Forwarded
Annotations on "Sichuan's Experience" [1]
(March 24, 1959)

Sichuan's experience is to be distributed to the Party committees of all provinces, municipalities, and regions for reference. In Sichuan, the communes are established with the township as the unit. The commune Party committee is the township Party committee, equivalent to the general branch in other provinces.

Mao Zedong
March 24, 1959

1. On the issue of to which level commune powers should be delegated as the base. Most areas have decided to use the management area as the base; individual wealthy teams that insist on distribution based on the small cooperative as the unit shall not be forcibly merged.
2. On the issue of the accumulation ratio. It is proposed to adjust it so that the management area retains 30% to 35%, the commune retains 60% to 65%, and about 5% goes to the county federation of cooperatives. Production teams, being the original small cooperatives, do not need to set aside additional accumulation.
3. On the issue of handling forests and trees. They shall be placed under the three-level management of the commune, management area, and production team according to different circumstances.
4. On the issue of wages. In order to protect the production enthusiasm of poor teams, in principle, every effort should be made to prevent these poor teams from lowering their current wage levels.
5. On the issue of housing use. It is determined that in the future, when communes use private houses, a small amount of rent should be paid.
(2) Specific arrangements for the county-level five-level cadres' conference:
1. All counties shall uniformly convene five-level cadres' conferences.
2. The conferences shall be conducted with great fanfare.
3. Leadership of the conferences must be strengthened, while also paying attention to accommodating production, ensuring that neither the conference nor production is delayed.
(3) Several specific measures for current work are stipulated. When Mao Zedong approved and forwarded this report, he changed the title of the report to "Sichuan's Experience."

--- Notes

[1] Refers to the briefing (No. 7) sent by the Sichuan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China on March 20, 1959, to the Central Committee and Mao Zedong regarding the six-level cadres' conference. The main contents are:
(1) Supplementary opinions on the commune management system and several policy issues: