Reply Telegram to Gao Gang’s Report on the Northeast Tiger-Busting Plan (February 9, 1952)

Comrade Gao Gang, with copy to all comrades:

Your telegram of February 6 [2] has been received.   (1) The public trial plan for Shenyang is very good. Please telegraph in advance to the Central Committee, in summary form, the names, charges, and degrees of sentencing of all categories of offenders—those to be executed, those to be spared—and await our reply before proceeding with the public trial. The public trial should be presided over by the Northeast Branch of the Supreme People’s Court; it may conclude at first instance, with no right of appeal. The Northeast Branch of the Supreme Procuratorate shall act as the prosecuting authority. In the public trial held in Beijing on February 1, various government organs served as prosecutors, a practice that some considered inappropriate.   (2) All major administrative regions are requested to take note of the above points.   (3) According to the Northeast plan, four thousand big tigers and twenty-five thousand small and medium-sized tigers are to be “busted,” placing this region first among the six major areas nationwide. While not every major area need follow the Northeast’s example exactly, each should, in light of its own circumstances, gradually increase its budget and criticize right-leaning tendencies among cadres.   (4) Military organs at the level of major administrative regions, provinces, municipalities directly under the central government, and prefectural areas shall come under the leadership of the respective Central Bureaus, provincial/municipal/city Party committees, and prefectural Party committees. They are to jointly formulate and revise tiger-busting budgets, exercise unified command over tiger-busting operations, and conduct research on tiger-busting tactics. At the same time, these military organs retain their own command structures. This division of labor combined with unity will facilitate coordinated efforts in the tiger-busting campaign.   (5) In certain units—for example, several divisions of the Tenth Army in North China—methods of extracting confessions through coercion have already emerged. As a result, what was uncovered were not real tigers but false ones, leading to the wrongful conviction of innocent people (this has since been corrected). Should such instances occur elsewhere, they should be promptly rectified.

Mao Zedong
February 9

Printed from the manuscript.

Notes:   [1] Gao Gang was then Secretary of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Chairman of the Northeast People’s Government.   [2] Refers to Gao Gang’s report dated February 6, 1952, to Mao Zedong and the Central Committee concerning the Northeast tiger-busting plan. The report proposed that the entire Northeast region aim to “bust” four thousand large tigers and twenty-five thousand small and medium-sized tigers, and to hold a public trial involving several thousand people in Shenyang around February 15, handing down different sentences to various types of offenders in order to advance the campaign.