Comrades, First Secretaries of the Party Committees of all Provinces, Municipalities, and Autonomous Regions:

The Central Committee has decided to convene an enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau in Shanghai on March 25. All of you are expected to attend. In accordance with the spirit of the Zhengzhou Conference resolution, the party committees of each province, municipality, and autonomous region should immediately hold conferences of lower-level cadres, with the people’s communes as the central theme. Such conferences should last approximately ten days. For example, the Hubei Provincial Committee’s decision to convene on March 11 is appropriate; any further delay would be detrimental. If the duration is too short, the analysis, exposure, and discussion of issues will inevitably be inadequate, and solutions will not be properly or thoroughly addressed—meaning they will lack depth and thoroughness. The conferences at the provincial, municipal, and regional levels should adopt a resolution on the management system of the people’s communes and on several specific policy questions, and the First Secretary should deliver a summarizing speech to provide a deep and comprehensive explanation of the principal contradictions currently facing the people’s communes and of the various policy issues involved. These two documents should be promptly circulated downward so that those at lower levels have clear guidance. However, formulating the ideas and drafting the text for these documents will require time. If the conference in Hubei opens on March 11, it may well continue until March 20 or 22 before concluding, allowing the respective First Secretaries to free up sufficient time to travel to Shanghai for the meeting on March 25. This would ensure a more relaxed schedule, avoiding undue haste. As for Henan, its six-level cadre conference could conclude by March 10. A draft of their resolution and summary speech could be finalized by March 9. The Central Committee will have these two documents airmailed to you for your reference no later than March 14. The next step in Henan is to convene four-level cadre conferences at the county level, to convey and discuss the outcomes of the provincial six-level conference. Participants will include: (1) several officials at the county level; (2) several officials at the commune level; (3) one to two representatives from each production brigade; and (4) one representative from each production team. In addition, there will be observers from the “tide-watching” and “accounting” factions. The total attendance will range from just over a thousand to around two thousand persons. The conference is scheduled to last seven to ten days. Counties throughout Henan plan to begin their meetings simultaneously on March 13 or 14 and to conclude them no later than March 20 or 24, leaving roughly one week remaining in March for communes, brigades, and production teams at all levels to hold their own meetings. In this way, most of the confusion and conflicting viewpoints surrounding the people’s commune issue can be fundamentally clarified and resolved during March. Starting in April, the entire Party and the whole nation will be able to advance along a unified course in carrying forward today’s Great Leap Forward. I hope that all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions will follow suit. If the six-level cadre conferences in your respective jurisdictions can be held as early as March 11, as in Hubei, and concluded by March 20 or 22, with the four-level county conferences wrapping up by the end of March and discussions at the commune and team levels completed before April 10, the timetable would lag behind Henan’s only by about ten days. Some comrades may feel that this schedule is too rushed and that preparations are insufficient, suggesting a postponement of the conferences. I do not believe this is advisable. We already have a clear policy direction. By swiftly assembling the six-level cadres and deploying them immediately to the localities, the major and minor contradictions will be brought to light within three or four days, thereby securing the support of the majority. We have a definite strategy for taking the initiative. The “tide-watchers” and “accountants” will have nothing substantive to say. Of course, a certain segment of the population will remain unconvinced and may denounce us as regressing. Such individuals may experience sleepless nights and poor appetite for a few days, but this discomfort will soon pass. Within three days, they too will come around. In short, slowness is undesirable; we must move quickly, while making some preliminary preparations—first by achieving a modest degree of ideological alignment between the county and township levels. It is not necessary to attain complete consensus; three days should suffice. Prolonging the process, on the other hand, would be counterproductive.

The foregoing constitutes my recommendation. Whether it is feasible remains for you to decide based on your own specific circumstances.

Zhengzhou, 4:00 a.m., March 9, 1959