Comment on the Experience of Launching the Campaign to Eliminate Counterrevolutionaries
(August 9, 1955)

All provincial and municipal Party committees, Party committees of autonomous regions, and leading Party members’ groups of central government ministries:

This material[1] has value for recommendation and is particularly useful for technical departments. It is hereby issued to you for reference.

The Central Committee
August 9, 1955

[1] Refers to the experience material on how the Second Group of the Guangdong Provincial Construction Bureau mobilized the backward masses to launch the struggle to eliminate counterrevolutionaries, issued by the Office of the Leading Group of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee on July 30, 1955. The material introduces the experience of consciously mobilizing the backward masses when the campaign to eliminate counterrevolutionaries shifted to linking with reality:

First, it is necessary to thoroughly understand the ideological characteristics, manifestations, and various concerns of the backward individuals, assign suitable comrades to conduct individual conversations, and address their ideological problems to relieve their concerns about the organization not trusting them and their reluctance to tear down the facade. Second, it is necessary to adopt the method of opening one lock with one key, find old engineers in the same profession who have an emotional foundation with the conversation subjects to talk with them, start by encouraging progress and consolidating their ideological and emotional state, and provide guidance and inducement without pursuing or pressing. Third, to defeat the enemy, it is necessary to mobilize the masses, especially the backward masses, to expose and report. Facts have proven that the targets of enemy activities are the backward masses, and the backward masses also know the enemy’s details best. Only by mobilizing the backward masses can the enemy’s true materials be uncovered. Mobilizing the backward masses is an arduous process that cannot be resolved through one or two conversations; it requires determination, patience, and meticulous enlightenment and education work.