Instructions Concerning Revolutionary Committees, etc.
(February 1968)

Run study classes on a large scale. Use the method of study classes to struggle against selfishness and repudiate revisionism, raise understanding, solve problems, and firmly grasp ideological revolutionization and organizational revolutionization. Where revolutionary committees have already been set up, they should be consolidated and developed. Revolutionary committees are indeed a good thing. We must sum up experience and liberate large numbers of revolutionary cadres. As long as cadres are not “three-anti” elements, capitalist-roaders, turncoats and traitors, or special agents, but have committed line mistakes in the movement and seriously examined and recognized their mistakes, they may be included in the three-in-one combination. In the three-in-one combination, attention should be paid to class composition, but we must not fall into the theory of class composition as the sole criterion, and bad elements must not be brought into the combination. The three-in-one combination should give expression to the old, the middle-aged, and the young—but little children won’t do.

In the revolutionary committees of ordinary universities, the People’s Liberation Army should not be incorporated. If incorporation in special circumstances is necessary, it must be approved by the municipal revolutionary committee. We must be on guard against bad elements and prevent sabotage. Where revolutionary committees have already been set up, we should cherish them, respect them, help them, protect them, and safeguard their proletarian authority, and strictly guard against sabotage by class enemies. The establishment of revolutionary committees does not mean the completion of the work of the “Three Supports and Two Militarys,” but marks the entry into a new stage of consolidating and developing the proletarian authority of the revolutionary committees.

[I]
On January 23, 1967, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the State Council, the Central Military Commission, and the Central Cultural Revolution Group jointly issued the “Decision Concerning the People’s Liberation Army’s Resolute Support for the Revolutionary Left Masses,” whereby the People’s Liberation Army intervened in the local “Cultural Revolution” and carried out “support for the left.” On March 19, 1967, the Central Military Commission issued the “Decision on Concentrating Forces to Carry Out the Tasks of Supporting the Left, Supporting Agriculture, Supporting Industry, Military Control, and Military Training,” i.e., the “Three Supports and Two Militarys.” This was the first time that “Three Supports and Two Militarys” was put forward as an integrated whole to all army units. The Three Supports and Two Militarys refers to the army’s support for the left, support for industry, support for agriculture, military control, and military training. Thereafter, starting with the “support for the left” decision issued on January 23, the PLA’s “Three Supports and Two Militarys” gradually unfolded throughout the country.