Comments on Xie Fuzhi’s〔1〕 Speech Draft for the Fourth Session of the Second National People’s Congress (November 20, 1963)

Comrades Fu Zhi and Peng Zhen〔2〕: I have read this document〔3〕; it is very good. After you have delivered the speech, please consider whether it could be circulated to party committees at the county level and to county public security bureaus. The Central Committee might add a few introductory remarks at the beginning of the document, to serve as material for educating cadres. It should mention the exemplary case from Zhuji〔4〕, which all localities should emulate; pilot programs should be conducted first, and then the approach should be widely implemented.

Mao Zedong November 20 Based on the manuscript print.

Notes 〔1〕 Xie Fuzhi was at that time Minister of Public Security.

〔2〕 Peng Zhen was then a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, and Vice Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Second National People’s Congress.

〔3〕 Refers to Xie Fuzhi’s draft speech, entitled “Relying on the Masses, Strengthening the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, and Transforming the Vast Majority of Reactionary Elements into New People,” which he was preparing to deliver at the Fourth Session of the Second National People’s Congress.

〔〕 Refers to the experience of Zhuji County in Zhejiang Province, the most fundamental principle of which was to mobilize the masses and, through reasoned struggle, subdue the enemy, thereby extending the policy of “not executing a single person and detaining only a small number”—originally applied during the internal rectification campaign—to the handling of landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, and other harmful elements exposed during the Socialist Education Movement.