Comments and Revisions on the Suggestions Regarding the Issues of Devolution
(March 11, 1958)

This document is for discussion.

Mao Zedong
March 11

The Guangdong Provincial Party Committee's suggestions regarding the issues of the five-year unchanged fiscal devolution and industrial devolution, requesting a reply.

The above suggestions are requested to be considered by the Central Committee. If deemed feasible, please promptly determine and notify the relevant comrades and us to implement them immediately, in order to benefit construction.

The above two items, two and three, are requested to be instructed by the Central Committee.

[1]
This article is firstly, Mao Zedong's comments on the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee of the CPC's suggestions regarding the issues of fiscal devolution and industrial devolution; secondly, the title drafted by Mao Zedong for the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee's suggestions;
thirdly, the two paragraphs at the end of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee's suggestions revised by Mao Zedong, of which the parts printed in Song typeface are those added and revised by Mao Zedong.

[2]
Refers to the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee of the CPC's report to the Central Committee and Mao Zedong on March 6, 1958, regarding the suggestions on the issues of fiscal devolution and industrial devolution. The main contents are: (1) Fiscal devolution has played a good role in organizing the socialist Great Leap Forward.
In 1958, Guangdong Province's capital construction investment has increased from the original 119 million yuan arranged by the Central Committee to 226 million yuan, that is, an additional 107 million yuan by the local authorities. It is estimated that after carrying out the anti-extravagance and waste campaign, practicing strict economy, and tapping production potential, enterprise profits can still be increased, which also makes it possible to increase investment again for production construction.
(2) The "five-year unchanged" regulation of finance will better give play to the enthusiasm of local authorities, enabling them to more actively arrange the development scale and speed of the second five-year plan. Therefore, please consider whether the Central Committee should formally announce the policy of fiscal devolution and five-year unchanged, and approve Guangdong Province's five-year capital construction investment plan. (3) In order to truly achieve more, faster, better, and more economical industrial development, in addition to some factories that must be directly managed by the Central Committee, some factories closely related to the development of local production and construction should be devolved as much as possible. Now some factories are managed by various departments of the Central Committee, and the local authorities cannot intervene. These factories often do their own thing, resulting in great waste, and the production potential has not been fully utilized. We believe that, in principle, the industry in a region must be determined to be under the unified management of the local authorities. This report was printed and distributed at the Chengdu Conference as a conference document.