Comment on Deng Zihui’s[1] Report Regarding the Communication of the Timeline for Basically Completing Socialist Transformation in Rural Areas[2]**
(May 19, 1953)

Comrade Zihui:
This matter[3] requires notification to all localities. Please consider adding a preamble and forwarding this telegram, or drafting another one, and send it to me for review.

Mao Zedong
May 19

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[1] Deng Zihui, then head of the Rural Work Department of the CPC Central Committee.

[2] This comment was written on a telegram dated May 16, 1953, from the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee to its subordinate units, concerning matters requiring attention when transmitting Deng Zihui’s summary of the Central Rural Work Conference.

[3] The Northeast Bureau stated in its telegram to subordinates: When conveying Deng Zihui’s summary, the phrase “basically complete socialist transformation in rural areas nationwide within ten to fifteen years or more” should, pending further instructions from the Central Committee on how to convey it, only be communicated down to county Party committee secretaries. They should be instructed not to relay it further for now, nor to publicize it to the masses, in order to avoid causing unnecessary ideological confusion among some sections of the populace.

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