Comments on Two Documents, Including an Investigation into the Income and Expenditure of Rural People’s Communes and Their Members (December 1959) 1. These two articles [1] are worth reading; please circulate them to all comrades for their information, then return them to Mao. 2. Cheng’an County and Cixian County have been merged to form the Cheng’an People’s Commune, which is a major cotton-producing area. I visited it myself in September of this year. [2] Printed from Mao Zedong’s handwritten draft. Notes [1] Refers to two dispatches published in Issue No. 2939 of Xinhua News Agency’s “Internal Reference,” compiled and printed on December 19, 1959. The article titled “An Investigation into the Income and Expenditure of Rural People’s Communes and Household Members in 1959” reports that fourteen provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, including Hebei and Beijing, recently conducted a preliminary survey of the income and expenditure situation in rural people’s communes and among commune members for 1959, with the following findings: First, agricultural production continued to make leaps and bounds, and diversified operations developed on an unprecedented scale. Second, income distribution has become more equitable. Third, grain distribution is in good order. Fourth, the system of partial public ownership within the communes is expanding rapidly. Fifth, the living standards of commune members have improved markedly. The other article, “The New York Times’ Groundless Commentary on the Seventeenth Congress of the U.S. Communist Party,” states that on December 14 the New York Times published an

article entitled “After Signaling a Shift to the Right, the U.S. Communist Party Nominates Midwest Leader Hall as Its Head.” The article notes that in his keynote address, Hall emphasized the importance of taking into account the specific national conditions of the United States when formulating the party’s tactics and strategy. He cited Mao Zedong’s call for Chinese communists to adapt Marxism to China’s realities, adding that the U.S. Communist Party must do likewise. The article points out that this marks the first time that a communist party in this country has based its own policies on the words of the Chinese Communist Party rather than on those of the Soviet party. [2] These comments were written beside the title of the article “The Cheng’an Commune Implements a Distribution Method Based on a Fixed Growth Rate,” also published in Issue No. 2939 of “Internal Reference.” The article explains that, in light of the commune’s successive years of rapid production growth, the Cheng’an People’s Commune in Cixian County, Hebei Province, has replaced its proportional dividend system with a fixed-growth-rate distribution system. The advantages of this change are as follows: first, it allows the rate of income increase for each production team to be determined according to its actual circumstances, enabling teams with initially lower incomes to receive a larger share and gradually catch up with wealthier teams; second, it makes it possible to set aside more funds for public accumulation.