Comment on the Report on the Question of the Producers’ Cooperatives
(August 16, 1955)

To the Shanghai Bureau, the provincial and municipal Party committees, and the Party committees of the autonomous regions:

The report of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee dated August 12, 1955, on the question of the agricultural producers’ cooperatives is hereby forwarded to you for reference. The Central Committee holds that the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee’s guiding principle is correct. With regard to the question of the interrelationship between socialist industrialization and the socialist transformation of agriculture, it is necessary to stress the close connection between the two, and impermissible to emphasize only the former while weakening the latter. For if the pace of the socialist transformation of agriculture is not made to correspond to the pace of socialist industrialization, then socialist industrialization cannot be accomplished in isolation and will inevitably encounter immense difficulties. At present, however, there are still many people within the Party who do not understand this point. Concerning the various preparatory tasks for consolidating, establishing, and expanding cooperatives, the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee points out that they should include: “carrying out ideological mobilization level by level, criticizing and overcoming right-leaning thinking, and actively giving play to the enthusiasm and initiative of the broad masses of cadres and the people; carrying out comprehensive planning level by level for the development of cooperatives, with special emphasis on resolving the class-based planning for cooperativization at the village level (that is, the township level—the northeastern provinces have not yet changed the designation to township); continuing to do a good job in consolidating and strengthening the existing cooperatives, further implementing the specific policies for cooperativization, and examining, clearing up, and purifying the organization of the cooperatives; strengthening leadership over the mutual-aid teams to lay a solid foundation for establishing cooperatives; and closely integrating the consolidation and establishment of cooperatives with the strengthening of the building of basic-level Party organizations.” All these are appropriate. The Liaoning Provincial Party Committee has decided to convene a joint conference of county Party secretaries and district Party secretaries across the province in the first ten days of September to discuss the question of cooperativization; other provinces may, at their discretion, follow suit. Liaoning does not have a prefectural Party committee level; in order to strengthen leadership over cooperativization, we deem it necessary to establish this level of organization immediately.

The Central Committee
August 16, 1955

To be read by Liu, Chen, Peng Zhen, Xiaoping, Chen Yi, and Enlai[1]; to be sent by telegram by Shangkun[2], and printed and distributed additionally as indicated above.

[1] Liu refers to Liu Shaoqi. Chen refers to Chen Yun, who was then a Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council. Peng Zhen was then an Alternate Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress. Xiaoping, i.e., Deng Xiaoping, was then Secretary-General of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council. Chen Yi was then Vice Premier of the State Council. Enlai, i.e., Zhou Enlai.
[2] Shangkun, i.e., Yang Shangkun, was then Deputy Secretary-General of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee.