Annotations on the Situation Bulletin from the Symposium
(March 29, 1961)
[1]
Refers to the situation material on the symposium on the commune system held in Shandong Province, reprinted in Issue No. 113 of the *Situation Bulletin* compiled and printed by the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on March 24, 1961 (originally published in Issue No. 5 of *Rural Work Conditions* compiled and printed by the General Office of the Shandong Provincial Committee on March 17). This material states that recently, the Rural Work Department of the Shandong Provincial Committee convened four symposiums on the commune system. At these symposiums, comrades from the counties and communes unanimously demanded that the current large counties and large communes be divided into smaller ones. Judging from the situation reflected at the meetings, the fundamental reason for the widespread and serious occurrences over the past few years of concealing production and privately dividing it, indiscriminate stealing and taking, production teams neglecting field production, commune members lacking enthusiasm for production, and not caring for draft animals, farm tools, and public property—apart from factors such as management failing to keep pace—lies in the economic imbalance between production teams within a single accounting unit, where there are considerable differences in production performance and income levels, yet the proceeds are uniformly distributed by the production brigade, thereby giving rise to egalitarianism.
At present, the production brigade, in terms of form, holds great power, with ownership of the means of production as well as powers over planning, contracted production, and distribution all in the hands of the production brigade. However, in reality, the means of production such as labor, draft animals, and farm tools are managed and used by the production teams, and all production tasks are undertaken by the production teams. The quality of production and the level of income also depend entirely on the production teams. Therefore, the production teams are the true "power faction." Through discussions at the symposiums, everyone believes that the unification of the four powers must be implemented, namely, the unification of the ownership and use rights of the means of production, and the unification of production rights and distribution rights. According to the principle of the unification of the four powers, the accounting unit should be the direct production unit. Below the accounting unit, permanent fixed production teams that only contract labor but not output should be established, and no output-contracting units should be set up. Therefore, the scale of the accounting unit should not be too large; generally, it should correspond to the former small higher-level cooperatives and large elementary cooperatives, which is equivalent to the current small accounting units and large output-contracting units. The number of households in a production brigade should generally be around fifty to sixty, and a production team should generally consist of around ten households. The production brigade should implement fixed land plots and labor for the production teams, and draft animals and farm tools should also be fixed for use by the teams.

Comrades Tao Zhu and Chen Boda:
As soon as you arrive, please read this document immediately. Around one o'clock in the afternoon, when we talk, we will study this issue.
Mao Zedong
Four o'clock in the morning, February 29
Return to Mao after reading.
[I]
Tao Zhu, then serving as First Secretary of the Central-South Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and First Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee. Chen Boda, then serving as Alternate Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Director of the Central Political Research Office, and Secretary to Mao Zedong.

Photograph of the material
In March 1961, Mao Zedong, Tao Zhu, and Zeng Zhi posed for a group photo on Zhudao Island in Guangzhou.