This document is to be distributed immediately to all comrades attending the Military Commission meeting.

It is an excellent document, well worth reading carefully. It can greatly broaden one’s horizons. This is your own affair: without a modern industry, how can there be a modern national defense? We must rely primarily on self-reliance while seeking foreign assistance as a supplement; dispel superstition and proceed independently in developing industry, agriculture, and in carrying out the technological and cultural revolutions. We must overthrow slave mentality, bury dogmatism, earnestly learn from the good experiences of other countries, and at the same time study their bad experiences—taking them as cautionary tales. Such is our line. The same applies equally to the economic front as to the military front. Those who oppose this line, if they cannot convince us, should themselves adopt it.

“To be unable either to give orders or to obey them—is to be utterly finished.” That leads straight into a dead end. May I ask, what way out is there?