Annotations on the Second Report
(January 1952)

This kind of bureaucratism [1], the gravity of its evil, is not "less than that of corruption," but greater than corruption. —Mao's note

[1]
Mao Zedong's annotation was written in parentheses after the following passage in the report of the Party Group of the Central Financial and Economic Commission on January 9, 1952:
"In an organ like the Central Financial and Economic Commission, which does not directly handle money and goods but holds the great power to examine and approve financial and economic expenditures, combating bureaucratism is of particularly important significance. The gravity of the evil of bureaucratism, though not as great as that of corruption..."
The original text of the report of the Party Group of the Central Financial and Economic Commission immediately continues with the following passage:
"...yet the losses it causes are countless times greater than those caused by corruption."

[2]
This refers to the bureaucratism of the principal responsible person of the Planning Bureau mentioned in the report of the Party Group of the Central Financial and Economic Commission. It was mainly manifested in being mired in routinism in work, relegating the major issue of how to establish planning work to a secondary position, disregarding the opinions of Soviet experts, failing to learn from the experience of planning work in the Soviet Union and the Northeast, and ignoring the plans for developing planning work put forward with the help of Soviet experts.