Comment on the Situation Briefing

(September 6, 1961)

This document[1] is very good. Print and distribute it to all comrades[2] for study. Also take it back with you and have it printed and distributed to the committee members at the provincial, municipal, and regional party committee levels. Convene an enlarged provincial party committee meeting, with the participation of prefectural committee comrades, to earnestly resolve the ten issues raised in the second part of this document. The sooner the better, so that during the autumn harvest, autumn plowing, autumn sowing, and autumn harvest distribution period, the policies can be implemented and fulfilled, striving for a bumper harvest next year. The six months of winter and spring for rectifying the work style and consolidating the communes, and training cadres, should also be arranged at this enlarged provincial party committee meeting, which will give us even greater initiative. Simultaneously carrying out production, state procurement, and livelihood arrangements will make us even more proactive.

Mao Zedong
September 6

[1] Refers to the material "The Situation and Problems in Implementing the Sixty Articles in Various Localities," published in Rural Briefing No. 175, compiled and printed by the Rural Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on August 24, 1961. The main contents are as follows: I. Basic Situation. Since the preliminary implementation of the Sixty Articles on Agriculture, the rural situation has clearly improved. II. Existing Problems. (1) In many places, the figures for grain retained by the masses and state procurement cannot be finalized; the masses generally demand that the procurement tasks be fixed and remain unchanged for 3, 5, or even 10 years. (2) Restitution and compensation are generally not thorough. (3) In some areas, the private plots have not been allocated to commune members in full according to regulations. (4) Egalitarian thinking still exists. (5) In some areas where the productive forces have been severely damaged, a considerable number of cadres and peasants have lost confidence in collective production, leading to phenomena such as "distributing land according to labor," "contracting output to households," and "distributing grain ration land," which are disguised forms of restoring individual farming. (6) In terms of management and administration, some erroneous practices have been discovered. In some places, when implementing the field management responsibility system, over half of the annual farm work is contracted to households, resulting in disguised forms of "contracting output to households" or "contracting part of the output to households," which harms collective production. (7) Some places have adopted a laissez-faire attitude in dividing communes and production brigades. (8) Among some of the third-category communes and brigades that were reformed last winter and this spring, problems such as incorrectly classified brigades, wrongly designated class status, and excessively broad scope of cadre punishment have not yet been addressed. (9) There are still many problems in the ideological understanding and work style of cadres. (10) Although the masses warmly support and are inspired by the Sixty Articles on Agriculture, there is still a widespread fear of policy changes. III. Deployments in Various Localities. (1) Resolutions have generally been made and directives issued on the methods, steps, restitution, differentiation, grain, and other issues concerning the implementation of the Sixty Articles on Agriculture. Some places have made specific provisions on concrete issues such as commune-run industries, private plots, and pig raising, based on the central policy principles. (2) The three-level cadre meetings in various counties can generally be concluded by mid-August, and plans for training cadres in batches by stages have been generally formulated. (3) It is generally required that within August and September, the main content for implementing the Sixty Articles on Agriculture should be restitution and compensation, resolutely implementing various distribution policies during the summer harvest, and vigorously strengthening management and administration work. (4) Preparations are being made for systematic rectification of work style and consolidation of communes after autumn.

[2] Refers to the comrades who were then attending the Central Committee Work Conference of the Communist Party of China at Lushan.