Namayi (first from the right), Vice-Chairman of the Pichiang
County Revolutionary Committee of the Nuchiang Lisu Autonomous
Chou in Yunnan Province, chats with commune members.
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, #10, March 10, 1972, pp. 12-14.]
UNDER the guidance of Chairman of Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line, great attention has been paid by local Party organizations in training cadres of minority nationalities and helping them mature rapidly.
Party organizations at all levels in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Chou of Szechuan Province, southwest China, have trained a group of new cadres of Yi nationality to reinforce the Party’s cadre contingent. This has strengthened unity in the Party and between nationalities.
Before the Great Cultural Revolution, former slave-owners and their agents in the autonomous chou seized some of the leading posts and revolutionary cadres trained from among the emancipated slaves were discriminated against and edged out because of the counter-revolutionary revisionist cadre line pushed by Liu Shao-chi and his local agents. During the Cultural Revolution the Party organizations at all levels led emancipated slaves and other people of various nationalities to expose and criticize this counter-revolutionary revisionist line. In accordance with Chairman Mao’s instructions on training successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat, Party leadership at all levels trained and selected a number of new Yi nationality cadres who were tempered in the class struggle and the struggle between the two lines.
Now Yi cadres constitute 51 per cent of the leading members on the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Chou Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and the nine county Party committees in the chou, and more than 80 per cent on the Party committees at the district, hsiang and commune levels. The overwhelming majority of the newly promoted Yi cadres come from families of slaves and some had once been slaves.
In the course of training these new cadres, the Party leadership at all levels attached great importance to carrying out education in ideology and political line. Schools and short-term study classes run according to Chairman Mao’s “May 7” Directive were set up for the cadres to study revolutionary theory, raise their general educational level and carry out revolutionary mass criticism. This helped enhance their consciousness in implementing Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line.
Namayi (first from the right), Vice-Chairman of the Pichiang
County Revolutionary Committee of the Nuchiang Lisu Autonomous
Chou in Yunnan Province, chats with commune members.
Veteran revolutionary cadres in the autonomous chou eagerly helped these new cadres study Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and the Party’s policies and helped them overcome various difficulties in their work. A mass movement to learn from the Tachai Brigade, pace-setter in socialist agriculture, swept the autonomous chou in 1970. Secretary of the autonomous chou Party committee Wang Hai-min, who joined the Red Army in 1935 and was a former slave of Yi nationality, took other cadres across mountains despite his advanced age and poor health to units with good experience in learning from Tachai. He told how Tachai’s leading body educated the people in Mao Tsetung Thought and persisted in putting politics in command. This served as a spur to the movement. Maheiyipo, a Party member from a slave family, is now political instructor of the militia company of a commune in Leipo County. After he became deputy secretary of the new county Party committee, other leading cadres on the committee helped him study Chairman Mao’s works and grasp and implement the Party’s policies. He made rapid progress and outstanding achievements in both revolution and production. The commune to which he belongs has become one of the advanced units in the autonomous chou.
The Party organizations at all levels in Turfan County in the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region make serious efforts to train local minority cadres and boldly assign them jobs. A large number have been promoted to leading posts at various levels. They play a positive role in the socialist revolution and socialist construction. At present, most of the leading cadres in the county are cadres of minority nationalities. Those at the county and commune levels now constitute 81 per cent as against 72 per cent before the Cultural Revolution.
The county Party organizations have enthusiastically helped the cadres of minority nationalities.
Early in 1971, Mamadi Yusuf transferred to the Hungchi People’s Commune as secretary of the commune Party committee, a commune constantly hit by serious sandstorms. He lacked confidence at first. The leading cadres of the county Party committee helped him study Chairman Mao’s works and told him about their experience to raise his confidence. Relying on the masses, he went to 50 production teams and the places that bore the brunt of the sandstorms and investigated and studied the situation. He summed up the experience of the masses in preventing and dealing with sandstorms and mobilized them to bring the sandstorms under control. As a result, the commune had a good summer harvest last year.
Once, all ten wells in a brigade of the Shengchin Commune ran dry and there was no water for irrigation. Class enemies took advantage to spread superstitious ideas to discourage people from digging more wells. The brigade Party organization saw this as a sharp class struggle. It promptly organized the local minority cadres to study Chairman Mao’s teachings on classes and class struggle so as to arm them with Mao Tsetung Thought. After raising their political consciousness, the cadres led the poor and, lower-middle peasants in exposing and smashing the class enemy’s sabotage. At the same time they succeeded in sinking 14 power-operated wells at a greater depth without using machines and irrigated more than 3,000 mu of farmland. They also expanded some 400 mu of farmland. Sufficient water supply has enabled the peasants to bring in good harvests several years running.
Of the people of Tibetan, Hui, Tu, Sala and other minority nationalities as well as Hans who live in the Hainan Tibet Autonomous Chou in northwest China’s Chinghai Province, ever 60 per cent are Tibetans. After liberation, especially since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the minority nationality cadres have matured rapidly. There are 11.8 per cent more of them throughout the autonomous chou than before the Cultural Revolution, and 43 per cent more on the Party committees at various levels. Most of them are of peasant and herdsman origin. They work enthusiastically, are familiar with local conditions and maintain close ties with the masses. Many have rich experience in work at the grass-roots level.
The Party organization of the autonomous chou ran many study classes and organized minority cadres to study the history of inner-Party struggle between the two lines and sum up their experience and lessons in the struggle so as to raise their theoretical level of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and their consciousness in carrying out Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line.
Deputy Secretary of the Tungteh County Party Committee Katsaichia is a Tibetan cadre who joined the revolution more than 20 years ago. After studying dialectical materialism, he understood better that correct ideas come from social practice, and from it alone. He spends two-thirds of the year living among the herdsmen, investigating and studying and dealing with matters in line with the Party’s policy. He has gone to all the production brigades on the 6,500-square-kilometre grasslands. With other members of the county Party committee, he summed up and popularized the advanced experience accumulated by the masses in the movement to learn from Tachai.
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