Letter to Liu Shaoqi and Others

(February 20, 1955)

Comrades Liu, Zhou, Chen, Deng, and Peng Zhen[1]:

I have read through the second draft of the outline for the Five-Year Plan once. Some opinions I have already conveyed to Comrade Chen Boda[2]. Please each find Boda for a talk within the next few days and tell him your opinions after you have reviewed it, or give him your revised copies. Together with the opinions of other comrades, let him compile them, make revisions, add a chapter on local plans, and print the third draft by the end of this month or the beginning of next month. At that time we can review it a third time, and around March 10 we can print the fourth draft, which can then serve as the basic final version.

The day after tomorrow I will begin reading the documents on the Gao-Rao issue.[3]

Mao Zedong
February 20
(According to the manuscript)

[1] Liu refers to Liu Shaoqi. Zhou refers to Zhou Enlai. Chen refers to Chen Yun, then Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council. Deng refers to Deng Xiaoping, then Secretary-General of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council. Peng Zhen, then Alternate Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress.
[2] Chen Boda, then Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee, Deputy Director of the Central Rural Work Department, and Secretary to Mao Zedong.
[3] Refers to the resolution on the anti-Party alliance of Gao Gang and Rao Shushi and the report on the Gao-Rao anti-Party alliance, among other documents, prepared for adoption at the National Conference of the Communist Party of China scheduled for March 1955.