Notes on Bo Yibo’s Draft Report on the 1953 State Budget and His Amendments thereto (February 9 and 13, 1953) 1. Please distribute the table and the report to all attendees at tomorrow’s meeting; ask them to take these home for study, submit any proposed revisions on slips of paper, and bring them along on the 11th. Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript. 2. Comrade Hu Qiaomu: Please contact Qi Yanming to ascertain whether there are any revision suggestions. Gather these comments, make the necessary amendments by tomorrow (the 14th), and present the revised version to me for review, so that it may be published on the 15th or 16th. Also, instruct the People’s Daily to write an editorial. Mao Zedong, February 13. Printed from the manuscript.

3. This new stage is built upon the achievements made during the preceding three-year recovery period. Over those three years, through arduous efforts and united solidarity, our nation and its people successfully resolved the grave challenge of economic restoration. Our country has now been transformed beyond recognition from the shattered, incomplete state in which it was first established. In general, our economy has returned to the level of its highest pre-war output, with many sectors even surpassing that peak—some by a considerable margin. This has created the conditions for launching the First Five-Year Plan for Economic Development and laid a solid foundation for it. The year 1953 marks the commencement of this plan. 4. Personal income tax is practiced in all countries where the fiscal system is well-established. It serves not only as a source of government revenue but also as a tangible expression of citizens’ concern for the national cause. 5. Government bonds, on the one hand, represent public savings, and on the other, a manifestation of the people’s care for the state; they are an embodiment of patriotism. Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

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Notes 1. Bo Yibo was then Deputy Director of the Financial and Economic Commission of the Administrative Council and Minister of Finance. 2. The first section of this document consists of Mao Zedong’s annotations dated February 9, 1953, on Bo Yibo’s draft report concerning the implementation of the 1952 state budget and the preparation of the 1953 budget. The third, fourth, and fifth sections comprise remarks added by Mao while reviewing Bo’s draft; the fourth section was later deleted. 3. The “table” refers to the 1953 National Budget Outline. The “report” is Bo Yibo’s draft address on the 1953 state budget, which he was scheduled to deliver at the meeting of the Central People’s Government Committee on February 12, 1953. After soliciting opinions and making revisions, this draft was published in the February 18, 1953 issue of the People’s Daily.   Hu Qiaomu was then Deputy Minister of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong’s secretary.   Qi Yanming was then Director of the General Office of the Central People’s Government and Vice Secretary-General of the Administrative Council.