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Agricultural Reform and Rural Transformation in China since 1949
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Historical Studies of Contemporary China
Series Editor
Thomas DuBois (Australian National University)
Editorial Board
Joel Andreas ( Johns Hopkins University)Liping Bu (Alma College)
Brian Demare (Tulane University)Xiaoping Fang (Nanyang Technological University)
Xiaofei Kang (George Washington University)Huaiyin Li (The University of Texas at Austin)
Glenn Tiffert (University of Michigan)Luman Wang (Virginia Military Institute)
Michael Szonyi (Harvard University)
VOLUME 2
The titles published in this series are listed at brillcomhscc
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Agricultural Reform and Rural Transformation in China
since 1949
Edited by
Thomas DuBois Huaiyin Li
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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issn 2352-7919isbn 978-90-04-29018-1 (hardback)isbn 978-90-04-32249-3 (e-book)
Copyright 2016 by Koninklijke Brill nv Leiden The NetherlandsKoninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill Brill Hes amp De Graaf Brill Nijhoff Brill Rodopi and Hotei PublishingAll rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced translated stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic mechanical photocopying recording or otherwise without prior written permission from the publisherAuthorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center 222 Rosewood Drive Suite 910 Danvers ma 01923 usaFees are subject to change
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner
The SSAP logo and the CASS logo should appear flush-left on the Copyright Page above the subvention text The logos should appear side-by-side with the SSAP logo appearing to the left of the CASS logo
This book is a result of the co-publication agreement between Social Sciences Academic Press and Koninklijke Brill nv These articles were selected and translated into English from the Chinese journal Contemporary China History Studies (《当代中国史研究》 Dangdai Zhongguo shi yanjiu) sponsored by the Institute of Contemporary China Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The translation has received financial support from the Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names DuBois Thomas David 1969- | Li HuaiyinTitle Agricultural reform and rural transformation in China since 1949
edited by Thomas DuBois Huaiyin LiDescription Leiden Boston Brill [2016] | Series Historical studies of
contemporary China ISSN 2352-7919 volume 2 | Includes bibliographical references and indexIdentifiers LCCN 2016016317 (print) | LCCN 2016017693 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004290181 (hardback alk paper) | ISBN 9789004322493 (e-book) | ISBN 9789004322493 (E-book)
Subjects LCSH Agriculture and state--China--History--20th century | Social change--China--History--20th century | Social problems--China--History--20th century | China--Rural conditions | China--Social policy | China--Politics and government--1949-1976 | China--Politics and government--1976-2002
Classification LCC HD2098 A355 2016 (print) | LCC HD2098 (ebook) | DDC 3381851--dc23LC record available at httpslccnlocgov2016016317
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Contents
List of ContributorsemspviiTranslatorrsquos Noteemspix
Introduction Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined Western and Chinese Perspectivesemsp1
Huaiyin Li and Thomas DuBois
Part 1Political Programs in Practice
1 The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquoemsp25Lu Xueyi
2 The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants after the Peoplersquos Republic of Chinarsquos Land Reformsemsp52
Su Shaozhi
3 The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquoemsp74Zhu Xianling Ding Zhaojun and Hu Huakai
4 A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields in Liulin County Shanxi Province in the Era of Collectivizationemsp101
Hao Ping
5 Historical Observations Regarding the Large-scale Establishment of Rural Public Canteens in Hebei Provinceemsp115
Li Chunfeng
6 From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to Full-scale KindergartensmdashRural Childcare Organizations in Shanxi Province in the 1950semsp133
Han Xiaoli
7 Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960smdashAn Inquiry Focused on Jiangsu Provinceemsp155
Wang Yugui
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vi Contents
8 Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises and the Rise of Rural Private Enterprises in Gaoyang County Hebei Province in the Early Days of Reform and Openingemsp192
Feng Xiaohong
9 Analysis of the Construction of Village Collective Economic Organizations and Related Issues in Changshu CitymdashFour Case Studiesemsp212
Zheng Yougui
Part 2Flows of Goods Money and People
10 The History of Rural Private Lending in Hubei Province 1952ndash1954emsp231
Su Shaozhi and Chang Mingming
11 The South-to-North and North-to-South Flows of Grains and CerealsmdashChanges to Directions and Quantities of Flows of Grains and Cereals between North and South in Contemporary Chinaemsp267
Zheng Yougui Ou Weizhong Kuang Chanjuan and Jiao Hongpo
12 Three Historic Changes to Inter-regional Grain Flows in the Peoplersquos Republic of China and Their Causesemsp287
Qu Shang and Su Shaozhi
13 Rural Population Flows in the Era of CollectivizationmdashA Study of the Border Region between Jiangxi Fujian and Guangdong Provincesemsp314
You Haihua
14 A Review of Research on the State Monopolyemsp330Wang Danli
Indexemsp361
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List of Contributors
Chang Mingming (常明明)PhD in economics is professor in the Institute of International Economics Guizhou University of Finance and Economics
Ding Zhaojun (丁兆君)is a lecturer in the university history museum University of Science and Tech-nology of China
Feng Xiaohong (冯小红)PhD in history is associate professor in the history department of Handan College
Han Xiaoli (韩晓莉)PhD in history is assistant professor in the history department of Capital Nor-mal University
Hao Ping (郝平)PhD in history is professor in the Institute of Social History of China and director of the Institute of History and Culture Shanxi University
Hu Huakai (胡化凯)PhD in history of science is a professor in the department of history of science and technological archaeology University of Science and Technology of China
Jiao Hongpo (焦红坡)is a researcher fellow in the department of contemporary agricultural history Institute of Rural Economics Ministry of Agriculture
Kuang Chanjuan (邝婵娟)is an associate research fellow Institute of Agricultural Resources and Regional Planning Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences
Li Chunfeng (李春峰)holds a Master of Laws and works in the Hebei Provincial Academy of Social Sciences History Center
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Lu Xueyi (陆学艺 1933ndash2013)was research fellow and doctoral thesis advisor Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (cass) President Chinese Sociological Association Director Insti-tute of Sociology cass President Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences Beijing University of Technology President Chinese Association for Rural Sociology
Ou Weizhong (欧维中)a noted agronomist and the former chairman of the Institute of Rural Econom-ics of the Ministry of Agriculture
Qu Shang (瞿商)PhD in economics is associate professor in Economics Institute Zhongnan University of Economics and Law
Su Shaozhi (苏少之)is professor in the School of Economics Zhongnan University of Economics and Law Director Institute of Economic History of China
Wang Danli (王丹莉)PhD in economics is assistant research fellow department of economic his-tory Institute of Contemporary Chinese Studies Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Wang Yugui (王玉贵)PhD in history is professor in the history department of Jiangsu University
You Haihua (游海华)PhD in history is professor in the School of Marxism Studies Zhejiang Gong-shang University
Zheng Yougui (郑有贵)is head of department of economic history Institute of Contemporary China Studies
Zhu Xianling (朱显灵)PhD is an associate research fellow in the department of history of science and technological archaeology University of Science and Technology of China
viii List of Contributors
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Translatorrsquos Note
The Chinese word nongmin is typically translated into English as ldquopeasantrdquo Its constituent characters are nong which can mean ldquofarmingrdquo ldquoagriculturerdquo or ldquorural areasrdquo in general and min which means ldquopersonrdquo or ldquopeoplerdquo A nong-min is thus literally a ldquofarmerrdquo or a ldquorural personrdquo Prior to the recent era most nongmin in China were peasants in the traditional definition operating un-der a feudal system Shortly after the communist liberation of China nong-min became a political denomination of class at which point the status of nongmin became preferable to that of dizhu or ldquolandlordrdquo So in discussions of Chinarsquos official class system of that time it is appropriate to translate nong-min as ldquopeasant(s)rdquo However around the same time the Peoplersquos Republic of China instituted the hukou or household registration system based on Soviet precedent This system divided Chinarsquos population into two categories nongye ldquoagriculturalrdquo or in other words ldquoruralrdquo and feinong ldquonon-agriculturalrdquo or in other words ldquourbanrdquo Citizens registered ldquoagriculturalrdquo generally belong to a vil-lage collective which allots them parcels of land some designated for farm-ing and some for homesteading Urban citizens are not allocated any land but have other advantages in the cities where they are registered in ease of finding employment and access to public schools and other public services Chinese people with either kind of registration are citizens who can apply for passports or party membership or official service ie with ldquocitizensrsquo rightsrdquo but there are distinct differences in the rights of either group In one of many examples one often hears of the hundreds of millions of ldquorural migrantsrdquo in China citizens registered ldquoruralrdquo despite living and working in urban areas and their lack of access to full rights In modern China when one uses the term nongmin especially in official literaturemdashan example being the ldquothree rural issuesrdquo or sannong wentimdashit is almost certainly in reference to hukou status especially when statistics are being given So in this book I almost always render the term nongmin as ldquorural citizen(s)rdquo as I feel this term succinctly captures the nature of the population being described unless in a particular instance it is clear that the author was referring to political class status or the occupation of farming in particular
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copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_00
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Introduction
Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined Western and Chinese Perspectives
Huaiyin Li and Thomas DuBois
Since the dismantling of the Peoplersquos Communes and the gradual introduction of the Household Responsibility System (hrs) in the early 1980s rural China has witnessed tremendous economic and social changes Grain production has grown prodigiously township and village enterprises (tves) have flour-ished huge numbers of migrant workers have flowed into the cities and the rapid process of urbanization has reduced the number of rural dwellers to just over half of Chinarsquos total population Observers have tended to juxtapose these recent developments against the poor economic conditions in the countryside prior to 1978 emphasizing the low agricultural productivity and widespread rural poverty that was prevalent before and during the era of collective ag-riculture Political and scholarly perspectives have largely agreed that it was the failure of Maoist agricultural policies that drove the decollectivization and reforms of the Deng Xiaoping era even as these reforms created new problems of wealth disparity environmental degradation and food insecurity
Agriculture has always been at the heart of prc policy the government in-herited a country that was overwhelmingly rural and predicated its social and economic revolution heavily on rural transformation Despite the stunning in-dustrial growth of the past few decades China remains heavily invested in ag-riculture Since the 1980s Chinese historians have revisited and reassessed the history of agricultural development in the Peoplersquos Republic from the dawn of the collective movement to the new realities of the 1980s and beyond This vol-ume brings together fourteen articles from the journal Dangdai Zhongguo shi yanjiu to introduce Chinese scholarly perspectives on many of the most impor-tant issues about agricultural development and institutional changes in rural China during and after the Maoist era Beginning with an overall assessment of the challenges and prospects of agricultural growth and social change in rural China this volume includes articles on the background and dynamics of agricultural collectivization in the early to mid-1950s the Great Leap Forward and its aftermath in the late 1950s and early 1960s and various facets of rural industrialization and economic development following decollectivization in the early 1980s
li and DuBois2
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This introduction frames the work of these scholars by presenting an overall historical context for the topics and issues addressed in this volume Beginning with a survey of the Chinese statersquos overall strategy for economic development and its subsequent agricultural policies it emphasizes the microeconomic in-stitutions that shaped collectivized agriculture as well as the motivations that subsequently drove the Great Leap Forward decollectivization and rural in-dustrialization In the process we will suggest some of the ways that the work presented in this volume engages some of the perspectives and concerns pre-sented in English language scholarship on post-1949 rural China
Overview Economic Strategy and Agricultural Growth
The dynamics and complexity of agricultural growth and agrarian changes in post-1949 China cannot be fully comprehended without placing them into the larger context of the Chinese statersquos overall development strategy it was after all these long-term macroeconomic goals that determined the statersquos priori-ties in investment the formulation of microeconomic policies and plans for the relationships among different economic sectors Like many other develop-ing countries in Asia during the decades following World War ii the newly established Peoplersquos Republic of China was confronted with the urgent task of economic development through industrialization and had to choose be-tween two alternative strategies The first was to encourage the improvement of family-based agriculture by means of modern inputs (chemical fertilizers pesticides machines improved seeds etc) provided by the industrial sector and by integrating family farming with regional national and global markets In turn improved productivity would enable rural ldquosurplus laborrdquo to flow from agriculture into the industrial sector thus propelling industrialization with the supply of cheap labor force and the subsequent process of urbanization This was the course of agricultural growth and rural development widely seen in other East Asian economies in the postwar decades1 The second was to priori-tize industrial growth especially investment in capital-intensive heavy indus-try (the manufacturing of machinery energy smelting and transportation) without significant investment in agriculture and light industry for consumer goods In the absence of external capital such as foreign loans or direct foreign
1 In these regimes as well the development of family farming often included the marginaliza-tion of existing agrarian elites see TJ Pempel ldquoThe Developmental Regime in a Changing Worlds Economyrdquo Meredith Woo-Cumings (ed) The Developmental State in Historical Per-spective (Ithaca Cornell University Press 1999) pp 164ndash165
3Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
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investment high-speed industrial growth relied on state extraction of eco-nomic resources from agriculture which in turn necessitated forced measures of agrarian collectivization and mobilization The Soviet Union had already pioneered just such an approach successfully achieving its goal of rapid indus-trialization but at the expense of a stagnant agriculture sector and the peren-nial shortage of consumer goods
Throughout the Mao era the Chinese leadership oscillated between the two strategies outlined above but generally it was the latter that prevailed The former which served initially only as a temporary and supplementary solution to the problems caused by overly aggressive agrarian extraction would eventu-ally come to dominate Chinarsquos development strategy in the post-Mao period The key factor behind the Maoist statersquos preference for the strategy of heavy industrial development was primarily geopolitical Mao was prompted by the success of the Stalinist model the Sino-Soviet alliance in the 1950s the Westrsquos embargo of China and his own eagerness to narrow the gap between China and industrial nations to advocate the policy of ldquoleaning to one siderdquo (yi bian dao)mdashborrowing Soviet political and economic institutions while pioneering its own strategy of economic growth As Perkins and Yusuf pointed out from the 1950s through the 1970s the economic planners in the central government persistently prioritized the expansion of heavy industry which accounted for from 40 percent to over 50 percent of the statersquos capital construction invest-ment in most years2 The limited availability of capital for investment in agri-culture drove the state to aggressively mobilize the rural workforce as the pri-mary means to increase grain output Compared to the phenomenal increase in industrial output grain production increased by only 225 percent annually from 1955 to 1980 which was no better than that in many other developing countries The sluggish growth of agricultural output was a result not only of the statersquos lack of investment in and excessive extraction from agriculture but also of the mismanagement of local collective organizations and the ineffi-ciency in labor input Therefore since the mid-1960s modern capital input especially in the application of chemical fertilizers and the introduction of new strains of crops became increasingly important for agriculture and con-tributed to at least half of the increases in agricultural production which grew ldquoat a respectable 4 percent or more per yearrdquo3
Mark Selden offers a nuanced analysis of Chinarsquos economy under Mao by distinguishing between the two phases before and after the summer of 1955
2 Dwight Perkins and Shahid Yusuf Rural Development in China (Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University Press 1984)
3 Ibid 198
li and DuBois4
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Selden suggests that in its earlier stage Chinarsquos economic plan was incremen-tal and innovative combining farmersrsquo voluntary participation in cooperatives and the use of market elements for the shared well-being of a coalition of so-cial forces Afterwards however the state turned to what he calls ldquomobiliza-tional collectivismrdquo in the form of compulsory procurement of crops at low state prices the forced transition to collectives and low investment in agri-culture Although Selden acknowledges the obvious achievements of Maoist rural development the overall direction of policy worked against rural inter-ests and accounted for the stagnation in agricultural productivity and peasant income from the collectives the continued poverty of the rural population and a widening gap in living conditions between urban and rural areas4 In a similar vein Andrew Walder questions the effectiveness of Chinarsquos develop-ment strategy after 1956 He emphasizes the facts that per capita gdp growth in China from 1950 to 1973 was only 29 percent largely on par with India but significantly lower than the level achieved by its East Asian neighbors As late as 1978 30 percent of the Chinese rural population remained below the pov-erty line not to mention the death of tens of millions during the Great Leap Forward and another 11 to 16 million during the Cultural Revolution5
To date Philip Huang has provided the most sophisticated explanation of the dynamics of agricultural growth in Maoist China Huang agrees that the rapid expansion of state power in the rural society through collectivization and party networks at the village level made possible local government pro-grams to construct water-control and irrigation projects increase the use of chemical fertilizers and tractors and promote the double-cropping of hybrid rice in the Yangzi delta in the 1960s and 1970s However the most important factor that contributed to agricultural growth Huang argues was the full mo-bilization of womenrsquos labor by the collectives The demands of the rapidly ex-panding population for more income to satisfy their subsistence needs efforts by collectives to maximize crop yields and the disappearance of off-farm em-ployment opportunities drove farmers to intensify labor input in production until the marginal return of their added labor input disappeared Labor in-tensification did increase output per unit area which reached its highest level in the late 1970s just before the abolition of the collective system However these gains were achieved at the cost of stagnation and even decline in labor productivity or output per workday as best measured by the cash value of the
4 Mark Selden The Political Economy of Chinese Socialism (Armonk ny ME Sharpe 1988) pp 3ndash23
5 Andrew Walder China under Mao A Revolution Derailed (Cambridge ma Harvard University Press 2015) pp 315ndash334
5Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
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farmersrsquo daily work points which remained largely unchanged throughout the Maoist era Huang refers to this process as agricultural involution which in his opinion had existed in Chinarsquos rural economy for centuries before the Com-munist revolution6
This volume begins with one similarly sweeping meta-analysis Lu Xueyirsquos still timely perspective on the ldquothree rural issuesrdquo (san nong wenti) Unlike the chapters that follow this piece was a speech rather than an academic research article and as such it offers an unusually frank assessment of the ways in which the past decades of rural reform have succeeded and those in which they have not The success story has been the development of agriculture (nongye) by which Lu refers to the aggregate level of production Simply put decades of successful investment in agriculture mean that depletion of the national grain supply is no longer a threat even (as one later chapter notes) in the case of an international embargo However this success has come at the expense of rural areas (nongcun) which are poorly managed and burdened by high levels of official debt and the welfare of rural citizens (nongmin) who have fallen behind their urban counterparts and are owed a debt for their contribution to national construction Worth particular notice are Lursquos recommendations which include abolishing the system of registering households as urban or ru-ral (with severely restricted options for the latter) as well as deep structural reforms of local government and the reinstatement of the Rural Work Depart-ment As Lursquos listeners and later readers would no doubt have understood each of these proposed reforms speaks to a specific moment of decision during Chinarsquos decades of agrarian transformation
Agricultural Collectivization in the 1950s
Commencing after the 1952 completion of land reform the process of collec-tivization continued for five years and proceeded in three stages7 The first stage was the organization of ldquomutual aid teamsrdquo (huzhuzu) each of which consisted of a few to more than a dozen households Participating house-holds joined the teams voluntarily and retained ownership of land and other
6 Philip CC Huang The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta 1350ndash1988 (Stanford Stanford University Press 1990) especially Chapter 11
7 Land reform itself was a multi-stage process which commenced on a small scale in the agrar-ian soviets of the 1920s and continued gradually in areas under communist control The date of 1952 refers to the point at which the reforms had been completed in newly acquired re-gions and the program officially declared complete
li and DuBois6
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property such as draft animals and farm implements Generally villagers wel-comed this form of cooperation because they still controlled all of the harvest from their private fields while the poor and middle peasants (labels which had been first applied during land reform) within the teams benefitted from the availability of shared use resources The second stage began in 1954 with the state-led transition from mutual aid teams to ldquoagricultural production cooperativesrdquo (nongye hezuoshe also known as primary cooperatives and more generally as apcs)8 These cooperatives each comprised an average of 30 households which as before continued to retain ownership of land draft animals and large farming tools but were required to allow their collective use by the coop In return households received payments of land dividends Because state policy limited such dividends to 45 percent of a cooprsquos total dis-tribution to member households (the remaining 55 percent was based on labor contribution to the collective) the apcs were considered to be ldquosemi-socialistrdquo in nature The third stage began in the summer of 1956 with the transition to ldquoadvanced cooperativesrdquo (gaoji nongye hezuoshe) This new generation of agrarian cooperatives was both larger with each coop having an average of 250 households and fully socialist in nature Member households were required to renounce private ownership of land and farming tools and their income from the collective was determined solely by their labor contribution The advanced cooperative movement proceeded quickly and involved coercion by local gov-ernments in merging the original (primary) apcs and the mobilization of in-dependent households By the end of 1956 nearly 90 percent of all households in the non-minority provinces were participating in the advanced collectives
The statersquos strategy for agricultural transformation therefore underwent a dramatic change from its original scheme of voluntary and gradual transi-tion to the radical plan of accelerated compulsory collectivization During the early 1950s the consensus among prc leaders and economic planners seems to have been that agricultural collectivization would be a lengthy process re-quiring at least fifteen years They believed further that agricultural collectives could be established widely and firmly only when Chinarsquos national economy was sufficiently industrialized as to provide agricultural machinery and other modern inputs9 At the same time planners recognized that industrial growth would rely on agricultural development Agricultural surpluses were necessary
8 It should be noted that different types of agricultural cooperatization remain in use outside of China and that terminology such as apcs is shared with a broader current literature on agrarian development
9 Pang Xianzhi and Jin Congji Mao Zedong zhuan [The biography of Mao Zedong] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 2011) pp 1307ndash1308
7Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
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not only to feed the urban centers where industry was to be concentrated but also to repay development loans from the Soviet Union and to fund the con-struction of industry in the absence of investment capital As Wang Danli dis-cusses in Chapter 14 of this volume the grain crisis of 1953 marked the moment of decision in this obvious conflict of priorities between agricultural develop-ment and surplus extraction It was at this point that state planners moved from simply regulating the grain market and instituted the grain monopoly that would remain in place until 1978
As is well known Mao personally championed the move to accelerate the transition to advanced cooperatives He did so for both productive and ideo-logical reasons Long before the Communist revolution observers had agreed that Chinarsquos independent family farming was in the words of one party reso-lution ldquoisolated scattered conservative and backwardrdquo and that the ineffi-ciency of household agriculture constrained the larger project of national de-velopment10 The other and as Mao increasingly emphasized more important reason was the struggle between the two roads of socialism and capitalism in the countryside For Mao the continuation of independent farming would inevitably lead to differentiation among peasant families and give rise to the resurgence of capitalism in agricultural production in which rich peasants predominated The transition to socialism in the countryside was the single solution to both the backwardness of agricultural production and the problem of endemic rural exploitation
In sharp contrast with Maorsquos ideological rhetoric Western scholars have generally emphasized the practical economic difficulties that challenged the leadership in the mid-1950s The greatest challenge according to Mark Selden lay in the crisis of the First Five-Year Plan which projected an annual growth of nine percent in grain production in 1953 and 1954 whereas the actual growth in both years was less than two percent ldquoAcceleration of cooperative forma-tion Mao now held could stimulate productive energies making possible fulfillment of the plan and opening new possibilities for accumulationrdquo11 On the other hand the problems of polarization and class differentiation Selden suggests were not as acute as Mao claimed by 1954 ldquothe already diminished rich-peasant advantage over poor peasants in per capita cultivated acreage
10 The negative assessment of household farming went back to the agrarian economists of the Rural Reconstruction movement See for example Martin C Yang A Chinese Village Taitou Shantung Province New York Columbia University Press 1945 Quote from Pang and Jin 2011 1325
11 Selden 1988 82
li and DuBois8
ltUNgt
had dropped from 134 to 1271rdquo12 In her classic work on rural transformation in the early 1950s Vivienne Shue emphasized the threat that sluggish growth in agricultural production posed to the fulfillment of the First Five-Year Plan as the leading reason behind Maorsquos decision to accelerate collectivization How-ever she also takes into account the factor of ldquostubborn persistence of wide disparities in wealth between classesrdquo which explained why poor and lower-middle peasants who made up 70ndash80 percent of all peasants were ldquoready and eager to join in cooperative farming venturesrdquo13 According to Louis Putterman however collectivization was not merely a tool by which the state could more effectively extract agrarian surplus but was more important as a means of projecting power into the countryside and breaking any remaining resistance among the former rural elite14
Three chapters in this volume highlight specific challenges as they were seen at the time While he does not mention the debate over Party motiva-tions in such terms it is clear that Wang Danli sees in 1953 a moment where the needs of production took precedence over those of the social revolution He attributes the formation of the state grain monopolymdasha fundamental change that coincided with the beginning of collectivizationmdashalmost solely to the economic priorities of industrialization with no mention of political or class conflict In a similar way Su Shaozhi and Chang Mingmingrsquos Chapter 10 on private lending presents an image of early rural reform that is far less focused on class leveling than on increasing productivity Su and Chang show that planners sought primarily to free up productive capital much of which was being hoarded by rich peasants In the years before collectivization cadres in Hubei not only tolerated private lending among peasants they positively encouraged it This process included even recognizing the validity of some debts incurred before the revolution ones that many lenders and borrowers alike had assumed would have been wiped clean under the new regime Cen-tral and provincial directives to protect the interests of creditors grew out of the recognition that private lending was necessary to keep capital flowing into agrarian improvements To that end rural cadres were instructed to assure rich peasants that money lent under fair terms of interest would indeed be repaid and would not have adverse implications for the class status of the lender
In Chapter 2 Su Shaozhi recreates the view from 1955 when cadres sought to assess the reemergence of rural class statification three years after
12 Ibid 7913 Vivienne Shue Peasant China in Transition The Dynamics of Development Toward Social-
ism 1949ndash1956 (Berkeley University of California Press 1980) p 28414 Louis Putterman Continuity and Change in Chinarsquos Rural Development Collective and Re-
form Eras in Perspective (Oxford uk Oxford University Press 1993) p 26
9Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
ltUNgt
the official conclusion of land reform Taking a broad national perspective Su found that a small stratum of rich peasants had begun to emerge in areas where land reform had been conducted early particularly in rapidly developing provinces such as Liaoning but had not yet appeared in areas where the reforms had been instituted more recently The more significant change was the one suggested by Selden the striking transition of people from poor to the ranks of middle peasants This latter change suggests that land reform was successful overall and was quite likely the reason behind the fact that cadres collecting the data did not seem to regard the reemer-gence of a small number of rich peasants as a crisis Their rather calm assessment that a certain number of peasants would always succeed by virtue of either hard work or good luck is particularly striking given that it was made just before the onset of the politically charged panic over the perceived reemergence of rural exploitation that pushed the acceleration of Maoist collectivism
The Great Leap Forward
The process of collectivization was on the whole relatively smooth and suc-cessful There was no widespread resistance of the sort that had been seen in the Soviet Union and the large number of grassroots rural cadres gradually learned to deal with the movementrsquos numerous logistical difficulties how to award different numbers of work points to individual peasants calculate the different forms of income distributed to peasant households coordinate tasks and labor remuneration between different production teams and requisition privately owned land to construct public projects15 Complete collectivization under the advanced coops actually made these problems easier to handle Ad-vanced coop cadres enjoyed complete control in assigning tasks and distribut-ing income even if coop members became more vulnerable to abuse Scholars have expressed different opinions about whether the advanced coop changed cadre loyalties Helen Siu suggests that the larger coops were more beholden to the state while others believe that they tended to remain true to their grass-roots origins16 Philip Huang is probably the most accurate in suggesting that
15 Carl Riskin Chinarsquos Political Economy The Quest for Development Since 1949 (Oxford uk Oxford University Press 1987) 81ndash95 Shue 1980 300ndash308
16 Helen F Siu Agents and Victims in South China Accomplices in Rural Revolution (New Haven Yale University Press 1989) p 168 Shue 1980 56 66ndash67 William Parish and Martin King Whyte Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago The University of Chicago Press 1978) pp 106ndash144
li and DuBois10
ltUNgt
the advanced coops held ldquodouble loyaltiesrdquo to both state and local communi-ties17 In either case it is clear that from the dual perspectives of extraction and control the advanced cooperatives were a success
The movement towards larger and more socialist cooperatives culminated in the Great Leap Forward (glf) from 1958 to 1960 Unlike the largely success-ful phases of land reform and agricultural collectivization that had come be-fore it the glf ended in disaster which in turn produced a profound impact on the course of institutional changes in Chinarsquos economic and political de-velopment over the decades to come Among the many puzzles surrounding the history of the glf the most intriguing is why Mao launched the program when he did After all Maorsquos stated objective of establishing socialist collective agriculture had already been declared complete with the formation of the ad-vanced cooperatives in 1957 Yet even these cooperatives did not last long Just one year later the glf merged the advanced coops into the gigantic Peoplersquos Communes (renmin gongshe) which had an average of approximately 4500 households and a population of 23000 and became the basic unit of planning production and distribution The Peoplersquos Communes were beset with prob-lems commune leaders (who no longer had the close ties to the grassroots) exerted arbitrary command over the labor force enforced overly egalitarian systems of labor remuneration and diverted the most able villagers from farm-ing to tasks such as the construction of earthwork projects and the smelting of useless iron and steel These problems together with drought the statersquos excessive procurement of grain and (at the outset) the wasteful consumption of food at collective canteens exacerbated nationwide crop failures causing severe food shortages in 1959 and 1960 and a nationwide famine that claimed millions of lives
Past studies have emphasized two major factors behind Maorsquos decision to embark on the glf Domestically party leaders were growing dissatisfied with the results of the First Five-Year Plan In 1957 the last year of the First Five-Year Plan grain production grew by only 13 percent and the industrial growth rate was the second lowest since the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic At the same time population growth accelerated reaching 2 percent annually in the 1950s in contrast to 1 percent in the first half of the twentieth century Increases in both the consumption needs of the people and industryrsquos demands for raw materials from agriculture placed unprecedented stress on grain production and supply As Roderick MacFarquhar observed for ccp leaders ldquohellipthe grain shortages of the late summer of 1957 must have indicated clearly enough that
17 Siu 1990 321
11Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
ltUNgt
a fundamental reappraisal of their development strategy was essentialrdquo18 Agricultural collectivization alone could not solve the bottleneck in economic growth
Externally the gradual souring of Chinarsquos relations with the Soviet Union behind which China still lagged economically naturally prompted the former to imitate elements of its neighborrsquos economic strategies and institutionaliza-tion The 1959 announcement of the Seventh Economic Plan for the Soviet Union with its stated objective of catching up with the United States in fifteen years in per capita industrial output clearly inspired Mao to claim that the glf would allow China to overtake Britain in the exactly same time period An un-spoken motive behind Maorsquos initiation of the glf was his personal rivalry with Nikita Khrushchev the new leader of the Soviet Union for supremacy in the ideological realm of socialist economic construction Mao disagreed openly with Khrushchevrsquos reversal of Stalin-era policies and his own goals for the glf were precisely and overtly Stalinist in that they prioritized the development of heavy industry at the expense of agriculture and production of consumer goods19 Maorsquos ultimate goal for the glf was to show to Moscow and the rest of the communist world that China could eventually surpass the Soviet Union in socialist construction and the transition to communism
Reports of food shortages and inefficiencies in production served only to radicalize the program putting pressure on local cadres to outdo each other in demonstrating enthusiasm Recurrent political movements in particular the 1957 Anti-Rightist campaign and the 1959 attack on Peng Dehuai and his ldquoanti-Party cliquerdquo demonstrated the price of honest criticism and the danger of being identified with ldquorightist deviationrdquo People at all levels had little choice but to join the fanaticism for poorly-planned projects exhibit support for obvi-ously nonproductive tasks and willingly suspend belief in the face of clearly exaggerated production figures The central governmentrsquos 1959 decision to ex-port as many as 42 million tons of grain in order to support some Third World countries and pay off Chinarsquos debt to the Soviet Union exacerbated further a food shortage that had plainly reached disastrous proportions20
Recent studies have focused on determining and prioritizing the reasons behind the famine that accompanied the failure of the glf Justin Lin for instance rejects the role of natural disasters local mistakes in production
18 Roderick MacFarquhar The Origins of the Cultural Revolution Vol 2 The Great Leap For-ward 1958ndash1960 (New York Columbia University Press 1983) p 3
19 Walder 2015 32020 Frank Dikoumltter Maorsquos Great Famine The History of Chinarsquos Most Devastating Catastrophe
1958ndash1962 (New York Bloomsbury 2010) 83 104ndash107
li and DuBois12
ltUNgt
planning and the inefficiencies of the oversized communes Instead he em-phasizes the loss of incentive and the prevalence of free riding by peasants who were unable to exit the collective after the 1958 formation of Peoplersquos Communes21 Others highlight differences at the provincial levels Dali Yangrsquos research finds that the death toll during the famine was linked positively to the popularity of public canteens which were found more commonly in provinces that were poorer had fewer ccp party members and leaders who tended to be more supportive of the radical policies22 Others have echoed the importance of provincial leadership but reached different conclusions about the exact significance of political status and ambitions Kung and Chen assert that those who were within sight of elevation to the Partyrsquos Central Committee were more likely to implement radical policies such as the excessive procure-ment of grain23 Three years later Dali Yang et al published a rejoinder to this theory attributing the most radical tendencies to leaders whom Mao had per-sonally appointed to the Central Committee24 In addition local conditions including population density level of rural development and natural agrarian productivity all played an enormous role in the way in which different regions experienced the famine
This volume presents a different perspective on the GLF by focusing on the local development of some of its most characteristic institutions Rather than addressing the level of political ambition as such three chapters offer instead different examples of how the politicization of production during the glf distorted perceptions and priorities Chapters 3 and 4 discuss the dissemina-tion of two production techniques terracing and deep plowing and hint at the ways that even technological innovation could take on the characteristics of a political movement The practice of terracing sloping land to increase ag-ricultural area was itself nothing new but it was vastly expanded during the 1950s due both to the prevalent attitude that bigger is always better and to the communesrsquo ability to mobilize labor on an mass scale Terraces such as those constructed in the model farms of Dazhai Shanxi were indeed marvels of
21 Justin Y Lin ldquoTizhi gaige he Zhongguo nongye zengzhangrdquo Institutional reforms and agri-cultural growth in China China Center for Economic Research Beijing University 2008 1ndash17
22 Dali Yang Calamity and Reform in China State Rural Society and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine (Stanford Calif Stanford University Press 1996)
23 James Kung and Shuo Chen ldquoThe Tragedy of the Nomenklatura Career Incentives and Political Radicalism during Chinarsquos Great Leap Faminerdquo American Political Science Review (2011) 105 1 27ndash45
24 Dali Yang Huayu Xu and Ran Tao ldquoA Tragedy of the Nomenklatura Career incentives political loyalty and political radicalism during Chinarsquos Great Leap Forwardrdquo Journal of Contemporary China (2014) 23 89 864ndash883
13Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
ltUNgt
agricultural construction but they came at a price Similar projects in nearby Yanggao did increase yields but at the cost of diverted labor and lost yields that could scarcely be mentioned at the time The deep plowing campaign shows how the idea of the ldquomass linerdquo wherein the Party adopts the revolu-tionary genius that originates with and arises from the masses was replicated even in the realm of technological innovation According to the stylized nar-rative the technique of deep plowing was pioneered by peasants of a produc-tion brigade perfected by rural cadres and research institutes and broadly dis-seminated back to the masses Like terracing the technique of deep plowing did produce some advantages and did increase yields in some areas However the politically charged atmosphere of the glf demanded that the practice be accepted universally and eventually came to demand extreme investments of human input tens of millions of peasants would turn their backs on existing techniques to ldquowage war on the landrdquo often unable to admit when the tech-nique did not work
In Chapter 5 of this volume Li Chunfeng illustrates a similar trajectory be-hind the acceptance and criticism of public canteens one of the signature social and economic policies of the glf Like terracing and deep plowing the story of the formation of public canteens was presented as having arisen from the spontaneous initiative of the masses who set up military style messes near the fields during the busy seasons The acceptance and development of canteens closely tracks the events of the glf as they began to reveal serious drawbacks as food waste canteens quietly began to fall into disfavor Ironi-cally the political reaction to Peng Dehuairsquos criticism of the glf saved the canteens as Mao championed the cause personally and cadres nationwide again competed to demonstrate their enthusiasm for a policy that was clearly flawed
