We have yet to fully resolve the serious problem of egalitarianism in agriculture; it remains an outstanding issue. As the peasants put it, the Sixty Articles are missing just one crucial provision. What is that provision? It concerns the fact that production rights are vested in the production teams, while distribution authority rests with the brigades—namely, the “three guarantees and one reward” system. Unless this issue is addressed, the vigorous development of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, sideline industries, and fisheries will continue to be constrained, and the masses’ enthusiasm for production will remain dampened. If we are to achieve a more substantial increase in agricultural output in 1962 compared with 1961, we should settle this matter at the December work conference this year. My view is: “Three-level ownership, with the team as the basic unit.” In other words, the fundamental unit of accounting should be the team rather than the brigade. The brigade’s so-called “unified leadership” must be clearly delimited; the Hebei comrades have specified nine such limits. Without such delineation, many of the team’s prerogatives would prove illusory, as they would still be seized by the brigade.  At the Guangzhou meeting last March, I had circulated a document from Shandong that laid bare this acute contradiction, together with another from Guangdong concerning a commune that had rigidly fixed its output targets. On the latter, I appended a few remarks asking whether such practices could be extended nationwide. However, no decision was reached. Once you have reviewed the materials from Hubei and Hebei and we have discussed them together, I propose that these documents, accompanied by a letter from the Central Committee, be transmitted downward. All central bureaus, provincial, municipal, and regional party committees, prefectural committees, and selected county committees should dispatch their own leading cadres, along with robust investigation teams, to conduct a two-week field study. They should hold several symposiums with representatives from the county, communes, brigades, teams, and individual members to determine the most effective approach: Is it better to implement the “three guarantees and one reward” system at the brigade level, or to base it on the team—that is, what the Hebei people call “large-scale contracting of distribution”? To mobilize the masses’ initiative in collective production and to substantially increase the output of grain, cotton, oilseeds, hemp, silk, tea, sugar, vegetables, tobacco, fruits, medicinal herbs, miscellaneous crops, as well as livestock products such as pigs, horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, ducks, and geese, in the coming year and subsequent years, I believe there is no alternative but to follow this course. On this very issue, we have been muddling along for six long years (since the establishment of the advanced cooperatives in 1956). Shouldn’t we finally come to our senses in the seventh year?