A Directive Concerning the Need for Leading Bodies to Improve the Work of Requesting Instructions and Submitting Reports[I]

(August 10, 1962)

This document[1] merits a reading. The Central Committee is unclear about many domestic situations. Many leading bodies block the flow of information, fail to produce analytical reports, do not request instructions beforehand, do not report afterward, and operate as independent kingdoms. Yet reports from our embassies abroad are so diligent and swift. Comrades, please think it over: can this chronic ailment of over a decade be corrected? If it is not corrected, then the only path left will be to enforce discipline.

Mao Zedong
August 10[3]

[1] This directive was written on a report submitted by the Party Committee of the Chinese Embassy in Morocco to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on August 5, 1962, concerning the situation in Algeria and the embassy’s views.
[2] The report from the Party Committee of the Chinese Embassy in Morocco to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided a relatively detailed introduction to the basic circumstances, main characteristics, and current internal contradictions within the leadership group of the Algerian national revolutionary struggle, and also presented some analyses and views by the embassy’s Party Committee.
[3] The date on Mao Zedong’s handwritten directive is “August 10,” but it was printed as “August 11.”