In a way the most important legacy of the glf was its undeniable failure In the aftermath opposing factions were emboldened to dramatically shift poli-cy in the hope of rehabilitating the ruined economy Although some of these new policies such as the introduction of ldquohousehold responsibility for produc-tion under contractrdquo (baochan daohu) and introduction of household plots did anticipate the market reforms of the 1980s it is important to view the policies of the 1960s in their own right Wang Yugui presents one view of this period in Chapter 7 of this volume in which he examines the 1961 campaign to provide restitution for property that had been illegally seized or destroyed during the previous years Nominally instituted at the urging of Mao himself in reality this campaign aimed to underscore the political shift away from the leftist poli-cies now branded as the ldquovogue of communismrdquo and to restore the damaged image of the Party in the countryside But here again the central state was by no means omniscient Like the glf the process of making reparations was
li and DuBois14
ltUNgt
only as good as the local cadres who implemented them in particular because the vague instructions they received left significant room for interpretation as well as abuses such as paying with unenforceable ious
We also note that the glf did leave some legacies that turned out to be positive for Chinarsquos economic growth in the long run For all the blindness and irrationality that often accompanied their planning projects such as the con-struction of water-control and irrigation systems aided rural development con-siderably The three-tiered commune system Carl Riskin argues also ldquoturned out to be a flexible instrument for organizing farmland capital construction facilitating technical change introducing some social welfare protection to rural people and instituting rural industrialization Many of the small and medium-size industries that sprang up in the countryside after 1962 originated in the backyard factories of the Leaprdquo25
One of the positive legacies of collectivization if not of the glf specifically was the fuller incorporation of women into the workforce the change that Philip Huang posits as the greatest productive transformation of the twentieth century26 Although traditionally women had been involved in various aspects of rural production particularly in handicrafts such as weaving it was the la-bor policies of the collectives that both encouraged (through the allocation of work points) and allowed (by freeing them from other duties) women to commit fully In Chapter 6 of this volume Han Xiaoli discusses the introduc-tion and evolution of collective childcare a key component in the evolution of this change In some contrast to the triumphant tone of some of the other chapters this one presents in some detail the struggles cadres faced in gaining acceptance of the practicemdashwomen who did not want to care for other peo-plersquos children others who were happy to let their own children run free in the fields and so on It was only with the professionalization of childcare both the provision of work points to village carers and their eventual replacement by politically vetted outsiders that allowed the centers to take root and transform into a stable element of the local landscape as kindergartens
Decollectivization and Rural Industrialization
The dismantling of collectivized agriculture was not a single event but rather a process that continued for years after Maorsquos death The official account of this
25 Riskin 1987 p 13826 Huang 1990
15Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
ltUNgt
process emphasized the peasantsrsquo own initiative epitomized by the actions of eighteen villagers from Xiaogang in Fengyang County Anhui Province who in the winter of 1978 secretly divided the fields of their production team to households for independent farming Over subsequent years collectives across China imitated this audacious but illegal act leading ultimately to the imple-mentation in agriculture of the Household Responsibility System This basic narrative has been widely accepted by scholars who agreed that the introduc-tion of the hrs was indeed a spontaneous bottom-up process in which villag-ers participated voluntarily27 According to this view it was the common recog-nition of the inefficiencies of collective agriculture and the ultimate failure of the collectives to improve rural living conditions that prompted the rapid and smooth acceptance of the hrs
However in reality reactions to decollectivization were more complex es-pecially at the local level It is true that the vast majority of the rural popula-tion was still living at the subsistence level by the end of the collective era and that in many localities the villagers indeed took the first step in dismantling the communes However the situation was often quite different in areas where collectivization had significantly enhanced production This was particularly true when the increase was clearly attributable to the use of modern inputs (improved crop varieties chemical fertilizers and improved water control) and material incentives (such as the wide implementation of the piece rate work point system and the increase in the work point share in grain distribu-tion) In fact the growth of agricultural production accelerated prior to 1978 in the country as a whole reaching the highest level in the most prosperous areas such as the Yangzi delta in 1978 just before the collective system was disman-tled28 In areas that had benefitted from collective agriculture the emphasis was instead on reform for example by upgrading the basic accounting unit from the production team to the larger brigades29 Thus although the hrs did indeed benefit many peasants not every part of the country embraced it spon-taneously At the national level it was only possible to implement it through a coordinated top-down effort30
27 Eg Susan Shirk The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China (Berkeley ca Univer-sity of California Press 1993) pp 38ndash41 Kate Xiaohong Zhou How the Farmers Changed China Power of the People (Boulder Colorado Westview Press 1996)
28 Stone Bruce 1988 ldquoDevelopments in Agricultural Technologyrdquo China Quarterly 116 Dec 767ndash822 818 Putterman 1993 36 Huang 1990 242
29 Putterman 1993 31 David Zweig Agrarian Radicalism in China 1968ndash1981 (Cambridge ma Harvard University Press 1989) 39
30 Riskin 1987 pp 286ndash290
li and DuBois16
ltUNgt
The transition to the hrs had two major consequences First it greatly im-proved the incentive for farmers to increase production From 1980 to 1984 total agricultural output across the entire country expanded by 4223 percent an average of 77 percent per year which was significantly higher than the an-nual growth rate of 29 percent from 1952 to 1978 According to Justin Linrsquos esti-mate the introduction of the hrs and hence of farmersrsquo improved incentives accounted for 49 percent of this growth while the increased application of chemical fertilizers contributed 32 percent and the increase in the statersquos pro-curement price of major crops contributed another 16 percent31
Another unanticipated but profound consequence of the transition to the hrs was the flow of labor from agriculture into non-agricultural sectors This move was by no means unprecedentedmdashas You Haihua shows in this volume significant population movement was quite common even during the collec-tive era State or commune authorities arranged some of this migration most notably the transfer of labor to work on large projects and especially the re-location to the countryside of the generation of sent-down youth However much of it was voluntary as people moved where their labor was more valued while others escaped into sparsely settled mountains
This trickle of voluntary movement greatly expanded with the implementa-tion of the hrs Released from their obligations as members of agricultural collectives hundreds of millions of rural dwellers suddenly were free to leave the land and engage in whatever work they chose so long as they paid an ag-ricultural tax and various fees to local governments and sold the contracted amount of harvest to the state under the procurement program As a result a growing number of villagers sought work in construction transportation and commerce or established their own family businesses
The most conspicuous feature of the economic and social transformation following decollectivization was the development of rural enterprise The first stage of this process had emerged within the collectives themselves Already possessing both managerial expertise and a structure for the allocation and remuneration of labor existing collective bodies began as early as 1978 to make the transition into profit-making Commune Brigade Enterprises (cbes) Feng Xiaohongrsquos chapter in this volume traces the process by which cbes in Hebei were encouraged by national and provincial legislation to branch into small scale industries such as weaving and acrylic knitting gradually building exper-tise networks and economies into zones of regional specialization
31 Justin Lin ldquoRural Reforms and Agricultural Growth in Chinardquo The American Economic Review 821 (1992) 34ndash51
17Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
ltUNgt
The opening of the labor market spelled the decline of cbes but it also laid the foundation for the rise of a new generation of rural entrepreneurs and for larger and more market oriented township and village enterprises (tves) Over time three patterns of tves began to emerge each geographically associ-ated with a different part of the country The first was the so-called Wenzhou model Typical of the coastal provinces of Zhejiang and Fujian in this model private investors (mostly villagers) started small-scale factories to manufacture labor-intensive goods which were then sold to domestic consumers through nationwide marketing networks In the second pattern prevalent in the Pearl River Delta factories received investment from Chinese in Hong Kong or over-seas and manufactured goods primarily for export The third was the Sunan (southern Jiangsu) model best exemplified by the factories in southern Jiangsu province but also seen widely throughout rural China In this model village or township governments took advantage of the public funds they had accumu-lated during and after the Mao era and established collectively owned (ie not state owned) factories to manufacture a wide array of industrial goods Where-as vast numbers of migrant workers came to power the factories and populate the unplanned urban sprawl (often called ldquourban villagesrdquo) of the Pearl River Delta employees of the Sunan firms were largely local villagers who would ldquoenter the factory but not the cityrdquo (jinchang bu jincheng) and ldquoleave the farm but not the countrysiderdquo (litu bu lixiang)32
Local government cadres vigorously encouraged and promoted the new col-lectively-owned factories These cadres were incentivized to start new factories in their home villages or townships to obtain the extra revenue available from local governments to fuel public projects as well as for their personal material gain as they completely controlled the firms they established33 The greatest problem of such industrial firms therefore was the ambiguity and complexity of their ownership and property rights which further entangled local govern-ment officials in the management of the factories making it difficult for the tves to run as efficient profit-making businesses sensitive to market condi-tions As a solution to the innate problems of the tves under the Sunan model most of those enterprises underwent a process of privatization in the 1990s which they became integrated more fully into the market economy During and since the 1990s most of these enterprises have either reorganized their ownership structure or been privatized outright
32 Samuel Ho ldquoRural Non-Agricultural Development in Post-Reform China Growth Devel-opment Patterns and Issuesrdquo Pacific Affairs 683 (1995) 360ndash391
33 Jean C Oi Rural China Takes Off Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform (Berkeley University of California Press 1999)
li and DuBois18
ltUNgt
In this volume Zheng Yougui presents a closeup view of the Sunan model focusing specifically on the ability of the Bixi Township of Changshu City to produce successful firms and famous brands Zheng discusses in detail how new enterprises in Bixi faced the challenge of dividing shares of the collective economy and emphasizes how the professionalization of village and town-ship government eased the transition into a market economy However while other firms in the Sunan model relied heavily on promotion by local officials Bixi was somewhat unique in that it enjoyed attention from the highest levels Already in the early 1980s Li Peng and other central leaders were promoting the ldquoBixi Roadrdquo initially as a pilot project and later as a replicable model of successful development What is not stated of course is the effect that such high level promotion had on the region particularly on its ability to attract loans and investment Without downplaying the success of the region it is also worth noting the similar role that the state had played in promoting earlier generations of model production areas
Unique Perspectives and Contributions
Although many of the chapters in this volume run parallel to or in some way engage the major themes in English language scholarship on post-1949 rural China there are tangible differences in their approach and perspec-tive One obvious difference derives from the nature of sources Most of the scholars featured in this volume enjoyed access to local archival mate-rials and many augmented this detailed view with more or less extensive oral histories This combination of sources allows them to present a finely grained view of local institutions such as rural canteens and daycare On the other hand they tend to be rather less critical of the perspectives con-tained in the sources themselves presenting without additional commen-tary the somewhat stylized view of construction and technology during the Maoist period or the unqualified success of the Bixi Road This observation itself is not necessarily a criticism It is perhaps a bit too simple to dismiss as ideological extremism historical concerns over the reemergence of rich peasants or movements such as the deep plowing campaign Scholarship that speaks as many of these chapters do in the voice of the original sources is particularly able to recapture the considerations that went into the formation of these iconic policies
In some cases the perspectives in this volume present entirely new directions of inquiry Issues such as informal rural debt have been studied extensively in
19Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
ltUNgt
the periods before 1949 and since the 1980s but not in between34 Revealing the importance of how and why rural cadres encouraged debt adds an important facet to our understanding of their plans for rural reconstruction The most striking departure is found in Chapters 11 and 12 on the flow of grain between provinces35 Together these two chapters outline dramatic changes the ability after 1986 of provincial governments to negotiate grain prices and especially the historic shift in the mid-1990s when the movement of grain from north to south first exceeded in caloric terms the traditional flow in the opposite direction Like the others these two chapters are valuable for their attention to detail in this case on the realities of the trade for example the fact that corn produced in the vast new farmlands of northern Heilongjiang works better as animal feed than the produce of the traditionally fertile south
Needless to say the fourteen articles included in this volume limited in number and scope of investigation do not do justice to the rich and multifac-eted scholarship that the Chinese researchers have developed in the past de-cades in understanding agriculture and social change in Maoist and post-Mao China Nevertheless we hope that readers will find the new evidence and per-spectives presented in these studies a useful resource for understanding some of the most drastic experiments pitfalls and breakthroughs that the hundreds of millions in rural China have experienced since 1949
References
Chan Anita Richard Madsen and Jonathan Unger 1992 Chen Village Under Mao and Deng Berkeley University of California Press
Dikoumltter Frank 2010 Maorsquos Great Famine The History of Chinarsquos Most Devastating Catastrophe 1958ndash1962 New York Bloomsbury
Ho Samuel 1995 ldquoRural Non-Agricultural Development in Post-Reform China Growth Development Patterns and Issuesrdquo Pacific Affairs 683 360ndash391
Huang Philip CC 1990 The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta 1350ndash1988 Stanford Stanford University Press
34 Walter H Mallory ldquoRural Cooumlperative Credit in Chinardquo The Quarterly Journal of Econom-ics 45 3 (1931) pp 484ndash498 Li Zhou and Hiroki Takeuchi ldquoInformal Lenders and Rural Finance in China A Report from the Fieldrdquo Modern China 36 3 (2010) pp 302ndash328
35 On provincial trade see also Thomas Lyons ldquoGrain in Fujian Intraprovincial Patterns of Production and Traderdquo China Quarterly 129 (1992) pp 184ndash215
li and DuBois20
ltUNgt
Kung James and Shuo Chen 2011 ldquoThe Tragedy of the Nomenklatura Career Incen-tives and Political Radicalism during Chinarsquos Great Leap Faminerdquo American Political Science Review 105 (1) 27ndash45
Lin Justin 1992 ldquoRural Reforms and Agricultural Growth in Chinardquo The American Eco-nomic Review 821 34ndash51
Lin Justin Y 1990 ldquoCollectivization and Chinarsquos Agricultural Crisis in 1959ndash1961rdquo Jour-nal of Political Economy 986 1228ndash1252
mdashmdashmdash 1998 ldquoTizhi gaige he Zhongguo nongye zengzhangrdquo (Institutional reforms and agricultural growth in China) China Center for Economic Research Beijing University
Lin Yifu 2008 Zhidu jishu yu Zhongguo nongye fazhan (Institution technology and agricultural development in China) Shanghai Gezhi chubanshe
Lyons Thomas 1992 ldquoGrain in Fujian Intraprovincial Patterns of Production and Traderdquo China Quarterly 129 184ndash215
MacFarquhar Roderick 1983 The Origins of the Cultural Revolution Vol 2 The Great Leap Forward 1958ndash1960 New York Columbia University Press
Mallory Walter H 1931 ldquoRural Cooumlperative Credit in Chinardquo The Quarterly Journal of Economics 45 (3) 484ndash498
Oi Jean C 1989 State and Peasant in Contemporary China The Political Economy of Village Government Berkeley University of California Press
mdashmdashmdash 1999 Rural China Takes Off Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform Berkeley University of California Press
Pang Xianzhi and Jin Congji 2011 Mao Zedong zhuan (The biography of Mao Zedong) Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe
Parish William and Martin King Whyte 1978 Village and Family in Contemporary China Chicago The University of Chicago Press
Pempel TJ 1999 ldquoThe Developmental Regime in a Changing Worlds Economyrdquo in Mer-edith Woo-Cumings (ed) The Developmental State in Historical Perspective (Ithaca Cornell University Press 1999) 137ndash181
Perkins Dwight and Shahid Yusuf 1984 Rural Development in China Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University Press
Putterman Louis 1987 ldquoThe Incentive Problem and the Demise of Team Farming in Chinardquo Journal of Development Economics 26 (1) 103ndash127
mdashmdashmdash 1993 Continuity and Change in Chinarsquos Rural Development Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective Oxford UK Oxford University Press
Riskin Carl 1987 Chinarsquos Political Economy The Quest for Development Since 1949 Oxford UK Oxford University Press
Selden Mark 1988 The Political Economy of Chinese Socialism Armonk NY ME Sharpe
21Chinese Agriculture and Rural Development Reexamined
ltUNgt
Shirk Susan 1993 The Political Logic of Economic Reform in China Berkeley University of California Press
Shue Vivienne 1980 Peasant China in Transition The Dynamics of Development Toward Socialism 1949ndash1956 Berkeley University of California Press
Siu Helen F 1989 Agents and Victims in South China Accomplices in Rural Revolution New Haven Yale University Press
Stone Bruce 1988 ldquoDevelopments in Agricultural Technologyrdquo China Quarterly 116 767ndash822
Unger Jonathan 2002 The Transformation of Rural China Armonk NY ME SharpeWalder Andrew 2015 China under Mao A Revolution Derailed Cambridge MA Har-
vard University PressYang Dali 1996 Calamity and Reform in China State Rural Society and Institutional
Change Since the Great Leap Famine Stanford CA Stanford University PressYang Dali Huayu Xu and Ran Tao 2014 ldquoA Tragedy of the Nomenklatura Career
incentives political loyalty and political radicalism during Chinarsquos Great Leap Forwardrdquo Journal of Contemporary China 23 (89) 864ndash883
Yang Martin C 1945 A Chinese Village Taitou Shantung Province New York Columbia University Press
Zhou Kate Xiaohong 1996 How the Farmers Changed China Power of the People Boulder Colorado Westview Press
Zhou Li and Hiroki Takeuchi 2010 ldquoInformal Lenders and Rural Finance in China A Report from the Fieldrdquo Modern China 36 (3) 302ndash328
Zweig David 1989 Agrarian Radicalism in China 1968ndash1981 Cambridge MA Harvard University Press
ltUNgtltUNgt
Part 1
Political Programs in Practice
∵
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_003
ltUNgt
chapter 1
The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo1
Lu Xueyi 2
Abstract
The unique urban-rural relationship and urban-rural development strategy that have emerged through Chinarsquos course of Reform and Opening have given rise to the theory of the ldquothree ruralrdquo issues which is unique to China The construction and use of this theory are highly significant for deepening understanding of Chinarsquos basic national conditions for guiding socialist modernized construction and for researching similar issues faced by other countries The overall status of Chinarsquos ldquothree ruralrdquo issues is Our agricultural issues have been fundamentally resolved but we still face serious rural citizen and rural area issues The root cause of this situation is that the rural and agri-cultural policies developed under the planned economy have yet to be fundamentally changed In order to resolve our rural citizen and rural area issues we must continue to deepen rural reforms resolve to reform the household registration system reform the current land contracting system reform the current income distribution system and reform the political authorities vested in town governments particularly in fiscal matters
Keywords
ldquothree ruralsrdquo theory ndash productivity factors ndash agriculture ndash rural areas ndash rural citizens
1 This essay was first presented as an academic report at the Institute of Contemporary China Studies Third Annual National History Academic Symposium on September 16 2003 This written format was compiled from an audio recording of that report which the author has edited and approved
2 Lu Xueyi (陆学艺) was a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Lu passed away in 2013 in Beijing at the age of 80
Lu26
ltUNgt
i Origins of the ldquoThree Ruralsrdquo Theory
It is widely known that reforms in China begin at the level of the rural village Rural areas were the first to implement the Household Responsibility System and the first to shake off the fetters of the planned economy These reformsled to a great liberation of agricultural productivity and great increases in agricul-tural yields for many years consecutively In 1984 grain production hit its peak of 800 billion jin (400 billion kilograms) which initially resolved the problems of insufficient food and physical security for the populace Peasants in those years became their own masters and received tangible benefits from the re-forms Their lives were improved to a great degree and the urban-rural gap was further closed At the time it was proposed that the second stage of rural reforms be implemented
Beginning in 1985 however there were changes to Chinarsquos urban-rural strat-egy Income in the national economy began flowing more toward cities the focus of work began shifting toward cities and the level of energy expended on rural reforms began to decline In 1985 agricultural production fell with grain production down seven percent From this point forward rural Chinarsquos development was at times bearish and at times bullish and rural development again took yet another turn In the late 1980s some Chinese academics who were summarizing the experiences and lessons of socialist modernization di-vided Chinarsquos rural issues (each beginning with the Character nong which is alternatively used to indicate agriculture or rural areas) into issues of agricul-ture [nongye] rural areas [nongcun] and rural citizens [nongmin ie peasants or farmers] on the basis of Chinarsquos unique national conditions They analyzed both the relationship between these three issues as well as the problems to be solved within each of the issues thereupon they proposed the analysis frame-work of the ldquothree rural issuesrdquo [san nong wenti] which they established as the theoretical framework for understanding Chinarsquos true conditions and the analysis of Chinarsquos practical issues After more than ten years of practical im-plementation and propagation this framework has now become a consensus within both political and academic spheres in China
The ldquothree rural issuesrdquo are unique to China they are the product of Chinarsquos Reform and Opening The development track of countries which have already successfully modernized indicates that when a country or region endeavors to modernize itself it generally must begin by accumulating capital through agri-culture in rural areas then move on to primitive accumulation of capital then to the production of agricultural products and rurally-produced industrial raw materials and finally move on to the large scale construction of factories and development of enterprises and industry During this time a great amount of
27The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
ltUNgt
rural labor will enter factories which are generally constructed on major traf-fic arteries Once there is an agglomeration of factories commerce and the service industry will begin to develop and cities will begin to rise At this point a large portion of the agricultural population will transform into city dwellers and so industrialization and urbanization go hand in hand with this process Once industrialization and urbanization reach a certain point they will begin to nurture agriculture they arm agriculture with modernized agricultural ma-terials (farm equipment fertilizers and pesticides) thereby bringing about the modernization of agriculture At this time rural citizens will become the mi-nority Under the effects of the market (and sometimes government interven-tion) the prices of agricultural products will rise and rural incomes gradually rise near to (and sometimes greater than) urban income levels Once urban industry is developed and the state treasury is amply stocked rural areas will be repaid this time with infrastructure such as roads irrigation works electric-ity telecommunications and so on This process leads to the modernization of rural areas which in turn causes urban-rural integration So other developed countries never linked together the ldquothree rural issuesrdquo during the course of their development Rather they considered only rural production rural area and rural citizen issues separately and conducted focused research in each area At the most some merged rural rural citizen or rural area and rural pro-duction issues together for joint research
Chinarsquos unique course of Reform and Opening gave rise to a unique urban-rural relationship and a unique urban-rural development path This path in turn led to Chinarsquos unique theory of the ldquothree ruralrdquo issues The construction and use of this theory is highly significant to understanding Chinarsquos fundamen-tal national conditions and to guiding the implementation of socialist mod-ernization For a relatively long time we have placed great emphasis on the resolution of Chinarsquos agricultural issues and have striven to solve production problems in both grain and major agricultural products in order to ensure effective supply However following the first bumper cropharvest of Reform and Opening in 1984 such problems as difficulty selling grain and cotton have emerged in rural areas Thereafter another series of problems presented them-selves such as the issuance of deferred payment slips (some of which were never repaid) by governments in lieu of cash for grain purchases heavy bur-dens on rural citizens increased number of clashes between rural cadres and rural citizens social instability in the countryside widening of the urban-rural gap and so on The emergence of these diverse problems led some academics and some people working in government departments performing real work to realize that rural work should not be centered on only agricultural issues but must also include resolution of rural citizen and rural area issues and that
Lu28
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agricultural rural area and rural citizen issues must be analyzed and studied together These academics and government workers then wrote a series of persuasive works on these issues Since the mid-1990s some academics and workers in government departments performing real work have composed treatises on agricultural rural citizen and rural area issues all three of which were studied and analyzed jointly The ldquothree ruralrdquo issues theory is now a con-sensus around China it has been widely cited in documents the media and all manner of written work In October 1998 the ldquoccp Central Resolutions on Several Major Issues in Agricultural and Rural Workrdquo 中共中央关于农业和
农村工作若干重大问题的决定 were issued reading ldquoThe issues of agricul-ture rural areas and rural citizens are major issues affecting the big picture of Reform and Opening as well as modernization Without stability in rural areas there can be no nationwide stability Without moderate prosperity for rural citizens there can be no agricultural modernization and thus there can be no modernization of the entire national economy If we can maintain stability in rural areas we will be able to take the initiative in controlling the big picturerdquo
The ldquothree rural issuesrdquo theory is also highly significant for studying the problems of other countries In 1998 I accepted an invitation from Waseda University to visit Japan At an academic conference there I conducted com-parative analysis on the countrysides of China and Japan on the basis of the ldquothree rural issuesrdquo theory this opportunity enabled me to elucidate a number of issues Japanrsquos path to modernization is fundamentally similar to that of de-veloped countries in North America and Europe However Japan is a country with a large population and small landmass Further since the 1960s the Japa-nese government has been importing agricultural products on a large scale in an effort to greatly increase exports of industrial products and develop markets for said products ignoring the costs to domestic agriculture Therefore since the 1970s most or all of the foodstuff cotton and other raw materials used in Japanese industry have been imported At present over 50 percent of Japanrsquos foodstuffs agricultural raw materials and industrial raw materials are import-ed thus Japanrsquos food prices are the highest in the entire world Importation of such a large quantity of foodstuffs has inevitably exerted a certain degree of influence on the quality of life for Japanese citizens It is thus evident that Japan a major economic powerhouse has problems in the area of agriculture If we analyze Japan on the basis of the ldquothree ruralsrdquo theory we see that Japan has solved its rural citizen issues and has fundamentally solved its rural area is-sues but its agricultural issues remain unsolved China is exactly the opposite Since the advent of Reform and Opening Chinarsquos agricultural policy has been ldquoDriven firstly by policy secondlyby sciencerdquo As a result of reforms and de-velopment we enjoyed several consecutive years of bumper crop harvests In
29The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
ltUNgt
1996 Chinese grain production exceeded 1 trillion jin (500 billion kilograms) and Chinese cotton production exceeded 84 million dan [Chinese unit of mea-sure equivalent to 50 kilograms] Since that time China has reversed its pre-vious long-standing shortages of grain and other major agricultural products and has now achieved year-to-year stability and agricultural surpluses China which contains nearly 10 percent of total arable land in the world feeds over 21 percent of the total global population Furthermore since 1997 Chinarsquos annual net exports of agricultural products have held steady at around usd $5 billion So if we use the ldquothree ruralsrdquo theory to analyze contemporary China we can see that agricultural issues have been fundamentally solved but rural citizen and rural area issues remain unsolved
ii The ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo in Contemporary China
Why do I hold that China has already fundamentally solved its agricultural issues but has yet to solve its rural area and rural citizen issues I will discuss just this question in this section
(A) Agricultural IssuesFrom a historical perspective the issues of supply of grain and other agricul-tural products from the former Soviet Union and other socialist countries have never been well resolvedfollowing the implementation of traditional collec-tive economic systems in rural areas These issues have long been a thorn in the side of socialist countries
Before the Peoplersquos Republic of China implemented collectivization and indeed during the early years of Chinarsquos collectivization (prior to 1958) China was a net exporter of grains and agricultural products Beginning in 1961 how-ever Chinese citizens have been eating imported grains and China became a net importer of grain cotton and other major agricultural products
In 1959 the Chinese state put forward the notion that agriculture was the foundation of the national economy and that grain was the foundation of that foundation Thereafter the state consistently placed primary emphasis on the development of agriculture within national economic work casting enormous amounts of labor and financial resources into that field However shortages of grain and agricultural products were not thoroughly solved until the dissolution of peoplersquos communes Problems of insufficient food for the citizenry weighed heavily on the hearts of the first generation of leadership from Chairman Mao to the economic architects Chen Yun and Li Xiannian One could say that in his late years Chairman Mao was a physiocrat in economic matters He was the
Lu30
ltUNgt
first to propose such ideas as ldquothe Constitution of Eight Characters for Agricul-turerdquo ldquoagriculture is the foundation of the national economyrdquo ldquograin is the guid-ing principlerdquo ldquolearning agriculture from Dazhairdquo ldquoagricultural mechanization is imperativerdquo and so on Chen Yun even went on the record to say that ldquowith grain in your hand there can be no panic in your heartrdquo At one point Li Xian-nian personally oversaw the allocation and transport of grain convoys
Experience confirms that it was not that our party or government didnrsquot place emphasis on agriculture nor was it that our land was insufficient or that our rural citizens didnrsquot know how to plant crops Rather it was the peoplersquos commune system of collective labor unified management and equal distribu-tion that failed us
In the wake of the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Com-munist Party of China rural areas took the lead in implementing reforms In ru-ral areas the household contract responsibility system was implemented and rural citizens obtained autonomy in their business operations Rural citizens benefited from this system which provided them with great work incentive in agricultural production There were bumper crop harvests in consecutive years and by the mid-1980s problems of insufficient supply of grain cotton and other major agricultural products had fundamentally been resolved Such fundamental resolution initially resolved problems of insufficient food and warmth Of course agricultural development hasnrsquot been an unbroken chain of good news over these past 20 years There have been some bumps on the road but the overall trend has been continuous progress and development As of 1996 Chinarsquos agricultural issues ie issues of guaranteeing effective agricul-tural supply have been fundamentally resolved
From the beginning of Reform and Opening to 1996 the general course of Chinarsquos agricultural development has been abumper crop harvest and major upgrade to agriculture about once every six years In 1978 total grain produc-tion was 6095 billion jin 317 kilograms per capita There were bumper crop harvests every year following the implementation of the household contract responsibility system in rural areas Total grain production in 1984 was 8146 billion jin this was the first year in which grain surpluses led to difficulty in selling grain In 1985 the state grain monopoly was abolished In its place the state implemented the contract system for grain purchasing This new policy suppressed grain prices and led to a decrease in grain production productivity among rural citizens grain production fell seven percent in this year leading to renewed vacillation on the grain issue Policies were adjusted again in 1986 and in 1990 there was a second bumper crop harvest total grain production hit 8925 billion jin just shy of 900 billion jin The bumper crop grain harvest in this year was widely unexpected Many in Beijing did not believe the numbers
31The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
ltUNgt
as a State Council spokesperson initially reported 840 billion jin then later 850 billion jin and the National Bureau of Statistics ultimately reported 8925 billion jin Relevant leadership fearing inflated reporting passed a Standing Committee resolution to report the yearrsquos grain production as 870 billion jin The National Bureau of Statistics disagreed with this resolution In the 1991 Tongji nianjian [China Statistical Yearbook] the Bureau reported 870 billion jin holding off on adding digits to the figure but at the same time did not report figures for such grain classes as rice and corn Following the major floods in An-hui and East China of 1991 the whole world joined together to provide disaster relief but in the end grain production on the year was reported at 8706 billion jin with no apparent year-on-year drop In 1992 the Bureau corrected the total figure reported for 1990
There was a drop in grain production in 1991 but slight increases in 1992 and 1993 However following Deng Xiaopingrsquos ldquosouthern tourrdquo in 1992 a surge of economic construction unfolded across the country A large number of devel-opment zones were established and peasant laborers flooded into cities There was a stark increase to urban populations as well as to demand for grain and agricultural products in the cities Beginning in autumn 1993 grain and agri-cultural product prices rose sharply some areas that had previously phased out the grain coupon system reinstated it The state had no choice but to re-new large-scale imports of grain in 1994 at the same time state officials greatly increased purchase prices for domestic grain In 1995 domestic grain produc-tion increased by 43 billion jin Even with agriculture on the rebound relevant leadership still feared instability and so again resolved to greatly increase grain purchase prices in 1996 reporting this to the masses ahead of time This resolu-tion provided rural citizens the incentives to plant grain Some migrant labor-ers even decided to return to the countryside to till grain fields With all those factors plus excellent weather 1996 saw the third bumper crop harvest with total annual grain production hitting 50454 million tonnes ie an excess of one trillion jin In the 1950s under the leadership of Mao Zedong the central government passed agricultural production plans that set the target for annual grain output at 400 then 500 and finally 800 jin per mu of land These targets were finally met in 1996
Chinarsquos history of agricultural development hit a milestone in 1996 the year that marked the end of the era of chronic food shortages and the beginning of that of supply-demand equilibrium accompanied by occasional surpluses China was no longer a buyer but a seller of major agricultural products China no longer pursued quantity exclusively in agricultural products rather equal emphasis was placed on quantity and quality and in some cases quality was given preference From this point forward Chinarsquos agricultural production
Lu32
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entered a phase of being restricted by not only resources but also by markets Thus one could say that following the bumper crop harvest of 1996 Chinarsquos agricultural development entered a new phase and at the same time Chinarsquos rural area development also entered a new phase
While Chinarsquos agriculture and rural areas had entered a new phase our understanding or policy approach to the new situation did not change cor-respondingly Such a lack of corresponding change caused the emergence of a new series of issues in agriculture and rural areas which we are currently experiencing One reason is that years of chronic food shortage seared the fear and anxiety about insufficient production into the collective memories of the Chinese people who are trying to stay in a state of perpetual preparedness
To this day academics and relevant departments have been unable to ex-plain why after 1996rsquos grain production figure in excess of one trillion jin the following six yearsmdashexcluding 1998 and 1999 in both of which years grain pro-duction exceeded one trillion jinmdashsaw grain production figures between 900 billion and 980 billion jin It is possible that grain production in 2003 will fall short of 900 billion jin These past seven years the population has increased by 730 million and urbanization has increased a full ten percentage points demand for grain agriculturally produced industrial raw materials and other agricultural products has clearly risen greatly That being the case why has supply exceeded demand in grain and other major agricultural products Why have grain reserves held steady at over 400 billion jin
One explanation for the grain situation is that the bounty of 1996rsquos harvest was not limited to just grain but was true also ofa range of other agricultural products There was a change to grain circumstances following 1997 but hus-bandry fisheries and aquaculture vegetables fruits and other agricultural sec-tors continued to grow by great margins In 2001 total grain production was 485 percent higher than in 1978 with a per capita increase of 123 percent over 1978 However in that same year total production of oil-bearing crops was 449 percent higher than in 1978 a per capita increase of 315 percent Over the same period meat output increased 640 percent from an annual per capitaoutput of 89 kilograms to 395 kilograms a 444-fold increase Output in fisheries and aquaculture increased 842 percent from an annual per capita output of 47 kilograms to 344 kilograms a 732-fold increase Fruit output increased 913 percent from an annual per capita output of 73 kilograms to 52 kilograms a 712-fold increase It is a tradition of the Chinese people to refer to grains as ldquomain foodsrdquo (ie staple foods) and to refer to all other foods as ldquoauxiliary foodsrdquo (ie non-staple foods) but it has been in these ldquoauxiliary foodsrdquo where China has experienced multiple-fold growth Now the majority of Chinese urban dwellers and more affluent rural citizens have reversed the old order
33The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
ltUNgt
consuming more ldquoauxiliaryrdquo than ldquomainrdquo foodstuffs Consumption of fowl fish other meat vegetables and fruits has greatly increased while consumption of grain has greatly decreased This structural shift indicates that there has been a fundamental change to the Chinese peoplersquos food consumption pattern particularly that of urban dwellers Thus despite decreases to overall grain output following 1996 grain sales have been sluggish and grain prices have remained low
To summarize after 1996 Chinarsquos agriculture entered a new phase a phase in which the major objective of guaranteeing effective supply had been achieved In other words Chinarsquos agricultural issues have been fundamentally resolved The reason we say that the issues have been fundamentally solved or that reso-lution had been fundamentally realized is that there is no one-time ultimate resolution to agricultural issues Just below the surface there are still factors of uncertainty such as land and water shortages worsening of agricultural and ecological environments less-than-ideal states of infrastructure such as irriga-tion works insufficient ability to resist natural disasters unsoundness of the agricultural technology propagation system and incomplete construction of pre-production and post-production agricultural service systems We now rely primarily on an economy composed of multitudes of small family farms for ag-ricultural output Both labor productivity and commodity rates of agricultural products are low We remain very far from achieving the objective of modern-izing agriculture and there is still much work for us to do in this field
(B) Rural Citizen IssuesIssues of rural citizens lie at the core of the ldquothree ruralrdquo issues Agriculture is the enterprise of rural citizens or in other words it is their profession Rural citizens are the laborers in the agricultural industry and rural areas are the communities in which rural citizens produce live and make their homes
Rural citizen issues are of particular importance in China traditionally a major agricultural country In 1950 Mao Zedong said ldquoPeasants [nongmin ie rural citizens] comprise the majority of Chinarsquos population The revolution was successful only because of support from the peasants The success of the statersquos industrialization will also be reliant upon support from the peasantsrdquo Experience has proven that this statement is entirely accurate Over these past 50 years our socialist modernization has been through many phases with both ups and downs One trend among these experiences has been particu-larly outstanding In all those phases in which party and state policies have adhered to the wishes and interests of the majority of rural citizens socialist enterprises have advanced smoothly and grown (such as Land Reform Reform and Opening the household contract responsibility system the development
