--- Notes



Commentary on the Issuance of “Certain Questions Concerning Rural People’s Communes and Agricultural Production in Northeast China” (March 19, 1961) This document [1] is very well written; it is hereby circulated for all comrades [2] to study and adopt. Mao Zedong, March 19. Printed from the manuscript. Notes [ ] refer to the materials titled “Certain Questions Concerning Rural People’s Communes and Agricultural Production in Northeast China,” submitted by Song Renqiong, First Secretary of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. According to these materials, at the sub-group meetings held on March 15 and 16, comrades from Northeast China, building upon the deliberations and discussions within the Northeast sub-group during the Northern Three-Region Conference, raised a number of issues regarding how to fully stimulate the enthusiasm of the broad masses of peasants, further improve the people’s communes, and develop agricultural production. All agreed that at present some rural people’s communes are excessively large in scale and that their institutional structure contains certain problems, which prevent the full mobilization of the masses’ initiative. Therefore, it is imperative to take vigorous and effective measures to readjust the size and institutional framework of the people’s communes. The problems that need to be addressed step by step in the countryside are as follows:

1. The issue of the organizational scale of the people’s communes. The guiding principle for adjustment is to strengthen leadership, promote production, organize the economic life of the people, enhance unity, and take into account historical and natural conditions. In line with this principle, generally one commune should correspond to one township, one production brigade roughly equivalent to the former advanced-level cooperative, and one production team approximately equivalent to the former primary-level cooperative.

2. The institutional structure of the people’s communes. It was agreed to take the production brigade as the basic unit of accounting and appropriately expand the collective ownership rights of the production teams.

3. The distribution system. The main task is to overcome egalitarianism, implement the principle of “more work, more food; more work, more pay,” appropriately reduce the provision component while increasing the wage component, and, over the next few years, either substantially reduce or completely suspend contributions to the communal savings fund at the basic accounting unit level.

4. The issue of communal canteens. These should be run effectively, participation must be voluntary, and their scale should be appropriately reduced.

5. The financial management of the communes. Management at all levels of the communes should be strengthened, accounting systems established and improved, and corruption and waste strictly prohibited.

6. The treatment of cadres at the brigade and production team levels. A system of “fixed work assignments with fixed allowances” should be implemented, and the scope of compensation for lost work time must be strictly controlled.

7. The issue of rural commerce. The supply-and-marketing cooperatives should be restored, and commercial activities conducted using a “two-pronged approach.”

8. The issue of rural handicrafts. Handicraft cooperatives should be revived to serve agricultural production.

9. The labor force. The urban population should continue to be reduced, and the workforce on the front lines of agricultural production reinforced.

10. Draft animal power. Sufficient fodder must be reserved, fodder bases established, and a portion of urban draft animals returned to the countryside.

In addition, there are also issues concerning rural transportation capacity, mechanization of agriculture, grain procurement quotas, adjustment of price differentials between industrial and agricultural products, rational allocation of living supplies between urban and rural people’s communes, incentives for cultivating cash crops and increasing grain yields, reform of the agricultural tax, and the Party organization within the rural people’s communes—altogether eighteen issues. [2] Refers to the comrades then attending the CPC Central Committee working conference in Guangzhou. 4