Letter to Comrade Deng Xiaoping
(June 22, 1961)

Comrade Xiaoping:

This document [2] is very good and should be issued to all central bureaus and all provincial, municipal, and regional Party committees for firm implementation in accordance with this report. If among the 240,000 personnel in the central organs, one-third, or 80,000, have already been reduced, and several tens of thousands more can still be cut, I am thinking of reducing a further 40,000—I wonder if that would be feasible? If we could achieve a total reduction of 120,000, or half of the total 240,000, work efficiency would certainly be greatly enhanced. If the provincial, municipal, and regional level, the prefectural level, and the county level—these three local levels—all carry out resolute streamlining according to this plan, then bureaucracy will be greatly reduced nationwide and work efficiency will be raised. At present, the urban population needs to be reduced by over 20 million, and the personnel quotas for the three levels of the people's communes have already been stipulated. If these measures can be resolutely and properly implemented, then the serious problem of overstaffing can be resolved.

Please consider and handle the above accordingly.

Mao Zedong
June 22, 1961

[1] Deng Xiaoping was then serving as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Vice Premier of the State Council.
[2] Refers to the "Report on the Streamlining of the Central Organs" submitted to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on June 19, 1961, by Xi Zhongxun, then Vice Premier and Secretary-General of the State Council.