Comments on the News Report “Jiangsu Young Pioneers’ Forty Measures of Support” (January 2, 1958)

Qiaomu [1]: The Young Pioneers news item [2] is worth reading, and you may also refer to the Xinhua News Agency’s dispatch on this matter, which was broadcast as a single report in the Jiangsu newspapers [3].

Mao Zedong, January 2. Printed from the manuscript.

Notes [1] Qiaomu refers to Hu Qiaomu, who at that time served as an alternate member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and as Mao Zedong’s secretary.

[2] Refers to the news report “Jiangsu Young Pioneers’ Forty Measures of Support,” published in the evening edition of the Xinmin Daily on December 30, 1957. The report detailed how the Young Pioneer organization of the No. 1 Central Primary School in the Yuhuatai District of Nanjing City had put forward an initiative to Jiangsu Province’s Young Pioneers to launch a campaign titled “Let Us Also Support the Forty Measures.” The main contents were: (1) Engaging in various forms of voluntary labor—such as accumulating fertilizer, repairing ditches, eradicating the Four Pests, conducting literacy campaigns, and planting sunflowers—in order to contribute, through concrete actions, to the realization of the Forty Articles of the Agricultural Development Program in their hometowns; (2) Collecting and remitting a portion of the proceeds from their collective labor to construct Young Pioneer-controlled water gates and reservoirs in the most meaningful or urgently needed locations, as a gift from the Young Pioneers to the Second Five-Year Plan. The report stated that their initiative had already received support from the Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education and…