Mao Zedong's Approval Monument

Mao Zedong's Approval Monument

The Mao Zedong's Approval Monument is a cultural relic protection unit of Cixi City and a classic red tourism site.

After the founding of New China, under the leadership of the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao, our country entered a new era of socialist construction with everything to be built up. The farmers in Wudongzha Village, Qishan Township, Cixi County, responded enthusiastically to the national call and established an advanced agricultural cooperative in 1952 under a collective ownership system. The cooperative had 14 member households, cultivating 149.91 mu of land. Apart from small plots of private land, all members' cultivated land was incorporated into the cooperative. Draft animals and medium-to-large farming tools were valued and contributed to the cooperative, while production and distribution were unified and organized according to the principle of “payment according to work.” The establishment of the advanced cooperative led to rapid development in productivity. In just four years, the yield of lint cotton per mu increased from 29 kilograms during individual farming to 60 kilograms. The cooperative accumulated over 60,000 yuan in collective funds, grew to include 180 member households, and expanded its cultivated area from the initial 149 mu to 1,300 mu, demonstrating the strong vitality of this new initiative.

Liu Ruilong, then Secretary of the Agricultural Commission of the East China Bureau of the CPC, along with leaders from the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and the Ningbo Prefectural Party Committee, placed great importance on the exemplary model of the Wudongzha Advanced Cooperative and visited the cooperative for inspection and guidance. That year, the Wudongzha Cooperative was awarded the Ministry of Agriculture’s “Cotton Harvest Award,” and its director, Luo Xianggen, received the title of “National Model for Agricultural Production Increase” and was received by Chairman Mao and other central leaders.

In October 1955, the Agricultural Work Department of the Provincial Party Committee reported the achievements of the Wudongzha Advanced Cooperative to the central government. On December 27, 1955, in the book "The Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside," compiled by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, Chairman Mao wrote an annotation regarding the briefing on the Wudongzha Advanced Cooperative: “Having read this, one cannot help but feel happy. I hope everyone will read it carefully. I hope that all primary cooperatives whose conditions are ripe will have this piece read out and discussed among their members, so that they may joyfully upgrade and merge into advanced cooperatives. This remarkable example of the Wudongzha Cooperative in Cixi County, Zhejiang Province, should be spread across the nation. In the township where the Wudongzha Cooperative is located—Qishan Township, Cixi County—92% of the farming households, or 8 advanced cooperatives, have joined. Who says advanced cooperatives are so hard to establish?”

Chairman Mao’s Annotation. In the spring of 1956, Cixi County underwent a wave of cooperative mergers and upgrades. The Wudongzha Advanced Cooperative merged with surrounding cooperatives to form a large-scale advanced cooperative with 1,462 member households and 10,784 mu of cultivated land. The Wudongzha Cooperative became a flagship of rural socialist construction at the time.

The Mao Zedong's Approval Monument was built in 1971 to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Chairman Mao’s annotation for the Wudongzha Cooperative. The monument is located on the west wall of the former Wudongzha Supply and Marketing Cooperative in Daqishan Village, Guanhaiwei Town, Cixi City. It stands 4.5 meters high and 20 meters wide, with the full text of the annotation written in regular script and filled in red paint. In December 2003, the Cixi Municipal People's Government designated the monument as part of the fifth batch of cultural relic protection units.