Comments on an Analysis
(January 10, 1952)

All departments of the Central Military Commission and the People’s Revolutionary Military Council, all leading Party members’ groups of the Central People’s Government; all central bureaus, to be forwarded to sub-bureaus and provincial, municipal and district Party committees; all greater military regions and the Chinese People’s Volunteers Army, to be forwarded to Party committees at all levels of military regions and all armies:

The Central Committee approves the three-category analysis of the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee on the problem of cadre overspending as described by Comrade Peng Zhen in this report, and considers this analysis to be correct. All Party committees at every level are requested to immediately convey this analysis both inside and outside the Party in accordance with it, so as to facilitate the unfolding of the struggle against the three evils. This document should be published in Party periodicals.

The Central Committee
January 10

[I] Refers to the report submitted on January 9, 1952, by Peng Zhen, deputy director of the Economy Inspection Committee of the Central People’s Government, to Mao Zedong and the Central Committee and the North China Bureau, concerning the Tianjin Municipality’s struggle against the three evils. This report was written by him after a telephone conversation with Huang Jing, secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee, as required by Mao Zedong. The report mentions that Tianjin Municipality divided the problem of cadre overspending into three categories: The first category is unavoidable overspending, such as heating costs and food expenses for relatives staying a few extra days. Such overspending is neither embezzlement nor waste, but results from certain unreasonable aspects of the system. The second category is overspending of an extravagant nature in daily life, such as excessively high standards for special mess. Its nature is waste, and it should be curtailed, but it does not yet constitute corruption. The third category is profligate squandering of a corrupt nature, that is, waste bordering on embezzlement. After such an analysis, and especially after conducting self-criticisms, some cadres who had only overspending of the first and second categories, particularly those with only the first category, became calm and confident in the struggle against the three evils.