Please take a look at this document; it contains some useful points. I have jotted down a few sentences that refute Khrushchev’s views. In the future, I plan to draft an article extolling the superiority of the people’s communes. Khrushchev opposes—or at least harbors serious doubts about—three major initiatives: “letting a hundred flowers bloom,” the people’s communes, and the Great Leap Forward. It seems to me that they are on the defensive, while we are firmly in control. What do you think? These three issues constitute a full-scale ideological and political struggle on a global scale, one that also targets the numerous opponents and skeptics within our own Party.

[1] Refers to three articles submitted on July 28, 1959, by Hu Qiaomu, alternate secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong's secretary, from Xinhua News Agency's *Internal Reference*: "Impressions of Severely Affected Communes in Zengcheng County" (Issue No. 2830), "Khrushchev on the Former Communes in the Soviet Union," and "Some Peasants in Panyu County Run Small Canteens on Their Own" (Issue No. 2831). The article "Impressions of Severely Affected Communes in Zengcheng County" stated that reporters recently visited the two severely flood-stricken communes of Shitan and Zengjiang in Zengcheng County, Guangdong Province. The overall impression was that the situation was very good, better than imagined. After the disaster, it was not a case of "everything being completely wiped out"; the lives of the disaster victims were arranged quite well, production was flourishing, and Party-mass relations showed a closeness not seen in the past two or three years. The article "Khrushchev on the Former Communes in the Soviet Union" stated that the Soviet newspaper *Pravda* published on July 21 a speech by Khrushchev, First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, delivered on July 18 at a mass meeting of the Polatsev Production Cooperative in Poznan County, Poland. The part concerning communes included: "It is understandable that transforming individual economies into collective economies is a complex process. We encountered quite a few difficulties along this path. Right after the civil war ended, what we began to establish then were not agricultural labor artels, but communes." "It seems that at that time, many people still did not quite understand: what is communism and how to build communism." "Communes were established, although at that time neither the material conditions nor the political conditions existed—I mean the consciousness of the peasant masses." "Many such communes achieved no results. So the Party took the path pointed out by Lenin. It began organizing peasants in cooperatives, in agricultural labor artels, where people work collectively but are remunerated according to their labor." "Now we have embarked on a broad and smooth path. The collective farm has become a dear home for the peasants." The article "Some Peasants in Panyu County Run Small Canteens on Their Own" stated: After some public canteens in Panyu County, Guangdong Province, ceased operation, some peasants spontaneously organized a new type of small-scale "new-style public canteen," characterized by a smaller number of participating households, complete management by commune members themselves, sole responsibility for profits and losses, and implementation of the "three voluntaries" principle: voluntary participation, voluntary amount of rice eaten, voluntary amount of vegetables eaten, embodying the advantages of reasonable burden-sharing, frugality, and mutual benefit. At that time, many commune members in Panyu County were considering organizing such "new-style canteens."

[2] The *Internal Reference* Issue No. 2831 submitted by Hu Qiaomu also carried a dispatch from the Central News Agency dated July 22, under the title "Foreign Newspapers Sow Discord in Sino-Soviet Relations over Khrushchev's Remarks on the Commune Question." This dispatch stated: *The New York Times* today carried on its front page a Warsaw dispatch concerning Khrushchev's criticism of the entire commune system, considering Khrushchev's remarks to be the most outspoken public criticism of the commune idea made by a Soviet leader so far. In the view of the *New York Times* Warsaw correspondent, Khrushchev's remarks "could be considered an implicit reference to certain statements made by the Chinese Communists last autumn. The Chinese Communists had said that establishing communes was the true path to communism. This view seems to have annoyed the Russians, because the Soviet press remained almost completely silent about communes for about three months."

[3] Jiaxiang, i.e., Wang Jiaxiang, then secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and head of the International Liaison Department of the CPC Central Committee.

[4] Refers to the first directive in this section and its attachments.