Comments and Revisions on the Draft Directive [2]
(October 15, 1959)
Send immediately to Comrade Peng Zhen [3] for handling.
Mao
[1]
The Central Committee Transmits the Hunan Provincial Party Committee's Experience on Selecting Ten Brigades in Ten Communes to Conduct Pilot Rectification of Communes in Conjunction with Production, i.e., Carrying Out the Struggle Between the Two Roads [I]
[I]
This is the title of the Central Committee's draft directive revised by Mao Zedong. The text printed in Song typeface represents the words added and rewritten by Mao Zedong. Here, Mao Zedong also made individual word revisions to the draft directive.

1959, Mao Zedong in Beijing.

Comments on the Fujian Provincial Party Committee's Briefing on the Situation of Conveying the Resolutions of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee
(October 16, 1959)
This document [1] is good. Adopting this attitude in speaking is most appropriate. All localities may refer to it and handle matters accordingly. Having spoken once, one can speak again, using the method employed by Fujian. This document is to be distributed to the Party committees of all provinces, cities, and regions for their consideration and appropriate handling.
Mao Zedong
October 16
[1]

--- Notes

Refers to the report on the symposium on the pilot rectification of communes by the Rural Work Department of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, approved and transmitted by the Hunan Provincial Party Committee on October 4, 1959, and the report by the Xiangtan Prefectural Party Committee on several major issues in the pilot rectification of the Shaoshan Commune.
[2]
This draft directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, dated October 15, 1959, states: The experience from the Hunan pilot projects demonstrates with utmost clarity that a struggle between the two roads is currently underway in the rural areas. This struggle is a continuation of the ten-year-long struggle between the capitalist and socialist roads in the countryside; it is a very intense and very profound class struggle. From these materials, one can understand how a section of the well-to-do middle peasants in the countryside and a minority of cadres who represent the interests of the well-to-do middle peasants—right-leaning opportunist elements—are wildly attacking the People's Communes, the Great Leap Forward, and the General Line, and are fundamentally opposing socialism. Do not assume that the offensive by a section of the well-to-do middle peasants will only occur in a few areas, or that their numbers are small and pose no threat. Although they constitute only a part of the well-to-do middle peasants, the harm they cause is very great, and sufficient attention must be paid to them. All provincial, municipal, and regional Party committees should arrange an appropriate period of time to take the struggle between the two roads and socialist education as the key link, grasping politics in one hand and production in the other, leading the masses in a planned and step-by-step manner, and carrying out a movement of commune rectification and style rectification in a gentle and mild manner, combined with Party rectification and League rectification work.
[3]
Peng Zhen, then a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Central Secretariat.


Refers to the fourth briefing sent by the Fujian Provincial Party Committee to the Central Committee on October 9, 1959, regarding the situation of conveying the resolutions of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee. The report states: Following the Central Committee's instructions, we convened a symposium for democratic personages on September 25 to convey to them the resolutions of the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee. In the morning, the two resolutions of the Plenary Session and related documents were read aloud, and they also listened to the recording of Chairman Mao's speech at the symposium for leaders of various democratic parties and organizations in Beijing on September 15. In the afternoon, Comrade Ye Fei, First Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, addressed them based on the spirit of Chairman Mao's speech. After hearing the conveyance, the majority of those present expressed support for the resolutions of our Party Central Committee, felt they had received a great education, and generally reflected that raising the call to oppose right-leaning tendencies and boost morale was extremely necessary and timely. However, a portion of people still exhibited, to varying degrees, feelings of surprise, suspicion, apprehension, and muddled understanding.