three-Anti campaign. Therefore, as the movement develops, it is necessary to consciously break through the various lines of defense of the corrupt elements. (3) The development of the Three-Anti movement throughout the province is very uneven, and quite a few organs have, to varying degrees, taken some detours. The solutions are: members of the provincial party committee should take the lead in urging responsible party and government cadres at all levels to conduct self-criticisms before the cadres and masses of their subordinate organs; leading party cadres at the department and bureau level, before and after conducting self-criticisms before the cadres of their organs, should come to the provincial party committee to conduct a self-criticism; the provincial party committee should dispatch capable cadres to supervise and assist backward units and those with serious problems, vesting them with certain powers, and when necessary, may remove those "stones" obstructing the movement; dispatch inspection teams to carry out mobile inspections to promote the development of the movement in various special districts, and so on. (4) Mobilize industrial and commercial circles to launch struggles against bribery, tax evasion, theft of state property, and exorbitant profits, serving as a frontal battlefield to counterattack the bourgeoisie’s onslaught in close coordination with the Three-Anti movement.