National Conference on the Work Of Printing
and Distributing Chairman Mao’s Works

ACTING on the directive of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, the Ministry of Culture recently convened in Peking a national conference on the work of printing and distributing Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s works. The conference urged printing, publishing and distribution organizations throughout the country to take immediate revolutionary measures and endeavour in every possible way to speed up the mass printing of Chairman Mao’s works so that gradually a plentiful supply of them will be ensured throughout the country. This is to meet the urgent needs of the masses of workers, peasants and soldiers and of revolutionary cadres and revolutionary intellectuals in their study of Chairman Mao’s thought.

In recent years, since the nationwide campaign to creatively study and apply Chairman Mao’s works was launched among the worker, peasant and soldier masses, and revolutionary cadres and revolutionary intellectuals, the contradiction between the demand for and the supply of Chairman Mao’s works became acute. The complete control of many propaganda and publishing departments by the sinister gang which was opposed to the Party, to socialism and to Mao Tse-tung’s thought, and the restrictions it imposed, under various pretexts, on the numbers of copies of Chairman Mao’s works to be printed and issued, further aggravated the already acute supply situation. This state of affairs aroused strong dissatisfaction among the broad masses of the people. In order to change the situation once and for all in which the publication and distribution of Chairman Mao’s works lag behind the circumstances and the needs of the masses, the conference asked printing, publishing and distribution organizations throughout the country to rely firmly on the leadership of the Communist Party committees at various levels, fully mobilize the masses, give full play to the revolutionary initiative of the entire body of workers and staff, work in the spirit of self-reliance, overcome all difficulties, mobilize all printing houses, where conditions permit, to undertake the glorious political task of printing Chairman Mao’s works, adopt the method of tackling a task with concentrated forces and endeavour by all possible means to print and distribute more copies of Chairman Mao’s works.

Chang Ping-hua, Deputy Director of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, spoke at the conference.

Representatives of printing, publishing and distribution organizations and other organizations concerned from various parts of the country told their colleagues of the great attention which their respective local Party committees were giving to the conference and the firm determination of the masses of workers and staff. With especially great revolutionary enthusiasm, all insistently requested the conference to assign them as large a share of the work as possible. Those units which were given the honourable duty to print Chairman Mao’s writings for the first time were particularly keen. With great emotion and pride, representatives of these units said: “The printing of Chairman Mao’s works is a need of the revolution. This is the most glorious, urgent and important task our time has entrusted to us. Not even the worst difficulties can deter us. We pledge to fulfil our task.”

Conference representatives cited many stirring examples showing the infinite esteem and love which the people throughout the land have for their great leader Chairman Mao, their boundless love for, belief in and veneration for Mao Tse-tung’s thought, and how eager they are to get copies of Chairman Mao’s writings. In hundreds of thousands of letters, they say that the foremost need for all the revolutionary people in China is to study Chairman Mao’s works. The letters say that Chairman Mao’s works are the best, most revolutionary and most scientific works. Every word in Chairman Mao’s works is gold and every sentence is truth. Mao Tse-tung’s thought is the red sun in the hearts of the whole Chinese people and of the revolutionary people the world over. It is our source of life and our treasure. Fish cannot live without water, and without Mao Tse-tung’s thought how can we make revolution! Of all books, we love to read Chairman Mao’s works most. To be proletarian revolutionaries, to follow the Chinese Communist Party for ever and to hold high the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought in all our work, Chairman Mao’s works must be studied.

At discussions, speakers read out portions of letters from people describing the eagerness with which the revolutionary people of China, in their thousands upon thousands, like people thirsting for water, avidly search out copies of Chairman Mao’s works to buy.

Many workers, peasants, People’s Liberation Army men, revolutionary cadres and students are constantly on the look-out for a chance to obtain Chairman Mao’s works. Many people who have failed to get them, tirelessly copy down article after article and quotation after quotation from Chairman Mao’s works. Lu Chin-tou, a worker in an electronic instruments plant in Yingkow city, Liaoning Province, who is an activist in the study of Chairman Mao’s works, has since 1960 copied out by hand all of the contents of the first three volumes of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, using paper the same size as the printed edition.

At the conference many representatives of printing, publishing and distribution organizations indignantly accused the handful of representatives of the bourgeoisie who had wormed their way into the Party of their towering crimes in monopolizing power in various propaganda and publishing organizations, and frantically suppressing the publication and distribution of Chairman Mao’s works. They said that over the past few years, there had been a constant struggle between the proletarian and bourgeois roads on the question of the publication of Chairman Mao’s works. These anti-Party ringleaders of the sinister gang, more venomous than reptiles, had been bitterly hostile to Mao Tse-tung’s thought and particularly afraid that it should be grasped by the worker, peasant and soldier masses. For this reason, they put countless obstacles in the way of printing, publishing and distributing Chairman Mao’s works. They permitted only a few printing plants in the country, a few printing presses and a few workers to engage in the printing of the Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, and laid down many complicated rules and regulations that were beyond realization under existing conditions. During those few years, a flood of vicious books came out against the Party, socialism and Mao Tse-tung’s thought as well as evil books that propagated feudalism, capitalism and revisionism to poison the mind of the masses. These books were given preferential treatment, published in several editions, carefully printed and luxuriously bound. By such base, underhand tricks, the sinister anti-Party gang turned publication and distribution enterprises into their tools to subvert the dictatorship of the proletariat and restore capitalism.

The masses of revolutionary workers and staff of many printing, publishing and distribution organizations in Peking were elated when told that their organizations had been entrusted with the publication and distribution of Chairman Mao’s works. They lost no time in spreading the news and congratulating each other. There was general elation. In a single day, the walls of their enterprises were covered with workers’ pledges expressing at the same time their happiness in being able to contribute their share to the project. They pledged: Printing Chairman Mao’s works means producing the most powerful spiritual atom bombs, and we are willing to print Chairman Mao’s books our whole lives. The masses of revolutionary workers and staff in all printing, publishing and distribution organizations unanimously hold that the spreading of Mao Tse-tung’s thought is the most fundamental task in cultural and publishing work and is their highest duty. The more the enemy opposes the publication of Chairman Mao’s works, the more they will be published, and published quickly, at the rate of making “one year equal to sixteen.” They will be published with the greatest enthusiasm, up to the highest standards, the highest quality and at thp highest speed, put into the hands of the workers, peasants and soldiers to arm our class brothers and spur the victorious advance of the great proletarian cultural revolution. In this great era in which the workers, peasants and soldiers are studying and mastering Mao Tse-tung’s thought, the great thought of Mao Tse-tung must become an infinitely great material force, thus ensuring that the revolutionary cause will for ever maintain its youthful vigour and that China will for ever be strong and prosperous.