The article "Cadre Participation in Labor Has Become a Social Trend in Xiyang County, Shanxi Province" and the provincial party committee's comments are both excellent and are hereby forwarded to you for reference. Cadre participation in labor is one of the Party's fine traditions and an extremely important policy of the Party during the period of socialist construction. The importance of conscientiously implementing this policy for rural work is very evident. Countless examples since agricultural cooperativization have proven that all well-run communes and production teams, without exception, share the characteristic that their leading cadres regularly and actively participate in labor together with commune members. Conversely, poorly run communes and production teams often exhibit an opposite characteristic, namely that their leading cadres are unwilling to actively participate in labor together with commune members, thus becoming detached from the masses, unable to resist the ideological encroachment of the exploiting classes, leading lives of privilege, embezzling and taking more than their share of the fruits of the masses' labor, and some even gradually degenerating and transforming into spokespersons for the interests of rich peasants and capitalist elements, forming the social basis for revisionism.

The Work Regulations for People's Communes (Revised Draft) have already made clear stipulations regarding the issue of cadre participation in labor at all levels of the people's communes, yet up to now, many places have still not conscientiously implemented them. Some county party committees and commune party committees lack sufficient understanding of the great significance of these stipulations and even believe that the provision limiting the subsidized work points for cadres of production brigades and production teams to no more than two percent of the total work points of the production team is fundamentally unworkable. They should be asked to carefully study the experience of Xiyang County. The experience of Xiyang County proves that the fundamental key to whether this policy can be correctly implemented lies precisely in whether the county party committee and commune party committee have the resolve and whether they set an example by their own actions. In 1962, cadres at the county and commune levels in this county performed labor days in production teams averaging 62 per person at the county level and 82 per person at the commune level. Wherever they went to work in the countryside, they participated in labor there, and they persisted unremittingly. Only after several years of effort did this gradually become a prevailing trend. It should be said that since the comrades in Xiyang County have been able to do this, all other counties can do the same.

The Central Committee requests that the party committees of all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, as well as prefectural party committees, earnestly help county party committees understand the reasoning, and in conjunction with the rectification and commune consolidation work, promptly resolve the implementation of the stipulations in the Work Regulations for People's Communes regarding cadre participation in labor and subsidized work points, so as to facilitate the consolidation and sound development of the people's communes.