To all provincial, municipal, and autonomous region party committees: Two investigative materials are hereby issued for your reference.

One is a report by Comrade Tan Zhenlin [1] on the rural situation in You County, Hunan; the other is a report by the Hebei Provincial Party Committee on the proportions of various products in the output value of agriculture and sideline occupations in Hebei Province.

Both materials illustrate that it is necessary to call on all agricultural production cooperatives to immediately pay attention to developing diversified operations, so as to enable over ninety percent of cooperative members to increase their individual income each year. Otherwise, it would constitute a major deviation, and could even lead to serious mistakes.

In Hebei Province, the output value of grain accounts for only slightly more than 28 percent of the province’s total agricultural output value, while agricultural products other than grain account for slightly more than 71 percent. This is a figure very worthy of attention.

Hebei Province produces relatively more cotton and relatively less grain. The circumstances in other provinces differ somewhat from this, but it seems unlikely that the output value of grain would exceed 50 percent, while the output value of crops other than grain and of sideline occupations accounts for at least 50 percent, or even more than 50 percent.

If we do not immediately pay attention to this issue, it will inevitably have a great adverse impact on the income of cooperative members, on the accumulation of the cooperatives, and on the accumulation of the state.

Therefore, please conduct an investigation of this issue yourselves, and notify the special district, county, district, and township levels down to the cooperatives, to carry out an analysis and calculate the ratio of grain output value to non-grain output value, so as to educate cadres and the masses.

Central Committee
June 14, 1956
Printed based on Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

Note
[1] Tan Zhenlin (1902–1983), a native of You County, Hunan. At the time, he served as Deputy Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Director of the Second Office of the Central Secretariat.