Comment on a Situation Report
(March 8, 1960)

Shanghai Bureau, all regional cooperation zone committees, all provincial, municipal, and autonomous region party committees, all ministries, commissions, and party groups at the central level:

In 1960, Mao Zedong cordially shakes hands with Song Zhihe, Secretary of the Henan Provincial Party Committee.

This report from the Henan Provincial Party Committee [1] is extremely well written. It is both a programmatic document and a scientific document, and is hereby issued to you for study and reference. The Central Committee hopes that you should all, at all times, produce scientific summaries of your own work, at least four times a year, once per quarter. Thematic summaries should also be made. Report to us on the one hand, and simultaneously issue them to subordinate levels for unified compliance. This document and its attachment may be published in party journals.

Central Committee
March 8, 1960

[1] Refers to the report from the CPC Henan Provincial Party Committee, dated February 29, 1960, to the Central Committee and Mao Zedong concerning the situation at the Five-Level Cadres Conference. The report states: Our province convened a Five-Level Cadres Conference from February 4 to 19, attended by leading responsible comrades from provincial-level departments and the first secretaries of prefectural (municipal), county, and commune party committees, as well as general branch secretaries of production brigades. The main issues discussed and resolved at the conference were: (1) The issue of taking agriculture as the foundation and striving to achieve grain self-sufficiency as soon as possible. The comrades attending the conference held that taking agriculture as the foundation and correctly handling the proportional relationships between agriculture, light industry, and heavy industry is the most essential issue in implementing the General Line and ensuring the high-speed, proportional development of the national economy, and represents a new development in socialist political economy. Based on the principle of taking agriculture as the foundation, combining the priority development of heavy industry with the rapid development of agriculture, and drawing on the experience of planning work since 1958, the conference discussed and determined our province’s 1960 national economic development plan, which is a plan for sustained leap forward. (2) Regarding the further development of the mass movement for technological innovation and technological revolution. The conference held that to achieve a sustained great leap forward in 1960, it is necessary to take Mao Zedong’s theory of uninterrupted revolution as the guiding ideology and vigorously carry out the movement for technological innovation and technological revolution. In the movement, it is necessary to adhere to the principle of “walking on two legs”: first, to extensively launch a mass movement to transform heavy manual labor and manual operations into semi-mechanized and mechanized operations; second, to actively and systematically develop towards the high-level, large-scale, precision, advanced, and new directions. (3) Regarding the deep and sustained development of the mass movement to study Mao Zedong’s works. The conference stressed that earnestly studying Mao Zedong’s works and raising the banner of Mao Zedong Thought still higher is the fundamental guarantee for achieving a sustained leap forward. In study, it is necessary to emphasize integrating theory with practice, systematically summarizing the rich experience of the Great Leap Forward, further improving work methods and work style, and raising the level of leadership. On March 10, 1960, the Central Committee of the CPC forwarded this report.

Immediately deliver to Shangkun [1] to bring to the Central Committee for review and forwarding.
Mao Zedong
March 8

[1] Shangkun, namely Yang Shangkun, then Alternate Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the General Office of the Central Committee.