Comment on the "Notification on the Agreed Matters of the Emergency Meeting on Steel Production"

(September 18, 1958)

Comrade Zeng Xisheng[1]:

Have read this document[2] once. Have you received it?

Mao Zedong
Early morning, September 18

[1] Zeng Xisheng was then the First Secretary of the Anhui Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.
[2] Refers to the "Notification on the Agreed Matters of the Emergency Meeting on Steel Production" issued by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on September 15, 1958. The notification stated: Comrade Zhou Enlai convened an emergency meeting on steel production on September 14 to discuss the current situation of steel production. It was unanimously agreed that the average daily steel output in early September was obviously higher than in August. However, the average daily output of iron was only 31,000 tons, and the average daily output of steel was only 24,000 tons, which was still a certain distance from the September plan of producing 2 million tons of iron and 1.2 million tons of steel. The work in the next half month is still very tense. To this end, all relevant departments of the Central Committee must vigorously assist all provinces and cities, and all steel plants to promptly solve the key problems in the current steel production, especially in pig iron production, and take various emergency measures to strive to complete the September iron and steel production tasks as much as possible, in order to facilitate a greater leap forward in steel production in the fourth quarter of this year. The notification also issued disposal opinions agreed upon on 17 issues such as strengthening mining technical forces and improving railway transportation.