Draft Proposal for Streamlining Organizations [I]'s Comment
(August 26, 1966)
Circulate to all comrades in the Political Bureau for study. I think this proposal is good and should be discussed at the next meeting.
Mao Zedong
August 26
[I]
Vice Premier of the State Council and Minister of Public Security Xie Fuzhi, on August 25, 1966, submitted a report to Mao Zedong regarding the streamlining of the Ministry of Public Security organs, stating:
In accordance with the Chairman's directive spirit given in Hangzhou this April that the Ministry of Public Security should cut two-thirds of its staff, we initiated in May a process of airing views and debate among cadres at the division level and above on the issue of streamlining. After several months of deliberation, especially through the Great Cultural Revolution, the conditions for resolving the streamlining issue have fully matured.
At present, the Ministry of Public Security has an administrative staff establishment of over 1,400 persons, and its organizational structure is bloated. Based on the fundamental line that public security work primarily relies on the Party and relies on the masses, and the principle of "substantive at the lower levels, streamlined at the upper levels," we propose merging the current 12 bureaus into 6, merging the 90 divisions into over 30, and reducing the administrative staff establishment from over 1,400 persons to over 400 persons. The enterprises and public institutions currently have over 7,000 persons, who will be transferred to relevant units respectively. We also propose, in the later stages of the Great Cultural Revolution movement, to mobilize the masses to air their views freely, carry out thorough revolution, and strive to reduce the administrative staff establishment to two to three hundred persons.