Linke 111:
Comments on Speech Materials and Other Documents
(April 24, 1960)

Please read the second article 121, which mentions the speeches made by the secretaries of the five major cities on the issue of people's communes at the People's Congress. Please find (you) and bring it to me for reading today. Also, there is a proposal by Qian Xuesen on the industrialization of agriculture, which should also be found and brought.
Mao Zedong
6 a.m., the 24th
[1]
1. It has developed production, establishing a large number of small and medium-sized factories in the process of organization.
2. It has developed collective welfare undertakings, increased the income of the working people, and thereby improved the people's

The Complete Works of Mao Zedong
Volume 43
lives. 3. Its establishment has further strengthened cooperation among various departments. 4. It has enabled the broad masses of women, especially housewives, to embark on the path of complete liberation. 5. It has promoted the development of culture, education, and health undertakings. Urban people's communes can not only promote the rapid development of production but are also an important tool for thoroughly transforming old cities to suit the needs of the current stage of socialist construction and the future communist ideal. While organizing the production and life of urban people's communes, we should continue to implement the central authorities' guidelines and policies, actively develop and run the communes well, but also implement the principle of voluntariness, never demanding that everyone participate; regarding public canteens, we should adopt the principle of actively running them well while also basing them on voluntariness; personal means of subsistence and private savings still belong to the individual; for the housing and utensils needed for collective welfare undertakings, we should advocate the spirit of making do with simple means, self-reliance, and government assistance, actively solving these issues on the basis of developing production. Whether or not one participates in the people's commune, daily necessities should be supplied as usual.
[4]

--- Notes

Linke, then served as a secretary in Mao Zedong's office.
[2]
Refers to the second article published in an internal journal printed by the United Front Work Department of the CPC Central Committee on April 23, 1960, titled "The Dynamics of Bourgeois Elements, Bourgeois Intellectuals, and Their Dependents in Tianjin During the Current Urban People's Commune Movement."
[3]
Refers to the joint speech by Wan Li, Secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the CPC; Cao Diqiu, Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee; Wan Xiaotang, Secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Committee; Song Yiping, Secretary of the Wuhan Municipal Committee; and Zhu Guang, Secretary of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee, at the Second Session of the Second National People's Congress, titled "The Establishment of Urban People's Communes Has Great Historical Significance." The speech pointed out that since 1958, we have begun to experiment with urban people's communes. Over a year of practice has proven that the organizational form of the people's commune is entirely suitable for large cities and is warmly welcomed by the broad masses of the people. This is because:

Refers to the proposal submitted by National People's Congress representative Qian Xuesen to the Second Session of the Second National People's Congress on establishing agricultural production experimental factories. The proposal stated that China's agricultural production (including farming, forestry, animal husbandry, sideline production, and fishery) has now greatly developed and will certainly move towards industrialization in the future. Currently, the development and research of agricultural production are mainly carried out within people's communes and state farms. This can be said to be an "indigenous" path, a very good and primary path, but not the only one. There is also a "foreign" path, which is to fully utilize modern biology, modern mathematics, physics, chemistry, modern power, machinery, and automatic control technology, as well as all achievements in modern gas mechanics and fluid mechanics, that is, to utilize all "high, precise, advanced, and new" scientific and technological achievements to conduct experiments in the industrialization of agricultural production, finding methods to greatly break through today's limits of agricultural production. Since the state cannot supply large quantities of machinery and power for the time being, this experiment may not be fully promoted in the near term, but part of the research results can certainly be promoted immediately. Moreover, for the long term, it is necessary for us to undertake this exploratory research to open the way for the industrialization of agricultural production.