(September 27, 1975)
Comrade Xiaoping (II):
Please consider whether these three items—two letters[1] and one report[2]—may be circulated to all central comrades in Beijing.
Mao Zedong
September 27th
[1]
Xiaoping refers to Deng Xiaoping, who at the time served as Vice Chairman of the CPC Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council.
[2]
These refer to a letter dated September 5, 1975, from certain fiscal and banking officials in Zhejiang Province addressed to Mao Zedong and the CPC Central Committee, and a letter dated December 28, 1974, from Hua Guofeng (then a member of the CPC Central Politburo and Vice Premier of the State Council) to the Hunan Provincial Party Committee. The letter from the Zhejiang officials stated that community- and team-run enterprises in rural areas throughout the province were flourishing like wildflowers, overcoming numerous obstacles and springing up everywhere. However, some local party and government leaders adopted an ambivalent stance toward this new phenomenon, hesitating to provide bold support and guidance. As a result, such enterprises in some areas developed haphazardly, straying from the socialist path and taking detours. In practice, when certain community-run enterprises performed well, leading departments at the provincial, prefectural, and county levels would go to great lengths to reorganize them, bringing them under their own administrative control, while asserting: “Transforming community-run enterprises into large collective specialized cooperatives or factories, and then further converting those into state-owned enterprises owned by all the people, is the correct socialist direction.” They would withhold raw materials and block sales channels unless such reorganization took place. This line of reasoning and these practices met with firm opposition from primary-level Party organizations and the broad masses of poor and lower-middle peasants. With a national conference on learning from Dazhai soon to be convened by the central authorities, we earnestly request that the Party Central Committee issue new directives on this matter, mobilizing the entire Party and all sectors of the country to study and disseminate the exemplary experiences of advanced provinces and cities. In his letter to the Hunan Provincial Party Committee, Hua Guofeng noted that community- and team-run enterprises had achieved encouraging results, demonstrating strong vitality, and that they held significant importance for consolidating and developing the people’s commune collective economy, accelerating agricultural mechanization, and eliminating the “three major differences.” He argued that these enterprises embodied the great hopes and future prospects of the people’s communes. Nevertheless, some comrades looked down upon them, seeking by various pretexts to abolish or dismantle them. We urge these comrades to resolutely abandon their erroneous views, enthusiastically support this nascent development, strengthen leadership, and engage in comprehensive planning. Only then can community- and team-run enterprises grow from nothing to something, from few to many, and from rudimentary to more advanced stages, steadily advancing forward. In due course, a new socialist countryside will unfold before our eyes.
[3]
This refers to the article “A Bright and Shining Hope—An Investigation into Gong County’s Huiguo Township Commune: Developing Industry Around Agriculture and Using Industrial Development to Boost Agriculture,” published in the Henan Daily on December 15, 1974. Together with the aforementioned two letters, this report was distributed as official meeting material for the CPC Central Committee’s symposium on rural work, held from September 23 to October 21, 1975.

In 1975, Mao Zedong was in his study at Zhongnanhai.