Letter to Yang Shangkui [1]
(September 14, 1962)

Comrade Yang Shangkui:
The several opinions put forward by Comrade Shao Shiping [2] — please discuss them with Liu Junxiu and other comrades presently in Beijing, and put forward your views. As for the documents on agriculture and commerce, etc., drawn up by the Central Committee, have some of Shao’s opinions already been incorporated? Apart from the “Sixty Articles on the People’s Communes,” is it still necessary to draw up a “Trial Charter”? Please let me know your opinions.

[1] Yang Shangkui was then First Secretary of the CPC Jiangxi Provincial Committee.

Mao Zedong
September 14

[2] This refers to the three opinions put forward by Shao Shiping, Governor of Jiangxi Province, on August 7, 1962, concerning the consolidation of the rural collective economy:
(1) It is suggested that the Central Committee draft a trial charter for the rural people’s communes. Organizationally, it should clarify the rights and obligations of commune members, and the democratic centralism of the people’s communes.
Cadres should be democratically elected, and it should be stipulated that only commune members may be elected as commune cadres. In principle, the commune members themselves must be responsible for running the commune well; they have the right to elect cadres,
and cadres must accept supervision by the commune members. Incompetent cadres may be recalled by the commune members through legally prescribed procedures. This is a necessary measure for consolidating the collective economy at present. (2) The question of exchange. The power to exchange products should correspond to the power of ownership. Since the production team is the basic accounting unit, the basic-level supply and marketing cooperative should take the commune as its unit and take the production unit (collectively owned) as the exchange unit; this would be beneficial to the consolidation of the collective economy. (3) When non-agricultural personnel are transferred down to the commune, they still remain non-agricultural population and consume grain supplied by the state, which amounts to no real transfer at all. The transfer of urban personnel likewise amounts to no real transfer. In this way, the difficulty of the state in arranging grain supply is not alleviated by the transferred personnel.