--- Notes



Letter to Deng Xiaoping [2] Regarding the Draft Notice for Convening a Central Work Conference [1] (April 25, 1961)

Comrade Xiaoping: Please draft a notice calling for a Central Work Conference. Responsible comrades from all Central Bureaus and the party committees of provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions are to arrive in Beijing by May 15. Members of the Drafting Committee for the Regulations on Rural People’s Communes (list them as in Guangzhou) are to arrive in Beijing on May 9.

The task of this conference is to continue the work left unfinished at the Guangzhou meeting [3]: to collect the views of peasants and cadres, to revise the sixty articles of the Regulations [4], and to carry forward the rectification of the “Five Winds” [ ]. Industrial and urban rectification will not be discussed, or only briefly at the very end of the meeting; that issue is to be reserved for the July conference [ ].

To this end, all comrades attending should make use of the present period to conduct focused investigations into several key problems in the countryside—namely, the canteen system, the grain situation, the rationing system, the allocation of private mountains, the graded management of forests, whether it is better for plow oxen and farm tools to be owned by the brigade or by the production team, comprehensive rectification and resolute restitution in first- and second-class counties, communes, and production teams, opposing the notion of paternalistic bestowal and steadfastly following the mass line, seeking guidance from the masses and vigorously promoting investigation and research, restoring handicrafts, and reviving supply-and-marketing cooperatives. Over the next ten to fifteen days, they should devote themselves wholeheartedly to finding the truth among the people, so that the May meeting may more thoroughly accomplish the tasks outlined above.

For this purpose, please collaborate with Comrade Tian Jiaying [7] in drafting the notice.

We had a good discussion this evening, and it will be sent out by telegram tomorrow. We earnestly hope for your prompt action!

Mao Zedong 9:00 a.m., April 25 Based on publication in Selected Letters of Mao Zedong. Included in the Collection of Thought Methods and Working Methods of Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yun. (A handwritten draft exists.)

Notes [1] This Central Committee work conference was subsequently held in Beijing from May 21 to June 12, 1961.

[2] Deng Xiaoping was then General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

[3] Refers to the Central Committee work conference held in Guangzhou from March 15 to 23, 1961.

[4] Refers to the Draft Regulations on Rural People’s Communes, consisting of sixty articles, which were discussed and adopted at the Central Committee work conference in Guangzhou in March 1961.

[ ] Refers to “communist wind,” exaggeration, arbitrary orders, special privileges for cadres, and blind commandism in production.

[ ] Refers to the Central Committee work conference originally scheduled for July 1961, which was later held at Lushan from August 23 to September 16.

[7] Tian Jiaying was then Deputy Director of the CPC Central Political Research Office and Mao Zedong’s secretary.