8 The People Need Writing Reform

In "On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People," Chairman Mao said: "All of our plans, our procedures, and our thinking should take as their starting point the fact that there are 600 million people in our country; we must never forget this." I feel that this statement by Chairman Mao can direct writing reform too. Writing reform is a major undertaking; it is related to the livelihood of 600 million people and their sons and grandsons for ten thousand generations. If such a major undertaking does not take the whole nation as its starting point, it will in all probability fail. Recently, however, some discussions of writing reform have not taken the 600 million people as their starting point; instead, they have considered it from the point of view of the advantages to and the convenience for a very small circle of people. They have not considered the laboring people in general, or the needs of the peasant masses in particular. This is what Mr. Chen Mengjia does.