Comment on "Summary of a Conversation with Two Old Poor Peasants" [1]
(November 26, 1964)
For Liu, Zhou, Deng, Peng [2] to read and return to Mao.
These two poor peasant comrades are the teachers of our entire Party.
Mao Zedong
November 26
[1]
This comment was written on the eighty-seventh issue of "Propaganda and Education Updates," compiled and printed by the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on November 21, 1964. This issue carried the record of multiple conversations held from September 26 to October 15 of the same year between Zhao Ziyang, a secretary of the Secretariat of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, and the poor peasant couple Wu Caitian and Chen Ermei from a production brigade in Zhongshan County, Guangdong Province. The couple Wu Caitian were old stalwarts from the time of the land reform, and had been consistently ostracized and attacked by cadres since the land reform; their lives were now extremely impoverished. Their conversations reflected many situations in the local rural areas, exposed many serious "four uncleans" problems existing among the cadres of their own production team and even the commune, and put forward many opinions and suggestions on how the work team should mobilize and rely on the poor and lower-middle peasants to carry out the Socialist Education Movement well, as well as on some policy-related issues.
[2]
Liu refers to Liu Shaoqi. Zhou refers to Zhou Enlai. Deng refers to Deng Xiaoping, then General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Peng refers to Peng Zhen, then a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and a secretary of the Central Secretariat.