Comment on Yuan Xiluo’s[1] Letter Requesting to See Chiang Kai-shek
(12 October 1955)

Liu, Zhou, Chen Yi, Peng Zhen[2] to read,
Return to Mao.
This person requests to go see Chiang. I said permission must be obtained from Taiwan before he can go. Consequently he has written a letter,[3] and it seems permissible to let him send it. This person has a strong bookish temperament; as a person, he is a good man.

Mao Zedong
12 October

Return to Xu Bing[4] for handling.

[1] Yuan Xiluo, a member of the Tongmenghui and a representative to the provisional parliament during the Xinhai Revolution. In the 1920s he served as county magistrate of Qidong County, Jiangsu Province. After the founding of New China, he served as a counselor in the Counsellors’ Office of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Government and as a member of the Shanghai Municipal Research Institute of Culture and History.
[2] Liu refers to Liu Shaoqi. Zhou refers to Zhou Enlai. Chen Yi, then Vice Premier of the State Council. Peng Zhen, then Alternate Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, and Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
[3] Refers to Yuan Xiluo’s letter to Chiang Kai-shek in October 1955.
[4] Xu Bing, then Deputy Director of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee.