Comment on Reports on the Movement Situation
(February 20, 1963)

This document (I) is to be distributed to all comrades attending the conference. All comrades are requested to study it together with that report from Hunan (already distributed). The two reports each have their own characteristics and are both good documents, deserving serious study by comrades from all localities across the country and from all central departments.

Mao Zedong
February 20

[1] Refers to the report submitted by the Hebei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China on February 17, 1963, to Mao Zedong, the Central Committee, and the North China Bureau, concerning the implementation of the resolutions of the Eighth Central Committee’s Tenth Plenary Session in the countryside and the unfolding of the rectification and commune rectification movement. The report states: In order to thoroughly implement the resolutions of the Party’s Eighth Central Committee’s Tenth Plenary Session, our province has launched a rectification and commune rectification movement in the rural areas and conducted socialist education among the peasants. Last October, the provincial committee convened a work conference attended by cadres at the provincial, prefectural (municipal), and county levels; subsequently, each county convened a three-level cadre meeting attended by cadres from the county, commune, and production brigade levels. After the meetings, each locality, taking the commune as the unit, trained Party and Youth League members, cadres, and activists from the poor and lower-middle peasants, totaling approximately 3 million people across the province. Then, the three documents of the Party’s Eighth Central Committee’s Tenth Plenary Session (the Communiqué of the Tenth Plenary Session, the “Decision on Further Consolidating the Collective Economy of the People’s Communes and Developing Agricultural Production,” and the “Revised Draft Regulations on the Work of Rural People’s Communes”) and the spirit of Chairman Mao’s instructions on three issues (class, situation, contradictions) were conveyed and explained to the broad masses of peasants, launching a socialist education movement. Approximately 80 percent of commune members received education.

[2] Refers to the comrades then attending the Central Committee Work Conference of the Communist Party of China in Beijing.