Lu34
ltUNgt
of township and village enterprises and so on) In all those phases in which party and state policies have not adhered to reality or have even been det-rimental to the interests of the masses of rural citizens work has been diffi-cult the development of enterprises such as economic construction has been sluggish and social problems have multiplied The Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China summarized one very important basic experience that the only way to spur productivity among the masses of rural citizens is to ldquobe fully concerned with their material interests in economic matters and grant true protection to their democratic rights in mat-ters of governancerdquo The plenum went on to declare that this was the ldquoutmost starting point for determining agricultural policy and rural economic policiesrdquo
So in which areas do we face rural citizen issues now
1 The Rural Population Remains Enormous Now 900 Million StrongChina has always been a major agricultural country and so a preponderance of rural citizens is merely an objective reality What I mean here when I say that our rural population is large is that over the course of industrialization a countryrsquos rural population should naturally decrease but in China at the same time as we industrialize and urbanize our rural population continues to grow This pattern does not conform to the regular patterns of industrialized development and has given rise to a number of social issues
In 1949 the total population was 54167 million the agricultural popula-tion was 48402 million or 894 percent of the total In 1952 the total popu-lation was 57482 million the agricultural population was 50139 million or 872 percent of the total In 1958 the total population was 65994 million the agricultural population was 54704 million or 828 percent of the total In 1978 the total population was 96259 million the agricultural population was 79014 million or 8008 percent of the total Over the 20 years from 1958 to 1978 the rural population grew by 24310 million an average annual increase of 12155 million In 1998 the total population was 124810 billion the agricultural popula-tion was 86868 million or 696 percent of the total Over these 20 years the rural absolute population grew by 7854 million an average annual increase of 392 million In 1999 the total population was 25786 billion the agricultural popula-tion was 82038 million or 652 percent of the total In 2000 the total popu lation was 126743 billion the agricultural population was 80837 million or 638 per-cent of the total In 2001 the total population was 127627 billion the agricultural population was 79563 million or 623 percent of the total
Publicly available population figures indicate that the rural population de-creased rapidly after 1999 with a total population loss of 789 million over just three years an average annual decrease of 263 million These figures however
35The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
ltUNgt
are based on records of residency in either urban or rural areas If records of household registrations (either agricultural or non-agricultural) were used in-stead one would find that there were still over 900 million citizens holding agricultural registrations in 2001
Our rapidly industrializing country is both developing industry on a large scale and experiencing great increases to the rural population (500 million in 1952 up to 900 million in 2001 an increase of 400 million over fifty years) with only limited increases to such major production resources as arable land These two factors are the root cause of the severe rural citizen issues China is experiencing today It is not possible for a country to be industrialized and modernized with a 75 percent absolute majority of its population engaged in agriculture A major task we must accomplish in the coming years is to figure out how to reduce the rural population
2 Rural Citizensrsquo Lives Have Markedly Improved but Rural Citizens Remain Poor and Burdened
I have two things to say about the poverty and heavy burden borne by rural citizens First rural citizensrsquo lives have been greatly improved since the advent of Reform and Opening They have experienced great increases to income and the vast majority of them are no longer worried about not having enough to eat this is unprecedented Net per capita income for rural citizens was 134 yuan in 1978 and 2366 yuan in 2001 after adjustment for inflation that repre-sents an annual increase of 46 percent This increase is quite an accomplish-ment and a great step forward Second the poverty and heavy burden borne by rural citizens can be understood only through comparison to their urban coun-terparts and through comparison to our economic accomplishments The 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has declared that we must build an overall moderately prosperous society that benefits over a billion peo-ple Chinarsquos gross domestic product (gdp) more than octupled over the span of 1978 to 2001 with average annual growth of 935 percent That said the ru-ral citizens who comprise seventy-five percent of Chinarsquos population did not benefit correspondingly Particularly after 1997 after agricultural development entered a new phase supply was greater than demand in agricultural prod-ucts which led to sluggish sales and low prices At the same time the degree of increase to rural citizensrsquo incomes fell relatively consistently nine percent in 1996 46 percent in 1997 43 percent in 1998 38 percent in 1999 21 percent in 2000 42 percent in 2001 and 46 percent in 2002 The slight increases in recent years is attributable to the income rural citizens earn from work they do as migrant laborers or non-agricultural activities The truth is that sixty-two percent of Chinese rural citizens count farming as their sole source of income
Lu36
ltUNgt
In recent years such income has suffered decreasesmdashfor the past seven years consecutively in fact That is to say that the majority of rural citizens are ex-periencing either stagnation or reductions in income In comparison urban citizensrsquo per capita disposable income grew by 3415 yuan over the years 1995 to 2002 an average annual increase of 487 yuan Over that same period rural citizensrsquo per capita net income grew from 1577 to 2476 yuan a net increase of only 899 yuan or an average annual increase of only 128 yuan This situation further exacerbated the urban-rural income gap which grew from 272 to one in 1995 to 292 to one in 2001 and further to 31 to one in 2002
We have been saying since the mid-1990s that we must increase rural in-comes reduce rural citizensrsquo burdens and maintain social stability by any means conceivable Then we started saying that we should ldquotake less give more and open furtherrdquo A number of years have passed and the government has come up with and implemented a number of plans However rural incomes remain low rural burdens remain high and the urban-rural gap continues to widen How can we expect to maintain social stability given such conditions In 2001 I participated in a small academic symposium in Shanghai At the sym-posium a county government committee leader from the Midwest said that the countryside had not been as well offmdashin terms of reforms and develop-mentmdashin the 1990s as they had been in the 1980s As of 1997 said the leader things in the Midwestern countryside were growing worse by the year People from Shanghai on the other hand said that Shanghai was doing much better in the 1990s than it had in the 1980s and that things in Shanghai were growing better by the year following 1995 My job is to study rural issues I previously worked in Shanghai and still often travel there I am familiar with the situations presented by both of these people and can affirm that both of their statements are true This is the problem that one is growing better by the year while the other is growing worse and that the gap between them continues to widen
3 Rural Citizens Have Grown Less HomogeneousInternal differentiation among rural citizens began in the 1980s with the im-plementation of the household contract responsibility system Occupation was the first in which this differentiation occurred as rural citizens were no longer only farmers In 1989 rural citizens I divided rural citizens into eight strata based on occupation agricultural laborer migrant laborer hired laborer individual industrial and commercial unit rural intellectual rural enterprise manager private enterprise owner and rural village manager This process of differentiation picked up pace in recent years
The second area in which internal differentiation among rural citizens oc-curred is income The rural income figures given above were averages and
37The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
ltUNgt
those averages actually conceal a great number of issues In 2001 for example per capita net income was 2366 yuan but 58 percent of citizens fell below that average In total 1322 percent of rural citizens earned less than 1000 yuan in that year which is to say that 1195 million of them were impoverished Another 2268 million rural citizens earned less than 500 yuan which means they were living in absolute poverty The current national poverty line has been estab-lished at 625 yuan per year in income Per this standard thirty million rural citizens are living in poverty with another ninety million hovering just above the poverty line
In recent years some regions have achieved affluence ahead of others and at the same time some people have become rich before others In 2001 only ten provinces or direct-controlled cities exceeded the national average in terms of per capita rural income They were in order Shanghai (5871 yuan) Beijing (5026 yuan) Zhejiang (4582 yuan) Tianjin (3947 yuan) Jiangsu (3784 yuan) Guangdong (3770 yuan) and Fujian (3381 yuan) Twenty-one provinces au-tonomous regions and direct-controlled cities fell below the average The low-est was Tibet (1404 yuan) followed by Guizhou (1412 yuan) Shaanxi (1491 yuan) Gansu (1509 yuan) Yunnan (1534 yuan) and Qinghai (1557 yuan) Av-erage income in Shanghai the highest was 418 times that of Tibet the lowest
There are even great discrepancies in rural citizensrsquo incomes within coun-ties towns and sometimes villages A minority of rural citizens particularly those in rural areas of Chinarsquos East or those near the edges of mid-sized and large cities have indeed become rich from businesses other than agriculture Some have even grown extremely rich in a short time Some households in those same areas nevertheless remain in poverty with the discrepancy be-tween rich and poor quite egregious in some cases A popular saying in the 1990s held that the richest people lived in rural villages and so did the poorest people This saying was rooted in fact
4 Rural Citizens are at a DisadvantageRural citizens are currently facing an extremely onerous problem Officials in many regions around the country are seizing and occupying rural citizensrsquo contracted land at an unprecedented scale rallying on such slogans as ldquoaccel-erate urbanizationrdquo ldquorun the city like a businessrdquo ldquogrow riches from the landrdquo and so on Rural citizens are being compensated for their land at extremely low rates which are still calculated based on standards established during the days of the planned economy Furthermore displaced rural citizens are not being properly relocated Such unequal transactions have resulted in tens of millions of rural citizens dispossessed of their land (some hold the total to be around forty million) At the same time some government officials and
Lu38
ltUNgt
unscrupulous real estate firms have profited immensely from the transactions which has objectively speaking given rise to a situation in which ldquothe more land is seized the more the government profits and the more government de-partments benefitrdquo Such government behavior is the fundamental reason that repeated efforts from the central government to enact protection of arable land as a fundamental national policy have continued to fall short of thorough implementation
An article written by Liu Tian appearing in the journal Zhongguo tudi (No 9 2001) the official magazine of the Ministry of Land and Resources reads ldquoOver the past 20 years the state has requisitioned about 100 million mu of land from rural citizenshellip The statehellip has used monopolistic tier-one market institutions and cut-rate price scissors (the difference between land prices on the market and actual compensations paid out for land requisitioning) to take from rural citizens a total amount of land resources valued at over two trillion yuan (this is clearly a conservative estimate)rdquo The over two trillion yuan Liu mentions has become a secondary treasury for many local governments in recent years These funds are used primarily in urban construction and urban expansion which in turn impose even greater losses on rural villages Some have estimat-ed that if a portion of these funds had been used for rural public products and infrastructure rural development would bear a much different face and the urban-rural disparity would be greatly diminished
It is particularly noteworthy that a new round of land requisitioning is cur-rently underway particularly in east and central China where the movement is proceeding at a spectacular pace in developed regions Per incomplete data from twenty-four provinces (and autonomous regions and direct-controlled cities) over 3500 new development areas have been opened on requisitioned land occupying a total area of 36000 square kilometers (fifty-four million mu) Everybody expects that land prices will skyrocket in the future and so some officials lacking a sense of responsibility and unscrupulous businessmen (in-cluding foreign businessmen) have colluded to seize rural citizensrsquo arable land under every guise conceivable Wherever this happens crops are destroyed old homes are torn down ancestral tombs are dug up and rural citizens are forced to relocate This process is dressed up under such names and excuses as ldquobroad swath developmentrdquo ldquostate constructionrdquo and ldquonecessary for urban-izationrdquo Rural citizens are at present a vulnerable group They have no rights no power and no organization All they can do is watch as their homes are stripped from them Nobody in local governments listens to their pleas and so all they can do is file reports with either provincial governments or the central government In recent years the majority of audiences sought with high-level authorities have been related to land requisitioning
39The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
ltUNgt
The land that rural citizens contract serves three functions provides re-sources for production retains household financial resources and serves as a means of subsistence So requisitioning a rural citizenrsquos land is tantamount to taking the source of that citizenrsquos livelihood from him On top of that there is a lack of proper relocation performed for these citizens So how can these tens of millions of people survive and how can we continue to develop One in-vestigation indicates that the majority of the fifty-four million mu of land req-uisitioned in the recent round of land-grabs is concentrated in economically developed regions in the Southeast particularly in the Yangtze River Delta the Pearl River Delta and in the outskirts of mid and large cities Most is extremely productive agricultural land In these places there are multitudes of people but only scarce land and so the number of people affected is in excess of fifty million Most of these rural citizens were relatively affluent to begin with ow-ing to their proximity to cities The loss of their land means that a considerable portion of these rural citizens will go from riches to rags in some cases becom-ing unpropertied migrants Such an enormous group is bound to give rise to a multitude of social issues Can the state sit back and watch this happen In the recent era it has been imperative for any country or region which desires to modernize industrialize and urbanize to first expand the size of its cities In all such cases the land used to that end has been agricultural land However in other countries the government or private enterprises must conduct fair transactions to purchase the land The land purchasing party must pay market prices and rural citizens are compensated fairly Rural citizens then use their funds to invest in secondary or tertiary industries or go buy land elsewhere All parties are thus satisfied and disputes after the fact are rare
At present we have brought about a socialist market economy but in the appropriation of rural citizensrsquo land we continue to use methods leftover from the planned economy (despite some small changes they remain on the whole unchanged) We seize rural citizensrsquo lands with inadequate compensation us-ing unequal powers and often relying upon administrative orders In the short term such measures simplify matters (no need for equal consultations) save money (low compensation levels) and speed things along (one administra-tive order and the deal is closed) However whatrsquos to be done about the rural citizen who loses his land Without a means to make a living hersquos going to come looking for you When it becomes difficult to make ends meet hersquos going to come looking for you When hersquos old and infirmed hersquos going to come look-ing for you When his progeny encounter trouble hersquos going to come looking for you Since land is the very lifeblood of a rural citizen if you take away the source of his livelihood with no or very little compensation of course hersquos go-ing to come looking for you (the Ministry of Water Resources is still receiving
Lu40
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petitions from rural citizens displaced with no or low compensations during the construction of large reservoirs in the 1950s) Real estate firms and foreign bosses pocket the money and walk away but we are the peoplersquos government Can we just shirk responsibility and let the chips fall where they may There is no end to the troubles for tomorrow wersquore sowing today by using land req-uisitioning methods leftover from the planned economic system Itrsquos bad for rural citizens bad for rural development and bad for the statersquos plans for urban development Because it does not conform to economic laws it is also detri-mental to the interests of the vast majority of rural citizens On the one hand some local cadres have come up with a plan summed up as ldquogrow riches from land build the city with those riches attract merchants with the city grow rich from the merchants and get promoted as a result of those richesrdquo But if we take a look at officials who have fallen from grace as a result of corruption such as Cheng Kejie 成克杰 Hu Changqing 胡长清 Mu Suixin 慕绥新 Ma Xiangdong 马向东 Yu Fei 于飞 (Guangdong) and Li Jiating 李嘉廷 can you tell me which one didnrsquot get his start by growing riches from the land
The number of civil law suits filed against officials is growing daily The num-ber of rural citizen petitions exceeded the number of those coming from urban areas for the first time in 2000 A total of seventy-three percent of petitions made to the Ministry of Land Resources in the first half of the year pertained to disputes over land requisitioning Of those forty percent of petitioners com-plained of disputes arising over land requisitioning Eighty-seven percent of these petitioners claimed insufficient compensation or inadequate relocation accommodations In 2002 the State Bureau for Letters and Calls received a to-tal of 4116 initial petitions concerning land requisitions in all these petitions rural citizens complained about problems caused by the loss of land and occu-pation The provinces of Zhejiang Jiangsu Fujian Shandong and Guangdong accounted for forty-one percent of these petitions Over fifty percent of all let-ters and visits received by the Ministry of Agriculture in 2001 and 2002 were related to land requisitions and rural relocation plans
(C) Issues of Rural AreasIn the Qing Dynasty and before Chinarsquos central government interceded no low-er than the county level dispatching officials to administer counties No cen-tral officials were dispatched to the level of towns or lower Those areas were all administered by country gentlemen or bodies similar to our modern autono-mous organizations Even in the Republican Era when the central government called for autonomy of towns and villages some provinces still installed re-gional or town administrative offices in towns and villages run by officials appointed from the county government Immediately after the founding of
41The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
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the Peoplersquos Republic of China we continued the old tradition establishing regional and town governments below the county level After the passage of the constitution in 1954 towns became tier-one government organizations and town peoplersquos government committees were founded After collectivization in 1958 governments and communes were unified with administrative powers granted to commune committees Peoplersquos communes then implemented a system of ldquothree-tier ownership with the production brigade as the founda-tionrdquo Production brigades were established under peoplersquos communes and under those were established production teams Officials thus unified the gov-ernment and communes as they were both collective economic organizations as well as administrative organizations Peoplersquos communes were abolished in 1983 at which point governance was separated from communes Communes were then reorganized into town peoplersquos governments production brigades into village committees and production teams into village small groups Over these past twenty years some towns and villages have been merged and some have otherwise been restructure In 2001 there were 40161 towns and 709257 villages across the country 365 million village small groups or natural villages 24432 million rural households and 90398 rural citizens (citizens holding agricultural registration) The administrative framework at use now is still the one previously employed during the era of the peoplersquos commune
The question we should study now is as follows Is this base-level adminis-trative framework suitable for modern rural China in which the norm is small-scale agricultural production divided into households not brigades That is to say is the higher level of construction suitable to the economic infrastructure and is it suitable for future agricultural modernization
Immediately after the household contract responsibility system went into practice there was a tranquil period during which neither cadres nor the masses found fault with each other ldquoWith land in your hand what of a cadre could you demandrdquo the saying went After the bumper crop harvest of 1984 it became difficult for rural citizens to sell their grain In 1985 the state grain monopoly system was nixed in favor of the purchase by contract system There was a drop in grain output in that year and grain prices on the market esca-lated much higher than the price levels stipulated in the purchase by contract system A common task of grassroots government organizations at this time was forcing rural citizens to hand over their grain stocks Town and village cad-res saw great increases to both their workloads and their levels of authority Beginning in the mid-1980s many construction projects and government-run enterprises were developed in rural areas on the tails of the development of urban-rural economic construction Such projects included roads irrigation projects compulsory education eradication of illiteracy greening village and
Lu42
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town construction and so on With such a slew of tasks being handed down cadres found themselves quite busy In eastern coastal regions and on the out-skirts of mid to large cities Township Village Enterprises (tves) rose up around the country the majority being collective economic bodies founded from with-in towns or villages As the tves grew considerable income began flowing into towns and villages With economic backing behind them local cadres could employ more people to work in town and village governments Such backing gave rise to a multitude of economic committees industry and communica-tions offices transportation management stations power plants and other autonomously founded governmental bodies The functions which had origi-nally been handled by assistants such as planned birth assistants civil affairs assistants culture and education assistants forestry assistants land manage-ment assistants and so on now were assumed by a great number of dedicated offices and stations As long as this continued the number of local officials continued to rise in some cases village governments previously staffing only thirty employees ended up with a hundred or even hundreds of cadres In the late 1980s some town governments built themselves eight-story office build-ings and some even had dozens of stores News of such happenings drifted to Chinarsquos central and western regions where the economy had not grown in any significant way yet local officials added superfluous government organs and increased their employee rosters dozens at a time all the same Town and village governments in these regions had neither local economic backing nor fiscal allocations from higher levels of government Their only choice was to apportion the increased financial burden to local rural citizens whose burdens grew heavier by the year
By 1992 central authorities had become aware of increasing rural citizen burdens heightening tensions between rural cadres and the rural masses and escalating conflicts Fresh from the closing of 14th National Conference of the Communist Party of China Jiang Zemin 江泽民 personally visited Hubei to convene a conference of cadres aimed at resolving the increasing burdens on rural citizens and social instability in the countryside A series of policies call-ing for the income and personnel attrition in the countryside was thereafter issued alleviating a portion of such rural issues
In 1993 the state began macroeconomic adjustments implementing major reforms to state finances taxation foreign reserves foreign trade and other areas These adjustments were enacted to increase the proportion of tax rev-enues within gdp as well as to increase the proportion of central-level funds to overall central and local fiscal incomes Experience has proven that this reform was both necessary and correct This reform led to great increases to state in-come State fiscal incomes greatly increased as did central-level fiscal incomes
43The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
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and such increases played an active role in augmenting the centerrsquos power to exert macroeconomic controls in ensuring healthy economic growth and in withstanding the effects of the Asian Financial Crisis The problem with this reform was that although it alleviated problems of fiscal allocations between the central and provincial levels it did not fully solve the problems of fiscal allocations and authorities between provincial governments and prefectural-level governments between prefectural-level governments and county gov-ernments and between county governments and town governments What happened in the end was that all stable fiscal and tax income was sent up the chain while all the difficulties and burdens were sent down
The town is the most basic level of government authority If you establish a state taxation bureau a local taxation bureau and a finance bureau in towns in the central or western regions where most lack tax revenue from secondary and tertiary industries then where are the funds going to come from to pay the several hundred new salaries One way is to extract it from local rural citizens and another is to borrow the money In both cases the burden on rural citi-zens grows heavier At present there are still many town governments in China unable to pay salaries on time and most town governments are saddled with debt The results of an investigation performed by the Ministry of Agriculture and five other departments in 1998 indicate that the average town government debt in the central and western regions is four million yuan and 200000 yuan for the average village in those regions Data released by the Ministry of Finance indicate that in 2000 the total debt burden borne by town and village governments is 320 billion yuan but some academics now estimate the figure to be in excess of 500 billion
Without reforms to the current fiscal system we will not only not be able to repay old debts but in fact may be unable to ensure financial resources to maintain normal operations of town governments That is because town cad-res have to go out on their own to find the money to pay their peoplersquos salaries The daily routine of many town chiefs and party secretaries contains a great deal of borrowing repaying and dodging debt collectors They are however nothing more than mice caught in the bellows stuck between fire on the one side and a hammer on the other When some town governments run out of money rendering them incapable of continuing normal operations their only choice is to declare a long holiday as a last resort but the truth is that when this happens the government is effectively paralyzed Some members of the State Councilrsquos Research Development Institute conducted research on a re-mote town in Ningxia The first three times they visited the town government hall was locked The fourth time seeing the door still locked they asked an old man tending to his sheep not far from the government hall ldquoWhere did all the
Lu44
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town leaders gordquo they asked ldquoI havenrsquot seen them for a long timerdquo responded the old man
iii Analysis
I have two things to say about the rural work thatrsquos been performed in the over 50 years since the founding of the country particularly in the twenty-plus years since Reform and Opening First we have accomplished an enormous amount in rural work it is fair to say that wersquove made historical progress Chinarsquos ag-ricultural issues have been fundamentally resolved Whatrsquos more we solved those problems on a foundation of a small agricultural economy centered on individual household units There have been earthshaking changes across all of Chinarsquos countryside and the lives of rural citizens have universally improved Some rural citizens have even grown rich No amount of praise for this accom-plishment could be excessive and the successful experience we attained in this area should be fully and deeply summarized However the other side of the coin is that now that we are faced with the objective of building a mod-erately developed socialist modernized country by the middle of this century and the demand to build a moderately prosperous society that benefits over a billion people in the coming twenty years our rural citizen and rural area is-sues remain quite serious We need to deeply consider these issues and find the reasons behind these issues and ultimately we need to establish correspond-ing guiding principles and policies
In order to solve rural citizen and rural area issues we must first analyze the reasons that these issues emerged in the first place Said reasons can be divided by and large into the following categories
(A) China Remains in a Transitory Phase in Which the Former Planned Economic System is Still Transitioning into a Socialist Market Economy
All the rural citizen and rural area issues we are currently facing are the result of the former planned economy They are all remnants of an era gone by
It has been clearly proposed since the 14th National Congress of the Com-munist Party of China that we must build a socialist market economy Howev-er such institutional reforms have been unable to permeate to the countryside since 1985 In that year rural areas entered the second phase of reforms but the truth is that the second round of reforms was unsuccessful in rural areas What was the second round of rural reforms intended to change To this day it remains unclear whether they were intended to promote development of
45The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
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tves to bring about industrialization or to develop small urban centers It would be fair to say that the second round of rural reforms reformed nothing That is because nothing was changed in the rural household registration sys-tem in the circulation system or in the land system Problems leftover from the planned economy such as population problems land problems grain circulation problems rural money lending systems and so on have lingered to this day The planned economy was inherently detrimental to the interests of rural citizens Under the planned economy rural citizens were defined by Stalin as a part of the populace intended to make special contributions to the state In other words their purpose was nothing more than primitive accu-mulation of capital for the state on its way to industrialization Immediately following its inception the former Soviet Union instituted the Prodrazvyorstka policy under which peasants were forced to hand over surplus grain to the state Even though a fixed contract purchasing system for grain later took the place of Prodrazvyorstka grain prices remained extremely low making life ex-tremely difficult for the Soviet peasantry We began learning from the Soviets at the time of our own countryrsquos inception implementing the planned economy and cooperativization Such systems stripped rural citizens of the power to sell their own produce The task given to agriculturalists was to guarantee supply in order to meet state demands for agricultural products The state fixed the prices at which rural citizens sold grain and other agricultural products to the state When rural citizens sold grain to the state it was called ldquomaking a con-tribution to the staterdquo or ldquoselling patriotic grainrdquo Such sales were in no way an equal value exchange So the rural citizen and rural area issues we are dealing with today are rooted in the rural area and agricultural policies established under the planned economy To this day we have yet to solve these issues At their root the rural citizen and rural area issues we face today are problems that require further deepening of reforms
(B) Under the Planned Economy We Governed Urban and Rural Citizens Differently Based on Their Household Registrations Which Gave Rise to Chinarsquos Urban-Rural Dual Social Structure This Structure Remains Unchanged to This Day and it is an Important Reason for the Ever-widening Urban-Rural Disparity
Under Chinarsquos long-standing household registration system the agricultural population is concentrated in rural areas and the non-agricultural population in urban areas It is for this reason that we say ldquodifferent governance for ur-ban and rural one country with two policiesrdquo This arrangement is beneficial to urban populations but detrimental to rural populations In economic terms citizens with agricultural household registrations receive different treatment
Lu46
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from their urban counterparts in taxation property ownership employment and other areas Whatrsquos more the degree of disparity in treatment is striking As for democracy one delegate to the National Peoplersquos Congress is elected per 240000 citizens in urban areas but 960000 in rural areas The difference is a factor of four In social terms rural citizens receive different treatment from their urban counterparts in education healthcare social security and other areas One statistician claimed that there are fourteen differences in treatment between urban and rural populations The result of this policyrsquos long-term im-plementation has been our countryrsquos urban-rural dual social structure with the urban-rural gap growing ever wider
(C) The Current State of Income Distribution is Detrimental to Both Rural Areas and Rural Citizens
Why have we long been unable to solve the issues of rural compulsory edu-cation Who is to blame The root cause is that current funding allocations for compulsory education are egregiously skewed against the interests of rural citizens and rural areas The Compulsory Education Law 义务教育法 stipu-lates that rural compulsory education be guided by central leadership but that local leadership be responsible for its implementation however the law does not clearly stipulate exactly which level of local leadership be responsible The results of an investigation conducted by the State Councilrsquos Development In-stitute indicate that the central government contributes only two percent of total funding to rural compulsory education Another eleven percent comes from the provincial and city levels nine percent from the county level and the remaining seventy-eight percent from the township level Some communi-ties have recently begun establishing ldquohope projectsrdquo which are in themselves good things deserving of praise but we cannot establish compulsory education in this way Some have even said that the ldquohope projectrdquo method is inherently ldquohopelessrdquo and they are not wrong The issue is that since wersquore mandating compulsory education across the country we ought to integrate urban and ru-ral education systems funding for all of which should be provided by the state or at the very lowest at the provincial level How can we hope to fundamentally solve compulsory education problems on the strength of well-intended ldquohoperdquo contributions of thirty and forty yuan at a time
The following is how the current funding allocation system operates in com-pulsory education as well as in the state healthcare funding system Annual state healthcare expenditures total in the hundreds of billions of yuan but of that total eighty-five percent goes to urban areas and only fifteen percent to rural areas At present the rural cooperative healthcare preventative sys-tem has more or less collapsed many rural areas lack doctors and drugs and
47The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
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some town governments have even been forced to sell their hospitals It was an extremely wise decision on the central governmentrsquos part to forbid university students and migrant laborers to return home during the outbreak of sars Had the epidemic spread to the countryside with the rural healthcare system in such shambles the results would have been unthinkable We often say that many areas have been improved following the advent of Reform and Opening in 1978 but the reality is that some areas have in fact worsened since 1978 One example is the rural healthcare system At least there were still cooperative healthcare and healthcare stations during the era of the peoplersquos commune Now even these are gone
(D) Reforms to Chinarsquos Economic Foundation and Superstructure in Recent Years Have Been Successful in Many Areas but Unsuccessful in Others
In recent years rural areas have entered a second round of reforms but it remains unclear exactly what is to be reformed Nobody is sure about what township governments are supposed to change where township-level finan-cial resources are supposed to come from and exactly what township govern-ments are supposed to be controlling Many reforms enacted in recent years have been successful but some have not In fact some have only reinforced those aspects leftover from the planned economy that are particularly detri-mental to rural development
A few years ago there was a trend in China for reorganizing counties and lower-level administrative areas into cities and districts For example Chang-ping County 昌平县 became Changping District 昌平区 and Jiangyin Coun-ty 江阴县 became Jiangyin City 江阴市 This reorganization gave rise to a unique situation in which ldquomayorsrdquo could be at one of five levels of authority the provincial level the deputy provincial level the prefectural level the depu-ty prefectural level or the county level Such different layers of authority exist-ing in one person had two results First it raised the level of the cadres involved and increased the total number of cadres Second it became easier to appro-priate rural land in regions once they had been elevated to the level of city or district The ease of appropriation was beneficial to cities but detrimental to rural citizens Even worse for rural citizens was the reorganization of lower-level regions into cities Before they had been converted into cities regions had jurisdiction over their counties and had to ensure a certain amount of govern-ment funding for each of these counties Once they were cities all funds al-located for them by the central government for culture education healthcare and so on got held up at the city government level no longer did these regions have to allocate portion of funding to their counties Itrsquos plain to all that nearly
Lu48
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all prefectural-level cities are well-constructed look respectable and contain modern facilities and a number of high-end hotels Almost nobody has ever heard of a cadre or a teacher working in a prefectural-level city not receiving wages on time This is why The result of this methodology has been to further exacerbate the urban-rural disparity
(E) Inadequate Understanding of the SituationAfter 1996 Chinarsquos agriculture left the phase of simply increasing output and ensuring supply and entered a new phase Some of our cadres however have been unable to adjust to this change their understanding of the situation is severely lagging In 1999 I met an official responsible for the agriculture of a Northeastern province at an agricultural conference I asked him how the har-vest had been that year Can you guess what he answered ldquo[Unfortunately] we just might see increasedoutput figures again this yearrdquo Evidently his un-derstanding hadnrsquot caught up with new conditions His job was to oversee agricultural production he should have been happy about increased output figures The times now however are different Increased agricultural output means added pressure as it costs the government money to buy agricultural products from the farmers not to mention the costs of transportation storage and operating the pricing mechanismfor agricultural products He was wor-ried because he hadnrsquot had access to the practical experience of processing agricultural products for added value and establishing a circulation system for agricultural products He was the very face of officialsrsquo being behind the times
Another question is whether it is now time for China to repay its debt to agriculture Fifty years have passed from the founding of the country to pres-ent Over this span of time we have consistently turned to agriculture to pro-vide the capital and raw materials necessary for industrialization Over these fifty years wersquove made ten five-year plans and wersquove basically achieved our goals of industrializing the country Is it not now time for the country to repay its debt to agriculture by boosting investment in it Industrialized countries and regions that developed following the Second World War generally began to increase investment in agriculture about twenty years after the beginning of industrialization Such was the case for Japan South Korea and Taiwan as well Taiwan began to boost investment in agriculture in 1973 and 1974 On the mainland itrsquos been over fifty years but wersquore still mostly taking from the ru-ral citizenry Not only has Chinarsquos urban-rural gap not been reduced in recent years but it has in fact continued to widen in two ways Such widening has caused the price scissors existing between urban and rural areas to cut broader and broader swaths
49The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
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One way is through migrant laborers Ministry of Agriculture statistics indicate that in 2002 there were 946 million migrant rural laborers employed in secondary and tertiary industries in Chinese cities Although they are also technically considered part of the laboring class their political and economic status is far different from that of their urban counterparts Even when work-ing identical jobs rural and urban citizens are paidunequally In 2001 the body of migrant rural laborers over 90 million strong created over 23 trillion yuan in gdp for Chinese cities an average of 25000 yuan in value created per mi-grant laborer yet the average migrant laborer earned only 8000 yuan on the year meaning that the remaining 17 trillion yuan was their contribution to the cities where they toiled It has been shown that the more migrant laborers employed in a city the faster that city develops Such was the case in Shenzhen and in Shanghai and Beijing as well The city of Shenzhen itself was built by several million migrant laborers
The second way is through land appropriations Ministry of Land and Re-sources data indicate that a total of 295 million mu of land was requisitioned under different programs around the country in 2002 The real figure is in fact much greater than that All that land was requisitioned at low prices using the methodology of the planned economy era and then flipped at high prices On average a single mu of land can be sold for between tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan That means several hundreds of billions of yuan for all land requisitioned around the country Of course a portion of those funds are handed up the chain to the central government but in the end the lower-level governments transacting land sales come away with enormous profits Hence the saying ldquoGrow money from the landrdquo The more land a re-gion requisitions the faster it becomes wealthy and the greater the benefits re-ceived by local cadres Such requisitioning has further exacerbated the already yawning gap between Chinarsquos rural and urban areas
iv Recommendations
The overall status of Chinarsquos ldquothree rural issuesrdquo is as follows Our agricultural issues have been fundamentally solved but we remain far from resolving our rural citizen and rural area issues as we have yet to solve issues of institutional restrictions The summary report of the 16th National Congress of the Commu-nist Party of China puts forward that there have been no fundamental changes to Chinarsquos urban-rural social duality that the urban-rural disparity and inter-regional disparities continue to grow and that there are still a great deal of
