Annotations and Revisions to the Draft Directive
(April 28, 1957)

To be immediately forwarded to Liu, Zhu, Chen, and Qiaomu⑶ for their review. Shangkun will dispatch it by car this month on the day designated as “Dingwu”; another set is to be printed as previously instructed. It is planned to make the document public in early or mid-May............
Mao
April 28, 1:00 PM
[1] The passages in Song typeface in sections two and three of this text are additions written by Mao Zedong.
[2] Liu refers to Liu Shaoqi. Zhu refers to Zhu De. Chen refers to Chen Yun, who at that time served as Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Committee. Qiaomu is Hu Qiaomu, then a candidate member of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat and Mao Zedong’s secretary.
[3] Shangkun is Yang Shangkun, then a candidate member of the CPC Central Committee Secretariat and Director of the Central Office.
[4] The CPC Central Committee’s April 27, 1957 directive on the Rectification Campaign was published in the May 1, 1957 issue of People’s Daily.

The fundamental nature of social relations has changed, and people’s thinking and consciousness are changing accordingly. For our Party and the working class to further and more effectively lead the transformation of the entire society and the building of a new society; to better mobilize all positive forces, unite all those who can be united, and transform negative forces into positive ones—so as to strive toward the goal of building a great socialist country—we must at the same time carry out self-reform.
In order to strengthen the Party’s ties with the broad masses of working people and thoroughly rectify the phenomenon of many leading cadres becoming divorced from the masses, while conducting the Rectification Campaign, we should advocate throughout the Party that the principal leading cadres at all levels of the Party, government, and military who are physically capable devote part of their time to engaging in manual labor alongside workers and peasants, and gradually institutionalize this practice as a permanent system.