Central Instructions Forwarding the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee’s Report on Arrangements for Convening a Six-Level Cadre Conference (March 14, 1960) To the Shanghai Bureau, the Committees of Various Cooperative Zones, the Provincial, Municipal, and District Party Committees, and the Central Ministries and Commissions as well as the Party Groups under them: The Central Committee endorses the basic ideas set forth in this report[1].

The mass conference may be held with up to ten thousand participants, or with fewer. We are now transmitting the Jiangsu report to you for your reference. Dated and signed by the Central Committee.

Printed from Mao Zedong’s handwritten draft.

Notes [1] On March 9, 1960, the Jiangsu Provincial Committee of the CPC submitted a report to the Central Committee, to Mao Zedong, and to the Shanghai Bureau concerning arrangements for convening a province-wide six-level cadre conference. The report stated that it had been decided to hold the conference on March 18, with representatives from the provincial, prefectural (municipal), county, commune, production brigade, and production team levels. Each commune would send one secretary of its Party committee, together with one representative each from poor and rich brigades and teams, for a total attendance of approximately ten thousand people over a ten-day period. The primary purpose of the conference was to address the five issues mentioned in the Central Committee’s instruction of March 3, which had been forwarded along with the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee’s guidelines on several current matters pertaining to the people’s communes. In our view, while the conference should promptly prevent and correct any shortcomings or errors in these areas, it is equally important to guard against a small number of cadres who might interpret the spirit of the Central Committee’s directive through a right-leaning ideological lens. The meeting should further clarify the current favorable situation, summarize the achievements and experiences of the winter-spring production campaign, and engage in constructive discussion to thoroughly resolve the five aforementioned issues. On this basis, the attending cadres are to be mobilized to study and formulate a comprehensive set of measures for further developing the people’s communes, thereby redoubling their efforts and launching a major upsurge in production centered on spring plowing and sowing. On March 18, 1960, the Central Committee of the CPC forwarded this report.