Lu50
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people living in poverty in the countryside For these reasons the tasks of increasing rural incomes by any means conceivable reducing rural citizensrsquo burdens by any means conceivable and maintaining rural stability by any means conceivable remain extremely arduous
The following are a few recommendations for how we can solve rural citizen issues and rural area issues given todayrsquos circumstances
(A) We Must Continue Deepening Reforms to the Rural SystemThe second round of rural reforms should continue We must continue to deepen reforms to the rural system in order to drag the rural economy and social system from the era of the planned economy into the new era of the socialist market economy and to further liberate our rural citizens from the fet-ters of the planned economy The aforementioned is the only way to overcome the urban-rural economic duality and bring about urban-rural integration We cannot sacrifice our rural citizens in order to bring about modernization in our cities If we implement the market economy in cities alone while leaving rural areas in the planned economic system our cities will flourish while our rural areas descend into poverty In other words the prosperity of our cities will be built on the poverty of our rural areas If that is the case we will be unable to build socialist market economy Even if we were able to build it it would be less than perfect
(B) We Must Reform the Household Registration SystemOur current household registration system is a product of the planned econ-omy It artificially divides our population into two sectorsmdashagricultural and non-agriculturalmdashand it restricts the free movement of the population This situation is the primary reason for the urban-rural duality and this situation is no longer suitable for our present conditions It is also a major obstacle to achieving urban-rural integration We must commit to thoroughly reforming the current household registration system
(C) We Must Reform the Current Land Contracting SystemLand issues lie at the core of our rural citizen and rural area issues As the saying goes ldquoif land is stable all under heaven will be stablerdquo The state gov-ernment has repeatedly gone on the record to say that the current land con-tracting system will continue unchanged In 1998 the government announced that the system will remain intact for the coming thirty years However ex-perience has proven that Chinarsquos rural land system has undergone constant changes The reason is that the current land contracting system has not funda-mentally solved issues of land ownership and land usage rights I suggest that
51The Origins and Development of Chinarsquos ldquoThree Rural Issuesrdquo
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we implement state ownership of all land that all land ownership rights be restored to the state with usage rights given to rural citizens This system should then be maintained in perpetuity Such a system would allow rural citizens to transfer usage rights of their land to other people who desire to produce on that land effectively ensuring reasonable fluidity of rural land I further suggest that homestead plots be returned to rural citizens At present rural citizensrsquo homestead plots belong to village collectives which leaves the citizens themselves unable to sell or mortgage the property This should be changed
(D) We Must Reform the Current Income Distribution SystemChinarsquos current income distribution system is skewed in favor of cities and is detrimental to both rural citizens and rural areas This system should be re-formed In order to shrink the urban-rural gap and fundamentally solve rural citizen and rural area issues we must skew the income distribution system in favor of rural areas and rural citizens particularly in such areas as education healthcare culture and other public services
(E) We Must Reform the Political Powers Vested in Town Governments Particularly Their Fiscal Powers I Also Recommend We Restore the Rural Work Department
At present town governments are saddled with debt and there is no end to conflicts between town officials and citizens This is not a problem caused by any given official but rather is the result of the town-level political system particularly in fiscal affairs We must commit to undertaking reforms in this area Furthermore if we want to fundamentally solve the ldquothree rural issuesrdquo of such a large country as China merely issuing documents will not suffice The central government should establish a dedicated body tasked with guiding the process Thus I recommend that the Rural Work Department be restored
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_004
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12
1 Su Shaozhi (苏少之) is a professor in the Economics School of the Zhongnan University of Economics and Law 430060
2 Nongcun jingji yu nongmin fudan diaocha ziliao《农村经济与农民负担调查资料》
Materials Regarding Investigations into Rural Economies and the Burden on Peasants] volume
chapter 2
The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants after the Peoplersquos Republic of Chinarsquos Land Reforms
Su Shaozhi1
Abstract
Between the conclusion of Land Reform and the eve of the agricultural cooperative movement few new rich peasants were created around the country and those who did were created slowly There was only a real correlative relationship between the degree of rural affluence and the proportion of new rich peasant households to total rural households across all provinces however there was a positive correlation be-tween these two factors within individual provinces The proportion of new rich peas-ant households to the total number of rural households in areas with relatively high degrees of rural cooperatization and restrictive policies on new rich peasants was not necessarily lower thanmdashand in some cases was higher thanmdashother areas These data indicate that many factors influenced the creation and development of new rich peas-ants and that analysis of a single factor would be insufficient to explain the complex socioeconomic issue of new rich peasants
Keywords
new rich peasant ndash scale ndash distribution
A rural investigation report issued by the Ministry of Finance in 1952 defines ldquonew rich peasantsrdquo as follows ldquoThey are rich peasants produced following land reforms New rich peasants are delineated on the basis of the stipula-tions regarding rural class differentiation issued by the State Administrative Council All those whose total of exploitation (including hiring laborers and issuing debt) exceed twenty-five percent of their total income shall be known as rich peasantsrdquo2 In 1955 the leadership of the Peoplersquos Republic of China
53The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
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made the following judgment new rich peasants were emerging everywhere following land reforms polarization grew more severe daily and capitalist forces spread unchecked This appraisal of rural conditions at the time was an important reason behind the acceleration of both agricultural cooperatization and collectivization In recent years many academics studying the issues of agricultural cooperatives have noted that under historical conditions of the time appraisals of polarization were frequently made too harshly However there has been no dedicated research performed on the key reason behind said polarization the concrete conditions for the creation of new rich peasants On the basis of data I have been able to collect on the issue I have performed research into the scale and distribution of new rich peasants created in the Chinese countryside between the end of land reforms and the eve of collectiv-ization Owing to the scattered nature of historical materials in this area and my own limited abilities as a researcher this essay should be considered no more than an initial foray into this field I hope that any academic colleague interested in this issue will send me valuable opinions
i The General Trend for the Creation of New Rich Peasants
Back during the War of Resistance against Japan peoplersquos democratic regimes were established in resistance bases These regimes either reduced rents and interests or outright launched land revolutions (for example in some border regions of Shaanxi Gansu and Ningxia) Feudal land ownership systems were either abolished or greatly weakened At the same time with the encourage-ment and support of democratic governments the proactivity of peasants (nongmin) to produce was increased and economic development caused im-portant changes to the class structure of rural areas Specifically those chang-es were a weakening of the old economy run by landlords and rich peasants a reduction in the number of poor peasants and an increase of middle peas-ants Among those ranks a minority of formerly poor peasants experienced rapid economic development and were elevated to the ranks of rich peasants A classic example of a new rich peasant from this era was Wu Manyou 吴满有
from the border region around Shaanxi Gansu and Ningxia During the war against Japan the democratic regimes adopted policies to encourage new rich peasants honoring those who remembered their roots after becoming rich ac-tively developed the economy and supported the democratic governments In the land reforms that followed the War of Liberation new rich peasants were
2 ed Central Peoplersquos Government Ministry of Finance Bureau of Agricultural Taxation (中央人民政府财政部农业税司) Shaanxi Provincial Archives D9-8-23 68
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345
3 For more information on the new rich peasant issue during the War of Resistance Against Japan see my article ldquoGenjudi xinfunong wenti yanjiu 根据地新富农问题研究 [Research Into the Issue of New Rich Peasants in Base Areas]rdquo Jindai shi yanjiu 《近代史研究》 1 (2004)
4 The demarcation line between ldquoold areasrdquo (ie old liberated areas) and ldquonew areasrdquo (ie newly liberated areas) changed constantly during the War of Liberation ldquoOld areasrdquo as referred to in this essay refer to those areas which completed land reforms prior to June 1950 ldquoNew areasrdquo as referred to here are those in which land reforms were implemented after the winter of 1950
5 Liaodong was one of nine provinces in Republican-era Northeast Many of the smaller prov-inces were disbanded between 1949 and 1954 leaving the current three provinces of Liaon-ing Jilin and Heilongjiang
again attacked particularly during the fervor for land reforms incited in winter of 1947 by the issuance of the Outline Land Law of China 中国土地法大纲 as egalitarianist ldquoleftistrdquo erroneous tendencies began emerging and even middle peasants and those working in industry and commerce saw their interests in-fringed This situation was initially remedied following an enlarged meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) Central Committee in December 1947 which called for appropriate care to be accorded to new rich peasants who had become rich through their own labor and that they should be treated politi-cally as wealthy middle peasants The meeting also emphasized that new rich peasants should be continued to exist in new democratic rural areas following the success of the revolution Some regions even wrote into policy that new rich peasants whose interests had been egregiously infringed should be com-pensated Nevertheless these policies were never thoroughly implemented So during this great movement to evenly divide the land those new rich peasants who had been created with the encouragement and support of democratic governments in resistance bases during the war against Japan were mostly re-duced to the status of middle peasants and in some cases beaten down to the level of poor peasants although in general they fared better than landlords and old rich peasants Also the economic model which new rich peasants had brought to the countryside was fundamentally abolished3
Immediately before and after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of Chi-na old areas4 gained peaceful stable social environments as they were the first to implement land reforms Rural economies in those areas were restored and began developing anew relatively early and so this is where new rich peas-ants first appeared A telegram sent on May 17 1949 by the ccp Provincial Party Secretary of Liaodong Province5 Zhang Wentian 张闻天 to the Northeast Bu-reau 东北局 and Mao Zedong 毛泽东 indicates that the lives of the major-ity of rural citizens (ie peasants) had improved as a result of rural economic development and that class division had already begun The majority of poor
55The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
67
6 Zhang Wentian xuanji 《张闻天选集》[Selected Works of Zhang Wentian] (Beijing Ren-min chubanshe 1985) 447ndash448
7 Zhongguo tudi gaige shiliao xuanbian 《中国土地改革史料选编》[Selected Historical Materials from Chinarsquos Land Reforms] ed China Land Reforms Editing Department and the Modern Economic History Department of the China Academy of Social Sciences Economic Institute (Beijing Guofang daxue chubanshe 1988) 690
peasant and hired farmhand households had been elevated to the status of middle peasant households which now comprised the majority in rural ar-eas Some poor peasant and hired farmhand households which had been al-located land and livestock still faced difficulties A minority of those originally deemed to be middle peasants had quickly become new rich peasants6 Per a report the North China Bureau dispatched to the ccp Central Committee in May 1950 following the production movement of 1948 and 1949 the majority of poor peasants hired farmhands and middle peasants inhabiting the coun-tryside in ldquoold areasrdquo of North China which had completed land reforms in 1947 had shirked off poverty and had seen their status rise in those areas middle peasants now comprised the absolute majority A survey conducted in 3097 households in twenty-three villages of the provinces of Hebei and Chahar in-dicates that the proportion of poor peasant and hired farmhand households to total rural households fell from fifty-one percent prior to land reforms down to fifteen percent while the proportion of middle peasant households grew from 376 percent to seventy-seven percent only one formerly affluent middle peas-ant household had elevated his status to that of new rich peasant7 These data regarding new rich peasants publicized long ago indicate that the new rich peasants of the Peoplersquos Republic of China were created against a socioeco-nomic background of recovering rural economic growth universal economic improvement for rural citizens and the fact that middle peasant households came to comprise the majority in rural areas
A large amount of materials regarding new rich peasants was later pub-lished but the movement for agricultural collectivization that followed land reforms overshadowed the issue and the Chinese countryside did not again engage in universal open class division The records that do exist pertain-ing to new rich peasants are scattered across a variety of rural investigative reports Many of these investigations were conducted on small scales offer piecemeal explanations are scattered or are incomplete It is not possible to shed light on the broader picture of new rich peasants across China from only these few fragmentary documents To write this essay I compiled and organized all the materials I could collect pertaining to this issue selecting for use those written by authoritative investigative bodies those covering a wide
SU56
ltUNgt
8
8 The materials I used to write this essay can be divided into two groups The first consists of rural investigation materials conducted by provincial regional city-level and county-level organizations The second consists of investigations conducted into rural household expenditures and incomes for 1954 by the National Bureau of Statistics in spring 1955 All of these investigations were one-off and so none is exactly the same in the body conducting the investigations the scope or targets of the investigations investigative methodology or statistical bore Thus none of the reports are strictly suitable for conducting vertical or hori-zontal comparisons It is now impossible to remedy shortages of research materials caused by historical reasons These materials can however give us a general impression of the basic conditions of new rich peasants at the time
scale those which collected a large quantity of samples and those which employed relatively scientific methodologies Such sampling enabled me to paint a comprehensive picture of the creation of new rich peasants in the Peoplersquos Republic of China8
Letrsquos first look at old areas in the Northeast Of four reports written by the ccp Central Northeast Bureau Rural Work Department regarding surveys con-ducted in 5510 households in seventeen typical villages of four counties in the three provinces of Heilongjiang Jilin and Liaodong some reports did not even touch on the issue of new rich peasants Some reported not having discovered any new rich peasants and some reported that there were ldquovery fewrdquo new rich peasants without providing any concrete data Only one of the reports makes mention of the example of one single new rich peasant household Of course this may just be a reflection of the fact that rural economic investigations con-ducted at the time did not place emphasis on rural class division
The conditions of new rich peasants in northeastern regions in 1951 and 1952 are indicated in Tables 21 and 22
Tables 21 and 22 indicate that there was relatively rapid growth in the num-ber of new rich peasants in the Northeast during the years 1951 and 1952 as compared to the years prior to 1950 The total proportion in 1951 was less than one percent but exceeded one percent in 1952
Lastly letrsquos take a look at the situation in the Northeast in 1953 and 1954 The results of an survey conducted in 8930 households in thirty-three typical villages of six provinces of the NortheastmdashHeilongjiang Songjiang Jilin Lia-oning Liaoxi and Rehemdashindicate that new rich peasants accounted for 142 percent of the total population surveyed (see Table 23)
The results of an investigation conducted in 1954 by the National Bureau of Statistics in 1735 households in the three Northeastern provinces of Heilongji-ang Jilin and Liaoning indicate that new rich peasants accounted for 133 per-cent of the total population surveyed (see Table 24)
57The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
Table 21 The conditions of new rich peasants as reflected by a rural economic survey into the six provinces of the northeast in 1951
Province Typical villages surveyed
Total households
New rich peasant households
Percentage of new rich peasant households ()
Heilongjiang Yongrsquoan and Xirsquoan Villages in 16th Dist Hailun County
394 3 067
Xiangyang Village Nehe County
470 5 106
Songjiang Mengjing Village Hulan County
234 2 086
Gonghe Changsheng and Haihong Villages Acheng County
366 None found
Liaoxi Cuijiatun Village 2nd Dist Heishan County
260 None found
Liaodong 4 villages in Tonghua Region
421 4 095
Guanfansi Village Hai-cheng County Nuanquan Village Gaiping county
988 15 152
Rehe 9 villages in Beipiao Ningcheng and Longhua Counties
1938 None found
Total of above
23 villages in 5 provinces 5071 29 057
Jilin Province-wide comprehensive rural economic data
Total 1
Data source compiled from ten rural economic investigative reports from 1951 contained within the 1950ndash1952 nian dongbei nongcun diaocha huiji 《 1 9 5 0 ~ 1 9 5 2 年东北农村调查汇集》 [Compilation of Northeastern Rural Investigations Years 1950ndash1952] edited by the ccp Central Northeast Bureaursquos Rural Work Department
SU58
ltUNgt
9
9 ldquoZhonggong zhongyang dongbeiju nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu ge sheng 26 ge cun diaocha de huibao jiyao (1953 nian 12 yue)《中共中央东北局农村工作部关于各省2 6个村调
查的汇报纪要( 19 5 3年 1 2月)》[Summary of Reports Conducted by the cpc Central Northeast Bureaursquos Rural Work Department into 26 Villages in Every Province (December 1953)]rdquo in 1953 nian dongbei nongcun diaocha huiji 《 19 5 3年东北农村调查汇集》
[Compilation of Northeastern Rural Investigations 1953] vol 2 ed cpc Central Northeast Bureau Rural Work Department 3
Table 22 The Conditions of new rich peasants in fourteen typical villages of three provinces of the northeast in 1952
Total rural households
New rich peasant households
Percentage of new rich peasant households to total ()
5 villages in Keshan Hailun and Zhaoyuan Counties Heilongjiang Province
1055 32 303
6 typical villages of Rehe Province 1488 18 123 villages of Liaoxi Province 1132 1 0114-village totals 3675 51 139
Data source compiled from four rural economic investigative reports from 1952 contained within the 1950ndash1952 nian dongbei nongcun diaocha huiji《 1 9 5 0 ~ 1 9 5 2 年东北农村调查汇集》 [Compilation of Northeastern Rural Investigations Years 1950ndash1952] edited by the ccp Central Northeast Bureaursquos Rural Work Department
The above data indicate that in the Northeast from the end of land reforms in 1948 until 1950 very few new rich peasants were created as the rural economy recovered From 1951 to 1952 the new rich peasant economy began to grow as economic rejeuvenation trended toward growth From 1953 to 1954 there was a slowing to the creation of new rich peasants Of course even within the Northeast conditions from province to province varied widely The summary of a survey report issued by the ccp Northeast Bureau Rural Work Department in December 1953 indicates conditions in 1953 ldquoThere are slightly fewer new rich peasants in Northern Manchuria than in 1952 but slightly more in the Southern Manchuria Special Production Zonerdquo9
59The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
Table 23 The proportion of new rich peasants to total rural populations as indicated by rural economic investigations conducted in six provinces of the northeast in 1953
Province Region county village Total rural households
New rich peasant households
Percentage of new rich peasant households to total ()
Heilongjiang 9 villages in Baicheng Keshan Hailun and Zhaoyuan Counties
1776 21 118
Songjiang Nongfeng Tianmao and Jinbu Villages in 7th Dist Shuangcheng County
1074 4 037
Jilin Xinyu Xinrsquoan and Xinzao Villages in 10th Dist Yongji County
1256 25 199
Jiefang and Guangming Villages in 13th Dist Yushu County
696 18 267
Liaoning Sitaizi Dongguantun and Beilitun Villages in 2nd Dist Gaiping County
552 7 17
Liaoxi 6 villages in Lishu and Yi Counties
1855 46 25
Rehe 7 villages in Chengde Chifeng and Zhaoyang Counties
1721 6 035
Totals 33 villages in 6 provinces 8930 127 142
Data source Compiled from six investigative reports and two summary reports contained in issues 1 and 2 of 1953 nian dongbei nongcun diaocha huiji《 1 9 5 3年东北农村调查汇集》 [Compilation of Rural Investigations in the Northeast in 1953] edited by the ccp Central Northeast Bureaursquos Rural Work Department
SU60
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 2
4 Ne
w ri
ch p
easa
nts i
n tw
enty
-one
pro
vinc
es a
roun
d th
e cou
ntry
in 19
54
Regi
onPr
ovin
ceH
ouse
hold
s su
rvey
edN
ew ri
ch p
easa
nt c
ondi
tions
No
of n
ew
rich
pea
sant
ho
useh
olds
Clas
s sta
tuse
s at t
he e
nd o
f lan
d re
form
sPe
rcen
tage
of
new
rich
pe
asan
t ho
useh
olds
to
prov
inci
al to
tal
()
No
of n
ew
rich
pea
sant
ho
useh
olds
in
regi
on
Perc
enta
ge o
f ne
w ri
ch p
eas-
ant h
ouse
hold
s to
regi
onal
tota
l (
)
Poor
pea
sant
s (h
ouse
hold
s)M
iddl
e pe
asan
ts
(hou
seho
lds)
Land
lord
s (h
ouse
hold
s)
Nor
thea
stLi
aoni
ng50
09
27
ndash1
823
133
Jilin
537
92
7ndash
168
Hei
long
jiang
698
52
3ndash
072
Nor
th C
hina
Heb
ei1
019
5ndash
41
049
100
47Sh
anxi
893
4ndash
4ndash
048
Inne
r Mon
g27
81
ndash1
ndash0
36Ea
st C
hina
Jiang
su50
02
ndash2
ndash0
421
057
Anhu
i98
47
25
ndash0
71Zh
ejia
ng46
01
1ndash
ndash0
16Sh
ando
ng1
054
102
8ndash
095
Fujia
n49
91
ndash1
ndash0
2N
orth
wes
tG
ansu
600
2ndash
2ndash
033
120
62Q
ingh
ai20
01
ndash1
ndash0
5
61The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
Dat
a so
urce
Com
pile
d fro
m Y
ijiuw
usi n
ian
quan
guo
nong
jia sh
ouzh
i dia
ocha
zilia
o《一
九五
四年
全国
农家
收支
调查
资料
》[I
nves
tigat
ive
Mat
eria
ls Re
gard
ing
Nat
ionw
ide
Rura
l Hou
seho
ld E
xpen
ditu
res a
nd In
com
es in
1954
] ed
ited
by th
e Pe
ople
rsquos Re
publ
ic o
f Chi
na N
atio
nal B
urea
u of
Sta
tistic
s (M
ay
1956
) Am
ong
the
twen
ty-fi
ve p
rovi
nces
and
regi
ons o
f the
cou
ntry
at t
he ti
me
Reh
e Ji
angx
i an
d G
uang
xi d
id n
ot re
port
rele
vant
figu
res
and
the
figur
es
repo
rted
by
Yunn
an d
id n
ot a
dher
e to
nat
iona
l uni
fied
stan
dard
s Th
us I
have
incl
uded
dat
a on
143
34 h
ouse
hold
s fro
m th
e re
mai
ning
twen
ty-o
ne p
rovi
nces
G
uang
dong
Pro
vinc
ial A
rchi
ves W
A07-
61middot2
22
Shaa
nxi
100
08
ndash8
ndash0
8Xi
njia
ng14
01
ndash1
ndash0
71So
uth-
cent
ral a
nd
Sout
h Ch
ina
Hen
an99
33
ndash3
ndash0
315
047
Hub
ei70
01
ndash1
ndash0
14H
unan
697
1ndash
1ndash
014
Gua
ngdo
ng81
610
37
ndash1
23So
uthw
est
Gui
zhou
500
ndashndash
ndashndash
ndashndash
Sich
uan
1140
ndashndash
ndashndash
Tota
l14
344
8114
661
057
81
SU62
ltUNgt
The overall situation of the Northeast shows us the general trends of new rich peasant creation in old and new areas However widely varying socio-economic conditions across different regions meant great disparities in the degree of new rich peasant creation A survey conducted into 6023 households in twenty typical townships of Shanxi Province indicates that new rich peas-ant households accounted for only 008 percent of total households surveyed in 1952 That figure was down to 006 percent in 195410 That is to say that the development trend of new rich peasants here was roughly similar to that of the Northeast but the proportion of new rich peasant households here was significantly lower than in the Northeast
Land reforms in new areas began in the autumn and winter of 1950 with most complete by 1951 or 1952 That left only two or three years of time for the rural individual economy to grow before the advent of agricultural coop-eratives After 1952 there were great changes to the rural policy environment Therefore there was little time for new rich peasants to be created in new ar-eas and those who were created mostly did not fall into standard patterns A survey conducted into 3754 households in twelve townships of Hubei prov-ince discovered no new rich peasant households in 1952 and only twelve in 1954 accounting for 032 percent of total households surveyed11 A survey con-ducted into 3575 households in nine townships of Hunan province indicates the proportion of new rich peasant households to total households to be 017 percent in 1952 025 percent in 1953 and 011 percent in 195412 A survey con-ducted by the Jiangxi Provincial Committee in 3638 households in nine typi-cal townships of Jiangxi indicates that no new rich peasant households were created in 1952 but four emerged in 1954 accounting for 011 percent of total households surveyed13 A survey conducted in 2893 households of ten town-ships of Anhui province indicates that 072 percent of households surveyed 10111213
10 Shanxi sheng 20 ge dianxing xiang diaocha ziliaothinspmiddotthinsptudi gaige jieshu shiqi (1952ndash1954) 《山
西省2 0个典型乡调查资料 middot 土地改革结束时期(1952~1954 年)》[Investigation Materials Regarding 20 Typical Townships of Shanxi Provincethinspmiddotthinspthe End of Land Reforms (1952ndash1954)] May 1956 Shanxi Provincial Archives 6805
11 Hubei sheng shirsquoer ge dianxing xiang diaocha tongji biao (1955 nian) 《湖北省十二个典
型乡调查统计表( 19 5 5年)》[Statistical Tables from Investigations into Twelve Typical Townships of Hubei Province (1955)] Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-154
12 See Note on Hunan rural economic investigations in References13 Guanyu quansheng (9 ge dianxing xiang) jingji diaocha zonghebiao 《关于全省(9个
典型乡)经济调查综合表》[Comprehensive Tables Regarding Economic Investigations into 9 Typical Townships Across the Province] ed Jiangxi Provincial Committee Investiga-tive Group 1956 Jiangxi Provincial Archives X006-2-13
63The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
were new rich peasant households down to 045 percent in 195414 Hunan Hubei and Jiangxi completed land reforms well after the provinces of the Northeast generally finishing in 1952 The ccp Central South-Central Bureau Rural Work Department launched an investigation into twelve typical town-ships of Guangdong at the end of 1953 Surveyors there reported an even lower proportion of new rich peasant households than in Hunan Hubei and Jiangxi A nationwide survey into rural household expenditures and incomes in 1954 revealed that the proportion of new rich peasant households in Guangzhou was 123 percent (see Table 24) That gave Guangdong a relatively high propor-tion of new rich peasant households as compared to the rest of the country
In summary after land reforms new rich peasant creation hit its peak more or less between 1953 and 1954 Beginning in the second half of 1955 China ex-perienced a fervor for establishing rural collectives at which point the new rich peasant and rural individual household economies abruptly died out In the spring of 1955 the National Bureau of Statistics and rural work departments of all provinces conducted a concentrated investigation into rural economic conditions over 1954 in order to aid the development of rural cooperatives Their work provided us with relatively systematized data for the study of the new rich peasant issue Thus in the following section we shall use 1954 as our focus year for the study of the scale distribution and economic characteristics of the creation of new rich peasants prior to the cooperative movement Of course we must also incorporate analysis of conditions prior to 1954 as the general line for the transitionary period was established in 1953 at which time central officials instituted the state monopoly for grains cotton oil and other important agricultural products exerting a great influence on the develop-ment of the new rich peasant economy
ii The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants in 1954
Prior to the spring planting of 1955 the National Bureau of Statistics conducted an investigation into the 1954 expenditures and incomes of rural households in twenty-five provinces and autonomous regions For this investigation the Bu-reau designed a unified methodology for sample collection The investigation sent 5000 active cadres into 16468 rural households in 824 villages around the 14
14 Anhui sheng nongcun dianxing diaocha (tudi gaige jieshu zhi 1954 nian) 《安徽省农村典
型调查(土地改革结束至 19 5 4年)》[Typical Investigations into Rural Areas of Anhui Province ( from the End of Land Reforms to 1954)] ed cpc Anhui Provincial Committee Rural Work Department 中共安徽省委农村工作部办公室
SU64
ltUNgt
country Once complete the Bureau compiled data from 15432 households from twenty-three provinces After the data were collected the entire inves-tigation was examined and studied before being made public For this reason this document is an important piece of evidence for understanding the chang-es and trends in class changes taking place in rural areas across the country up to 1954 The conditions of new rich peasants from most of the countryrsquos prov-inces regions and autonomous regions are indicated in Table 24
Table 44 indicates that new rich peasant households accounted for 057 percent of all surveyed rural households included in the tablersquos datamdash14344 households across twenty-one provinces At the time land reforms ended 815 percent of these new rich peasant households had been middle peasant households 173 percent had been poor peasant households and 12 percent had been landlord households Although most had been deemed middle peas-ant households a substantial amount had also been classified poor peasant households
If we break the data down by province or autonomous region we can see that Liaoning had the highest proportion of new rich peasant households at 18 percent Other provinces or autonomous regions exceeding the national aver-age were in order Jilin Guangdong Shandong Shaanxi Heilongjiang Anhui and Xinjiang all exceeding 07 percent The provinces with the fewest new rich peasant families were in order Sichuan Guizhou Hubei Hunan Zhejiang and Fujian all coming in below 03 percent The remaining provinces and au-tonomous regions of Qinghai Hebei Shanxi Jiangsu Inner Mongolia Gansu and Henan all registered between 03 and 05 percent
If we break it down by larger administrative divisions the Northeast had the highest proportion of new rich peasant households followed by the North-west East Chinarsquos proportion was even with the national average North China and central China both fell below the national average and two provinces of the Southwest did not report discovering any new rich peasants
iii Analysis of the Factors Determining the Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
In order to study the patterns behind the creation of new rich peasants we broke the data into units of provinces (or autonomous regions) and selected such indicators as rural per capita income levels the proportion of commune-member rural households to total rural households and the proportion of middle peasant households to total rural households as well as such factors as differentiation between new and old areas We used these criteria to ana-lyze the factors behind the scale and distribution of the creation of new rich
65The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
peasants We also examined the influence on the creation and development of new rich peasants of the time at which land reforms were completed the level of rural economic development the level of middle-peasant-ization the degree of severity of rural policies and the political climate in a given area
The correlation coefficient between the proportion of new rich peasant households to total households and the level of rural per capita income is 0266 calculated based on the data in Table 25 That is to say that there is a
Table 25 Comparisons of per capita (total) incomes and proportions to total rural population of new rich peasant households commune member households and poor peasant households in twenty provinces and regions in 1954
Province Total households surveyed
Per capita income (yuan)
Percentage of new rich peasant households ()
Percentage of middle peasant + commune member households ()
Percentage of commune member households ()
Hebei 1019 14957 049 8116 815Shanxi 839 16715 048 8641 2062Shaanxi 1000 19712 08 643 05Shandong 1054 13218 095 6831 398Henan 993 13365 03 6294 111Liaoning 500 18215 18 718 9Jilin 537 16486 168 6536 95Heilongjiang 698 19189 072 5602 831Inner Mong 278 21615 036 6007 791Gansu 600 19011 033 6533 133Qinghai 200 26550 05 69 05Jiangsu 500 15517 04 65 12Anhui 984 12893 071 5132 274Zhejiang 640 16359 016 6688 078Hubei 700 13787 014 7229 186Hunan 697 14904 014 6901 029Sichuan 1140 14383 0 6202 053Guangdong 816 17367 123 5453 208Guizhou 500 9454 0 682 2Fujian 499 19495 02 6814 441
Data source Same as Table 24 The Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was omitted from this list as data on its class structure at the time are incomplete
SU66
ltUNgt
15
15 See Note on Hunan rural economic investigations in References
positive correlation between these two factors but the correlation is weak In other words the correlation between the number of new rich peasants and the degree of economic development is not strong
However if we look at different periods of time within a single province we discover a different situation Letrsquos take Hunan as an example The harvests of nine typical Hunan towns surveyed in 1952 and 1953 were relatively good The per capita annual grain income of households in the survey increased from 14267 jin to 1572 jin an increase of 102 percent Of these same households the proportion of new rich peasant households increased from 017 percent to 025 percent In 1954 widespread crop failures due to waterlogging caused decreases in agricultural output Rural household per capita grain income fell to 12277 jin a drop of 219 percent from the previous year there was a corresponding reduction of the proportion of new rich peasant households of 011 percent (see Table 26) These data reported by the Hunan government indicate that as the rural economy developed and rural incomes increased the number of new rich peasants also increased at the same time the income disparity be-tween new rich peasants and other classes of peasant households shrank The data also indicate that as agricultural output fell so did rural income levels and the overall proportion of new rich peasant households at the same time the income disparity between new rich peasants and other classes of peasant
Table 26 Per capita rural incomes and the proportion of new rich peasant households to total rural households in nine townships of hunan province 1952ndash195415
Total house holds surveyed
Per capita income (in jin of grain)
Non-new-rich-peasants New rich peasants
Year Number of households
Per capita income (in jin of grain)
Number of households
Percentage of total households ()
Per capita income (in jin of grain)
1952 3488 14267 3482 14251 6 017 211151953 3284 1572 3276 15715 8 025 1998841954 3575 12277 3571 12262 4 011 20061
67The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
1617
16 I must clarify here that the reason behind the reduction of new rich peasant per capita income in 1953 might be that newly created new rich peasant households lagged eco-nomically behind existing new rich peasant households This may have resulted in the per capita income drop When there was a reduction to the total of new rich peasant households in 1954 economically weak new rich peasants fell from the stratum of new rich peasants as a result of the crop failures This may have caused the rebound to per capita income levels in this year
17 These data reflect the degree of middle-peasant-ization This is because most peasant households joining communes at this time had originally been middle peasants and be-cause commune-member households were on nearly identical economic footing with middle peasant households
households grew16 Such disparities indicate that in the nine Hunan towns of the survey reduction to the income of other classes of peasant households was not a prerequisite for the creation of new rich peasants Rather the creation of new rich peasants was attributable to economic development and universal increases to rural incomes
Using data contained in Table 25 we calculated a coefficient of correlation of minus0144 between the proportion of middle peasant households+commune-member households and new rich peasant households across the provinces and autonomous regions17 That is to say that there is a negative correlation between the two but the correlation is relatively weak In other words there was a weak relationship between the number of new rich peasants and the degree of middle-peasant-ization
Also using data contained in Table 25 we calculated a coefficient of correla-tion of 0347 between the proportion of rural commune-member households to total rural households (which reflects the level of agricultural cooperatiza-tion) and the proportion of new rich peasant households to total rural house-holds This coefficient indicates a positive correlation but a weak one It is generally held that the higher the level of agricultural cooperatization in an area the more rigorous that arearsquos policies were toward new rich peasants the higher the political pressure on them and thus the more restrictions were im-posed on the creation of new rich peasants If this were the case there should have been a negative correlation between the two variables but we found the case to be the opposite This conclusion indicates that many factors influenced the creation and development of new rich peasants Analysis of a single factor would be insufficient to explain the complex socioeconomic factors influenc-ing the creation of new rich peasants
Letrsquos break down the 21 provinces and provincial-level areas into three groups old areas new areas and crossover zones between old and new ar-eas As shown in Table 27 there was a higher proportion of new rich peasant
SU68
ltUNgt
households in old areas than in crossover zones and the proportion was high-er in crossover zones than in new areas That said proportions varied widely from province to province even within similar areas Table 24 shows us that the highest proportions of new rich peasant households were concentrated in the three northeastern provinces and Shandong Provincemdashin old areasmdashand provinces like Shaanxi in the crossover zone but also in areas such as Guang-dong Anhui Xinjiang and so on All provinces containing proportions of new rich peasant households less than 03 percent were in the new areas However such provinces as Hebei and Shanxi in the old areas and Henan in the cross-over zone exhibited proportions of new rich peasant households lower than the national average
The above analysis leads us to the following conclusionsFirst generally speaking old areas were the first to complete land reforms
and experience rejuvenation in rural economies Thus relatively higher pro-portions of affluent peasant households appeared in the old areas It would have been impossible for all peasants to have identical experiences amid rural individual economic competition across the country therefore it was inevi-table that new differences in economic conditions would arise
Second there was not a clear relationship between the degree of rural af-fluence and the proportion of new rich peasant households to total peasant households from province to province However the situation is different if one looks within similar areas For example rural conditions in Hunan from
Table 27 The proportion of new rich peasant households to total rural households in old areas new areas and the crossover zone between old and new areas in 1954
Total households surveyed
New rich peasant households
Percentage of new rich peasant households to total ()
Old areas total 4674 42 09Crossover zone total 1993 11 055New areas total 7694 28 036
Data source Same as Table 24 Here the old areas include such provinces as Liaoning Jilin Heilongjiang Hebei Shanxi and Shandong The crossover zones include the provinces of Shaanxi and Henan New areas include such provincial-level regions as Inner Mongolia Xinjiang Qinghai Gansu Hubei Hunan Jiangsu Zhejiang Anhui Fujian Guangdong Sichuan and Guizhou This is very rough division
69The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
1952 to 1954 indicate that the situation was not as some have surmised it to be that a small number of people swallowed up the resources of others in order to engage in capital accumulation thus causing the majority to fall into poverty Rather the situation was that most peasants were hardworking strove for busi-ness success and saw their economic stars rise Some made economic gains faster than others which caused them to become new rich peasants Of course some peasants made economic gains slowly or struggled to make any gains at all There is not however a definite direct correlation between this phenom-enon and the emergence of new rich peasants this was rather a reflection of individual natures These peasants and their families had little resources to begin with and did not benefit amply from land reforms Some had little or in some cases no capacity for labor Some were not gifted in business and some suffered natural or man-made calamities Some were just lazy An investiga-tion into thirty-five townships in the South-central region in 1953 indicates that of two thirds of poor peasant households which comprised about thirty percent of total rural households had experienced economic growth following land reforms as a result of government assistance and were near to the level of middle peasant households The remaining third (about ten percent of total rural households) had not experienced any economic improvement and had in fact suffered economic losses Some of these troubled households possessed insufficient means of production and some had suffered natural or man-made calamities The primary reason for their condition however was insufficient capacity for labor The majority of such households consisted of widowers widows orphans the childless the elderly and the infirmed and the families of martyrs of the revolution they were in need of assistance and support from the government
Third before the agricultural cooperative movement hit its crescendo the proportion of new rich peasant households to total households in areas with relatively high degrees of rural cooperatization and restrictive policies on new rich peasants was not necessarily lower thanmdashand in some cases was higher thanmdashother areas This proportion reflects the contradictory nature of rural economic policies in the period before the agricultural cooperative movement peaked In other words the only way to promote rural economic development following land reforms was to give policy support to individual peasant house-holds striving to increase output and run their businesses At the same time the government was encouraging the masses of peasants to strive to increase output and expand accumulation it was also restricting the emergence of eco-nomic disparities amid economic competition of individual rural families as well as the creation of new rich peasant households These two policy direc-tions were in direct conflict with one another It was precisely this conflict that
SU70
ltUNgt
18
18 National Bureau of Statistics 1954 nian woguo nongjia shouzhi diaocha baogao 《 19 5 4
年我国农家收支调查报告》[Investigative Reports into the Expenditures and Incomes of Chinese Rural Households in 1954] (Beijing Tongji chubanshe 1957) 13ndash14
caused the government to later accelerate the pace of agricultural cooperatiza-tion and collectivization thereby rooting out the driver of the creation of new rich peasants by eliminating the individual economy
