Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung

To The Communist Labour University
In Kiangsi

August 1, 1961


Comrades

I wholeheartedly support your venture. Your schools, including your primary and secondary schools, and universities which follow the principle of part-time work and part-time study, hard work and hard study, thus costing the government nothing to run them, and which are situated on the mountain tops and in the plains of the province, are good schools indeed. Most of the students are young people, but there may also be some middle-aged cadres. I hope in other provinces besides Kiangsi there will be schools of this type. Other provinces should send competent and knowledgeable comrades in responsible positions to Kiangsi to investigate your schools and to absorb your experience. At the beginning there must not be too many students. Their number can be increased later to 50,000 as now in Kiangsi. Moreover the party, government and people’s organizations (e.g. trade unions, youth league and women’s associations) should also run their own schools on the principle of part-time work and part-time study. But there should be a difference [between] the work and study of your schools [and theirs]. Your work consists of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and so on; your studies are [also] on these subjects. The schools run by the party, government and people’s organizations, on the other hand, should work in their own institutions and study cultural sciences, current affairs, Marxism-Leninism and so on. They are quite different from you. The central organizations have established two schools. One was created by the military police corps, which has been in existence for six or seven years. There the soldiers and cadres began by learning to read and write in the primary section, then they were promoted into the secondary section and finally entered the university section in 1960. They felt happy and wrote me a letter. I shall have the letter printed and show it to you. The other was established last year (1960) by the party institutions in Chungnanhai [Peking] on the same principle of part-tim! e work and part-time study. Its work means the work in the institutions, [and its students] include senior members of the staff, members of the manual staff, members of the liaison staff, members of the medical staff, members of the security staff and others. The military police, on the other hand, is an armed force whose work is security, i.e. sentry duties and so on. It also goes through military training. Naturally its school is different from civilian schools.

The Communist Labour University of Kiangsi celebrates its third anniversary on 1 August 1961 and I was asked to write a few words for the occasion. It is a big occasion for which I have written the above.



Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung