Comment on Zhang Pinghua’s \[I\] Letter Regarding Work in Hunan
(5 May 1961)

Comrade Xiaoping:
This letter \[2\] should be printed and distributed to the members of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee and the secretaries of the Secretariat. Whether it should be distributed to all comrades attending the May Work Conference \[3\] will be decided at that time. This letter is a pertinent and sincere letter, a very good letter.

Mao Zedong
5 May, in Shanghai.

\[I\] Zhang Pinghua, then serving as First Secretary of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee.

\[2\] Refers to the letter Zhang Pinghua sent to Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and others on 14 April 1961. The letter stated: The Chairman’s letter of 11 April to Comrade Wang Dongxing has been printed and distributed to all comrades in the Provincial Committee Secretariat, and has been conveyed and discussed at meetings of the Provincial Committee Standing Committee and the secretaries of the prefectural (municipal) Party committees. Over the past six months, the rectification and commune consolidation campaign in our province has achieved some results, but only in a few key counties where action was taken earlier and leadership was relatively strong has the work been done fairly well. In most areas, it remains incomplete, and in some areas the problems have not been resolved at all. The fundamental reason is the failure to fully mobilize the masses to implement the Party’s policies. In our practical work, two types of errors exist: First, the viewpoint of bestowing favors. In many places, problems are not solved by truly relying on and mobilizing the masses, letting the masses be the masters of their own affairs, but rather by a small number of people standing above and “issuing decrees and dispensing benevolence.” Second, subjectivism. A number of our specific policy measures are divorced from reality and from the masses. Examples include overemphasizing the operation of public canteens, an excessively large portion of supply, and overly heavy state procurement tasks. For all these errors, the Provincial Committee, and first and foremost I myself, should bear the primary responsibility.

\[3\] This Central Committee Work Conference was later held in Beijing from 21 May to 12 June 1961.