In the above sections we have analyzed the scale and geographic distribu-tion of the creation of new rich peasants around the country in the period of time following land reforms but before the crescendo of the agricultural cooperative movement So what influence did the creation of new rich peas-ants exert on the changes taking place to rural class structure Per an inves-tigation into rural household expenditures and incomes conducted in 1954 poor peasant households accounted for 571 percent of total rural households at the time land reforms ended By the end of 1954 469 percent of poor peas-ant households (ie 268 percent of total rural households) had been elevated to the status of middle peasants This status elevation caused an important change to the rural class structure That is to say that the proportion of poor peasant households to total rural households fell to 29 percent while the pro-portion of middle peasants to the total rose from 358 percent at the end of land reforms to 622 percentmdashnearly two thirds of total householdsmdashby the end of 1954 causing them to comprise the bulk of the rural population At the same time old rich peasant households accounted for 36 percent of total rural households at the end of land reforms By the end of 1954 565 percent (21 percent of the total rural population) of old rich peasant households had fallen to the level of either middle or poor peasants At this time scarcely any new rich peasants were created and those who did get created were created slowly such households came to comprise only 06 percent of total rural households Thus the proportion of both old and new rich peasant households combined by the end of 1954 to total rural households was only 21 percent a reduction of 15 percent from the end of land reforms18 On the basis of the above analysis we can conclude that the trend of changes to rural class structure in the period of time between the end of land reforms to the crescendo of the agricultural cooperative movement was reduction at both extremes and concentration in the middle Of course it was not possible for all peasants to take identi-cal paths toward affluence following land reforms Very few new rich peasants were created as a result of economic competition in small-scale commerce among peasants Some peasant households made economic gains slowly or struggled to make any gains at all This phenomenon was inevitable during the
71The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
19
19 Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu shang 若干重大决策与事
件的回顾 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 1] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1991) 208
course of middle-peasant-ization This process did not in any way conform to what is generally referred to as ldquopolarizationrdquo As the government enacted a series of new democratic policies following land reforms to actively aid and support peasants in poverty this process of differentiation was limited to a cer-tain scope I agree with Bo Yiborsquos 薄一波 assessment in his book A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events In Borsquos view although there was a nega-tive side to the differentiation occurring in rural populations under historical conditions of the times this differentiation was beneficial to promoting gains in productivity So long as we perform our work well the negative side wonrsquot result in any destructive consequences19
References
1950ndash1952 nian dongbei nongcun diaocha huiji《 1950~ 1952年东北农村调查汇集》
[Compilation of Northeastern Rural Investigations Years 1950ndash1952] ed CPC Cen-tral Northeast Bureaursquos Rural Work Department
Anhui sheng nongcun dianxing diaocha (tudi gaige jieshu zhi 1954 nian)《安徽省农村
典型调查(土地改革结束至 1954年)》[Typical Investigations into Rural Areas of Anhui Province ( from the End of Land Reforms to 1954)] ed CPC Anhui Provincial Committee Rural Work Department 中共安徽省委农村工作部办公室
Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu shang《若干重大决策与
事件的回顾》上[A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 1] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1991)
Guanyu quansheng (9 ge dianxing xiang) jingji diaocha zonghebiao《关于全省(9个
典型乡)经济调查综合表》[Comprehensive Tables Regarding Economic Investiga-tions into 9 Typical Townships Across the Province] ed Jiangxi Provincial Committee Investigative Group 1956 Jiangxi Provincial Archives X006-2-13
Hubei sheng shirsquoer ge dianxing xiang diaocha tongji biao (1955 nian)《湖北省十二个
典型乡调查统计表( 1955年)》[Statistical Tables from Investigations into Twelve Typical Townships of Hubei Province (1955)] Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-154
National Bureau of Statistics 1954 nian woguo nongjia shouzhi diaocha baogao 《 1954 年我国农家收支调查报告》[Investigative Reports into the Expenditures and In-comes of Chinese Rural Households in 1954] (Beijing Tongji chubanshe 1957)
Nongcun jingji yu nongmin fudan diaocha ziliao 《农村经济与农民负担调查资
料》[Materials Regarding Investigations into Rural Economies and the Burden on
SU72
ltUNgt
Peasants] volume 2 ed Central Peoplersquos Government Ministry of Finance Bureau of Agricultural Taxation (中央人民政府财政部农业税司) Shaanxi Provin-cial Archives D9-8-23
Shanxi sheng 20 ge dianxing xiang diaocha ziliaomiddottudi gaige jieshu shiqi (1952ndash1954) 《 山 西 省 20个 典 型 乡 调 查 资 料 middot 土 地 改 革 结 束 时 期 (1952~1954年 )》 [Investi-gation Materials Regarding 20 Typical Townships of Shanxi Provincemiddotthe End of Land Reforms (1952ndash1954)] May 1956 Shanxi Provincial Archives 6805
Zhang Wentian xuanji 《张闻天选集》[Selected Works of Zhang Wentian] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1985)
ldquoZhonggong zhongyang dongbeiju nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu ge sheng 26 ge cun diaocha de huibao jiyao (1953 nian 12 yue) 中共中央东北局农村工作部关于
各省26个村调查的汇报纪要( 1953年 12月) [Summary of Reports Conducted by the CPC Central Northeast Bureaursquos Rural Work Department into 26 Villages in Every Province (December 1953)]rdquo in 1953 nian dongbei nongcun diaocha huiji 《 1953年东北农村调查汇集》[Compilation of Northeastern Rural Investigations 1953] vol 2 ed CPC Central Northeast Bureau Rural Work Department 中共中央
东北局农村工作部 Zhongguo tudi gaige shiliao xuanbian 《中国土地改革史料选编》[Selected
Historical Materials from Chinarsquos Land Reforms] ed China Land Reforms Editing Department and the Modern Economic History Department of the China Academy of Social Sciences Economic Institute (Beijing Guofang daxue chubanshe 1988)
Note on Hunan rural economic investigations Data compiled from investigations conducted into nine townships from 1952 to 1953 and eight townships in 1953 as follows
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Xiangtan xian Qingxi xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于湘潭县清溪
乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from In-vestigations into the Economy of Qingxi Township Xiangtan County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Pro-vincial Archives 146-1-176
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Xiangtan xian Changle xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于湘潭县
长乐乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from Investigations into the Economy of Changle Township Xiangtan County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Provincial Archives 146-1-197
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Anxiang xian Zhulinyuan xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于安乡
县竹林垸乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables
73The Scale and Distribution of New Rich Peasants
ltUNgt
from Investigations into the Economy of Zhulinyuan Township Anxiang County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Provincial Archives 146-1-205
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Anxiang xian Jianjiadu xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于安乡
县蹇家渡乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from Investigations into the Economy of Jianjiadu Township Anxiang County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Provincial Archives 146-1-204
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Yuanling xian Xiaojiaqiao xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于沅陵
县肖家桥乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from Investigations into the Economy of Xiaojiaqiao Township Yuanling County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Provincial Archives 146-1-246
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Yuanling xian Mengfu xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于沅陵县
蒙福乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from Investigations into the Economy of Mengfu Township Yuanling County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Pro-vincial Archives 146-1-272
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Yuanling xian Mumaxi xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于沅陵县牧
马溪乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from Investigations into the Economy of Mumaxi Township Yuanling County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Provincial Archives 146-1-260
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Changsha xian Juantang xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于长沙县
卷塘乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from Investigations into the Economy of Juantang Township Changsha County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Provincial Archives 146-1-153
Shengwei nongcun gongzuo bu guanyu Changsha xian Caotang xiang 1952ndash1954 nian jingji qingkuang diaocha fenxi biao (1955 nian) 《省委农村工作部关于长
沙县草塘乡 1952~ 1954年经济情况调查分析表( 1955年)》[Analytical Tables from Investigations into the Economy of Caotang Township Changsha County from 1952ndash1954 Performed by the Provincial Committee Rural Work Department (1955)] Hunan Provincial Archives 146-1-265
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_005
ltUNgt
chapter 3
The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
Zhu Xianling Ding Zhaojun and Hu Huakai1
Abstract
From 1957 to 1958 Mao Zedong upheld the experience of Lijiazhai Village 厉家寨
村 in Shandong Province and Changge County in Henan Province in increasing crop yields through deep plowing He called for the entire country to learn from their ex-ample and meet objectives for increased yields through deep plowing In August 1958 the ccp Central Committee issued directives calling for all arable land in the country capable of being plowed to a depth of one chi or more to be so plowed within two to three years A spectacular nationwide frenzy for deep plowing erupted In the ensu-ing movement officials from around the country actively organized teams to learn from Changge Countyrsquos experience and methodologies in deep plowing dispatching the masses to the fields to launch a ldquodecisive military campaignrdquo against the earth Re-searchers developed or revised farm implements specifically for deep plowing and sci-entists summarized and argued for the effectiveness of deep plowing measures Some also conducted experiments for increasing yields through deep plowing Although it was scientifically possible to increase yields to a certain extent through deep plowing many problems arose around the country in 1958 as deep plowing was taken too far done on too much land or performed improperly in some cases decreasing soil fertil-ity The movementrsquos anticipated objectives were never met
Keywords
ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo ndash deep plowing ndash deep plowing implements
1 Zhu Xianling (朱显灵 ) is a doctorate in Confucian idealist philosophy and an associate research fellow in the department of science and technology history and archaeology at the University of Science and Technology of China Ding Zhaojun (丁兆君 ) is a lecturer in the museum of history at the University of Science and Technology of China Hu Huakai (胡化凯 ) is a professor in the department of science and technology history and archaeol-ogy at the University of Science and Technology of China
75The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
i Genesis of the Deep Plowing Movement
Land reforms were completed swiftly following the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China many rural citizens founded mutual aid teams and cooper-atives Some cooperatives made efforts in irrigation projects and land reclama-tion both of which markedly increased agricultural yields In 1951 the Liyueju 厉月举 team of Lijiazhai Village 厉家寨村 Yingnan County 莒南县 Shan-dong Province began experimenting with deep plowing They experienced in-creased yields in their very first year In 1953 the Liyueju teamrsquos average yield per mu of land was 228 kilograms an increase of 1255 kilograms per mu over the previous year In 1954 the Liyueju deep plowing system sparked a mass fervor for deep plowing In December 1955 the Lijiazhai Village advanced ag-ricultural producersrsquo collective began a program of large-scale irrigation works construction The slogan used for this program was ldquocleave ridges and fill in ravines change the courses of rivers turn over the land and advance into the mountainsrdquo Through hard work the collective changed the courses of five riv-ers flattened eleven mountains filled in twenty-one large ponds and over 300 ravines merged over 1000 scattered pieces of farmland into 118 large fields and increased arable land by an area of 192 mu Leadership at all levels took notice and lauded them for their fighting spirit2 On October 9 1957 Mao Zedong wrote the following memo upon reading the ldquoReport On the Repeated Bumper crop Harvests Achieved by Any Means Conceivable Realized by the Dashan Ag-ricultural Cooperative of Lijiazhai Township Yingnan County Shandong Prov-incerdquothinsp山 东 省 莒 南 县 厉 家 寨 乡 大 山 农 业 社 千 方 百 计 争 取 丰 收 再 丰 收
的报告 ldquoLijiazhai is a good example for reforming China with the spirit of yu gong yi shan [a Chinese saying that can be interpreted as lsquowhere therersquos a will therersquos a wayrsquo or more literally as lsquothe foolish old man who moves an entire mountain through sheer determinationrsquo]rdquo3 From this point forward Lijiazhai was extolled as the supreme example for agricultural and irrigation construc-tion around the country and deep plowing became an important experience for increasing agricultural yields
Around the same time in 1954 Director Ma Tongyi 马同义 of the Shengli 胜利 Number One Cooperative of Mengpai Village 孟排村 Changge County
2 Wang Ribin and Su Qinshu 王日彬孙钦书 ldquoMao Zedong san ge dianxing jingyan pishi gei women de qishi 毛泽东三个典型经验批示给我们的启示 [Inspirations that Three of Mao Zedongrsquos Classic Experiences and Memos Give to Us]rdquo Lingdao ganbu wang 领导干
部网 accessed from httpwww1dgbcomcnE_ReadNewsaspNewsID=815913 Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 6 ce 《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第6 册 [Mao Zedong
Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 6] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chu-banshe 1992) 599
ZHU DING AND HU76
ltUNgt
Henan Province summarized his deep plowing methodology He first applied sixty percent of his base fertilizer to the surface of mature soil then dug up that fertilized soil into piles He then applied the remaining 40 percent of his base fertilizer to the immature soil below and mixed up that soil layer with the fertilizer Then he pushed the previously fertilized mature soil back on top of the now fertilized immature soil Once an entire field had been so fertilized he moistened it with water and plowed the soil level in preparation for plant-ing Marsquos method called for plowing approximately thirty centimeters deep His reported yield of early corn was 5365 kilograms per mu4 The government of Changge County promoted Marsquos deep plowing method across the county in the winter of 1955 and spring of 1956 with a total of 29426 mu thus treated In the winter of 1957 the county government promoted the slogan ldquoturn up thousand-year-old soil and strive for output of 1500 jin per murdquo This slogan too set off a frenzy for deep plowing5
In May 1958 the first party secretary of the Changge County Committee Luuml Bingguang 吕炳光 made a report on deep plowing at the second meeting of the Communist Party of China (ccp)rsquos Eighth National Congress Luuml claimed that there were ten great advantages to deep plowing and went on to give a de-tailed explanation of his countyrsquos deep plowing methods and changes needed in farming implements to make the methods work Luuml said that 330000 mu of land in his county had been deep plowed to a depth of about 15 chi [unit of measure equal to one third of a meter] as of the end of April 1958 He also reported that the county committee had planned to have all 112 million mu of land in the county deep plowed and hoped to yield 800 jin of grain per mu He also gave several examples to show that deep plowing was an important mea-sure in the process of increasing yields He shared the following slogans ldquoplow deeper by one cun [unit of measure equal to one third of a decimeter] and cap it with manurerdquo and ldquowater is blood manure is grain and deep plowing is constructing granariesrdquo6 Luumlrsquos speech appeared in Renmin ribao 人民日报 the Peoplersquos Daily on May 137
4 Changge xian zhi 《长葛县志》 [Records of Changge County] (Shenghuomiddotdushumiddotxinzhi sanlian shudian 1992) 648
5 cpc Changge County Committee 中共长葛县委会 ldquoNongju da gexin tudi da fanshen 农具大革新土地大翻身 [Great Revolution in Farm Implements Great Turning of the Earth]rdquo Zhongguo nongbao 《中国农报》 3 (1958)
6 Although Luumlrsquos speech was based in fact the figures he presented regarding deep plowing methods and increased yields were exaggerated
7 Luuml Bingguang 吕炳光 ldquoTudi da fanshen zhengqu muchan babai jin 土地大翻身争取
亩产八百斤 [Great Turning of the Earth Strive for 800 Jin of Production per Mu]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 May 13 1958 fourth edition
77The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
In a speech to the second meeting of the Eighth ccp Congress Mao Zedong called for the entire country to promulgate Changge Countyrsquos experience He said ldquoDeep plowing of one chi and five cun is a great invention Changgersquos ex-perience poses a question to all other counties if Changge can deeply plow all of its 112 million mu can other counties not do the same If one year isnrsquot enough then take two years If two years isnrsquot enough then take three If three years isnrsquot enough then take four If four years isnrsquot enough surely five years can do the trickrdquo8 Maorsquos high appraisal of deep plowing touched off a wave of enthusiasm for the method among cadres at all levels After the meeting the entire country mobilized from the upper echelons down to the grassroots levels formally kicking off the deep plowing movement of the entire people
ii Apex of the Deep Plowing Movement
On July 11 1958 the Ministry of Agriculture convened the ldquoNationwide Deep Plowing Implements and Soil Improvementrdquo 全国深耕农具和改良土壤 on-the-spot meeting in Changge County With over 200 party leaders agriculture specialists and farm machinery technologists from around the country in at-tendance the Ministry promoted Changgersquos experiences in deep plowing and soil improvement The countyrsquos delegate to the meeting announced that the county had run a control with corn millet cotton sweet potatoes sesame and tobacco on soil that had not been deeply plowed The root systems of all crops planted in soil plowed between one and two chi deep had grown strong and ldquoyields were at least double those of fields not deeply plowed and in some cases multiple times higherrdquo At the meeting it was decided that the following principles were essential to deep plowing and soil improvement living soil on top donrsquot disrupt soil layers administer water and fertilizer together improve soil from the bottom up and strengthen the earthrsquos productivity Also impor-tant were making proper adjustments based on location and season and not blindly copying Changgersquos precedent word-by-word It was further decided that political leadership take control of the movement at all levels The entire party and entire population were mobilized under the mass debate of deep plowing and soil improvement unifying understanding and overcoming rightist con-servative thought Leadership demanded that every level of the state estab-lish plans clarify tasks involved grasp the key time period organize dedicated
8 Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu xia 《若干重大决策与事件
的回顾》下 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1997) 708
ZHU DING AND HU78
ltUNgt
teams and launch an all-out assault Leaders at the meeting demanded that the country strive to deeply plow and improve the soil of all of the over 16 bil-lion mu of arable land in the country before spring of 1959 The stated goal was to plow fields to a depth of about 15 chi two to three or more chi in particularly productive soil fertilize multiple layers of soil and convert all poor soil in the country into good soil9 This meeting abundantly confirmed the effects of deep plowing it turned out to be the pivotal moment when leading cadres from the Ministry of Agriculture mobilized the country to bring about Maorsquos vision of deep plowing
An enlarged meeting of the ccp Central Politburo was convened from August 17 to 30 1958 in Beidaihe On August 29 the meeting passed the ldquoccp Central Directives on Deep Plowing and Soil Improvementrdquo 中共中央关于
深耕和改良土壤的指示 which stressed that deep plowing was the core technical measure to be used to bring about increased agricultural yields The Directives noted that during the spring and summer plantings of 1958 only 120 million mu of landmdashless than one tenth of total arable land in the countrymdashhad been deeply plowed and that it would not be possible to deeply plow all land in the country even given ten years So the Directives demand-ed that all land which could be deeply plowed in the following two to three years be deeply plowed and that the deep plowing process be repeated on all previously deeply plowed land once every three years The standard for deep plowing established by the Directives was a depth of over one chi and over two chi in particularly productive land The Directives also made the following demands of all governments around the country ldquoguidance by political lead-ership mobilization of the entire party and action by the entire populacerdquo ldquoincite a frenzy for the deep plowing and soil improvement movementrdquo and ldquomake the high tide of output centered on deep plowing and soil improvement even higher in 1958 than in 1957 and ensure that an even greater leap is made in agricultural output in 1958 than was made in 1957rdquo10 On September 2 of that year Renmin ribao published an editorial extolling the advantages of deep plowing claiming that immature soil could be converted into mature soil and
9 Qu Mingzhen 曲明振 ldquoShengeng shenfan daliang zengchan quanguo jiang xianqi shen-fan he gailiang turang yundong 深耕深翻大量增产全国将掀起深翻和改良土壤
运动 [Deep Plowing Greatly Increases Yields The Entire Nation Will Launch a Move-ment for Deep Plowing and Soil Improvement]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 July 27 1958 fifth edition
10 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 11 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》
第 11 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 11] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1995) 459ndash462
79The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
mature soil into particularly fertile soil thereby greatly increasing overall soil fertility and allowing a single mu of land to produce as much as it had taken several mu to produce in the past The article claimed that deep plowing gener-ally increased agricultural yields by between fifty and 100 percent and in some cases as much as much as 300 to 500 percent or higher The editorial includ-edcomparison of Changge Countyrsquos agricultural productivity before and after deep plowing to illustrate the effectiveness of the method The author called for leadership around the country to be sufficiently decisive and for the entire party to mobilize the masses into a grand and spectacular movement11 Agri-cultural departments increased propagation and guided work per the Direc-tives and leadership from every region in the country dispatched delegates to Changge for observations A nationwide frenzy for the deep plowing and soil improvement was then swiftly launched
iii Methods and Measures of Deep Plowing
Once the movement had been launched the Peoplersquos Daily Zhongguo nongbao 中国农报 Nongye gongzuo tongxun 农业工作通讯 and other periodicals frequently published articles discussing new deep plowing methods that had been developed around the country The two most representative cases were those of Lijiazhai Village and Changge County Lijiazhai adopted two deep plowing methods ldquosparrow somersaultrdquo and ldquotwo immature soil layers around one mature soil layerrdquo Changge adopted over ten methods including ldquotwo-layer deep plowing and widespread turning of earthrdquo ldquoman-power widespread deep turningrdquo ldquoman-power ditch turningrdquo ldquocombined man-and-beast plowingrdquo ldquofirst shallow single plowing then double deep plowingrdquo ldquoplowingfollowed by pick-ingrdquo ldquotriple plowings to build a ridgerdquo ldquoplowing high and planting low methodrdquo ldquosingle-layer deep plowing and turningrdquo ldquosparrow big somersaultrdquo ldquodeep plow-ing in the middle shallow plowing on both sidesrdquo ldquoleaving immature soil intact while moving mature soilrdquo and others The ldquotwo-layer deep plowing and wide-spread turning of earthrdquo method consisted of one person driving two draft ani-mals to plow andturn the earth to a net depth of 12 chi driving the plowhead to a depth of 15 chi and turning three mu of earth per day The ldquoman-power widespread deep turningrdquo and ldquoman-power ditch turningrdquo methods were both man-powered the former used progressive deep soil turning and the latter used interlaced deep soil turning In the ldquocombined man-and-beast plowing
11 ldquoRang tudi lai ge da fanshen 让土地来个大翻身 [Let there Be a Great Turning of the Earth]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 September 2 1958 fourth edition
ZHU DING AND HU80
ltUNgt
methodrdquo a team of people drove draft animals to pull a seven cun walking plow to turn the surface soil followed by a team of people using hand-held plows to dig up the earth while applying fertilizer at the same time In the ldquofirst shal-low single plowing then double deep plowingrdquo method first a shallow walking plow is used followed by a deep double plow to dig up lower soil layers In the ldquodeep plowing in the middle shallow plowing on both sidesrdquo method first a double-layer double-furrow plow is used to turn the earth after which the soil is fertilized and then a seven cun shallow walking plow is used to plow shal-lowly piling the mature soil from either side into the middle to form ridges This last method calls for four people and four draft animals and can be used to plow five to six mu per day The depth in the middle is 12 chi and seven cun on either side This method is suitable for planting corn tobacco sweet potatoes and other wide-ridged crops12 Table 31 lists the depths and work efficiencies of the primary deep plowing methods used in Changge County
Table 31 shows that ldquoman-power widespread deeprdquo turning was the deepest of all the primary methods in Changgersquos deep plowing arsenal hitting depths of between two and three chi as compared to the other methods which came in at just over one chi in plowing depth Nevertheless the work efficiency of most deep plowing methods was low The ldquoman-power widespread deep turningrdquo method required twelve workers to turn a single mu of land The ldquoman-power ditch turningrdquo method required seven workers and the ldquocombined man-and-beast plowingrdquo method required three The above indicate that deeper plowing required more workers The use of improved deep-plowing implements (ie plows) markedly increased work efficiency but they reached no deeper than 15 chi In order to reach plowing depth of 15 chimdashand in some cases over a metermdashgovernments around the country drastically increased the number of workers deployed to perform this work
The Henan provincial government mobilized an army of millions of laborers organized into several specialized brigades They lived and ate in the fields where they worked spending day and night deep plowing the earth The government of Xiayi County 夏邑县 placed a high premium on deep plowing Officials there organized a troupe of laborers 200000 strong com-manded in military style organized into regiments battalions and companies This force was divided across over sixty ldquobattlefieldsrdquo where they launched an all-out assault on the land night and day The different tiers of government in Hebei Province also generally took deep plowing very seriously There party
12 Zhang Junchang and Niu Pu 张君常钮溥 ldquoChangge xian shenfandi de fangfa he kexue genju 长葛县深翻地的方法和科学根据 [The Methods and Scientific Basis of Changge Countyrsquos Deep Plowing]rdquo Nongye kexue tongxun 《农业科学通讯》 9 (1958)
81The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 3
1 M
etho
ds d
epth
s an
d wo
rk ef
ficie
ncy o
f dee
p pl
owin
g co
nduc
ted
in C
hang
ge C
ount
y H
enan
Pro
vinc
e
Met
hod
Two-
laye
r dee
p pl
owin
g an
d w
ides
prea
d tu
rnin
g of
ear
th
Man
-pow
er
wid
espr
ead
deep
turn
ing
Man
-pow
er
ditc
h tu
rnin
gCo
mbi
ned
man
-and
-be
ast
plow
ing
Plow
ing
follo
wed
by
pick
ing
Trip
le p
low
ings
to
bui
ld a
ridg
ePl
ow h
igh
and
plan
t low
Sing
le-la
yer
deep
plo
win
g an
d tu
rnin
g m
etho
d
Plow
ing
dept
h (c
hi)
15
2ndash3
15
15
12
12
Dra
ft an
imal
s re
quire
d
23
32
Labo
r (p
eopl
e x
days
mu)
029
127
03
02
00
331
00
30
Data
sour
ce c
cp C
hang
ge C
ount
y Co
mm
itte
e ldquoN
ongj
u da
gex
in t
udi d
a fa
nshe
n《农
具大
革新
土地
大翻
身》
[Gre
at R
evol
utio
n in
Farm
ing
Impl
emen
ts G
reat
Tur
ning
of
the
Eart
h]rdquo
Zhon
gguo
non
gbao
中国
农报
3 (19
58)
ZHU DING AND HU82
ltUNgt
secretaries were put in charge of the program and the entire party and entire populace were mobilized deep plowing command headquarters were estab-lished at every level of government from the county down to the commune The majority of agricultural cooperatives and peoplersquos communes organized deep plowing brigades and groups Those peoplersquos communes and peoplersquos mi-litia production and fighting brigades which had already completed labor-mil-itary integration comprised the bulk of the ldquofighting forcerdquo13 Statistics indicate that at this time Henan Hebei Shandong Shanxi Beijing Shaanxi Gansu Anhui Jiangsu and Hubei had already collectively deeply plowed a total of over 129 million mu Of those 10 provinces and cities the movement was par-ticularly vast in Henan Shandong Hebei and Beijing where a force over 32 million strong was waged war on the land night and day14
In early October 1958 the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee convened telephone conferences on deep plowing for party secretaries at the provincial city and county levels successively followed by a conference broadcast on mass media regarding a mass pledge to go all out in deeply plowing thereby completing concrete deployments and deep mobilization Provincial leaders called for party committees at every level to arouse the masses to take action of their own accord in the deep plowing movement In early October over 42 million people around the province participated in the war of deep plowing Over 877 million mu of land was deeply plowed five times the area that the mass pledge conference had called for15 The movement was taken seriously in
13 ldquoShenfan yi chi tu duo chan wan jin liang Henan Hebei qianbaiwan laodong dajun riye tuji fandi 深翻一尺土多产万斤粮河南河北千百万劳动大军日夜突击翻
地 [Deeply Plow and Increase Grain Yields by 10000 Jin Armies Millions Strong Staging an Earth-Turning Assault Day and Night in Hebei and Henan]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日
报》 September 12 1958 sixth edition14 ldquoXunsu tuiguang xianjin jingyan he shengsuo qianyin li ba shenfan tudi yundong
tuixiang gaochao 迅速推广先进经验和绳索牵引犁把深翻土地运动推向高潮 [Swiftly Promulgate Advanced Experience and Rope-Pulled Plows Push the Deep Plow-ing Movement to Crescendo]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 September 29 1958 third edition
15 ldquoMingnian nongye dafanshen xian yao jinnian tudi dafanshen Liaoning xingqi ri fan bai-wan mu yundong sibaiwan dajun jizhan yi zhou shenfandi babaiqishi duo wan mu 明年农业大翻身先要今年土地大翻身辽宁兴起日翻百万亩运动四百万大军激
战一周深翻地八百七十多万亩 [We Must Bring About a Soil Revolution This Year in Order to Realize an Agricultural Revolution Next Year a Movement to Plow a Million Mu per Day Rising in Liaoning an Army Four Million Strong can Deeply Plow Over 8700000 Mu in a Week of Fierce Fighting]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 October 19 1958 first edition
83The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
both the agricultural and semi-agriculturalsemi-husbandry regions of Inner Mongolia There many peoplersquos communes promoted the ldquosix in-the-fieldsrdquo (ie command in the fields eating in the fields living in the fields holding meetings and debates in the fields learning in the fields and entertainment in the fields) and the method of rotating people and oxen but never stopping the plowing process deep plowing proceeded night and day in this province as well16 In the ldquosatelliterdquo fields of Shouzhang County Shandong Province lead-ership demanded that deep plowing go 12 zhang [a unit of measure equal to three and one third meters] deep In this county youth platoons waged the ldquonight battlerdquo Teams were frequently composed of three people top middle and bottom The soil dug up by the bottom person was lifted to the middle per-son who then hauled it to the top person who then hauled it to fill a ditch17
iv Development of Implements for Deep Plowing
Human-powered deep plowing not only called for an immense amount of labor but it also consumed great amounts of time It became imperative to develop new implements specialized in deep plowing to complete the task Officials from Changge County unveiled the plowing implements they had developed for deep plowing at the same time they shared their experience with the country The most famous of said implements was the double-layer double-furrow plow invented by farmer Wang Yushun 王玉顺 This plow is fitted with a guiding wheel on the front and regulators for both depth and width of plowing It is fitted in the middle with two plow columns The front plowshare was an eight cun walking plow and the back was composed of a plow furrow and a plow frog The plowshare was an eight cun walking plow and plow frogs were also installed on the plow columns There were four holes on the top to adjust the plow headrsquos depth of entry into the soil The plow was 220 centimeters long twenty-five centimeters wide and 118 centimeters tall When in use this implement could plow a width of twenty centimeters
16 ldquoZhuajin nongshi jiasu qiugeng Neimenggu Jilin fandi yundong jinru gaochao 抓紧农
时加速秋耕内蒙古吉林翻地运动进入高潮 [Firmly Grasp the Farming Season and Accelerate Autumn Plowing The Plowing Movement Hitting Crescendo in Inner Mongolia and Jilin]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 October 24 1958 fourth edition
17 Tong Pingya 佟屏亚 ldquoNongye lsquoda yuejinrsquo kaoliang nongye kexuejiamdashxie zai 1958 nian nongye lsquoda yuejinrsquo 50 zhou nian 农业ldquo大跃进rdquo考量农业科学家mdash mdash 写在 1958 年农业ldquo大跃进rdquo50 周年 [Agricultural Scientists Consider the Agricultural lsquoGreat Leap Forwardrsquo ndash Written on the 50th Anniversary of the Agricultural lsquoGreat Leap Forwardrsquo]rdquo Nongye kaogu 《农业考古》 4 (2008)
ZHU DING AND HU84
ltUNgt
turning all soil to the right side The back plow didnrsquot turn the earth but loos-ened it in a swath twenty centimeters wide It required one person and three draft animals and could plow 35 mu of earth per day to a depth of forty centi-meters deeper than the average walking plow by twenty centimeters18 Wangrsquos plow was held up as a great invention The plow itself became the prototype of the farm implement revolution and Wang himself was hired as a special research fellow in the China Academy of Agricultural Sciences Mechanization Institute
On July 11 1958 the Ministry of Agriculture convened the National Confer-ence on Deep Plowing Implements and Soil Improvement 全国深耕农具和
改良土壤会议 in Changge County The primary goals of the conference were to promulgate Changge Countyrsquos experience with deep plowing and appraise various experiments which had been conducted in deep plowing implements A total of fifty-seven newly invented implements were displayed at the confer-ence (of which twenty-onemdash368 percent of the totalmdashcame from Changge itself) Of those thirty-six were chosen for field testing They were appraised based on their plowing depth pulling capacity and efficiency as well as on their ability to turn earth loosen earth and flatten ditch bottoms During the testing some plows were unable to function properly due to poor design Some were equipped with weak parts which warped during testing render-ing them likewise unable to function properly The malfunctioning models excluded only twenty-six plows ended up being appraised (see Table 32) These twenty-six could be divided into three groups based on their working conditions and basic design dry farming deep plows paddy field deep plows and double-wheel double-furrow deep plows They were basically all com-plex plows meaning that their tops turned the topsoil while their rear ends loosened the earth below the plow
On-the-spot testing showed that all the double-wheel double-furrow com-plex deep plows met the demands of deep plowing but they required a great deal of pulling capacity Some even required the capacity needed to pull over 700 kilograms of weight which even three draft animals working in concert would be hard pressed to provide rendering them impractical The paddy field plows were tested in dry sandy soil and so testing results were less than ideal The fore-plows and subsoil shovels among the dry farming deep plows reached a depth of 33 centimeters with a minimum capactiyto pulla weight of 250 kilograms which made them practical for teams of three draft ani-mals working in light soil however the subsoil shovel was often incapable of
18 Nongju tupu di yi juan 《农具图谱》第 1 卷 [Illustrated Farm Implements Vol 1] ed Peoplersquos Republic of China Ministry of Agriculture (Tongsu duwu chubanshe 1958) 34
85The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 3
2 Te
chni
cal a
ppra
isals
for n
ewly
inve
nted
dee
p pl
owin
g im
plem
ents
Nam
eSp
onso
rD
esig
nPl
owin
g de
pth
(cm
)Pu
lling
cap
acity
Mai
n pl
owSu
bsoi
l sho
vel
Tota
l dep
thK
g
8 cu
n fu
rrow
-sty
le c
urve
d rid
ge d
oubl
e-la
yer p
low
Wan
g Yu
shun
of
Chan
gge
Coun
tyM
ain
plow
8 cu
n
furr
ow-s
tyle
subs
oil
shov
el
2210
532
525
97
Dee
ply
curv
ed h
oe-s
tyle
do
uble
-laye
r plo
wW
ang
Yush
unM
ain
plow
8 cu
n h
oe-
styl
e su
bsoi
l sho
vel
216
1738
546
7
7 cu
n fu
rrow
-col
umn-
styl
e do
uble
-laye
r plo
wW
ang
Yush
unM
ain
plow
8 cu
n
furr
ow-s
tyle
subs
oil
shov
el
99
1827
926
37
7 cu
n fu
rrow
-sty
le d
oubl
e-la
yer p
low
Wan
g Yu
shun
Mai
n pl
ow 8
cun
fu
rrow
-sty
le su
bsoi
l sh
ovel
2312
135
127
66
Dou
ble-
furr
ow d
oubl
e-la
yer
plow
Wan
g Yu
shun
Mai
n pl
ow se
lf-m
ade
fu
rrow
-sty
le su
bsoi
l sh
ovel
1418
3227
4
7 cu
n fu
rrow
-sty
le fo
ur-la
yer
plow
Wan
g Yu
shun
Mai
n pl
ow 7
cun
fu
rrow
-sty
le su
bsoi
l sh
ovel
735
2532
449
5
ZHU DING AND HU86
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 3
2 M
etho
ds d
epth
s an
d wo
rk ef
ficie
ncy o
f dee
p pl
owin
g co
nduc
ted
in C
hang
ge C
ount
y H
enan
Pro
vinc
e (co
nt)
Nam
eSp
onso
rD
esig
nPl
owin
g de
pth
(cm
)Pu
lling
cap
acity
Mai
n pl
owSu
bsoi
l sho
vel
Tota
l dep
thK
g
8 cu
n fu
rrow
-sty
le d
eepl
y cu
rved
dou
ble-
laye
r plo
wCh
angg
e Co
unty
Fa
rmM
ain
plow
8 cu
n
furr
ow-s
tyle
subs
oil
shov
el
222
64
286
272
5
8 cu
n fu
rrow
-sty
le d
eepl
y cu
rved
dou
ble-
laye
r plo
wSo
ngzh
ai V
illag
e 宋
砦村
Cha
ngge
Co
unty
Hen
an
Mai
n pl
ow 8
cun
fu
rrow
-sty
le su
bsoi
l sh
ovel
209
1232
927
1
Dee
ply
curv
ed h
oe-s
tyle
do
uble
-laye
r plo
wH
enan
Pro
vin-
cial
Agr
icul
tura
l Bu
reau
Mai
n pl
ow 8
cun
hoe
-st
yle
subs
oil s
hove
l21
49
430
825
63
8 cu
n ho
e-st
yle
extr
a de
ep
plow
Shua
ngm
iao
Tow
nshi
p 双
庙乡
Cha
ngge
Co
unty
Hen
an
Mai
n pl
ow 8
cun
hoe
-st
yle
subs
oil s
hove
l20
23
723
919
44
8 cu
n do
uble
-laye
r col
umn-
styl
e pl
owLi
anfe
ng 连
丰
Coop
erat
ive
Ch
angg
e Co
unty
H
enan
Mai
n pl
ow 8
cun
old
fu
rrow
subs
oil s
hove
l18
88
727
529
51
87The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
8 cu
n do
uble
-hoo
k-st
yle
extr
a de
ep p
low
Zhen
ping
Cou
nty
镇平
县 H
enan
Mai
n pl
ow 8
cun
ho
ok-s
tyle
subs
oil
shov
el
204
34
238
186
5
7 cu
n ho
e-st
yle
extr
a de
ep
plow
Tong
xu C
ount
y 通
许县
Hen
anM
ain
plow
7 cu
n h
oe-
styl
e su
bsoi
l sho
vel
2514
3940
0
7 cu
n do
uble
-laye
r hoe
-sty
le
deep
plo
wH
ejia
n Co
unty
河间
县 H
enan
Mai
n pl
ow 7
cun
hoe
-st
yle
subs
oil s
hove
l20
1636
516
Old
plo
w p
lus s
ubso
il sh
ovel
Chan
gge
Coun
ty
Hen
an6
0815
211
188
7 cu
n th
ree-
laye
r dee
p pl
owSo
ngzh
uang
To
wns
hip
宋
庄乡
Lus
han
Coun
ty 鲁
山县
H
enan
Old
7 cu
n m
ain
plow
ho
ok-s
tyle
subs
oil
shov
el
201
67
268
257
5
Old
styl
e do
uble
-laye
r plo
wN
anya
ng S
teel
-w
orks
Hen
anIm
prov
ed m
ain
plow
ho
e-st
yle
subs
oil
shov
el
235
65
3031
25
7 cu
n ho
e-st
yle
3-la
yer p
low
Chin
a Ac
adem
y of
Ag
ricul
tura
l Sci
-en
ces A
gric
ultu
ral
Mec
hani
zatio
n In
stitu
te
One
shov
el h
ole
in
mid
dle
254
1439
444
8
Two
shov
els
hole
in
mid
dle
174
1431
629
5
One
shov
el h
ole
on
top
2516
441
451
0
Two
shov
els
hole
on
top
185
1836
533
2
ZHU DING AND HU88
ltUNgt
Com
poun
d de
ep p
low
Fujia
n Fa
rm
Impl
emen
t Tes
t-in
g Ce
nter
Mai
n pl
ow a
pad
dy
plow
hoe
-sty
le su
b-so
il sh
ovel
213
37
2526
35
7 cu
n sh
ould
er-c
arrie
d ho
e-st
yle
deep
plo
wG
uang
xi Z
huan
g M
inor
ity A
ut-
nom
ous R
egio
n Ba
ise
Farm
Ma-
chin
ery
Fact
ory
Mai
n pl
ow a
pad
dy
plow
hoe
-sty
le su
b-so
il sh
ovel
196
41
237
201
7 cu
n do
uble
-toot
h-st
yle
deep
pl
owG
uang
xi A
uton
o-m
ous R
egio
nM
ain
plow
a li
ght
wal
king
plo
w h
ook-
styl
e su
bsoi
l sho
vel
217
21
238
192
5
Dou
ble-
furr
ow p
low
plu
s su
bsoi
l sho
vel
East
Chi
na A
gri-
cultu
ral S
cien
ces
Inst
itute
Dou
ble-
furr
ow p
low
fro
nt p
low
repl
aced
w
ith su
bsoi
l sho
vel
204
88
292
323
Nam
eSp
onso
rD
esig
nPl
owin
g de
pth
(cm
)Pu
lling
cap
acity
Mai
n pl
owSu
bsoi
l sho
vel
Tota
l dep
thK
g
Tabl
e 3
2 M
etho
ds d
epth
s an
d wo
rk ef
ficie
ncy o
f dee
p pl
owin
g co
nduc
ted
in C
hang
ge C
ount
y H
enan
Pro
vinc
e (co
nt)
89The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
Dou
ble-
furr
ow p
low
plu
s su
bsoi
l sho
vel
Shan
dong
Pro
vin-
cial
Far
m Im
ple-
men
t Ref
orm
O
ffice
Dou
ble-
furr
ow p
low
fro
nt p
low
repl
aced
w
ith su
bsoi
l sho
vel
186
89
275
236
Dou
ble-
whe
el p
low
plu
s su
bsoi
l sho
vel
Shan
dong
Pr
ovin
ceD
oubl
e-fu
rrow
plo
w
on a
turn
ing
rack
for
plow
ing
in fr
ont a
nd
loos
enin
g in
bac
k
284
1038
468
6
Dou
ble-
furr
ow p
low
plu
s su
bsoi
l sho
vel
Anhu
i Pro
vinc
ial
Farm
Impl
emen
t Re
sear
ch In
stitu
te
Dou
ble-
furr
ow p
low
fro
nt p
low
repl
aced
w
ith su
bsoi
l sho
vel
185
127
312
365
Dou
ble-
furr
ow d
oubl
e-la
yer
deep
plo
wD
ahui
大会
Tech
ni-
cal G
roup
Dou
ble-
furr
ow a
nd
doub
le-s
hove
l22
610
326
740
Data
sour
ce T
echn
ical
Gro
up o
f th
e Na
tion
al C
onfe
renc
e fo
r De
ep P
low
ing
Impl
emen
ts a
nd So
il Im
prov
emen
t ldquoS
heng
eng
nong
ju sh
iyan
jia
ndin
g zo
ngjie
深耕
农具
试验
鉴定
总结
[Sum
mar
y of
Tes
ts a
nd A
ppra
isal
s on
Deep
Plo
win
g Im
plem
ents
]rdquo N
ongy
e jix
ie 《
农业
机械
》3
(195
8)
ZHU DING AND HU90
ltUNgt
effectively loosening soil This problem indicates that some of the deep plow-ing implements of the time required such great pulling capacity as to be im-practical while others were practical only in a minority of soil conditions Oth-erwise they were limited in depth and efficiency The conference demanded that further research and development be performed with the focus of future efforts on improving the design and manufacture of subsoil shovels so as to reduce required pulling capacity and increase efficiency19
The deep plowing implement revolution hit its apex after this conference with all manner of vibrating rotating single-layer double-layer combined-man-and-beast-powered and machine-powered deep plowing implements emerging from every corner of the country For example the China Academy of Sciences (cas) Mechanical Institute conducted tests on a vibrating deep plow (referred to as Machine Development No 1) in September 1958 The device was intended for dry farming designed to plow to a depth of fifty-three centime-ters turn a swath of earth fifteen centimeters wide and loosen another thirty-eight centimeters of soil with a vibrating shovel It required very little pulling capacity it could be pulled by a thirty-five-horsepower tractor burning little gas half of what machine-pulled plows at the time required Another bene-fit of the machine was that its high-frequency vibrations killed pest insects collapsed soil capillaries and reduced losses of water through evaporation20 Although it did not perform well in field tests its innovative design was met with approbation After this a number of work units around the country began designing their own innovative deep plowing implements In late September the Tianjin Tractor Factory collaborated with the Institute to convert a four-furrow plow into a three-furrow vibrating plow The Sixth Division of the First Ministry of Machine-Building 一机部六局农机所 borrowed that idea and converted a three-furrow plow into a two-furrow vibrating plow In December the cas Mechanical Institute collaborated with the Farm Machine Institute of the First Ministry of Machine-Building to test a four-furrow vibrating plow Nevertheless all these vibrating plows indicated a number of problems in field testing The vibrating engines of some were improperly sized while others had problems in vibration frequency or amplitude Some were improperly
19 Technical Group of the National Conference for Deep Plowing Implements and Soil Im-provement ldquoShengeng nongju shiyan jianding zongjie 深耕农具试验鉴定总结 [Sum-mary of Tests and Appraisals on Deep Plowing Implements]rdquo Nongye jixie 《农业机
械》3 (1958)20 Nongye jixiehua dianqihua de jiejing 《农业机械化电气化的捷径》 [Shortcuts to Ag-
ricultural Mechanization and Electrification] ed Ministry of Agriculture Office of Farm Implement Reform 农业部农具改革办公室 (Nongye chubanshe 1958) 189
91The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
curved or had subsoil shovels of inappropriate size The transmission belts of some fell off easily The list went on and on21
In March 1959 the Ministry of Agriculture and the First Ministry of Machine-Building together convened the National Conference for Selection through Ap-praisal and Lectures Regarding Deep Plowing Implements A total of 144 deep plowing implements were submitted from around the country Experts chose twenty-four out of these for assessment eleven animal-powered plows eight plow slings three rope-pulled plows and two machine-driven plows However the fields used for testing were small and the time allotted tight On top of that nonstop rain made tests difficult to manage and testing results far from ideal The implements failed to meet requirements for depth (one chi in paddy fields and 15 to two chi in dry fields) quality (at turning soil and not disturbing soil layers) speed (low required pulling capacity and high efficiency) stability (solid stable reliable and long-lasting) economy (simple manufacture low costs) convenience (ease of use and simple technology) and so on22 In sum-mary although the objectives of the deep plowing implement were straightfor-ward and requirements clear no great achievements were made This lack of achievements was attributable not only to technological handicaps but also to misguided thinking on behalf of leadership
