To the Shanghai Bureau, all branch bureaus, and all provincial and municipal Party committees: Regarding the grain situation, please investigate clearly and report to us the following points within one month after receiving this telegram (for the scope of calculation, except for the sixth issue, the other five items all exclude salt workers, forestry workers, fishermen, herders, boat people, disaster victims, and farmers of cash crops; that is, calculate exclusively for grain-producing farmers, and compute the average with the province as the unit): (1) What percentage had their output targets set too high last year, what percentage too low, and what percentage appropriately; (2) What percentage are grain-deficient households (calculated starting from those deficient by one month’s grain), what percentage are self-sufficient households, and what percentage are surplus-grain households; (3) Regarding the supply to grain-deficient households, what percentage are genuinely grain-deficient households that should be supplied, what percentage are false grain-deficient households that were supplied but should not have been (excluding turnover grain), and how much grain was wasted in the current grain year due to blind supply to false grain-deficient households; (4) Taking those crying out about grain shortages as one hundred, what percentage are those who are genuinely grain-deficient and whose supply was insufficient or not timely, thus causing them to cry out, and what percentage are those making false cries; (5) Regarding the supplementary sales work, what percentage of townships or households have already completed it well, what percentage of townships or households have not yet completed it well, and when can it be completed; (6) The grain sales of each province and municipality should definitely be reduced; exactly how much can be reduced in the next grain year.


For the above six issues, if time is insufficient, please make estimates based on a number of reliable typical materials and report them first before July 5 (before the opening of the National People’s Congress).


Precise investigation shall be left for the second half of the year.


Central Committee, May 28, 1955. Printed based on Comrade Mao Zedong’s manuscript.