Marginalia on the CCP Central Financial and Economic Commission Organs’ Party Group’s Second Report on the Three-Anti Campaign [1] (January 1952)

This kind of bureaucracy [2], in terms of the gravity of its crimes, is not “less serious than corruption”; it is far more serious than corruption. — Mao’s note

Printed from the manuscript. Notes [1] These marginalia by Mao Zedong are enclosed in parentheses and follow the following passage in the CCP Central Financial and Economic Commission Organs’ Party Group’s report of January 9, 1952: “In an organ such as the Central Financial and Economic Commission, which does not directly handle funds but wields considerable power over the review and approval of financial and economic expenditures, combating bureaucracy is of particularly great importance. Although the seriousness of bureaucratic malfeasance is not equal to that of corruption.” The original report then continues with the following words: “However, the losses it inflicts are immeasurably greater than those caused by corruption.” [ ] Refers to the bureaucracy exhibited by the principal person in charge of the Planning Bureau, as discussed in the CCP Central Financial and Economic Commission Organs’ Party Group’s report. It was mainly manifested in a preoccupation with routine administrative matters, relegating the crucial question of how to establish a planning system to a secondary position; in disregard for the opinions of Soviet experts and for the experience of planning work in the Soviet Union and Northeast China; and in the complete neglect of a plan for launching planning work that had been proposed with the assistance of Soviet experts.