There was a positive correlation between plowing depth and required pull-ing capacity ie the deeper a plow was to go the more pulling capacity it re-quired At the time there were no high-powered tractors in China and draft animals were generally able to plow no deeper than one chi The central prob-lem in the design of new deep plowing implements was to achieve plowing depths of between one and 15 chi while at the same time reducing pulling capacity required of draft animals and small to mid-sized tractors Inventors working on this problem took one of two paths The first was to design a dou-ble-level plow that turned topsoil with a furrow and loosened subsoil with a shovel The second was to design a rotating deep plow that cut horizontally while lifting soil vertically thus achieving the objective of loosening the soil
21 Da yuejin zhong nongjiju de chuangzao faming 《大跃进中农机具的创造发明》 [Creation and Invention of Farm Machines and Implements during the Great Leap For-ward] ed First Ministry of Machine Building Sixth Administrative Bureau of Machinery Industry 第一机械工业部第六机器工业管理局 (Jixie gongye chubanshe 1959) 40ndash47
22 ldquoQuanguo shengeng nongju pingxuan jiangxihui zongjie (zhaiyao) 全国深耕农具评
选讲习会总结 (摘要 ) [Summary of the National Conference for Selection through Appraisal and Lectures Regarding Deep Plowing Implements (Abstract)]rdquo Nongye jixie 《农业机械》 6 (1959)
ZHU DING AND HU92
ltUNgt
Most double-layer deep plows were redesigned based on existing walking plows although there were differences between old and new in design of plow furrows and subsoil shovels shape size and working efficiency Some double-layer plows required a relatively small pulling capacity and in light soil could achieve a plowing depth of over one chi pulled by a draft animal These plows were not however able to meet the demands for deep plowing of the time First they could not achieve a plowing depth of 15 chi or more Second they frequently ended up mixing immature soil with subsoil which is bad for farm-ing Third it was not possible to achieve fertilization of different layers with these plows Fourth the pulling capacity required to operate these plows in heavy clay soil made them unusable
Although the theory behind rotating deep plows was scientific and their design reasonable they encountered many problems in field testing Not only were they difficult to manufacture but they required many diverse parts and their structures were complex They were designed to rotate move forward and elevate soil all at the same time It was difficult to coordinate the various necessary movements and their parts wore out quickly The reason for this is that soil environments are highly complex Different areas vary in soil quality and structure and vary widely in soil composition and hardness Even in a sin-gle patch of land a rotating deep plow could encounter rapidly changing levels of obstacles which could overload the engine and break the machine down
There were too many demands on deep plowing implements as well as too many different categories So despite the greatest efforts on the part of techni-cians limitations on engine power for farm machines at the time made it pos-sible for only a very small number of new deep plowing implements to meet demands
v Evidentiary Support for Deep Plowing and Experimentation in High Yields
Once the nationwide deep plowing movement had been launched a number of agricultural education and scientific research organs actively began research-ing the issue They wrote reports and articles expounded on the theoretical basis of deep plowing and proved the effectiveness of deep plowing In July 1958 the cas Soil Institute 中国科学院土壤研究所 dispatched a team to Changge County to make observations Team leader Xiong Yi 熊毅 read a report titled ldquoUsing Soil Science to Study the Question of Deep Plowingrdquo 从土壤科学
来研究深翻问题 at the National Conference on Deep Plowing Implements and Soil Improvement In his report he claimed that deep plowing was a great
93The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
revolution of the soil and that we would no longer be able to make judgements of soil distribution and changes from solely the perspective of the natural en-vironment It was more important Xiong said to study soil changes caused by the power of the great laboring masses Therefore he said we must use not only natural dialectics but also historical materialist dialectics to study the soilHis conclusion based in argumentation was this ldquoDeep plowing is a method that can be employed in all ordinary soil Except in a very few extreme cases it generally is only beneficial and not harmfulrdquo Deep plowing could cause ldquotheo-retical changes to the soilrdquo said Xiong who continued ldquoWe must scientifically summarize the experience of the agricultural masses seek patterns and cause the soil to develop in the direction of our demandsrdquo23 A researcher from the Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University wrote an essay titled ldquoThe Sci-entific Basis behind Changge Countyrsquos Deep Plowing Methodsrdquo 长葛县深翻
地的方法和科学根据 after having concluded investigations in Changge In the essay he divides the countyrsquos deep plowing practices into ten methods and explains the effectiveness of deep plowing on increasing yields He discusses the scientific basis behind the deep plowing methods and points out the five great advantages of deep plowing He notes that in Changge it was absolutely possible to produce 200000 jin of sweet potatoes per mu after plowing to a depth of one to 15 chi24
On September 11 1958 Renmin ribao convened a symposium of agricultural scientists and workers to discuss the meaning of the deep plowing movement Deputy Secretary of the China Institute of Agricultural Sciences 中国农业
科学院 Liu Chunrsquoan 刘春安 addressed the assembly saying that fertiliza-tion as performed in deep plowing had destroyed the ldquolawsrdquo of soil and fer-tilizer science and that this experience had been created by farmers during the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo25 In an article that appeared in the Peoplersquos Daily
23 Xiong Yi 熊毅 ldquoCong turang kexue lai yanjiu shenfan wenti 从土壤科学来研究深翻
问题 [Using Soil Science to Study the Question of Deep Plowing]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民
日报》 September 12 1958 sixth edition24 Zhang Junchang and Niu Pu 张君常钮溥 ldquoChangge xian shenfandi de fangfa
he kexue genju 长葛县深翻地的方法和科学根据 [The Methods and Scientific Basis of Changge Countyrsquos Deep Plowing]rdquo Nongye kexue tongxun 《农业科学通讯》 9 (1958)
25 Liu Chunrsquoan 刘春安 ldquoXuexi nongmin weida de chuangzao jingshen tamen de shijian dapo le nongye kexue shang hen duo chenfu de guiluuml 学习农民伟大的创造精神他们
的实践打破了农业科学上很多陈腐的规律 [Learning from the Great Innovative Spirit of Farmers Their Experience Has Broken Many Old Decayed Laws of Science]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 October 8 1958 seventh edition
ZHU DING AND HU94
ltUNgt
in October that same year Gao Shiqi 高士其 wrote that this had proven that deep plowing could transform dead soil into living soil and that multi-level fertilization could effectively turn living soil into particularly fertile soil Deep plowing wrote Gao could change the appearance and characteristics of soil and made crops grow better in the soil26 Clearly scientists and researchers at the time had been affected by the prevailing political and social atmosphere of the time Their arguments were not based on strict experimentation and this led them to slant their views Their writings attached the word ldquosciencerdquo to the deep plowing movement thus giving the foolhardy behaviors of the movement a ldquoscientificrdquo basis
In addition to making theoretical arguments for the scientific nature and necessity of deep plowing many scientific institutes dispatched researchers to the countryside to participate in deep plowing labor and run experiments to prove that yields were indeed higher The China Institute of Water Resourc-es and Hydropower Research 中国水利科学院 conducted experiments on three mu of land within the Institutersquos grounds plowing the earth to a depth of six chi (a feat performed by Institute employees using spades and shovels) In the experiment one chi of soil was considered a layer and every layer was dug up and moved to a pre-selected location Once the lowest layer of soil had been dug up every layer was replaced in its original order The experiment was con-ducted on the basis of ldquobeing in accordance with the precise demands of and rigorously masteringrdquo the ldquoEight Character Constitutionrdquo 八字宪法 One thou-sand jin of wheat was planted on each mu with dedicated personnel in charge of fertilizing irrigating and weeding Fans were used at regular intervals to promote air circulation and music was played to facilitate the happy growth of wheat seedlings Electric lights were used to increase photosynthesis and trestles were erected to support the wheat stalksThe wheat yield per mu ended up at over 1500 jin as a result of great efforts on the part of the Insti-tutersquos entire staff27 This was an extremely high yield for the time but it still fell far short of the target yield of 300000 jin The China Academy of Sciences Biology Division likewise established a deep plowing high-yield field testing
26 Gao Shiqi 高士其 ldquoBa situ biancheng huotu ndash cong shenfandi tan dao turang de gaizao 把死土变成活土mdashmdash 从深翻地谈到土壤的改造 [Transform Dead Soil into Living Soil ndash a Discussion of Deep Plowing to Soil Reformation]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日
报》 October 17 1958 eighth edition27 Zhou Sun 周孙 ldquoShuikeyuan yijiuwuba nian gaochan shiyan tian jishi 水科院一九五
八年高产试验田纪实 [Records from Field Tests Performed in 1958 by the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research]rdquo accessed from httpbbs chinaunixnetarchivertid-1058420html
95The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
committee The committee planted wheat on six mu which staff plowed to a depth of 10 chi Committee employees planted between 260 to 400 jin of seeds and used between 400000 to 600000 jin of manure fertilizer per mu During the day the team used fans to increase carbon dioxide and at night used electric lights to increase photosynthesis In the end the most produc-tive mu of their experiment yielded only 900 jin of wheat28 Their experiments proved that deep plowing combined with other technical measures did indeed increase yields but within certain limitations and that it would certainly be impossible to bring about yields of over 10000 jin per mu In fact in many places deep plowing was taken too far ldquodead soilrdquo from deep in the earth got mixed with fertile topsoil which not only didnrsquot increase yields but in some cases reduced them29
The Peoplersquos Daily published an article written by the Meng County 孟县 Committee of Henan Province on July 7 1959 The committee wrote ldquoOur experience from the first year of deep plowing indicates that there is no clear difference in results between plowing to a depth of over two chi and plowing to a depth of only one chihellip Three to five times the amount of labor required to plow to a depth of one chi are required to plow to a depth of two chi Thus as both human labor and draft animals are in short supply we have found it appropriate to plow to a depth of one chirdquo30 On September 5 1959 the Peoplersquos Daily published an article by a researcher at the China Academy of Agricul-tural Sciences which read ldquoOwing to limited supply of human labor draft animals and machine power a plowing depth of between six to eight cun is appropriate for most dry land both in the South and the North a depth of approximately six cun is appropriate for paddy fieldsrdquo31 This logic indicates
28 Luo Pinghan 罗平汉 1958ndash1962 nian zhongguo de zhishijie 《 1958 ~1962 年中国的知识
界》 [Chinarsquos Intelligentsia from 1958 to 1962] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 2008) 115
29 Qi Zhengxin 戚正欣 ldquoJiaoguan yu shenfan 绞关与深翻 [The Plow Sling and Deep Plowing]rdquo Qinzhou xinwen wang 秦州新闻网 accessed from httpwwwtznewscnArticlelvyouducj20081130921html
30 ldquoYunyong lsquoba zi xianfarsquo yingde xiaomai gaochan Henan Meng xian xiaomai da mianji fengchan fang jishu jingyan zongjie 运用ldquo八字宪法rdquo赢得小麦高产河南孟县
小麦大面积丰产方技术经验总结 [Use of the lsquoEight Character Constitutionrsquo Brings about Big Wheat Yields Summary of the Technological Experience of Meng County Henan Province in Big Wheat Yields over a Large Area]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 July 7 1959 third edition
31 China Academy of Agricultural Sciences Institute of Crop Breeding and Cultivation 中国农业科学院作物育种栽培研究所 ldquoGuanyu jinnian qiubo xiaomai jishu cuoshi de ji dian yijian 关于今年秋播小麦技术措施的几点意见 [Some Opinions
ZHU DING AND HU96
ltUNgt
that those people who held to practical experience and sober thought arrived at a logical understanding of the effects of deep plowing and made more reasonable demands
vi Commentary on the Deep Plowing Movement
Experience shows that reasonable deep plowing is useful for increasing agri-cultural yields First deep plowing improves the physical and chemical proper-ties of the soil A plow layer 10 centimeters deep may form in fields in which farm machines have long exerted pressure An over-shallow plow layer can se-verely affect the growth of crop root systems Deep plowing breaks up the plow layer thickens the living soil layer increases soil porosity reduces soil density increases soil breathability and water retention and increases soil capacity for holding water and fertilizer If one combines deep plowing with multi-layer fertilizing especially with organic fertilizers such as farmyard manure or green manure one may accelerate the maturation of lower layers of soil and improve the soilrsquos aggregate structure Second deep plowing promotes the growth of crop root systems down into deep soil layers allowing them to absorb more nutrition from the soil Third deep plowing enables one to turn insect eggs and larva and pathogenic bacteria to the surface which helps reduce the effects of pests on crops32 The experiences of Lijiazhai Village and Changge County in increasing yields through deep plowing and intensive agriculture constitute effective evidence in support of the positive effects of deep plowing
That said one must use reasonable plowing depths and appropriate plow-ing methods in order to increase yields deeper is not always better Excessive deep plowing can ruin the structure of good topsoil making said soil extreme-ly vulnerable to erosion which not only does not lead to increased yields but may also incite other side effects During the deep plowing movement some locations dug to a depth of three chimdashand in some cases three metersmdash turning ldquodead soilrdquo and sand up into the topsoil layer Such methods not only destroyed the topsoil structure but also sapped away the soilrsquos existing fertility rendering it incapable of fostering crop growth Such ldquodeep plowingrdquo was never going to bring about increased yields
Regarding Technical Measures Used in This Yearrsquos Autumn Wheat Planting]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 September 5 1959 seventh edition
32 Liu Jiansheng et al 刘健生等 Woguo nongju de chuangzao gailiang ji qi zonghe liyong 《我国农具的创造改良及其综合利用》 [The Creation Improvement and Comprehensive Use of Chinarsquos Farm Implements] (Nongye chubanshe 1959) 7
97The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
This means of increasing crop yields invented by farmers working on their own was first promoted into a nationwide movement and then completely petered out The reasons are that the methods employed in Changge County were never seriously studied or converted into effective science for the rest of the country Changge County arrived at its deep plowing methods only after years of experimentation People there employed different implements and methodologies in different soil and for different crops along the way improv-ing a few basic plows to increase the effectiveness of their deep plowing They never plowed deeper than one chi and they never deeply plowed more than 30000 mu even over the course of several years Their increased yields were experienced over a small area and the increases were confined to hard limita-tions Changge Countyrsquos party secretary clearly overstated the results of the countyrsquos experiments in deep plowing when delivering his report to the Cen-tral Committee boasting about deep plowing objectives he had only imagined The Central Committee not knowing this called on the entire country to emu-late Changge County in the hope that such increased yields could be extended everywhere This call was made to bring about the agricultural ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo which in the end caused deep plowing to become a political move-ment The concurrent backyard steel furnace movement and large-scale irriga-tion movement had led to shortages in labor and machinery in the countryside at the time and so the high targets imposed on deep plowing were entirely infeasible Although governments in some places employed the human wave strategy or organized veritable armies of plowhands the only results garnered were the widespread waste of labor and material resources The ultimate goals of deep plowing were unattainable
The lesson that the deep plowing movement can give us today is that in promoting technical measures we absolutely cannot contradict the laws of science In Chairman Maorsquos words ldquoWe must begin from the true conditions of our own country and abroad from within and without provinces from within and without counties and from within and without onersquos own area We must draw from these conditions intrinsic facts not those which have been fabricat-ed In other words we must find the internal connections between incidents and allow them to guide us in our actionsrdquo33 In such actions we should move forward positively and steadily on the basis of scientific experimentation and large quantities of practical experience Things will only go against our wishes if we violate the rules of science and act rashly
33 Mao Zedong xuanbian di 3 juan 《毛泽东选集》第3 卷 [Selected Works of Mao Zedong Vol 3] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1991) 801
ZHU DING AND HU98
ltUNgt
References
Changge xian zhi 《长葛县志》 [Records of Changge County] (Shenghuomiddotdushumiddotxinzhi sanlian shudian 1992)
China Academy of Agricultural Sciences Institute of Crop Breeding and Cultivation 中国农业科学院作物育种栽培研究所 ldquoGuanyu jinnian qiubo xiaomai jishu cuoshi de ji dian yijian 关于今年秋播小麦技术措施的几点意见 [Some Opin-ions on Technical Measures Used in This Yearrsquos Autumn Wheat Planting]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 September 5 1959 seventh edition
CPC Changge County Committee 中共长葛县委会 ldquoNongju da gexin tudi da fan-shen 农具大革新土地大翻身 [Great Revolution in Farm Implements Great Turning of the Earth]rdquo Zhongguo nongbao 《中国农报》 3 (1958)
Da yuejin zhong nongjiju de chuangzao faming《大跃进中农机具的创造发明》
[Creation and Invention of Farm Machines and Implements during the Great Leap Forward] ed First Ministry of Machine Building Sixth Administrative Bureau of Machinery Industry 第一机械工业部第六机器工业管理局 (Jixie gongye chubanshe 1959)
Gao Shiqi 高士其 ldquoBa situ biancheng huotu ndash cong shenfandi tan dao turang de gaizao 把死土变成活土mdashmdash 从深翻地谈到土壤的改造 [Transform Dead Soil into Living Soil ndash a Discussion of Deep Plowing to Soil Reformation]rdquo Renmin ribao《人
民日报》 October 17 1958 eighth editionJianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 6 ce《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第6 册 [Mao Ze-
dong Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 6] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1992)
Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 11 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第 11 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 11] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1995)
Liu Chunrsquoan 刘春安 ldquoXuexi nongmin weida de chuangzao jingshen tamen de shijian dapo le nongye kexue shang hen duo chenfu de guiluuml 学习农民伟大的创造精
神他们的实践打破了农业科学上很多陈腐的规律 [Learning from the Great Innovative Spirit of Farmers Their Experience Has Broken Many Old Decayed Laws of Science]rdquo Renmin ribao《人民日报》 October 8 1958 seventh edition
Liu Jiansheng et al 刘健生等 Woguo nongju de chuangzao gailiang ji qi zonghe liyong 《我国农具的创造改良及其综合利用》[The Creation Improvement and Comprehensive Use of Chinarsquos Farm Implements] (Nongye chubanshe 1959)
Luuml Bingguang 吕炳光 ldquoTudi da fanshen zhengqu muchan babai jin 土地大翻身争
取亩产八百斤 [Great Turning of the Earth Strive for 800 Jin of Output per Mu]rdquo Renmin ribao《人民日报》 May 13 1958 fourth edition
Luo Pinghan 罗平汉 1958ndash1962 nian zhongguo de zhishijie《 1958~1962 年中国的知
识界》[Chinarsquos Intelligentsia from 1958 to 1962] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 2008)
99The Deep Plowing Movement of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo
ltUNgt
Mao Zedong xuanbian di 3 juan《毛泽东选集》第3 卷 [Selected Works of Mao Zedong Vol 3] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1991)
ldquoMingnian nongye dafanshen xian yao jinnian tudi dafanshen Liaoning xingqi ri fan baiwan mu yundong sibaiwan dajun jizhan yi zhou shenfandi babaiqishi duo wan mu 明年农业大翻身先要今年土地大翻身辽宁兴起日翻百万亩运动
四百万大军激战一周深翻地八百七十多万亩 [We Must Bring About a Soil Revolution This Year in Order to Realize an Agricultural Revolution Next Year a Movement to Plow a Million Mu per Day Rising in Liaoning an Army Four Million Strong can Deeply Plow Over 8700000 Mu in a Week of Fierce Fighting]rdquo Renmin ribao《人民日报》 October 19 1958 first edition
Nongju tupu di 1 juan《农具图谱》第 1 卷 [Illustrated Farm Implements Vol 1] ed the Peoplersquos Republic of China Ministry of Agriculture (Tongsu duwu chubanshe 1958)
Nongye jixiehua dianqihua de jiejing《农业机械化电气化的捷径》[Shortcuts to Agricultural Mechanization and Electrification] ed Ministry of Agriculture Office of Farm Implement Reform 农业部农具改革办公室 (Nongye chubanshe 1958)
Qi Zhengxin 戚正欣 ldquoJiaoguan yu shenfan 绞关与深翻 [The Plow Sling and Deep Plowing]rdquo Qinzhou xinwen wang 秦州新闻网 accessed from httpwwwtznews cnArticlelvyouducj20081130921html
Qu Mingzhen 曲明振 ldquoShengeng shenfan daliang zengchan quanguo jiang xianqi shenfan he gailiang turang yundong 深耕深翻大量增产全国将掀起深翻和
改良土壤运动 [Deep Plowing Greatly Increases Yields The Entire Country Will Launch a Movement for Deep Plowing and Soil Improvement]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 July 27 1958 fifth edition
ldquoQuanguo shengeng nongju pingxuan jiangxihui zongjie (zhaiyao) 全国深耕农具评
选讲习会总结(摘要) [Summary of the National Conference for Selection through Appraisal and Lectures Regarding Deep Plowing Implements (Abstract)]rdquo Nongye jixie《农业机械》 6 (1959)
ldquoRang tudi lai ge da fanshen 让土地来个大翻身 [Let there Be a Great Turning of the Earth]rdquo Renmin ribao《人民日报》 September 2 1958 fourth edition
ldquoShenfan yi chi tu duo chan wan jin liang Henan Hebei qianbaiwan laodong dajun riye tuji fandi 深翻一尺土多产万斤粮河南河北千百万劳动大军日夜突击翻
地 [Deeply Plow and Increase Grain Yields by 10000 Jin Armies Millions Strong Staging an Earth-Turning Assault Day and Night in Hebei and Henan]rdquoRenmin ribao《人民日报》 September 12 1958 sixth edition
Technical Group of the National Conference for Deep Plowing Implements and Soil Improvement ldquoShengeng nongju shiyan jianding zongjie 深耕农具试验鉴定总
结 [Summary of Tests and Appraisals on Deep Plowing Implements]rdquo Nongye jixie 《农业机械》 3 (1958)
Tong Pingya 佟屏亚 ldquoNongye lsquoda yuejinrsquo kaoliang nongye kexuejia ndash xie zai 1958 nian nongye lsquoda yuejinrsquo 50 zhou nian 农业ldquo大跃进rdquo考量农业科学家mdashmdash 写在
ZHU DING AND HU100
ltUNgt
1958 年农业ldquo大跃进rdquo50 周年[Agricultural Scientists Consider the Agricultural lsquoGreat Leap Forwardrsquo ndash Written on the 50th Anniversary of the Agricultural lsquoGreat Leap Forwardrsquo]rdquo Nongye kaogu《农业考古》 4 (2008)
Wang Ribin and Sun Qinshu 王日彬孙钦书 ldquoMao Zedong san ge dianxing jingyan pishi gei women de qishi 毛泽东三个典型经验批示给我们的启示
[Lessons from Mao Zedongrsquos Commentaries on Three Classic Cases]rdquo Lingdao ganbu wang 领导干部网 accessed from httpwww1dgbco mcnE_ReadNewsaspNewsID=81591
Xiong Yi 熊毅 ldquoCong turang kexue lai yanjiu shenfan wenti 从土壤科学来研究深
翻问题 [Using Soil Science to Study the Question of Deep Plowing]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 September 12 1958 sixth edition
ldquoXunsu tuiguang xianjin jingyan he shengsuo qianyin li ba shenfan tudi yundong tuixiang gaochao 迅速推广先进经验和绳索牵引犁把深翻土地运动推向高
潮 [Swiftly Promulgate Advanced Experience and Rope-Pulled Plows Push the Deep Plowing Movement to Crescendo]rdquo Renmin ribao《人民日报》 September 29 1958 third edition
ldquoYunyong lsquoba zi xianfarsquo yingde xiaomai gaochan Henan Meng xian xiaomai da mianji fengchan fang jishu jingyan zongjie 运用ldquo八字宪法rdquo赢得小麦高产河南孟
县小麦大面积丰产方技术经验总结 [Use of the lsquoEight Character Constitutionrsquo Brings about Big Wheat Yields Summary of the Technological Experience of Meng County Henan Province in Big Wheat Yields over a Large Area]rdquo Renmin ribao《人
民日报》 July 7 1959 third editionZhang Junchang and Niu Pu 张君常钮溥 ldquoChangge xian shenfandi de fangfa he
kexue genju 长葛县深翻地的方法和科学根据 [The Methods and Scientific Bas-es of Changge Countyrsquos Deep Plowing]rdquo Nongye kexue tongxun《农业科学通讯》 9 (1958)
Zhou Sun 周孙 ldquoShuikeyuan yijiuwuba nian gaochan shiyan tian jishi 水科院一九五
八年高产试验田纪实 [Records from Field Tests Performed in 1958 by the China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research]rdquo accessed from httpbbs chinaunixnetarchivertid-1058420html
ldquoZhuajin nongshi jiasu qiugeng Neimenggu Jilin fandi yundong jinru gaochao 抓紧农
时加速秋耕内蒙古吉林翻地运动进入高潮 [Firmly Grasp the Farming Sea-son and Accelerate Autumn Plowing The Plowing Movement Hitting Crescendo in Inner Mongolia and Jilin]rdquoRenmin ribao《人民日报》 October 24 1958 fourth edition
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_006
ltUNgt
chapter 4
A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields in Liulin County Shanxi Province in the Era of Collectivization
Hao Ping1
Abstract
The construction of terraced fields is an important measure in water and soil conser-vation work During the era of collectivization in Liulin County Shanxi Province the movement to construct terraces grew from nothing into a major agricultural move-ment The Hechang Agricultural Cooperative and the Hanjiayu Brigade spurred tech-nological upgrading of terrace construction on the Loess Plateau where locals were first apprehensive toward the idea but later embraced and promulgated it The major reason for that was the increased agricultural yields made possible by terrace construc-tion on sloped farm fields Increased yields were the greatest value the construction of terraces brought to the ridge-and-ravine regions of the Loess plateau in the battle against erosion during the era of collectivization
Keywords
Terraced fields ndash terraces ndash collectivization ndash water and soil conservation ndash Shanxi Province ndash Liulin County
Chinarsquos Loess Plateau the worldrsquos largest deposit of loess is currently facing a series of environmental problems the most prominent of which is soil ero-sion Liulin County 柳林县2 is located in the heartland of the Loess Plateau and the Luumlliang Mountain Range 吕梁山 Its territory is full of interlacing
1 Hao Ping (郝平 ) is an associate professor in the Chinese Social History Institute of Shanxi University
2 After the founding of Peoplersquos Republic of China Liulin County was under the administration of Lishi County but was reorganized as an independent county in 1971 The areas I discuss in this essay lie within the jurisdiction of Liulin County During the era of collectivization
HAO102
ltUNgt
round-topped mountains and its topography of ridges and ravines is typical of the Loess Plateau It has also been hard hit by soil erosion It was precisely for that reason that the party and government established soil and water con-servation as a strategic task in remedying Yellow River floods and developing agriculture in impoverished areas during the era of collectivization launching large-scale programs to control and preserve water and recreate nature Liulin has been the forerunner in soil and water conservation on the Loess Plateau when it was the Liulin Commune 柳林公社 under jurisdiction of Lishi Coun-ty 离石县 and remained so after it became a county in its own right The most prominent feature of Liulinrsquos efforts in this area is terraced field construction Compared with the construction of alluvial flood control damsmdashparticularly the Jiajiayuan Dam3mdashthat took place hundreds of years earlier development of terraced fields proceeded rapidly in Liulin In only thirty years beginning shortly after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China Liulinrsquos terracing technology evolved from slope-style terraces to level terraces to broad terraces During this time the county also saw the rise of advanced typical models like the Hechang Agricultural Cooperative 贺昌农业社and the Hanjiayu Brigade 韩家峪大队 4 How were the terraces understood and spread by the common people What was the process of terrace replacement What were the effects of terraces on water and soil conservation work performed on the Loess Plateau during the era of collectivization In this essay I shall attempt to answer these questions with the aim of providing insights and valuable lessons to those working in water and soil conservation and irrigation works construction today5
Liulin County was the typical model for construction of terraced fields on the Loess Plateau The rest of the country looked to this area for guidance in sustainable irrigation projects
3 The Jiajiayuan Dam is located in Jiajiayuan Village Liulin County It was first built in the 12th year of the reign of the Jiaqing Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1807) It is Shanxi Provincersquos oldest and largest alluvial flood control dam
4 Prior to 1958 in the Chinese countryside first came the founding of primary agricultural co-operatives followed by the founding of advanced agricultural cooperatives In this essay I re-fer to both by the single term ldquoagricultural cooperativesrdquo After the founding of rural peoplersquos communes in August 1958 rural grassroots administrative units turned into production bri-gades I refer to both collectively as ldquobrigadesrdquo
5 Academic research into Chinese society during the era of collectivization has been in the ascendant in recent years Many great achievements have been made in the research of policy changes rural life rural culture and other areas Likewise much good work has been done in the study of soil erosion and erosion prevention on the Loess Plateau Cheng Fulong (成甫隆) made an inital foray into the subject in his book Huanghe zhiben lun《黄河治
本论》 [On Treating the Root Cause of the Yellow Riverrsquos Problems] (Pingmin ribaoshe 1947)
103A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields
ltUNgt
i The Construction and Promotion of Terraced Fields
Terraced fields are constructed primarily to aid in water and soil conservation and to increase agricultural yields They first appeared as early as the Qin and Han Dynasties primarily in the mountainous regions of Jiangnanmdasha geo-graphic area comprising lands immediately to the south of the lower reaches of the Yangtze River including the southern part of the Yangtze Deltamdashwith the majority now found in Guangxi and Yunnan These areas are rich in mountains but poor in plains and so local farmers build terraced fields to suit a maximum area of their mountainous terrain to rice planting Terraced field construction began considerably later in Northern Shaanxi and Western Shanxi the practice in these regions was widely popularized only in the 1950s The Loess Plateau is typified by low Guangxi and poor soil fertility The construction of terraced fields here not only helps mitigate soil erosion on sloped fields but also helps to increase yields through increased water retention and soil improvement It has been shown that terraced fields achieve an average water retention rate of 832 percent and a soil retention rate of 839 percent in Lishi County Shanxi Yanrsquoan City 延安市 Shaanxi and Suide County 绥德县 Shaanxi all three of which are located in mountainous regions of the Loess Plateau6 Terraced fields are an extraordinarily effective means of conservation in sloped farm fields and so have developed rapidly in Western Shanxi and Northern Shaanxi Liulin alone built terraces on a total area of 114338 mu of arable landmdashtwenty percent of the countyrsquos 577880 mu of total arable landmdashover the thirty-plus
Shi Nianhairsquos (史念海 ) Huangtu gaoyuan lishi dili yanjiu 《黄土高原历史地理研究》 [A Study of the History and Geography of the Loess Plateau] (Huanghe shuili chubanshe 2001) was the culmination of all work done so far in the field There are however few works on the subject of soil and water conservation work performed during the era of collectiviza-tion Other than a few essays published in small local publications there are very few aca-demic treatises on this subject the major exception being Gao Yunrsquos (高芸 ) ldquolsquoYi liang wei gangrsquo zhengce de shishi dui shaanbei huangtu qiuling gouhe qu shuitu baochi gongzuo de yingxiangmdashyi Suide xian weili ldquo以粮为纲 rdquo 政策的实施对陕北黄土丘陵沟壑区水土
保持工作的影响mdashmdashmdash以绥德县为例 [The Effects on Soil and Water Conservation Work in the Loess Plateau Hills and Ravines of Northern Shaanxi of the Implementation of the lsquoTaking Grain as the Key Linkrsquo Policymdashusing Suide County as an Example]rdquo (masters thesis Shaanxi Normal University 2007)
6 Wu Faqi and Zhang Yubin 吴发启张玉斌 ldquoHuangtu gaoyuan shuiping titian de xush-uibaotu xiaoyi fenxi 黄土高原水平梯田的蓄水保土效益分析 [Analysis of the Effec-tiveness at Water and Soil Conservation of Level Terraces on the Loess Plateau]rdquo Zhongguo shuitu baochi kexue 《中国水土保持科学》 1 (2004)
HAO104
ltUNgt
years from the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China to 19807 Terraces are now an important component of the countyrsquos arable land
Liulinrsquos terraces were not however built overnight At first locals were op-posed to the idea of terraces but eventually their understanding changed and they came to accept them
Residents of Liulin had abundant experience in digging ditches and build-ing dams but terraced fields were a completely alien concept to them at first In August 1954 the first Peoplersquos Congress of Shanxi Province passed the ldquoRes-olutions on the Planned Performance of Water and Soil Conservation Work throughout the Provincerdquo 关于在全省范围内有计划地开展水土保持工
作的决议 They read ldquoImportant measures in properly performing water and soil conservation work include changing unreasonable land usage customs promoting the widespread construction of terraced fields on sloped arable land and changing the extensive farming method of lsquoplanting widely but reap-ing littlersquordquo8 In the ldquoShanxi Province fifteen-year Long Range Plan for Water and Soil Conservationrdquo 山西省水土保持十五年远景规划 that followed the government turned its attention to the ridge-and-ravine areas of the Loess Pla-teau where soil erosion was the most severe The Plan read ldquoWe must imple-ment a widespread program of water and soil conservation In other words we must flatten stretches of earth at fixed intervals on sloped arable land building earthen ridges at their outskirts Water should then be irrigated into the newly flattened land making it suitable for planting Every year the ridges should be rebuilt and reinforced and the earth should be plowed more deeply every year In this way terraced fields will eventually be formedrdquo9 At this time the Lishan County government assembled a total of 381 agricultural cooperative directors production brigade chiefs and technicians from 379 cooperatives around the county and dispatched them to study the construction of terraced fields at Daquan Mountain 大泉山 Yanggao County 阳高县 the provincial
7 Liulin xian shuili zhi 《柳林县水利志》 [Irrigation Records of Liulin County] ed Chen Baohua 陈保华 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 2006) 93 Liulin xian zhi 《柳林县志》 [Re-cords of Liulin County] ed Li Jiulin 李九林 (Zhongguo haichao chubanshe 1995) 114
8 ldquoGuanyu zai quan sheng fanwei you jihua di kaizhan shuitu baochi gongzuo de jueyi 关于
在全省范围有计划地开展水土保持工作的决议 [Resolution Regarding Promoting Planned Water and Soil Conservation Work throughout the Province]rdquo Shanxi ribao 《山西
日报》 August 12 1954 second edition9 Shanxi shuitu baochi zhi 《山西水土保持志》 [Records of Water and Soil Conservation in
Shanxi] (Huanghe shuili chubanshe 1998) 93
105A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields
ltUNgt
model for water and soil conservation works10 Officials in Liulin still under the jurisdiction of Lishan County 离山县 made the earliest forays into terrace construction One of their pilot programs was established at the Wangjiagou water and soil conservation station 王家沟水土保持站 One of two methods was employed in tests at Wangjiagou depending on the degree of slope and general topography of an area The first was to build the terraces all in one go The second was to build terraces gradually over the course of several years Ag-ricultural cooperatives at the time generally employed the all-at-once method on land with a slope of six degrees or lower as a relatively small amount of la-bor was required On land with slopes between six and twenty-fivedegrees co-operatives would use a combination of cultivation techniques and engineering measures digging level ditches across the slope along predetermined horizon-tal lines set at fixed distance from one another Above the ditches they built ridges and then they flattened the earth behind those ridges Over the years a combination of working the earth and natural rainfall established the terraces more firmly and built the ridges higher In the end slope-style terraces with a slope between three and five degrees resulted
The construction of slope-style terraces required only a small amount of changes to a hillside which made the process relatively simple However the process was slow particularly the gradual building up and adding of ridges and this slow pace did not conform to the rapid pace at which cooperatization was sweeping the country It took two years to complete terrace construction in the Wanjiagou basin coming to total an area of less than 100 mu of terraced fields11 Construction methods were not very scientific and so the process of gradual leveling of the terraced fields ended up ruining fertile topsoil render-ing those fields incapable of increasing grain yields One person with inside knowledge had this to say ldquoIn the early 1950s owing to our lack of experience we had an insufficient understanding of topsoil issues while constructing the terraced fields The result was that the majority of soil contained in the ter-raced fields was immature soil with the cultivatable soil buried deep below
10 Lishi xian zhi 《离石县志》 [Records of Lishi County] ed Li Wenfan 李文凡 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 1996) 746
11 Shanxi sheng Lishan shuitu baochi shiyan zhan ( jingliu guance ziliao zhengli) 《山西省
离山水土保持试验站 (径流观测资料整理 )》 [LishanWater and Soil Conservation Testing Station of Shanxi Province Compiled from Runoff Observation Materials] ed Shanxi Provincial Agricultural Construction Bureau Department of Farm Fields and Irrigation and the Lishan Water and Soil Conservation Testing Station 山西省农业建设厅农田
水利局离山水土保持试验站 (1959) 5
HAO106
ltUNgt
The immature soil was not only insufficiently loose but even worse it lacked the organic matter necessary for agricultural production The result of these construction methods was that grain output did not increase but rather de-clined Locals referred to this method of terrace construction as lsquothree years of povertyrsquordquo12 For these reasons locals did not truly accept terraced fields at this time and the method was not promulgated
Beginning in 1958 the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo was launched on the agricul-tural front Although this movement resulted in great losses to socialist con-struction to a certain extent it did spur construction of terraced fields on the Loess Plateau Lishan County began attempts at one-off construction of level terraces in order to accelerate the pace of water and soil conservation work A much larger amount of labor was required in this method than in the slope-style method but it did result in the replacement of high-degree slopes with terraces This method also eliminated erosion due to gravity and stabilized soil water content by thickening the soil and increasing the soil layerrsquos adsorption capacity Thus from this point forward terraced fields were highly effective in both water and soil conservation and in increasing grain yields
The Hechang Agricultural Cooperative of Liulin Township was the first group to attempt ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo The cooperative built an area of 230 mu at the Sanlangbao 三郎堡 site in the Tianjiagou 田家沟 basin using this method Throughout the process cooperative members worked as a team and pooled wisdom to arrive at common goals They employed a method of matur-ing immature soil in which they combined soaked soil stove ashes mule and horse manure bituminous coal corn stalks and other fertilizers in trenches for a period of time before returning the mixture to the terraced fields and plowing deeply This method enabled them to overcome the various shortcom-ings of previous terrace construction they both avoided destroying the topsoil level and increased agricultural yields at the same time In 1958 alone yields per mu in terraced fields rose to 363 jin eighty-three percent higher than in slope-style terraces13 One Soviet water and soil conservation expert lauded the terraces as ldquoa pioneering undertaking in water and soil conservationrdquo14 At this time began the great ldquoone-time level terracerdquo movement that subsequently swept across Liulin not to mention the rest of the ridge-and-ravine areas of the Loess Plateau Thereafter such areas as Jinluo Village 金罗村 Zhongyang County 中阳县 and Anye Village 安业村 Lin County 临县 in Shanxi and
12 From an interview with a cadre surnamed Dong (78 years old) from the Liulin County Water Conservation and Irrigation Department conducted on April 20 2010
13 Lishi xian zhi 20214 Liulin xian shuili zhi 519
107A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields
ltUNgt
Suide County in Shaanxi also began promoting ldquoone-time level terracerdquo con-struction More importantly locals began to approve of the method as the soil maturation process ensured that topsoil was not damaged and increased grain yields Once this improved method had been invented terraces were built with even greater speed By the end of 1959 5799 mu of terraced fields had been built in Liulin County alone15
In the 1960s and 1970s Liulin County adopted the ldquoconcentrate topsoil in the middlerdquo method the ldquoinvert layersrdquo method and other methods on the basis of Dazhairsquos ldquotriple retention fieldsrdquo All these merged into a top-to-bottom theory of slope management which was used to guide the large-scale construction of terraces in the area Of all groups working in this field the Hanjiayu Bri-gade made the greatest strides at increasing yields with their ldquobroad terracerdquo method From this point forward terraced fields were elevated to the status of ldquohigh yield fieldsrdquo and the total area of land converted to terraced fields grew many times over up to 54638 mu in 1970 and again to 114338 mu in 198016 No longer lamented as ldquothree years of povertyrdquo terraced fields came to be known among locals as ldquoriches this yearrdquo on the strength of their stable high yields Terraces in Liulin were first lamented and then widely accepted In that era in which grains were scarce and indeed having enough to eat was one of the greatest issues of the times terraces came to be supported and welcomed by the masses The effectiveness of the terraces at water and soil conservation was thus considered less important at that time than their effectiveness at increas-ing agricultural yields
ii The Establishment of Typical Models and the Replacement of Terraced Fields
The Hechang Cooperative and Hanjiayu Brigade were the forerunners of ter-race construction of Liulin County changing the reputation of terraces from ldquothree years of povertyrdquo to ldquoriches this yearrdquo Their work also served as a model in water and soil conservation across the ridge-and-ravine regions of the Loess Plateau in both Western Shanxi and Northern Shaanxi
(A) The Hechang Cooperativersquos ldquoOne-time Level TerracerdquoThe Hechang Cooperative was not the first group to build ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo Back in early 1957 the Shanxi Provincial Water and Soil
15 Ibid 9316 Ibid
HAO108
ltUNgt
Conservation Station had tried this method in the Wangjiagou basin but with limited success There was great dissent regarding how ldquoone-time level ter-racesrdquo should be tested owing to the nascent nature of the technology Many officials and members of the public were strongly opposed to the method as it required a great deal of labor to build andnecessitated sacrificing ten to fifteen percent of slope land to ridge-building and because the plowing up of im-mature soil affected yields One reason that testing in ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo was conducted by the Hechang Cooperative was that Hechang had been the home of the Hechang martyrs of the ccp Fifth Central Committee Another reason was a brave quote attributed to the leader of the Hechang Cooperativersquos seventh production team Yang Tingrsquoan 杨庭安 ldquoThere are always losses and gains to any story Itrsquos not so bad that our yields dropped this year When yoursquore hit with one year of losses replace it with gains year after yearrdquo17 For these reasons the Lishan County Party Committee chose the Hechang Cooperative to conduct the testing
