Mao Zedong's Comment on Song Renqiong's[1] Report Concerning the Cultivation of Successors by Rural Party Branches
(May 18, 1964)

Comrades Shaoqi and Xiaoping[3]:
Please read this document. After reading, print and distribute it to the working conference[4] for discussion.
[1]
Song Renqiong, then First Secretary of the Northeast Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

Mao Zedong
May 18
[2]
Refers to Song Renqiong's report of May 13, 1964, on the cultivation of successors by rural Party branches—a report to the CPC Central Committee and Mao Zedong from a Party branch with political foresight. The report states that according to a briefing by Li Mingxin, Party branch secretary of the Hetun Brigade, Taiyangsheng Commune, Gaiping County, Liaoning Province, following the "Four Cleanups" movement, the branch attaches great importance to the issue of cultivating successors, regarding it as a major matter concerning whether the country can be firmly held. To this end, they analyzed all the young men and women in the brigade one by one, selecting 14 activists of good family background, fine moral character, and education as key cultivation targets designated internally by the branch. The branch committee members divided responsibilities to provide individual cultivation for them, and according to their conditions, assigned them to hold certain posts, regularly invited them to attend general Party meetings as non-voting participants, listen to Party lectures, and study Mao Zedong's works. Through cultivation and education by these methods, their class consciousness, ideological level, and work ability have been continuously enhanced. Six of the 14 already meet the conditions for Party membership. The branch has decided to persistently carry forward this work. The report states that the briefing by the Party branch secretary of the Hetun Brigade raises a fundamental issue in rural political work, Party building, and socialist construction. We plan to once again raise the issue of strengthening the education of youth in the Northeast region, so that everyone further recognizes the important significance of cultivating successors and continuously sums up experience in this regard; at the same time, we require Party committees at all levels, in places where systematic socialist education has been conducted and Party organizations have been rectified, to help Party branches, based on actual conditions, adopt appropriate methods to make plans and arrangements for cultivating successors. Attached to this report is a briefing on the situation of successor cultivation by the Party branch of the Hetun Brigade, Taiyangsheng Commune, Gaiping County, compiled by the CPC Yingkou Municipal Committee.
[3]
Shaoqi, i.e., Liu Shaoqi. Xiaoping, i.e., Deng Xiaoping, then General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
[4]
Refers to the working conference held by the CPC Central Committee in Beijing from May 15 to June 17, 1964.