Annotations and Revisions to the Article “They Are Reactionaries”⑴
(September 12, 1957)
Return to Comrade Hu Qiaomu No. 2. This document may be used.
Mao Zedong
September 12
Those who support socialism include not only the proletariat but also the broadest masses of the working people, accounting for eighty to ninety percent of the entire population. Those who oppose it, or who are temporarily unwilling to endorse it, or who give only grudging assent without truly believing in it, constitute only a tiny minority. Socialism
is the supreme will and highest interest of the vast majority of the people across the country at present; therefore, opposition to socialism is tantamount to opposition to the people. The three notions—“anti-communism,” “anti-socialism,” and “anti-people”—are inherently linked; they cannot be arbitrarily combined or separated by anyone.
In 1957, Mao Zedong watched an air force flyover accompanied by Nie Rongzhen, He Long, Luo Ronghuan, and others.

--- Notes

[1] This is the revision Mao Zedong made when reviewing the People’s Daily editorial titled “Why the Bourgeois Rightists Are Reactionaries.” The text typeset in Song typeface represents additions and revisions penned by Mao Zedong. The editorial was published in the People’s Daily on September 15, 1957.
[2] Hu Qiaomu was at that time an alternate member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong’s secretary.