The Hechang Cooperative was located in the Tianjiagou basin in the lower reaches of the Sanchuan River 三川河 It was by no means an advanced unit in water and soil preservation at the time The cooperative managed 600 mu of paddy fields and 4400 mu of mountainous terrain but over the three years of cooperatization the area suffering from soil erosion in the Cooperative ac-counted for only six percent of the total size of the area suffering from soil ero-sion in this area Once tests had begun in ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo secretary of the Lishan County Committee and secretary of the Liulin Township 柳林乡 Party Committee Wang Jian 王健 was dispatched to the Hechang Coopera-tive to oversee work Although Wang was a native of the area just like the co-operativersquos members he wasnrsquot very sure about whether terraces could actu-ally increase grain output His strategy then was ldquocrossing the river by feeling the stonesrdquo Wang ventured deeply into the countryside paying visits to many old farmers with experience in this area in order to make breakthroughs with ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo In addition he convened ldquoassemblies of geniuses and heroesrdquo to hear a broad array of suggestions With all members working togeth-er as a team the Hechang Cooperative conducted multiple tests ultimately arriving at their method of erecting level terraces without ruining the topsoil The method was described thusby one official at the time ldquoShovel the top-soil to the side and dig up the immature soil from the bottom After building
17 ldquoLishan xian chuxi nongcun shehuizhuyi jianshe xianjin danwei daibiao dianxing cailiao (1958 nian 10 yue) 离石县出席农村社会主义建设先进单位代表典型材料 (1958 年 10月 ) [Representative Typical Materials from Liulin Countyrsquos Participation in a Rural Socialist Construction Advanced Unit]rdquo Liulin County Archives SJ 1-9-48-54
109A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields
ltUNgt
ridges with the immature soil press the rest down to the bottom and cover with mature soil Next deeply plow and fertilize At the same time to economize labor on land sloping more than fifteen degrees make the terraces slightly nar-rower and intertill on land sloping less than fifteen degrees Then use an ox to deeply plow once or twice and then flatten In addition Chinese yams barley beans and other high-yield crops can be planted in immature soilrdquo18 Local of-ficials then mobilized all 300 members of the cooperative in the construction of ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo The guiding policy was ldquoSpecialized teams work during the busy farming season and the entire populace launches an all-out assault during the slow seasonrdquo The overall situation at the time was summed up as ldquoEvery village is taming its slopes and building terracesrdquo Over the course of one year the total area of terraced land increased drastically and agricultur-al yields increased by 83 percent from when farming was done on sloped fields This change in methodology from treating symptoms to treating the root cause of the problem laid a good foundation for later construction of basic farmland Commendations and encouragement from the State Councilrsquos Water and Soil Conservation Committee 水土保持委员会 established the Hechang Cooper-ativersquos status as a typical model in water and soil conservation What followed was a mass movement for the construction of ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo across all ridge-and-ravine regions of the Loess Plateau
In the 1950s the ccp promoted development of agricultural productivity and initiated the agricultural cooperative movement in order to rapidly lift the countryside out of poverty and backwardness At the end of 1955 the ccp Central General Office published a three-volume series called The Socialist Up-surge in Chinarsquos Countryside 中国农村的社会主义高潮 which introduced the various typical models of the cooperative movement being conducted throughout the country Interim secretary of the Lishan County Committee Liu Yaorsquos 刘耀 essay ldquoIt is Entirely Feasible to Launch Large-scale Water and Soil Conservation Work on the Strength of Cooperatizationrdquo 依靠合作化开
展大规模的水土保持工作是完全可能的 and Yanggao County Commit-tee Secretary Wang Jinrsquos 王进 ldquoLook Daquan Mountain Has Changedrdquo 看 大泉山变了样子 were two of a very small number of works on typical models of water and soil conservation in mountainous regions accepted for this rea-son they became prototypes for mountain management and water conserva-tion Another model for water and soil conservation at the time was the highly
18 ldquoLishan xian chuxi nongcun shehuizhuyi jianshe xianjin danwei daibiao dianxing cailiao (1958 nian 10 yue) 离石县出席农村社会主义建设先进单位代表典型材料 (1958年 10月 ) [Representative Typical Materials from Liulin Countyrsquos Participation in a Rural Socialist Construction Advanced Unit]rdquo Liulin County Archives SJ 1-9-48-54
HAO110
ltUNgt
celebrated Daquan Mountain Lishan County was formally made a national model in water and soil conservation for its planning but the ldquofairytalerdquo story of Gao Jincai 高进才 and Zhang Fenglinrsquos 张凤林 Daquan Mountain was altogether different The success of ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo ended the Loess Plateaursquos reliance on traditional methods of mountain management and wa-ter conservation It was a one-off exploration and revolution in water and soil conservation aided by collectivization It also overcame the myriad apprehen-sions and misgivings people had toward terraced fields at the time At the time the basic farmland system was established the status of ldquohigh-yield farmlandrdquo accorded to terraces made them an important practical measure for water and soil conservation in the ridge-and-ravine regions of the Loess Plateau
Wang Jian the actual executor of national policy during the era of collec-tivization truly made deep incursions with laborers He excavated the diverse scattered experiences and wisdom of the masses exceeding what was pos-sible with labor alone and bringing about a sublimation of the wisdom of the masses
(B) The Hanjiayu Brigadersquos ldquoBroad TerracesrdquoldquoBroad terracesrdquo were another form of level terraces The ldquobroadrdquo in their name refers to the width of the area of arable land within individual terraces The standards for this width varied from region to region and from one period of time to another In the 1970s six meters was the dividing line with terraces be-tween three to five meters wide referred to as ldquonarrow terracesrdquo and anything over six meters referred to as ldquobroad terracesrdquo One difference between these and ldquoone-time level terracesrdquo was the equipment necessary to build them All level terraces built in the 1950s and 1960s were ldquonarrow terracesrdquo because the most common equipment for terrace-building at the time was limited to spades shovels hoes and bamboo baskets As a result the work efficiency of terrace construction was low Further compounded by the nascent nature of the technology terrace construction was generally limited to a width of be-tween three and five meters The spread of mechanization was a turning point in the construction of ldquobroad terracesrdquo which are intrinsically more effective at water and soil conservation The Hanjiayu Brigade was the first group in all of Liulin County to attempt trials with broad terraces Their success at moving away from narrow terraces led to an updating of terrace construction technology
The Hanjiayu Brigade was one of the most successful models for water and soil conservation during the ldquolearn from Dazhai in agriculturerdquo movement The Brigade administered a total of 1268 mu of farm land the vast majority of which was located on slopes in the region of Liuliangjiugou which means ldquosix
111A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields
ltUNgt
ridges and nine ravinesrdquo This region had long been mocked as ldquonine apologies every ten yearsrdquo owing to severe erosion and poor land management In 1970 the Brigade launched a mass water and soil conservation movement based on Dazhairsquos experience with ldquosponge fieldsrdquo ie fields of soil with loose soft tex-ture Specialized conservation teams were at the core of the movement with the participation of all other laborers ensured via labor competitions quota management and other means The focus of their work was the construction of terraced fields Over the course of three years the Brigade built a total area of 812 mu of terraces which together with their pre-existing 300 mu of terraces meant that terraces comprised ninety-two percent of the Brigadersquos land That was quite an impressive accomplishment Terraces improved soil conditions and the Brigade experienced bumper crop grain harvests for several years running Their total grain yield in 1970 was 200000 jin In 1972 the figure was 300000 meaning a per capita grain yield of 400 jin19 The most striking differ-ence between Hanjiayu and other model areas in water and soil conservation was that all of the over 800 mu of terraces built by the Brigade were ldquobroad terracesrdquo over six meters wide Before this time terrace construction had been carried out using an array of basic tools wooden rafters wooden tamps and hoes The Hanjiayu Brigade had at its disposal certain amounts of push carts flatbed carts walking tractors and other more advanced implements These possessions represented a technological upgrade in the construction of ter-races Seeing that narrow terraces made tractor plowing and irrigation diffi-cult the Hanjiayu Brigade boldly broke through the previous width limitations of three to five meters making tractor plowing and irrigation possible It was for this reason that at the Province-wide Shanxi Region ldquoLearn from Dazhairsquos Experiencerdquo Exchange Conference convened by Liulin County in 1972 the Hanjiayu Brigade was confirmed as an advanced model in building terraces on sloped fields and in ldquogoing from rags to richesrdquo More important were the advantages of ldquobroad terracesrdquo in bringing about increased grain yields and the guiding effect of this model The Hanjiayu Brigade played an important role in pushing the change from ldquonarrow terracesrdquo to ldquobroad terracesrdquo on the Loess Plateau in the 1970s This change in turn played an innovative and leading role in the widening and general upgrading of level terraces in the region
19 ldquoShanxi sheng xishan diqu nongye xue dazhai jingyan jiaoliuhuiyi cailiao (1972 nian 10 yue) 山西省西山地区农业学大寨经验交流会议材料 (1972年 10月 ) [Materials from the Exchange Conference for Learning from Dazhairsquos Agricultural Experience in the Western Mountain Regions of Shanxi Province]rdquo Liulin County Archives SJ1-4-12-14
HAO112
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iii Conclusions
China has been a major agricultural country since antiquity Between the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China and the end of the 1970s grain was constantly a major problem in the development of Chinarsquos socialist economy Mao Zedong addressed the conference of the secretaries of provincial and municipal party committees convened in 1957 saying the following ldquoYou must be aware that not paying special attention to grain is very dangerous If you donrsquot pay attention to grain sooner or later there will be great upheavals under the heavensrdquo20 The greatest threat to grain in Liulin County inhabiting the ridge-and-ravine topography of the Loess Plateau was soil erosion That is why from the very outset of the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China officials here launched a long-lasting movement of water and soil conservation One of the most important measures of that movement was the construction of terraced fields Over time local attitudes toward terraces changed from op-position to acceptance A major reason for that change was increased grain yields brought about by terraced fields Officials established both the ldquoone-time level terracerdquo and ldquobroad terracerdquo as official models specifically because of increased grain yields The mobilization of grassroots labor during the era of collectivization made the wide scale construction of terraces possible A virtuous cycle emerged between the struggle to control soil erosion and the realization of higher grain yields in terraced fields which had been officially deemed ldquohigh-yield farmlandrdquo This cycle made them an important practical measure in water and soil conservation in the ridge-and-ravine regions of the Loess Plateau At the same time an important characteristic of the era of col-lectivization was the excavation concentration refinement and sublimation of the experience of the people especially as manifested during the upgrading of terracing technology
Thirty years of unflagging efforts to control erosion spurred vigorous de-velopment to Liulinrsquos terraced fields and brought about mature theories and technological achievements during the era of collectivization One must also remember however that there are also lessons to be learned from the ter-race building of this period For example some poorly designed terraces went barren after only a few years of use meaning that a great deal of labor and material resources had been squandered for nothing In another example pressure to increase grain output and the success of the ldquoone-time level ter-racerdquo prompted the people to pursue higher yields of grain per mu but in the
20 Mao Zedong wenji di 7 juan 《毛泽东文集》第7 卷 [Collected Works of Mao Zedong Vol 7] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1999) 199
113A Study of the Construction of Terraced Fields
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end many terraces were built on land too narrow or too steep to be suitable for terrace construction leading to increased soil erosion in those areas21
In summary the major reasons behind the deficiencies of water and soil conservation work of this era lay in restrictions of leftist wrong though and in technological limitations In the pursuit of speed and quantity many areas overlooked efficiency and quality in their conservation work More important-ly water and soil management wasmdashjust like the construction and explora-tions of the Peoplersquos Republic of China at the timemdashin an exploratory period There was little experience to draw from during this time of performing prac-tical work without having first completed research Those factors in addition to scarcity of resources and capital and low levels of technology caused some endeavors to end unsuccessfully Historical researchers should however view the past with a dialectical attitude One could even say that it was the unbro-ken chain of attempts and failures of those explorers on the front line that propelled the great advances made in terrace construction in Liulin County Those successes and failures have now become valuable treasures for further water and soil conservation work on the Loess Plateau
The appeals of the masses and the creation of official models forged the glowing glamor of terraces in the era of collectivization After the start of Reform and Opening there was a new surge in rural irrigation construction as the countryrsquos overall national prowess steadily increased Recent achieve-ments have been made in water and soil conservation on the Loess Plateau on the strength of abundant capital and advanced technology that overshadow any achievements made in times gone by The dense network of terraces are a major component in the engineering system currently used to administer the regionrsquos mountainous regions Whereas in the past increased grain yields were the major driver of water and soil conservation at present the foremost objective in this field is environmental improvement Improved agricultural yields are now a secondary concern such a status conforms to our current social environment of increased attention to environmental issues One can-not however overlook the fact that explorations made in terraced field con-struction during the era of collectivization not only laid a solid theoretical and practical foundation for the achievements of today but the experiences and lessons gained from that time still exert a strong impact on the water and soil conservation work being performed today Now as farming irrigation projects have become the focus of the ldquothree rural issuesrdquo the abundant resources and
21 From an interview with a cadre surnamed Lei (55 years old) from the Liulin County Water Conservation and Irrigation Department conducted on April 21 2010
HAO114
ltUNgt
experiences accumulated during the era of collectivization are still extremely valuable to our socialist construction today
References
ldquoGuanyu zai quan sheng fanwei you jihua di kaizhan shuitu baochi gongzuo de jueyi 关于在全省范围有计划地开展水土保持工作的决议 [Resolution on Promot-ing Planned Water and Soil Conservation Work throughout the Province]rdquo Shanxi ribao 《山西日报》 August 12 1954 second edition
ldquoLishan xian chuxi nongcun shehuizhuyi jianshe xianjin danwei daibiao dianxing cailiao (1958 nian 10 yue) 离石县出席农村社会主义建设先进单位代表典型材
料(1958年 10月) [Representative Typical Materials from Liulin Countyrsquos Participa-tion in a Rural Socialist Construction Advanced Unit]rdquo Liulin County Archives SJ 1-9-48-54
Lishi xian zhi《离石县志》 [Records of Lishi County] ed Li Wenfan 李文凡 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 1996)
Liulin xian shuili zhi 《柳林县水利志》 [Irrigation Records of Liulin County] ed Chen Baohua 陈保华 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 2006) 93
Liulin xian zhi 《柳林县志》 [Records of Liulin County] ed Li Jiulin 李九林 (Zhong-guo haichao chubanshe 1995)
Mao Zedong wenji di 7 juan 《毛泽东文集》第7 卷 [Collected Works of Mao Zedong Vol 7] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1999)
ldquoShanxi sheng xishan diqu nongye xue dazhai jingyan jiaoliuhuiyi cailiao (1972 nian 10 yue) 山西省西山地区农业学大寨经验交流会议材料(1972 年 10 月) [Materials from the Exchange Conference For Learning from Dazhairsquos Agricultural Experience in the Western Mountain Regions of Shanxi Province]rdquo Liulin County Archives SJ1-4-12-14
Shanxi shuitu baochi zhi 《山西水土保持志》 [Records of Water and Soil Conserva-tion in Shanxi] (Huanghe shuili chubanshe 1998)
Wu Faqi and Zhang Yubin 吴发启张玉斌 ldquoHuangtu gaoyuan shuiping titian de xushuibaotu xiaoyi fenxi 黄土高原水平梯田的蓄水保土效益分析 [Analysis of the Effectiveness at Water and Soil Conservation of Level Terraces on the Loess Pla-teau]rdquo Zhongguo shuitu baochi kexue 《中国水土保持科学》 1 (2004)
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_007
ltUNgt
chapter 5
Historical Observations Regarding the Large-scale Establishment of Rural Public Canteens in Hebei Province
Li Chunfeng1
Abstract
Between the first half of 1958 and June 1961 rural public canteens in Hebei Province first exploded in number then became difficult to sustain then were forcibly rein-stated and finally were completely abolished The fate of rural canteens in Hebei was closely related to the rise and fall of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo and the peoplersquos com-mune movement Rural public canteens in Hebei grew prodigiously as the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo and peoplersquos commune movement were in the ascendant but the rural can-teen movement ended in failure just as the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo came to its close
Keywords
Hebei Province ndash rural public canteens ndash the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo movement ndash the peoplersquos commune movement
Between the first half of 1958 and June 1961 rural public canteens in Hebei Province first exploded in number then became difficult to sustain then were forcibly reinstated and finally were completely abolished The fate of rural canteens in Hebei was closely related to the rise and fall of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo and the peoplersquos commune movement Rural public canteens in He-bei grew prodigiously as the Great Leap Forward and peoplersquos commune move-ment were in the ascendant but the rural canteen movement ended in failure just as the Great Leap Forward came to its close In this essay I shall attempt to present a thorough review and some observations of the historical processes by which rural public canteens were widely established in Hebei Province dur-ing the Great Leap Forward era
1 Li Chunfeng (李春峰 ) is a master of laws in the Hebei Provincial Academy of Social Sciences History Center
LI116
ltUNgt
i Headlong Rush to Action
The genesis of the rural public canteen movement in Hebei Province lay in the rural cooperative movement During this time farmers voluntarily and spon-taneously established simple or mobile canteens on a temporary or seasonal basis amid the fields to increase the work efficiency of farming As the busy seasons wound down these simple canteens were temporarily closed These temporary canteens were similar in style and substance to the public canteens that followed One might say they were the embryonic form of the public can-teens they laid the foundation for the widespread establishment of public canteens during the Great Leap Forward
On September 24 1957 the ccp Central Committee and the State Council jointly issued the ldquoResolutions Regarding the Large-scale Launch of the Farm-land Irrigation and Manure Collection Movement in Winter of this Year and Spring of Next Yearrdquo 关于今冬明春大规模地开展兴修农田水利和积肥
运动的决定 which called for governments around the country to launch a ldquoleapingrdquo upsurge in output centered on construction of irrigation works in rural areas In order to thoroughly implement the spirit of the Central Com-mittee directives and comprehensively promote the construction of rural irrigation works the Hebei Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Peoplersquos Committee between October 14 and 20 of that year jointly convened a congress of irrigation and manure collection activists at which it was demanded that the entire rural population of the province initiate an upsurge in the move-ment for irrigation works construction and manure collection and promote the Great Leap Forward in agricultural production The Xushui County 徐水县 government implemented a large-scale collective irrigation works labor strat-egy of ldquomilitarized organization battle-style action and collectivized livingrdquo which brought about unified control of labor over a wide area In response all manner of busy season canteens and ldquoon-work-premise canteensrdquo were es-tablished to increase labor productivity and to integrate modes of living and modes of production By July 1958 every commune and production brigade of Xushui County had established public canteens which made Xushui the first county in Hebei to bring about county-wide ldquocanteen-izationrdquo It was reported that ldquoall the 247 agricultural cooperatives of Xushui County have established a total of 1771 rural canteens serving a total of 275000 people more than 80 percent of the total population of the countyrdquo2
2 ldquoLaoli da jiefang shengchan da yuejin Xushui xian sheshe ban qi gonggong shitang 劳力大
解放 生产大跃进 徐水县社社办起公共食堂 [Great Liberation of Labor Great Leap
117Historical Observations
ltUNgt
In the first half of 1958 the Great Leap Forward was launched in every corner of the country On August 17 officials at a meeting of the ccp Central Politburo in Beidaihe 北戴河 attended by non-members passed the ldquoccp Central Resolutions Regarding Issues of Establishing Peoplersquos Communes in Rural Areasrdquo 中共中央关于在农村建立人民公社问题的决议 The Resolutions mandated that communes implement a distribution system combining a supply system (ie rationing system) and a wage system and that communes erect public canteens From August 13 to 15 the Hebei Provincial Committee convened on-the-spot conferences on canteens in Anci and Wuqing to promulgate canteen experience On August 29 the Hebei Provin-cial Committee issued the ldquoDirectives Regarding Construction of Peoplersquos Communesrdquo 关于建立人民公社的指示 which demanded that the govern-ments of all provincial and city-level regions establish peoplersquos communes and establish public canteens Xushui County was ahead of nationwide trends at the time Under the guidance of ccp Central Xushui officials began to estab-lish ldquocommunist pilotsrdquo and implemented the ldquosupply system of the entire peoplerdquo which was also known as the ldquofifteen includedsrdquo3 With the central government vigorously promoting ldquofactors of communismrdquo this ldquopioneering workrdquo of Xushui County caught the attention of the Central Committee who lent the region their enthusiastic support This official support led to the rapid spread of public canteens throughout the province
On September 1 Hong qi Magazine published an editorial titled ldquoWelcom-ing the Climax of Peoplersquos Commune Transformationrdquo 迎接人民公社化高潮 as well as the general regulations of the Cuoyashan Satellite Commune 嵖岈
山卫星公社 of Suiping County 遂平县 Henan Province The regulations stipulated a distribution system that combined a wage system and a food sup-ply system State regulations of the time established the standard for food supply as the establishment of public canteens within production units On September 4 the Peoplersquos Daily 人民日报 published an editorial lavishing praise on the Cuoyashan Satellite Communersquos food supply system and its pub-lic canteens The Cuoyashan Satellite Communersquos provisions regarding public canteens stipulated that the communersquos public canteens be a model for the
Forward in Production All Communes of Xushui County Establishing Public Canteens on a Wide Scale]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 July 12 1958
3 On September 23 1958 Xushui County First Party Secretary Zhang Guozhong further ex-plained the concept of ldquofifteen includedsrdquo to a meeting convened by the county committee The full list of ldquoincludedsrdquo was food clothing housing shoes socks towels soap lamp oil matches heating subsidies showers haircuts watching movies healthcare subsidies and burial
LI118
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promulgation of such canteens throughout the country Once word got out officials in every corner of the country began emulating the communersquos food supply system The most common method of establishing food supply systems at the time was as follows a portion of food rations pre-established for dis-tribution to individual commune members was retained per state regulations and appropriated to public canteens where commune members could eat for free If one holds that the 1958 Beidaihe conference was the precursor to the public canteen movement then one must agree that the publication of the Cuoyashan Satellite Communersquos general regulations lit the fuse that spread the movement to every peoplersquos commune in the country The regulations also provided the model for the rapid rise of public canteens in neighboring Hebei On October 25 the Peoplersquos Daily published an editorial titled ldquoProper Opera-tion and Management of Public Canteensrdquo 办好公共食堂 which read ldquoThe collective welfare enterprise of properly establishing communes particularly the establishment of public canteens has become an extremely important component of the work involved in the peoplersquos commune movement It is the crux behind solidifying peoplersquos communesrdquo4 As the peoplersquos commune move-ment of the Great Leap Forward and the ldquoGreat Forging of Steel and Iron of the Entire Populacerdquo [aka ldquobackyard furnacerdquo] movement swept the country rural public canteens sprouted in every corner of Hebei as vigorously as bamboo shoots after a spring rain ldquoBy November 1958 over 230000 public canteens were established in all rural areas of the province with ninety-four percent of commune members participatingrdquo5
ii Difficulties in Sustaining
The Great Leap Forward movement was plagued with problems including the ldquovogue of communismrdquo (a trend by which egalitarianism was held supreme and labor and material resources were transferred arbitrarily regardless of which commune they belonged to) the tendency of officials to exaggerate yield figures special treatment of cadres the trend of excessively forceful or-ders and other ldquoleftistrdquo mistakes These severely impacted the national econo-my and plunked the economy of Hebei into a mire of difficulties
4 ldquoBan hao gonggong shitang 办好公共食堂 [Proper Operation and Management of Public Canteens]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 October 25 1958
5 Hebei sheng zhimiddotzhengfu zhi 《河北省志 middot政府志》 [Records of Hebei ProvincemiddotGovernment Records] (Renmin chubanshe 2000) 522
119Historical Observations
ltUNgt
At the end of 1958 there were severe food shortages in Hebei where it became difficult to sustain the multitudes of public canteens that had been recently set up The first reason was that the policy of providing food free of charge in public canteens led to enormous wastes Two official policies of public canteens in Hebei instituted from the outset were ldquoeat for freerdquo and ldquoall you can eatrdquo One estimate based on incomplete statistics was that ldquoover 3 bil-lion kilograms of food were thrown away or left to rot across the provincerdquo6 A second reason was that the ldquoGreat Forging of Steel and Ironrdquo large-scale con-struction of irrigation works and other ldquolarge-scalerdquo rural collective initiatives siphoned off an enormous quantity of fit young laborers This loss of laborers led to a severely insufficient labor pool dedicated to agriculture and in many cases there was nobody available to harvest fields full of ripe grain which in turn led to a condition known as ldquopoor yields despite healthy cropsrdquo One farmer in Qingyuan County Baoding District said this of the situation ldquoFields of ripe beans rotting on the ground and to pick the cotton therersquos no one aroundrdquo7 The third reason was ldquoexcessive grain requisitioningrdquo caused by over- ambitious estimates of grain yields The Hebei Provincial Committee convened a province-wide financial and economic work conference at the end of August 1958 at which provincial officials apportioned the work of ldquogreat purchasing and great sellingrdquo of agricultural products and by-products At the conference grain output for the entire province was estimated at the enormous figure of 225 billion jin but the actual yield from 1958 was only 837 billion jin Of that total 2641 billion jin of grain was requisitioned 3155 percent of total grain output In February 1959 the Hebei provincial government convened a con-ference for the purchase and sale of agricultural products At this conference the province-wide grain yield was estimated at 30 billion kilograms officials demanded requisitioning of 435 billion jin to be realized by force if neces-sary The requisitioning figure was reduced to 335 billion kilograms in October The true grain yield in 1959 was 739 billion kilograms a drop of 980 million kilograms from 1958rsquos total but a total of 3323 billion kilogramsmdash4496 per-cent of the totalmdashwas requisitioned by the government After requisitioning rural citizens were left with 1235 kilograms of grain per capita a reduction of ten kilograms from the previous year Inflated estimates and increased requi-sitioning intensified the burden on rural citizens and severely dampened their
6 Hebei sheng zhimiddotliangshi zhi 《河北省志 middot粮食志》 [Records of Hebei ProvincemiddotGrain Records] (Zhongguo chengshi chubanshe 1994) 3
7 Ibid 45
LI120
ltUNgt
incentive It was reported that by 1958 ldquoover forty counties across the province were in famine with over 40000 people having fled from hungerrdquo8
By the end of 1958 the Hebei government ordered that grains and pota-toes be allotted together in public canteens and demanded that all local gov-ernments enforce planned eating and reasonable distribution of grain On December 30 Hebei ribao 河北日报 published an article reading ldquoPeoplersquos communes must enforce planned consumption of grains with the prerequi-site that commune members eat well and eat enough All food that is retained within peoplersquos communes after state requisitioning tasks are fulfilled must be reasonably distributedrdquo9 In May of the following year there were 255 se-vere incidents of canteens running out of food in fifty-five natural villages of the province10 These incidents indicate that Hebei did indeed face a dire food shortage many public canteens were forced to stop operating once food stocks had been exhausted
The ccp Central Committee convened a series of meetings from late 1958 to early 1958 to mitigate the negative influence of ldquoleftistrdquo mistakes on economic development and rectify peoplersquos communes On January 14 1959 the Hebei provincial government convened an assembly of delegates from advanced work units in rural socialist construction At the assembly provincial officials demanded that delegates thoroughly implement the ldquoResolutions Regard-ing Several Issues of Peoplersquos Communesrdquo 关于人民公社若干问题的决议 passed by the Sixth Plenum of the Eighth ccp Central Committee and the ldquoResolutions Regarding Rectifying and Solidifying Rural Peoplersquos Communesrdquo 关于整顿巩固农村人民公社的决议 passed at the second meeting of the Hebei Provincial Party Congress Officials further demanded that delegates grasp the opportunities of winter that year and spring the following year and over the course of about four months mobilize the entire party and entire pop-ulace to perform one-time deep rectification and solidification work within all peoplersquos communes11 With public canteens facing severe food shortages the Hebei Provincial Committee began taking proactive measures to mitigate the pressure that the food situation was exerting On April 21 the Hebei Provincial
8 Ibid9 ldquoGonggong shitang yong liang hai yao bu yao jihua 公共食堂用粮还要不要计划
[Should We Make Further Plans for Grain Demand in Public Canteens]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 December 30 1958
10 Liang Shuzhen 梁淑珍 ldquoDa ban nongcun gonggong shitang de lishi jiaoxun 大办农村
公共食堂的历史教训 [Historical Lessons from the Wide-scale Establishment of Rural Public Canteens]rdquo Zhonggong dangshi yanjiu 《中共党史研究》 3 (2000)
11 ldquoXie Xuegong tongzhi de kaimuci 解学恭同志的开幕词 [The Opening Address of Comrade Xie Xuegong]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 January 15 1959
121Historical Observations
ltUNgt
Committee held a telephone conference on resolution of food shortages Officials demanded that grain sale figures be reduced that a system of fixed per capita rations be instituted in rural canteens that emphasis be placed on food allocations and that more grain be purchased12 On April 23 the Hebei Provincial Committee transmitted to subordinate government bodies the ccp Central Committeersquos directives on feasibly reducing grain sales figures which demanded a reduction of urban grain sales by about one tenth The Central Committee had not however fully understood the level of danger posed by maladies plaguing rural public canteens this is reflected by the continued em-phasis on properly establishing public canteens contained in the ldquoResolutions Regarding Several Issues of Peoplersquos Communesrdquo In addition Mao Zedong had during the Sixth Plenum of the Eighth ccp Congress written the follow-ing memo regarding the publication of the Biography of Zhang Lu 张鲁传 ldquoIt is most interesting that those who eat in roadside eateries did not need to pay This was a harbinger of the public canteens in our peoplersquos communesrdquo13
As the various ills of public canteens gradually came to light the ccp Central Committee and Mao Zedong also gradually became aware of the severity of the issue In April 1959 some experts and academics from the Institute of Econom-ics of the China Academy of Sciences 中国科学院经济研究所 conducted an investigation into the problems caused by the large-scale establishment of public canteens in rural Changli County 昌黎县 Hebei Province Their inves-tigations yielded two reports ldquoDo Rural Canteens have any Advantages at Allrdquo 农村食堂究竟有无优越性 and ldquoRecent Working Conditions and Problems in Communes of Changli County Hebei Provincerdquo 河北省昌黎县最近公
社的工作情况和问题 In these reports researchers point out seven abuses that were taking place in rural public canteens in Changli County as well as across the country Mao approved the latter report and on May 2 wrote the following memo ldquoThe situation in Changli County Hebei Province and the opinions they raise are universal in nature Party committees in every location and at every tier should lay emphasis on the resolution of these problems the faster the betterrdquo14 That same month an enlarged meeting of the ccp Central Politburo in Shanghai issued a meeting summary titled ldquoRegarding Eighteen
12 Hebei sheng zhimiddotliangshi zhi 36213 Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 7 ce《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第7 册 [Mao
Zedong Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 7] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1992) 627
14 Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 8 ce《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第8 册 [Mao Zedong Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 8] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1993) 241
LI122
ltUNgt
Issues of Peoplersquos Communesrdquo 关于人民公社的十八个问题 In it officials noted the following ldquo Communes may institute a meal ticket system in their canteens on the basis of per capita food rationing Once per month commune members who do not use all their tickets may exchange them for grain or cash to be considered their private propertyrdquo15 On May 26 the ccp Central Commit-tee issued the ldquoDirectives Regarding the Distribution of Summer Harvests in Peoplersquos Communesrdquo 关于人民公社夏收分配的指示 which stipulated the following
We must earnestly reform public canteens through the distribution of the summer harvest Public canteens must be founded properly and positively and participation therein is to be voluntary We must ensure that participa-tion in public canteens by commune members be truly voluntary but at the same time we cannot adopt a laissez-faire attitude and allow the canteens to disappear like the windhellip We may establish canteens in which all commune members participate or we may also establish canteens in which only a por-tion of commune members participate Canteens may be run all year long or they may be run only during busy farm work seasons They may also be flexibly operated with more running in busy seasons and fewer in slack seasons Those canteens which are too big may be appropriately scaled down Food supplies should be distributed directly to households and commune members on the basis of per capita rationing The rations of those people who eat in canteens should be distributed to canteens with less going to individuals The entirety of rations should be distributed to those people who do not eat in canteens for their own safekeeping and consumption16
In order to practically implement the spirit of the ccp Central Committeersquos ldquoDirectives Regarding the Distribution of Summer Harvests in Peoplersquos Com-munesrdquo on May 30 the Hebei Provincial Committee and Provincial Peoplersquos Committee jointly issued the ldquoDirectives Regarding the Solid Performance of Summertime Rural Work including Harvest Retention Government Pur-chases Utilization and Plantingrdquo 关于切实做好夏季农村工作 实现收
好留好征购好用好种好的指示 The Directives made the follow-ing demands ldquoCanteen work must be improved and integrated with summer harvest distributionhellip They should be proactively rectified in accordance with the principles of proactivity voluntary participation by the masses diversity of methodology and being advantageous to production Various manners of
15 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 12 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第
12 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 12] ( Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996) 173
16 Luo Pinghan 罗平汉 Nongcun renmin gongshe shi 《农村人民公社史》 [The History of Rural Peoplersquos Collectives] (Fujian renmin chubanshe 2003) 141
123Historical Observations
ltUNgt
canteens should be established based on different seasons different condi-tions and different demands of the masses Canteens should continue to be run using methods of per capita rationing meal ticket systems and limited quantities of food being allotted to individualsrdquo17 On June 20 the Hebei Pro-vincial Peoplersquos Committee issued a statement demanding the reinstatement of the system of retaining private plots of land by individual households and the allowance of commune members to feed their own livestock and fowl and to operate private family side-businesses All income from these enterprises was to belong to commune members and no grain requisitioning was to be imposed on these incomes As to the issues of public canteens the statement stipulated the following ldquoFood rations are to be distributed to individual households on the basis of per capita rationing standards Those commune members who voluntarily choose to eat in canteens should have a portion of their rations distributed to canteensrdquo18 This relaxation of rural policy enabled rural citizens to engage in a certain extent of individual production and played an important role in the restoration and development of agricultural produc-tion Once rural citizens had been allowed to engage in individual production many local governments abolished their supply systems and dissolved a por-tion of public canteens This abolishment did not however fundamentally treat the chronic illness plaguing public canteens a fact which was to come to light after the forcible reinstatement of the public canteen policy
The reform of public canteens from early policies of ldquoeat for freerdquo and ldquofill up your bellyrdquo into a system of distributing rations directly to households served to mitigate the anarchy that had beset public canteens This reform was the result of adjustments made to the public canteen system caused by food short-ages These adjustments however did not change the overarching central push for the large-scale establishment of public canteens which continued to be considered part of the countryrsquos ldquobudding communismrdquo
iii Forcible Reinstatement
The Lushan Conference intended to correct ldquoleftistrdquo tendencies was con-vened in July and August of 1959 At the conference Peng Dehuai 彭德怀
17 ldquoQieshi zuo hao xiaji nongcun gongzuo zhong zhonggong Hebei shengwei sheng renmin weiyuanhui fachu zhishi 切实做好夏季农村工作中共河北省委省人民委员会
发出指示 [Solidly Carry Out the Instructions Issued by the Hebei cpc Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Peoplersquos Committee in Summertime Rural Work]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 June 12 1959
18 Hebei sheng zhimiddotzhengfu zhi 254
LI124
ltUNgt
Zhang Wentian 张闻天 and other leaders raised criticisms of the Great Leap Forward and the peoplersquos commune movement including criticisms of public canteens Peng denounced the supply system and public canteens claiming that ldquoallowing the people to eat for free too soonrdquo and ldquoencouraging people to fill their belliesrdquo were ldquoboth lsquoleftistrsquo tendenciesrdquo19 Zhang proclaimed that ldquoso-cialism does not necessarily require such methods as the supply system and public canteensrdquo20 The conference denounced the views of Peng Zhang and others as ldquotrends of pessimistic thoughtrdquo Peng and others were condemned as rightist opportunists and members of anti-party cliques Maorsquos view was that disbanding public canteens was ldquoan extremely bad thought trend that will cor-rode the party and corrode the people It is in opposition to the will of the proletariat and mass of poor farmers and it is in opposition to Marxism and Leninismrdquo21 The atmosphere of the Lushan Conference quickly deteriorated into an ldquoanti-rightistrdquo movement
The attitude of the Hebei Government toward public canteens merged with the prevailing trend of attacking rightists and the policy for proactively estab-lishing public canteens was restored On September 12 the Hebei Provincial Committee issued the ldquoDirectives Regarding Proactively Establishing Rural Public Canteensrdquo 关于积极办好农村公共食堂的指示 which called for putting a stop to the growth of rightist thought and the negative emotions of letting things fall by the wayside They also called for the rapid restoration of public canteens22 From August 24 to September 16 an enlarged meeting of the eighth plenum of the First Hebei Provincial Committee was convened in Tianjin This meeting passed the ldquoResolutionon Opposing Right-leaning Ten-dencies Boosting Incentives and Launching a Movement to Increase Output and Promote Conservationrdquo 关于反右倾鼓干劲 深入开展增产节约
运动的决议 The Resolution further criticized rightist thought The meet-ing made the following demands of all local governments in the province ldquo Actively engage in such collective welfare enterprises as establishing can-teens kindergartens childcare centers homes for the elderly and so on As for public canteens leading organizations and leading cadres at all levels should feasibly implement the centerrsquos guiding policy of lsquoproactive establishment and voluntary participationrsquo and enthusiastically support them lead them
19 Peng Dehuai zhuan 《彭德怀传》 [Biography of Peng Dehuai] (Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe 1993) 600
20 Zhang Wentian xuanji 《张闻天选集》 [Selected Works of Zhang Wentian] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1985) 497
21 Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 8 ce 41022 Liang Shuzhen
125Historical Observations
ltUNgt
and cause them to grow better day by dayrdquo23 On September 25 and 26 the Hebei provincial government convened an enlarged meeting of the Provincial Peoplersquos Committee at which officials transmitted the resolutions issued by the eighth plenum of the Eighth ccp Central Committee and the spirit of the resolutions issued by the eighth plenum of the First Provincial Committee On October 15 the ccp Central Committee approved and issued the Ministry of Agriculture party organizationrsquos ldquoReport on the State of Rural Areas since the Lushan Conferencerdquo 关于庐山会议以来农村形势的报告 which claimed that ldquoeliminating a portion of the supply system closing down public can-teens and other measures run defiantly against the spirit of socialismrdquo The report further called for ldquoexposing such reactionary repulsive things as much as possiblerdquo and ldquocriticizing them and holding them to accountrdquo24
At this point the issue of public canteens became organically mixed to-gether with the anti-rightist movement as a negative attitude toward public canteens was taken as one of the marks of a rightist The Hebei provincial government ceased to give due consideration to objective reality and began fiercely attacking any ldquorightist speech and thoughtrdquo that was allegedly criti-cal of the supply system and public canteens Provincial officials then forcibly reinstated public canteens On October 14 Hebei ribao summarized the experi-ence of the Dongziyan Production Brigade 东紫烟生产队 of the Chengguan Commune 城关公社 of Xinle County 新乐县 extolling the 10 great advan-tages of public canteens suitability to collectivized production liberation of women convenience to the masses economization of labor efficient use of food and coal improvements to commune membersrsquo lives the fostering of the spirit of collectivism strengthening unity of the masses bringing harmony to families and driving the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo in production25 These moves strongly repoliticized the issue of public canteens and exacerbated the spread of ldquoleftistrdquo mistakes Even with food supplies still extremely tight public can-teens many of which had been forced to close due to exhausted supplies
