Comment on Three Documents Including
“Thoroughly Refute the Fallacy of Well-to-Do Middle Peasants
Opposing the ‘Eight-Point Charter’” [1]

For all comrades to read. Return to Mao.

The question of educating well-to-do middle peasants.

(December 1959)

[1]
This comment was written on No. 266 of *Situation Bulletin*, compiled and printed by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on December 25, 1959. That issue of the bulletin carried three documents. Among them, the document “Thoroughly Refute the Fallacy of Well-to-Do Middle Peasants Opposing the ‘Eight-Point Charter’” stated that Guangdong Province had again reaped a great harvest in grain production, especially in the late crop of this year, but a considerable number of upper-middle peasants and old peasants with serious right-leaning thinking attributed the harvest to “favorable weather, devolution of specifications, implementation of sparse planting, and old peasants taking command,” in an attempt to oppose the Party’s leadership and the agricultural “Eight-Point Charter” and to shake the broad masses’ confidence in continued leaps forward next year. Therefore, the entire province launched a great debate in the countryside over the agricultural “Eight-Point Charter.” Following this mass debate, the ideological consciousness of the broad cadres and the masses was further raised, winter production was dynamically promoted, and a consolidated ideological and technical foundation was laid for the more comprehensive implementation of the “Eight-Point Charter” in the future and for achieving an even greater leap forward in agricultural production next year. The document “Hebei Province Makes Thorough Inspections of Rural Rectification and Commune Reorganization Work” stated that the development of the rural rectification and commune reorganization movement in Hebei Province was normal and healthy, thoroughly discrediting the capitalist thinking and capitalist road represented by well-to-do middle peasants, and making the broad masses even firmer in their confidence and determination to take the socialist road. However, some problems also occurred in the movement, and in a few areas the targets designated for key criticism were somewhat too broad in scope.

Because the policies were not clearly explained.