--- Notes

Comments and Revisions on the Draft of the Central Committee’s Notice Soliciting Opinions on the Treatment of War Criminals [1] (April 11, 1956)

I. To Comrade Peng Zhen [2]: There have been minor revisions [3], mainly to direct that the document be circulated down to the county level, with opinions to be collected and reported to the Central Committee in May. Mao Zedong, April 11. Printed from the manuscript.

II. In addition to this, please have your organization distribute this document to the local party committees, municipal party committees under provincial jurisdiction, and county party committees, and instruct them to convene appropriate meetings involving both party members and non-party elements for discussion and the collection of opinions. Please compile these into a report and submit it to the Central Committee before mid-May. Printed from Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

Notes  [1] Refers to the CPC Central Committee’s notice dated April 11, 1956, addressed to the Shanghai Bureau, the party committees of all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, as well as to the leading party groups of various central ministries and commissions, state organs, and mass organizations, concerning the solicitation of views on the treatment of Kuomintang, Japanese, and puppet war criminals. The notice stated that at present, appropriate measures needed to be taken regarding the war criminals then in custody. After weighing all considerations, the Central Committee concluded that a lenient approach would be preferable: no death sentences would be imposed; instead, depending on the circumstances of each case, suitable prison terms would be handed down; those not requiring further punishment would be released successively; and certain major war criminals who had demonstrated repentance and were willing to atone for their crimes through meritorious service would also be granted successive amnesties. Such an approach, it was argued, would help isolate, weaken, and disintegrate enemies at home and abroad, consolidate and expand the people’s democratic united front, and ultimately benefit both the nation and the people. However, it was acknowledged that this policy might also give rise to dissatisfaction among some, who might regard it as too lenient toward these criminals, and could embolden certain reactionary elements, thereby fueling their counterrevolutionary activities. Accordingly, the party committees of all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions were requested to convene, during April and May, enlarged meetings of the standing committees of their local committees of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, or other appropriately scaled symposiums, to solicit opinions. Following these discussions, they were to report the results to the Central Committee so that it could make a final decision. After deliberations throughout the country, the Central Committee did not, in that year, issue a decision to grant a general amnesty. On September 17, 1959, the Ninth Session of the Standing Committee of the Second National People’s Congress approved the CPC Central Committee’s proposal to grant amnesty to war criminals, counterrevolutionaries, and ordinary criminal offenders who had genuinely reformed and turned over a new leaf, deciding to implement such an amnesty in celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China. That same day, Liu Shaoqi, President of the People’s Republic of China, issued the amnesty decree. On December 4 of the same year, the Supreme People’s Court released the first group of twenty-three war criminals under the terms of the amnesty.

[2] Peng Zhen was at the time an alternate member 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] See section (II) of this text. This is a sentence added by Mao Zedong at the end of the draft central notice.