Qiao Mu and Lengxi:

Critique on the matter of commentary [1]
(4 September 1959)
(1) This item also seems publishable;
(2) Some favourable commentaries from Japan and the West should be published in large quantities; slanderous commentaries should also be published, and refuted. The more vicious the anti-China attacks, the more advantageous to us, for the enemy is in a passive position and cannot turn the tables. The above is for your consideration.

Furthermore: After a while, for instance half a month after National Day, publish Khrushchev’s speech opposing the communes [2] in Renmin Ribao, so as to make him even more passive and let the people of the whole country know that Khrushchev is opposed to the communes. Whether this is feasible, please think it over first; the Central Committee will make a decision when the time comes.

Mao Zedong
4 September

[1] This critique was written on a report dated 2 September 1959 from the Chinese Embassy in Iraq to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs concerning the reactions of the Iraqi press to the communiqué of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee and other documents. The report described how a number of Iraqi newspapers had published the communiqué of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee and related documents, and had printed commentaries praising the achievements of China’s socialist construction. On 5 September 1959, Renmin Ribao published an NCNA dispatch entitled “China’s Gigantic Achievements in Construction Inspire Mankind,” introducing these reactions in the Iraqi press.

[2] This probably refers to the speech made by Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, on 18 July 1959 at a mass meeting of the Polatsev Production Cooperative in Poznań County, Poland. Renmin Ribao did not subsequently publish this speech by Khrushchev.