Central Committee’s Transmittal of the Northwest Bureau’s Report on the Issue of Investigation and Research, with Comment
(April 15, 1961)

To all central bureaus, and party committees of all provinces, municipalities, and regions:

The report of the Northwest Bureau dated April 11 on the issue of investigation and research [1] is hereby forwarded for your reference.

Central Committee
April 15, 1961
Comrade Xiaoping [2] to review and handle.

Printed based on Mao Zedong’s manuscript.

Notes
[1] This report from the Northwest Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to the Central Committee states: Following the Guangzhou Central Work Conference, the Secretariat of the Northwest Bureau convened a meeting to discuss the guiding spirit of the Guangzhou Conference and Chairman Mao’s article “On Investigation Work” from the spring of 1930. The meeting unanimously held that Chairman Mao’s speech at the Guangzhou Conference was most earnest, with words weighty and heartfelt, profoundly educating everyone. In a spirit of criticism and self-criticism, everyone examined the work of recent years and painfully felt that in the past, investigation and research were not given sufficient attention and were carried out very poorly. Strengthening this work is no longer a matter of sitting and talking about it today; what is important is the matter of rising and doing it. The meeting decided that party committees at all levels under the Northwest Bureau must make investigation and research their primary task; leading cadres, especially first secretaries, must personally take action; cadres of the Northwest Bureau organs must take turns going down in batches by stages; the majority of comrades in the Secretariat and the principal responsible persons of all departments must lead cadres down. At present, the focus of investigation and research is the countryside, while a certain amount of effort must also be devoted to urban investigation. The content and forces for investigation must be organized in a unified manner according to the principles of comprehensive planning and each having its own focus. Before going down, cadres must be conscientiously organized for study, emphasizing that investigation and research work requires a correct standpoint and attitude, and humbly learning from lower-level cadres and the masses. It must be closely integrated with the local central work; in the countryside, it is mainly integrated with the implementation of the Central Committee’s Twelve-Point Directive on current policy issues concerning the people’s communes and the draft regulations on the work of rural people’s communes. Through investigation and research, resolve the two tendencies toward egalitarianism and other problems existing in rural work, correctly implement the Party’s policies, fully mobilize the peasants’ enthusiasm, and strive for this year’s agricultural harvest.
[2] Xiaoping, namely Deng Xiaoping, then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.