Comments on Several Regulations Concerning Current Work
(November 21 and 27, 1958)
This document is very good. Please have Comrade Xiaoping read it first, then circulate it to all comrades present at the meeting for their study.
Mao Zedong
November 21, 1958
Return to Comrade Xiaoping for circulation.
Mao
7 p.m. on the 27th
Since it was to be made public after the meeting, the date should be some day in December.
1 41

On Questions of the People’s Livelihood.
[I)
Refers to the Hubei Provincial Committee of the CPC’s November 1958 regulations on several tasks related to improving current living conditions. The regulations state that, based on numerous instructions from the Central Committee and Comrade Mao Zedong, the provincial committee has set a major task for party organizations throughout the province:
to make every effort to carry out several tasks concerning the people’s current livelihood. The purpose is not to dampen spirits but to boost them; not to hinder progress but to promote it; not to achieve merely a small leap in industrial and agricultural production next year, but rather a much greater leap than this year. To this end, the following provisions are made:
(1) Harmoniously balance work and rest. First, workers must have sufficient sleep, rest, and cultural-recreational time—eight hours for sleep and four for meals and breaks, totaling twelve hours—which must be guaranteed. Second, improve tools and labor organization to gradually reduce heavy physical labor and enhance productivity. Third, ensure that members of rural people’s communes enjoy half a day off each week. Fourth, guarantee that female workers do not perform heavy labor, wade into cold water, or stay up late during menstruation. Fifth, ensure workplace safety, improve working conditions as much as possible, and strive to minimize or prevent work-related accidents. (2) Properly manage communal canteens. First, ensure that everyone has enough to eat; second, ensure good quality food; third, maintain cleanliness and hygiene. Fourth, communal canteens should have dining rooms. Fifth, implement democratic management in canteens. Sixth, adhering to the principle of “large collective, small freedom,” those who eat in the canteen should be allowed necessary flexibility—for example, patients, the elderly, children, and pregnant women may take food back to eat elsewhere. Seventh, improve worksite canteens to ensure that workers there have adequate and nutritious meals. Eighth, currently the ratio of diners to canteen staff should be 20:1 or 25:1; efforts should be made to reform cooking equipment, lighten and improve cooking labor, and increase efficiency. Ninth, when members of communal canteens receive guests, they may bring them to the canteen for a meal without requiring additional dishes to be prepared. Tenth, organize training courses for cooks in batches so that all canteen staff can continuously improve their culinary skills, expand their knowledge of hygiene, and strengthen their dedication to canteen work. Eleventh, no landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, bad elements, or rightists shall hold any positions in communal canteens. Twelfth, establish canteens at the level of production teams. (3) Housing issues. First, each commune should have one or more construction teams. Second, each commune should inspect every household to promptly carry out winter-proofing measures for homes. Third, county committees and commune party committees, while conducting urban and land-use planning, should also draw up plans for new collective villages, conduct pilot projects, and set an example in terms of village size, housing styles, landscaping, sanitation standards, as well as the construction of threshing floors, roads, cemeteries, toilets, and animal shelters. Newly built houses should facilitate family gatherings for men, women, and children of all ages. (4) Care for the elderly and women and children. First, establish nursing homes to provide care for lonely and destitute seniors. Second, set up nurseries and kindergartens. Third, in addition to ensuring equal pay for equal work and respecting women’s menstrual hygiene, patient assistance should be provided to help women acquire cultural and technical skills. (5) Strengthen sanitation efforts. First, all towns and villages across the province should mobilize the masses to revise and implement plans for eliminating the “five pests” (flies, mosquitoes, rats, sparrows, and snails) and eradicating the “five diseases” (schistosomiasis, malaria, active syphilis, hookworm disease, and filariasis), and to take swift action with the aim of essentially eliminating the five pests and eradicating the five diseases within one to two years. Second, improve medical institutions, streamline medical procedures, and provide patients with every possible convenience. Third, develop public bathhouses; those who prefer not to use public baths may take bathwater home for personal use. Fourth, maintain thorough cleanliness in all residences and public spaces. (6) Actively promote mass cultural, recreational, and sports activities. First, party committees at all levels should mobilize the masses to organize cultural and recreational events in fields and workplaces. Second, during the 1959 Spring Festival, a large-scale cultural and sports event should be held, featuring performances and athletic competitions, allowing all workers to enjoy themselves fully. Third, actively cultivate small theater troupes in factories and rural areas that write, direct, and perform their own shows without interrupting production, while systematically helping them gradually raise their political awareness and artistic standards. Fourth, integrate mass sports activities with militia military training to advance national defense through sport.
[2]
Xiaoping refers to Deng Xiaoping, who at that time served as General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
[3]
Refers to the expanded meeting of the CPC Central Politburo being held in Wuhan.
[4]
This comment was written on a letter dated November 27, 1958, from Deng Xiaoping to Mao Zedong, submitting a draft of Mao’s comments on the Hubei Provincial Committee’s regulations regarding several tasks to improve current living conditions for onward transmission by the CPC Central Committee. The letter stated: “Comrades Shaoqi and Peng Zhen have already reviewed this document. Please examine it and return it to me. If you deem it suitable, I propose immediately circulating it to all attendees and making it public after the meeting.” The original draft of the CPC Central Committee’s comments was dated November 1958, but Mao revised the date to December and added his own comment. When the People’s Daily published this document on December 20, 1958, the date recorded for the CPC Central Committee’s comments was December 19, 1958.
[5]
This is the title Mao Zedong drafted for the CPC Central Committee’s forwarded version of the Hubei Provincial Committee’s regulations on several tasks to improve current living conditions; the People’s Daily also adopted this title when it published the document on December 20, 1958.