Comment on the Time Limit for Settling Accounts Regarding Corruption in the 22nd Corps [1] (March 5, 1952)

Zhou [2]: Please inform Wang Zhen that the original time limit he had set—counting from the moment political commissars were dispatched and the Communist Party organization was established—should still apply. When you speak with Wang Zhen, convey this to him.  Mao Zedong, March 5.

Printed from the manuscript.    This comment by Mao Zedong was written on a telegram dated March 2, 1952, from the CPC Northwest Military Region Committee to Zhang Bangying and Zhang Xiqin, with copy to the Central Military Commission and the Northwest Bureau, concerning the handling of corrupt officials in the 22nd Corps. The Northwest Military Region Committee believed that the investigation and prosecution of corrupt elements within the 22nd Corps should begin from the time the unit launched its uprising and that this time frame should not be broadly shortened. Mao Zedong disagreed with this view of the Northwest Military Region Committee.

[2] Zhou refers to Zhou Enlai.  [3] Wang Zhen, Secretary of the Xinjiang Branch of the CPC Central Committee, Second Deputy Commander of the People’s Liberation Army’s Northwest Military Region, and Acting Commander and Acting Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Military Region, stated in his report of March 1, 1952, to Mao Zedong and the General Political Department of the Military Commission regarding the anti-corruption campaign among the Party, government, and military in Xinjiang, that with respect to the time limit for investigating corruption in the 22nd Corps, he had at the outset of the Three-Anti Campaign proposed: “The boundary for settling accounts over corruption should be fixed as beginning after the reorganization and the establishment of Communist Party leadership (political work).”