23 ldquoGuanyu fanyouqing gu ganjin shenru kaizhan zengchan jieyue yundong de jueyi 关于
反右倾鼓干劲 深入开展增产节约运动的决议 [Directives Regarding Opposing Rightists Encouraging Enthusiasm and Launching a Movement to Increase Production and Increase Savings]rdquo Hebei Ribao 《河北日报》 September 22 1959
24 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 12 ce 62125 ldquoDongziyan sheyuan zhengkua shitang hao zongjie jingyan ba shitang ban de geng hao
东紫烟社员争夸食堂好总结经验把食堂办得更好 [Members of Dongziyan Commune Sing Praises of Canteens Summarizing Experience Makes Canteens Better]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 October 14 1959
LI126
ltUNgt
were resuscitated It was reported that ldquo100000 canteens have been rectified or developed amid the movement of the Great Leap Forward in productionrdquo26
In late February 1960 the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee issued the ldquoReport on the Current Conditions of Rural Public Canteensrdquo 关于目前农村
公共食堂情况的报告 which read ldquoCanteens are also a battlefield position of socialism which we defend tenaciously If we lose this position it will be impossible for peoplersquos communes to maintain their strength and there will be no guarantee for the Great Leap Forwardrdquo27 This report caught the attention of the ccp Central Committee and Mao In a memo regarding this report the Central Committee reversed the position on the distribution of food rations to households which it had taken in 1959rsquos ldquoDirectives Regarding the Distribution of Summer Harvests in Peoplersquos Communesrdquo The memo read ldquoThe principles of food distribution are send quotas to householdssend physical materials to canteens eat on the basis of meal tickets and reduce the amount that goes to individuals These are prerequisites for properly establishing canteensrdquo ldquoThis practice should be emulated across the country with no exceptionsrdquo28 The forcible reinstatement of public canteens and reversals on policies for distrib-uting food directly to households further stripped rural citizens of their rights to private ownership and demand for food Without a doubt this reinstate-ment added to their already heavy burden
On March 18 the ccp Central Committee issued the ldquoMemo on Strengthen-ing Leadership of Public Canteensrdquo 关于加强公共食堂领导的批示 which Mao had drafted himself The Memo demanded that all local governments across the country continue to reinstate and promulgate public canteens As early as February 17 at the second meeting of the Second Hebei Provincial Peoplersquos Congress public canteens were established as a focus of rural work The congress demanded that ldquoin the countryside we must place central em-phasis on grain make canteens the focus and feasibly plan the lives of the massesrdquo29 In November the central government issued the ldquoUrgent Instruc-tions on Current Policy Issues in Rural Peoplersquos Communesrdquo 关于农村人民
公社当前政策问题的紧急指示信 (more commonly known as the ldquoTwelve
26 ldquoWosheng nongcun da yuejin gaochao xiongyong pengpai 我省农村大跃进高潮汹涌
澎湃 [The Surging Tide of the Great Leap Forward in the Rural Areas of this Province]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 October 21 1959
27 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 13 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第
13 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 13] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996) 47
28 Ibid 43ndash4429 Hebei sheng zhimiddotzhengfu zhi 517ndash518
127Historical Observations
ltUNgt
Instructionsrdquo) intended to reverse severe economic hardship in the country-side The Instructions ended the ldquoanti-rightistrdquo movement begun at the Lushan Conference and took initial steps toward reversing ldquoleftistrdquo practices However the Instructions continued to refer to public canteens as battlefield positions of socialism which must be stalwartly defended The Instructions read as fol-lows ldquoPublic canteens must be properly established The key to properly es-tablishing canteens is for lsquopolitics to enter the canteen and cadres to enter the kitchenrsquohellip Resolutely implement per capita rationing sending quotas to households sending food to canteens enforcing the meal ticket institution and reducing distribution to individualshellip The institution of public canteens must be persisted inrdquo30 In 1960 Hebei suffered a severe natural disaster that greatly stressed food supply yet the official line still held that public canteens must be persisted in On December 31 Hebei ribao reprinted an editorial that had appeared in Dong feng Magazine titled ldquoStriving to Increase Agricultural Yields in 1961rdquo 为争取 1961年的农业丰收而奋斗 The editorial read that ldquoagriculture has suffered from two consecutive years of natural disasters par-ticularly in 1960 when the scale of the disaster was unprecedentedrdquo but ldquothe proper establishment of public canteens enables the masses to participate in the production movement with healthy bodies and abundant spirit This is an extremely important condition for ensuring bumper crop agricultural yields This is an extremely important task that we should fully implement through-out the entire yearrdquo31
iv Complete Abolition
The Great Leap Forward threw the national economy into a quagmire As a result of the movement the national economy became severely imbalanced and total output values of both industry and agriculture fell several years con-secutively During this period there were great losses to productivity in the cities and rural areas of Hebei Province particularly in grain production These losses led to famine and the abnormal deaths of humans and livestock in some regions of the province Grain output in Hebei during the Great Leap For-ward fell to the level of 1953 ldquoAfter 1960 when grain purchase and sale figures were reduced overall grain conditions worsened to an unusual extent In 1961
30 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 13 ce 67131 ldquoWei zhengqu 1961 nian de nongye fengshou er fendou 为争取 1961年的农业丰收而
奋斗 [Fight to Increase Agricultural Yields in 1961]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 December 31 1960
LI128
ltUNgt
province-wide per capita grain output was 1561 kilograms and oil crop output was 305 kilograms the rural per capita grain ration fell to 134 kilograms from 184 kilograms in 1957 a reduction of fifty kilogramsrdquo32
The ccp Central Committee took a series of measures to mitigate the dam-age done to the national economy In January 1961 the Ninth Plenum of the Eighth ccp Congress formally passed the Eight Character Guiding Policy 八字方针 intended to ldquoadjust solidify replenish and increaserdquo the national economy and also commit to implementingthoroughly the ldquoTwelve Instruc-tionsrdquo in the countryside At the plenum Mao emphasized the ideological line and working method of seeking truth from facts calling for the entire party to incite a trend of investigation and research Faced with a strong public out-cry against public canteens Mao dispatched teams to conduct rural investiga-tions in Zhejiang led by Tian Jiaying 田家英 to Hunan led by Hu Qiaomu 胡乔木 and to Guangdong led by Chen Boda 陈伯达 The ccp Central Com-mittee convened the ldquoThree Souths Conferencerdquo 三南会议 and ldquoThree Norths Conferencerdquo 三北会议 in February and March collectively as a central work conference in Guangzhou To address the various abuses which had appeared in the peoplersquos communes the conference passed the ldquoWorking Regulations for Rural Peoplersquos Communes (Draft)rdquo 农村人民公社工作条例(草案) This draft did not however change the stipulations of the ldquoTwelve Instructionsrdquo regarding public canteens Rather this document held that ldquoproduction teams should actively establish public canteens in all places that meet conditionsrdquo33 The masses however had by this time long been dissatisfied with public can-teens At the ldquoThree Souths Conferencerdquo somebody transmitted the four great disadvantages of public canteens as had been reported by the branch secre-tary of a production brigade in Guangdong they destroy the mountains and forests they waste labor they have no meat and theyrsquore disadvantageous to production34 Itrsquos plain to see that public canteens had become an onerous problem that desperately needed to be solved On March 7 the Hebei Provin-cial Peoplersquos Committee convened an enlarged meeting to analyze the reasons
32 Hebei sheng zhimiddotzhengfu zhi 52733 Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu xia 《若干重大决策与
事件的回顾》下 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1997) 926
34 Liang Yaoji 梁耀基 ldquoYi wei yinqi Mao Zedong guanzhu de nongcun dang zhibu shuji -- -- Liang Jinan fanying gongshe gonggong shitang wenti de guocheng 一位引起毛泽东
关注的农村党支部书记mdashmdash梁纪南反映公社公共食堂问题的过程 [One Rural Branch Secretary Who Caught Mao Zedongrsquos Attention mdash Liang Jinanrsquos reporting of the Problems of Public Canteens in Communes]rdquo Guangdong dangshi 《广东党史》 5 (2002)
129Historical Observations
ltUNgt
behind economic hardships in the province The committee also proposed concrete measures to overcome hardship and demanded that all provincial and city-level regions concentrate efforts in agriculture and grain output In the first half of that year Hebei Provincial Committee Secretary Liu Zihou 刘子厚 led an investigation in the Rencheng Commune 任城公社 of Julu County 巨鹿县 after which he wrote the ldquoReport on the Issues of Canteensrdquo 关于食堂问题的报告 to Mao In the report he noted the problem of egali-tarianism that had emerged in public canteens primarily in excessive use of labor excessive expenditures and a reduction of the value of workpoints
After the Guangzhou Central Working Conference 广州中央工作会议 leaders at every level from the center to the village left their offices and vis-ited public canteens to study their problems At the end of April Zhou Enlai 周恩来 travelled to Handan 邯郸 Hebei to receive reports from provincial cadres From May 3 to 7 Zhou personally visited several impoverished mid-dle peasant households in the Boting Commune 伯延公社 of Wursquoan County 武安县 Hebei where he made inspections of collectivized canteens This visit gave Zhou first-hand experience of a number of the problems taking place in public canteens He discovered that the central directives on developing can-teens and maintaining a portion of the supply system did not conform to the real conditions of the countryside These were in fact two issues about which both cadres and the masses had the most vehement complaints Zhou report-ed his findings to Mao who was in Shanghai at the time35 Further investiga-tions were then conducted by Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇 in Hunan Zhu De 朱德 in Sichuan and Deng Xiaoping 邓小平 and Peng Zhen 彭真 in the outskirts of Beijing They all reported the various severe problems of public canteens to Mao and the fact that the masses were unanimous in their desire to abolish the institution Their reports ended up compelling the ccp Central Commit-tee and Mao to change the policies calling for persistence in public canteens
From the end of May to the beginning of June The ccp Central Committee convened a working conference in Beijing at which the ldquoWorking Regulations for Rural Peoplersquos Communesrdquo were debated and revised The revised draft stipulated the following ldquoThe decision whether or not a production team establishes a canteen is to be decided entirely by debate among commune membershellip All commune membersrsquo rations should be distributed to house-holds regardless of whether the production team has established a public canteen these rations are to be used at the discretion of individual commune
35 Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949ndash1976) zhong juan 《周恩来年谱 (1949~1976)》中卷 [Chronicles of Zhou Enlai (1949ndash1976) Vol 2] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1997) 409
LI130
ltUNgt
membersrdquo36 In order to thoroughly implement the spirit of the Central Committeersquos instructions on public canteens on May 25 the Hebei provincial government drafted the ldquoSupplemental Working Regulations for Rural Peoplersquos Communes (Revised Draft)rdquo 农村人民公社工作补充条例(草案修改稿) this document adopted a policy of ldquogenerally not establishingrdquo public canteens By the end of May all public canteens in Hebei province were disbanded ush-ering the public canteen off the stage of history
References
ldquoBan hao gonggong shitang 办好公共食堂 [Proper Operation and Management of Public Canteens]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 October 25 1958
Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu xia 《若干重大决策与事
件的回顾》下 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1997)
ldquoDongziyan sheyuan zhengkua shitang hao zongjie jingyan ba shitang ban de geng hao 东紫烟社员争夸食堂好 总结经验把食堂办得更好 [Members of Dongzi-yan Commune Sing Praises of Canteens Summarizing Experience Makes Canteens Better]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 October 14 1959
ldquoGonggong shitang yong liang hai yao bu yao jihua 公共食堂用粮还要不要计划 [Should We Make Further Plans for Grain Demand in Public Canteens]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 December 30 1958
ldquoGuanyu fanyouqing gu ganjin shenru kaizhan zengchan jieyue yundong de jueyi 关于反右倾鼓干劲 深入开展增产节约运动的决议 [Directives Regarding Opposing Right-Leaning Tendencies Boosting Incentives and Launching a Move-ment to Increase Output and Promote Conservation]rdquo Hebei Ribao 《河北日报》 September 22 1959
Hebei sheng zhimiddotliangshi zhi 《河北省志 middot粮食志》 [Records of Hebei ProvincemiddotGrain Records] (Zhongguo chengshi chubanshe 1994)
Hebei sheng zhimiddotzhengfu zhi 《河北省志 middot政府志》 [Records of Hebei ProvincemiddotGovernshyment Records] (Renmin chubanshe 2000)
Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 7 ce 《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第7 册 [Mao Zeshydong Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 7] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1992)
36 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 14 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第
14 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 14] ( Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1997) 401
131Historical Observations
ltUNgt
Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 8 ce 《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第8 册 [Mao Zeshydong Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 8] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1993)
Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 12 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第
12 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 12] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996)
Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 13 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第 13 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 13] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996)
Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 14 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》
第 14 册 [Selected Important Documents from after the Founding of the Nation Vol 14] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1997)
ldquoLaoli da jiefang shengchan da yuejin Xushui xian sheshe ban qi gonggong shitang 劳力大解放 生产大跃进 徐水县社社办起公共食堂 [Great Liberation of Labor Great Leap Forward in Production All Communes of Xushui County Establishing Public Canteens on a Wide Scale]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 July 12 1958
Liang Shuzhen 梁淑珍 ldquoDa ban nongcun gonggong shitang de lishi jiaoxun 大办农村
公共食堂的历史教训 [Historical Lessons from the Large-scale Establishment of Rural Public Canteens]rdquo Zhonggong dangshi yanjiu 《中共党史研究》 3 (2000)
Liang Yaoji 梁耀基 ldquoYi wei yinqi Mao Zedong guanzhu de nongcun dang zhibu shuji -- -- Liang Jinan fanying gongshe gonggong shitang wenti de guocheng 一位引起
毛 泽 东 关 注 的 农 村 党 支 部 书 记 mdashmdash梁 纪 南 反 映 公 社 公 共 食 堂 问 题 的 过 程 [One Rural Branch Secretary Who Caught Mao Zedongrsquos Attention mdash Liang Jinanrsquos reporting of the Problems of Public Canteens in Communes]rdquo Guangdong dangshi 《广东党史》 5 (2002)
Luo Pinghan 罗平汉 Nongcun renmin gongshe shi 《农村人民公社史》 [The Hisshytory of Rural Peoplersquos Collectives] (Fujian renmin chubanshe 2003)
Peng Dehuai zhuan 《彭德怀传》 [Biography of Peng Dehuai] (Dangdai zhongguo chubanshe 1993)
ldquoQieshi zuo hao xiaji nongcun gongzuo zhong zhonggong Hebei shengwei sheng renmin weiyuanhui fachu zhishi 切实做好夏季农村工作中共河北省委省
人民委员会发出指示 [Feasibly Carry Out the Instructions Issued by the Hebei CCP Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Peoplersquos Committee in Summer Rural Work]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 June 12 1959
ldquoWei zhengqu 1961 nian de nongye fengshou er fendou 为争取 1961年的农业丰收而
奋斗 [Fight to Increase Agricultural Yields in 1961]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 December 31 1960
ldquoWosheng nongcun da yuejin gaochao xiongyong pengpai 我省农村大跃进高潮汹
涌澎湃 [The Surging Tide of the Great Leap Forward in the Rural Areas of this Province]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 October 21 1959
LI132
ltUNgt
ldquoXie Xuegong tongzhi de kaimuci 解学恭同志的开幕词 [The Opening Address of Comrade Xie Xuegong]rdquo Hebei ribao 《河北日报》 January 15 1959
Zhang Wentian xuanji 《张闻天选集》 [Selected Works of Zhang Wentian] (Bei-jing Renmin chubanshe 1985)
Zhou Enlai nianpu (1949ndash1976) zhong juan 《周恩来年谱(1949~1976)》中卷 [Chronshyicles of Zhou Enlai (1949ndash1976) Vol 2] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1997)
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_008
ltUNgt
chapter 6
From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to Full-scale KindergartensmdashRural Childcare Organizations in Shanxi Province in the 1950s
Han Xiaoli 1
Abstract
In the 1950rsquos rural childcare in Shanxi Province evolved from seasonal childcare cen-ters into model kindergartens and from voluntary mutually beneficial arrangements between cooperative members into full-fledged public welfare enterprises Theregion-ally diverse seasonal childcare organizations became standard model kindergartens with standards of education and enrollment as their objectives evolved from the liberation of women to the education of children Changes that took place in rural childcare organizations reflected the statersquos efforts to develop rural public welfare en-terprises amid social transformations of the time Throughout this process there were both popular innovations that met the true needs of rural areas as well as the problem of exaggerated figures and adventurism A look back on the lessons of history is help-ful not only for more deeply understanding changes that took place to Chinese rural society in that particular era and comprehending efforts and explorations on the part of the government and the masses to build an ideal society but also in resolving to-dayrsquos rural social issues particularly as related to the issue of migrants leaving children behind in their villages an now issue widely discussed in China
Keywords
busy-season childcare centers ndash model kindergartens ndash social reformation
In recent years there has been a great deal of attention paid to research of Chinese rural society during the era of the agricultural cooperative How did the ccp promote the agricultural cooperative and peoplersquos commune movements
1 Han Xiaoli (韩晓莉 ) holds a PhD in history and was conducting postdoctorate research in the history department of Capital Normal University at the time this essay was written
HAN 134
ltUNgt
under new social structures and social relations How were the masses mobi-lized and organized in such an enormous social revolution These have been the foci of academic research in this field In the 1950s many different forms of childcare organizations emerged in rural China They were popularized and touted as safeguards for the cooperative movement and components of rural welfare enterprises In this essay I shall focus on Shanxi Province and make use of local records field surveys2 and materials published in newspapers to conduct a deep investigation into rural childcare organizations from the time of cooperatization to the advent of the peoplersquos commune I hope this will pro-vide valuable lessons for the resolution of modern rural social issues
i Pilots in Busy-Season Childcare Centers
The emergence of rural childcare organizations is closely related to the entry of women into the workforce The liberation and mobilization of women was an important social policy of governments in communist base areas since the beginning of the revolution After the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China the guiding ideology concerning women in the workforce was to en-able women to leave the house and become involved in socialist reformation and construction On October 20 1949 the Shanxi provincial government con-vened a womenrsquos congress at which it was proposed that as part of the great production movement of 1950 seventy percent of women would participate in agricultural work3 The first step to meeting this objective was to liberate women from the burden of caring for children
Shortly after the beginning of the cooperative movement some rural gov-ernments of Shanxi began pilots in childcare mutual aid teams and childcare centers that opened during busy farm work seasons in order to free up more of the female labor pool In spring 1951 Xigu Village 西故村 Tunliu County 屯留
县 established a busy-season childcare team one of the first childcare teams in Shanxi As the initial childcare team was highly effective at liberating female
2 Some records and materials used to write this essay came from field surveys conducted by professors and students of the Chinese History Institute of Shanxi University They are stored in the archives of that Institute
3 ldquoQuan sheng funuuml daibiao huiyi jueding funuuml ying zuo de shiqing 全省妇女代表会议决定
妇女应做的事情 [Province-wide Womenrsquos Congress Determines Things Women Should Do]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 November 10 1949 second edition
135From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
labor the number of such groups quickly grew from one to six4 The provincial government lauded Xigursquos experience and quickly introduced the model of childcare teams and busy-season childcare centers to the rest of the province
Although government officials believed that the establishment of busy- season childcare centers helped reduce womenrsquos burdens in the home the public was highly apprehensive of the practice at first Some even displayed doubts or feelings of revulsion In 1952 a womenrsquos symposium was convened by the government of Xinhe Village 新河村 Wutai County 五台县 in prepa-ration for the establishment of a nursemaid group ldquoAt the symposium some older women expressed fear that the children would cry that there would be much urine and feces and that there would be disharmony among the adults if children were not cared for properly Young women who took the podium said they were not willing to allow others to take their children away from them and that if it was tiresome for them to care for the children it would be even more so for older peoplerdquo5 After the agricultural cooperative of Hongjing Village 洪井村 Licheng County 黎城县 had established a busy-season child-care center only two women sent their children there The rest of the women preferred letting their children run wild in the fields to sending them to the cen-ter When the female deputy commune director visited individual households one mother asked her ldquoHow could somebody see a child as kin if they didnrsquot bear the child or rear himrdquo Another mother said ldquoMy child is still small hersquoll be bullied by the older children if I send him to the centerrdquo The nurses and maids had their own concerns One said ldquoItrsquod be fine if you asked us to raise pigs but we donrsquot dare to take the responsibility of watching childrenrdquo6 When the Nanyujiao Cooperative 南余交农业生产合作社 of Qin County 沁县 opened a pilot busy-season childcare centers nursemaids there raised four things that gave them fear ldquoFirst we fear gossip Second we fear that the mothers wonrsquot trust us Third we fear the children will fall ill Fourth we fear that watching children is exhaustingrdquo Mothers were either afraid that their children would
4 ldquoTunliu xian Xigu cun nongmang tuorsquoersuo ban de geng hao le 屯留县西故村农忙托儿
所办得更好了 [Childcare Centers in Xigu Village Tunliu County Now Better Run]rdquo Shanxi nongmin《山西农民》 April 21 1952 second edition
5 ldquoXinhe cun chengli le baomu xiaozu dai haizi de funuuml shang le minxiao 新河村成立了
保姆小组 带孩子的妇女上了民校 [Xinhe Village Has Established a Guardian Group Women with Children Now in Peoplersquos School]rdquo Shanxi nongmin《山西农民》 December 14 1952 fourth edition
6 ldquoBa haizi song dao nongmang tuorsquoersuo qu 把孩子送到农忙托儿所去 [Send Children to Busy-Season Childcare Centers]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 June 1 1955 third edition
HAN 136
ltUNgt
not be well looked after in the childcare center or were resentful of the work-points that would be allocated to the nursemaids7
The awkwardness that plagued busy-season childcare centers was mitigat-ed as the cooperative movement deepened One reason for this mitigation of awkwardness was that the various cooperatives improved the organization and administration of childcare centers on the basis of real circumstances elimi-nating the concerns of mothers and nursemaids alike Another reason was the policy for paying women and men equally for equal work which greatly in-creased womenrsquos incentives for participation in labor By the spring of 1952 there were ten childcare centers in Xigu Village with twenty-five nursemaids caring for 125 children making ninety-eight female laborers available for work outside the home8 The Womenrsquos Federation of Sigouhui Village 寺沟会村 Kelan County 岢岚县 founded three childcare teams in the village with three nursemaids supervising all the children in the village9 The Baiyangyu Agricul-tural Cooperative 白羊峪农业生产合作社 of Xiyang County 昔阳县 solved the childcare problems for twenty-four women through the establishment of various forms of childcare teams allowing them to participate in production10
The establishment of busy-season childcare centers played an active role in spurring women to participate in work outside the home the centers them-selves gradually came to be accepted by the public In early 1952 the women of Xigu Village worked alongside with male workers to dig twenty-five wells and four cisterns They also dug one cistern and one well and weeded 973 mu of grain fields on their own Ninety-eight women with children enrolled in child-care centers sun-dried the grain harvest from twenty-six mu of land11 The fifth production team of the Nanyujiao Agricultural Cooperative of Qin County was
7 ldquoNanyujiao nongyeshe zuzhi nongmang tuorsquoersuo tengchu you xiaohai funuuml canjia tian-jian shengchan 南余交农业社组织农忙托儿所 腾出有小孩妇女参加田间生产 [Nanyujiao Agricultural Cooperative Organizes Busy Season Childcare Centers Frees Women with Children to Participate in Agricultural Production]rdquo Shanxi nongmin《山
西农民》 July 7 1954 second edition8 ldquoTunliu xian Xigu cun nongmang tuorsquoersuo ban de geng hao lerdquo9 ldquoSigouhui cun de funuuml bianyang la 寺沟会村的妇女变样啦 [The Women of Sigouhui
Village Have Changed]rdquo Shanxi nongmin《山西农民》 August 14 1952 second edition
10 ldquoBaiyangyu nongye shengchan hezuoshe shixing nannuuml tong gong tong chou funuuml can-jia shengchan de jijixing gengjia tigao 白羊峪农业生产合作社实行男女同工同酬 妇女参加生产的积极性更加提高 [Baiyangyu Agricultural Cooperative Implements Equal Pay for Equal Work for Men and Women Womenrsquos Proactivity in Participating in Production Further Increased]rdquo Shanxi nongmin《山西农民》 September 5 1953 second edition
11 ldquoTunliu xian Xigu cun nongmang tuorsquoersuo ban de geng hao lerdquo
137From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
the first there to run a pilot childcare center which allowed four women with children to participate in production work outside the home Female coopera-tive member Wang Ehai 王娥孩 had this to say ldquoBefore I was so tired because of the child(ren) that I couldnrsquot even go into the fields and I was often very angry Now that the child(ren) is (are) looked after I can get in more days of laborrdquo12 As a result cooperative members began actively demanding the rees-tablishment of busy-season childcare centers
Some cooperatives when liberating female laborers from childcare to par-ticipate in production outside the home also used the same childcare model to enable women to study In 1952 Dongcheng Village 东城村 Quwo County 曲沃县 established an ldquointensive literacy classrdquo for women Most students brought their children however who turned the classroom into a playground greatly compromising the efficiency of the class The village government then established a childcare center to look after all the children in one place One villager had this to say ldquoIt has become convenient for women to participate in production outside the home and to engage in studies since the founding of the childcare center This has made them more at ease during their studies The women in the intensive literacy class are making progress quite quicklyrdquo13 The womenrsquos school of Xinhe Village District One Wutai County adopted a similar method There twenty-two senior villagers were organized into a child nursemaid group to watch forty-two children Every day after lunch the female students of the school sent their children to the nursemaid group before head-ing off to classes atthe school14
The establishment of busy-season childcare centers not only liberated wom-en laborers from childcare but also brought about a certain degree of change to the social atmosphere Once women worked outside the home their incomes in-creased and relations among family members became increasingly harmonious In the Gucheng Zhang Bingyi Agricultural Cooperative 故城张炳义农业生
产合作社 of Wuxiang County 武乡县 ldquoold women were organized to watch after the children giving them something to do and a sense of satisfaction With women joining the labor force fifteen men were freed up to engage in secondary enterprises Some of these men packaged grain in the granary and
12 ldquoNanyujiao nongyeshe zuzhi nongmang tuorsquoersuo tengchu you xiaohai funuuml canjia tian-jian shengchanrdquo
13 ldquoQuwo Dongcheng cun chengli le tuorsquoersuo jiejue le dai haizi funuuml de xuexi kunnan 曲沃东城村成立了托儿所 解决了带孩子妇女的学习困难 [Dongcheng Village of Quwo Founds Childcare Center Resolves Difficulties Experienced by Women with Chil-dren in Attending School]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 December 1 1952 fourth edition
14 ldquoXinhe cun chengli le baomu xiaozu dai haizi de funuuml shang le minxiaordquo
HAN 138
ltUNgt
some became carpenters These men earned a considerable amount of money and so they too were happy The women were able to earn more workpoints from their work outside the home now that their children were in childcare centers and so they were also satisfied Economic production was going well and we had achieved satisfaction by three different groupsrsquordquo15
ii Organization and Administration of Busy-Season Childcare Centers
Although at first rural citizens founded busy childcare centers on their own later agricultural cooperatives began to play an important role in their intro-duction in other areas At this time childcare centers were administered in ac-cordance with the principle of voluntary mutual benefit between cooperative members Administratorsrsquo greatest functions were coordination and oversight
(A) The First Problems to Solve were Reasonable Labor Exchange Arrangements Addressing Womenrsquos Concerns and Compensation for the Nursemaids
When childcare centers first appeared the greatest concern of mothers and nursemaids alike was how the workpoints they would earn (or lose) would be calculated Rural mothers were concerned that too many workpoints would be allocated to the nursemaids which would make it not worth their while to work outside the home The nursemaids by contrast felt that caring for chil-dren was dirty tiring work and if too few workpoints were allocated for this work they might as well be toiling in the fields instead Cooperatives had to find a way to keep everybody satisfied and so they established measures in-formed with input from both sides
Cooperatives first helped their female members figure out the economics Letrsquos examine the example of Gu Jinzhi 顾金枝 mother of two and member of the Nanguan Village Agricultural Cooperative 南关村农业合作社 of Tiejiahui Township 铁家会乡 Fanzhi County 繁峙县 When the cooperative founded its childcare center a total of ten workpoints were assigned for one day of work outside the home Gu could earn seven or more points every day they worked and she could work about eighty days out of the year Sending her children to a childcare center for those eighty days would earn a nursemaid a
15 Wuxiang funuuml yundong shiliao xuanbian di 2 ji《武乡妇女运动史料选编》第2 集 [Selected Historical Materials from the Womenrsquos Movement in Wuxiang Vol 2] ed Wux-iang County Womenrsquos Movement History Office 武乡县妇运史办公室 (1985) 40
139From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
total of twenty-nine workpoints which left her a total of 771 paid days of work and an income of 8481 yuan If she had opted to stay at home with her children and forego working outside the home she would have earned no income This calculation eliminated the worries of mothers who collectively declared their position ldquoWe are willing to send our children thererdquo16 Gong Yumei 弓玉梅 member of the Donghongyi Agricultural Cooperative 东洪驿农业生产合作
社 of Anze County 安泽县 had this to say ldquoAfter they showed us the compari-son I came to truly understand that participating in cooperative production was much better than spinning thread at home I can earn at least six points a day of which I give two and a half to the nursemaid That leaves me with a net earning of three and a half points Who would give me even one point for staying at homerdquo Having been persuaded the mothers of the village sent their thirty-nine children into the care of seven nursemaids greatly freeing up female labor for participation in production outside the home17
The various cooperatives generally made compensation for the nursemaids flexible depending on local conditions The Nanyujiao Agricultural Coop-erative of Qin County made the following stipulation ldquoOne and half points shall be awarded per child per day for small children unable to walk For older children able to walk 08 points shall be awarded per child per dayrdquo18 The Xigu Village Agricultural Cooperative of Tunliu County made this stipula-tion ldquoWorkpoints shall be awarded based on the age of children supervised Two and a half points shall be awarded for watching small children two years of age and under Two points shall be awarded for caring children four years and under One point shall be awarded for caring for children six years and under Ten workpoints are equivalent to one day of a womanrsquos laborrdquo19 The government of Quwo County made the following stipulation ldquoAll nursemaid compensations shall be borne by the mothers These compensation should be
16 Fanzhi County Womenrsquos Federation 繁峙县妇女联合会 ldquoTiejiahui xiang Nanguan cun gongnong lianmengshe shi zenyang ban qi tuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan de (1956 nian 7 yue 3 ri) 铁家会乡南关村工农联盟社是怎样办起托儿所幼儿园的 (1956年7月3 日 ) [How the Worker-Peasant Alliance of Nanguan Village Tiejiahui Township Established Childcare Centers and Kindergartens (July 3 1956)]rdquo Xinzhou City Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 6ndash2
17 Shanxi Provincial Democratic Womenrsquos Federation 山西省民主妇女联合会 ldquoFunuuml ertong fuli gongzuo jingyan jieshao (1956 nian 3 yue) 妇女儿童福利工作经验介绍
(1956年3月 ) [Introduction to the Experience of Womenrsquos and Childrenrsquos Welfare Work (March 1956)]rdquo 8
18 ldquoNanyujiao nongyeshe zuzhi nongmang tuorsquoersuo tengchu you xiaohai funuuml canjia tianjian shengchanrdquo
19 ldquoTunliu xian Xigu cun nongmang tuorsquoersuo ban de geng hao lerdquo
HAN 140
ltUNgt
according to seasonal fluctuations to the age of the children being watched and the quality of the care The ultimate principle to be observed is voluntary mutual interest between mothers and nursemaidsrdquo20
(B) Second Systems were to be Tailored to Local Conditions and a Variety of Models of Childcare Service were to be Adopted
Local governments encouraged officials in all localities to establish childcare centers that suit local conditions to operate cooperatives in accordance with the principles of thrift and industry and to offer flexibility in childcare ser-vices In 1956 the government of Quwo County issued the ldquoUrgent Notice on the Large-scale Establishment of Busy-Season Childcare Centersrdquo 关于大力
举办农忙托儿所的紧急通知 which read as follows ldquoEarnestly and thor-oughly implement the principle of thrift and hard work in operating coopera-tives set your goals according to a realistic understanding of your means and capabilities The best method to adopt at present is unified leadership over a number of child supervision centers It is appropriate for onenursemaid to watchtwo to three children This makes it easy to solve the housing problem and to meet hygiene and sanitation standards and helps prevent the spread of communicativediseasesrdquo21 The Womenrsquos Federation of Qi County 祁县 is-sued this statement ldquoActively build all manner of childcare organizations on the basis of the principle of running cooperatives by abiding by the princi-ples of thrift and hard work the needs of production and the demands of the peoplerdquo22
By 1956 there were 104 childcare groups and centers in Wuxiang County where childcare services were divided into three categories The first category featuredmultiple childcare facilities under unified leadership In such child-care facilities each nursemaid was charged with watching three to six chil-dren with a total of over 100 children among all the facilities Childcare centers in the second category putall the nursemaids and all the children in their care together for centralized education there were over fifty children cared for in
20 ldquoQuwo xian renmin weiyuanhui guanyu dali juban nongmang tuorsquoersuo de jinji tongzhi (1956 nian 5 yue 28 ri) 曲沃县人民委员会关于大力举办农忙托儿所的紧急通知
(1956年5月28日 ) [Urgent Notice of the Quwo County Peoplersquos Committee on Striving to Establish Busy Season Childcare Centers]rdquo Houma City Shangpingwang Village Archives 131ndash5
21 Ibid22 Qi County Democratic Womenrsquos Federation 祁县民主妇女联合会 ldquoQiuji funuuml gong-
zuo anpai de chubu yijian (1956 nian 10 yue 3 ri) 秋季妇女工作安排的初步意见 (1956年 10月3日 ) [Initial Opinions on Womenrsquos Autumn Work Plans (December 3 1956)]rdquo Qi County Li Village Archives 42ndash63
141From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
centers in this category The third category involved mutual aid among fami-lies and neighbors in this category nursemaids and children were assembled together twice a month forclasses23 The childcare center of the Nanguan Co-operative 南关社 of Tiejiahui Township Fanzhi County adopted the model of multiple facilities under unified leadership on the basis of how far one lived from thesefacilities Nursemaids there care for children by themselves at home or together with two or three other Nursemaids24 During my investigation in Nanyukou Village 南峪口村 Dongshan Township 东山乡 Fanzhi County I discovered that mutual aid between neighbors and family members had been particularly widespread during the era of cooperatization One senior still living there Mrs Zhao Xiuying 赵秀英 recalled that when the village cooperative was formed because of her poor healthshe stayed at home watching her three children and two neighborsrsquo children ldquoBack then we had no childcare centers to speak of It was just people in the village helping each other out It was enough for people to express their gratitude by sharing some grain after the autumn harvest This was very common in the villagerdquo25
(C) Oversight was Strengthened Nursemaid Duties Clarified and the Level of Care Increased
Agricultural cooperatives all imposed concrete requirements on nursemaids to ensure that busy season childcare centers continue to function over the long term Some cooperatives improved nursemaidsrsquo abilities through fixed-interval education Most nursemaids were older women from villages no longer able to participate in work outside the home and so their generally low levels of edu-cational attainment determined that the primary means of supervision imple-mented in childcare facilities was household education At this time the funda-mental requirement to which cooperatives subjectednursemaidswas to ensure the health of children under their care The Tinghebao Village 停河堡村 Busy-Season Childcare Center of Licheng County 黎城县 was a model childcare center in the area The extent to which nursemaids there took care of children in their care was described thus ldquoThey fed the children mixed soup when it was time to eat Once they had gotten full the older children were made to
23 Wuxiang funuuml yundong shiliao xuanbian di 3 ji《武乡妇女运动史料选编》第3集 [Selected Historical Materials from the Womenrsquos Movement in Wuxiang Vol 3] ed Wuxiang County Womenrsquos Movement History Office 武乡县妇运史办公室 (1985) 4ndash5
24 Fanzhi County Womenrsquos Federation 繁峙县妇女联合会 ldquoTiejiahui xiang Nanguan cun gongnong lianmengshe shi zenyang ban qi tuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan de (1956 nian 7 yue 3 ri)rdquo
25 From an interview I conducted with the 89-year old Zhao Xiuying in Nanyukou Village Dongshan Township Fanzhi County on February 21 2013
HAN 142
ltUNgt
lead the younger children in games The younger children were both comfort-able and happyrdquo26 In addition to imposing basic requirements for maintaining childrenrsquos health some cooperatives with the means to do so opted to increase nursemaid standards by establishing childcare center committees convening meetings at fixed intervals offering nursemaid education and implementing other methods as well In March 1952 the government of Xigu Village Tunliu County convened a meeting composed of delegates from the village childcare center nursemaids and mothers Delegates summarized a year of achieve-ments and shortcomings and established institutions to address issues of sani-tation and nursemaid shift changes The cooperative ldquoimplemented nursemaid education that was good for oneself good for others and good for the state [Officials] described the conditions of childcare centers in the Soviet Union and recounted to them some common sense knowledge about sanitation The patriotic convention of childcare centers requires that nursemaids not only take good care of children and see to their health but also that they tend to the childrenrsquos patriotic education and internationalist educationrdquo27
Local governments and cooperatives operating on the principle of volun-tary mutual benefit between cooperative members played an important role in the organization and administration of busy season childcare centers they established objectives that satisfied both mothers and nursemaids Although preschool education practices taken in busy-season childcare centers at the time pales in comparison with modern practices the basic demands of flexibly customizing service according to the specific conditions in different places and prioritizing childrenrsquos health fit the true social needs of rural areas at the time
iii Establishing Model Kindergartens
In 1958 changes began taking place in the nature of rural childcare organiza-tions as the peoplersquos commune movement began taking off At this time child-care centers and kindergartens both important components of rural public welfare system were accorded special significance Lenin once called the con-struction of public canteens childcare centers and kindergartens the begin-nings of the great enterprise of communism28 In August local governments
26 ldquoNongmang tuorsquoer huzhuzu 农忙托儿互助组 [Busy-Season Childcare Mutual Aid Groups]rdquo Shanxi nongmin《山西农民》 May 17 1952 third edition
27 ldquoTunliu xian Xigu cun nongmang tuorsquoersuo ban de geng hao lerdquo28 Cao Guanqun 曹冠群 ldquoJinyibu jiefang funuuml laodongli wei duokuai haosheng di jianshe
shehui zhuyi fuwu 进一步解放妇女劳动力为多快好省地建设社会主义服务
143From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
across the country accelerated the pace of the construction of public canteens and kindergartens with communist characteristics in response to the upsurge of the peoplersquos commune movement Incomplete data indicate that by the end of October 475 million childcare centers and kindergartens had been built across the country29 The quantity of rural childcare centers and kindergartens at this time was unprecedented Moreover many communes began working to standardize preschool education in order to demonstrate their advanced nature From this point many standardized kindergartens began to emerge
In 1959 the Yingzhao Peoplersquos Commune 应朝人民公社 of Yangcheng County established a model kindergarten with five rooms one hall one kitch-en and a playground The slogan for this operation was ldquoattempt to establish a model create experience and propel the entire countryrdquo The five rooms in-cluded a classroom a sleeping room a washroom a teachersrsquo room and an of-fice The hall was a meal hall equipped with tables and chairs The kitchen was a childrenrsquos kitchen with food rations allocated under the unified guidance of the production brigade The playground was a facility for sports and activi-ties equipped with rocking horses see-saws swiveling chairs and a basketball goal One report described the facility this way ldquoThe interior and exterior of the kindergarten are as beautiful as a park It is truly a rural nursery that mothers have been expecting that everybody can love that is not tiring to the eyes that is grand and awesome that is fresh and beautiful and that can accommodate 180 childrenrdquo30 Although that description was slightly exagger-ated the construction of the Nanguan Village 南关村 Kindergarten did indeed conform to standards of the time this was proven through a field investigation The Nanguan Village Kindergarten is still operating today currently under its fourth principal It has one of the best reputations of private kindergartens in the area Former principal Cui Xuetao 崔雪桃 told me that the kindergarten was originally established in the Bai Family Courtyard 白家四合院 a very large
[ Further Liberating Female Labor Serves the Faster More Economical Construction of Socialism]rdquo Renmin ribao《人民日报》 June 2 1958 second edition
29 Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu xia 《若干重大决策与
事件的回顾》下 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 2008) 526
30 ldquoYangcheng xian yingzhao renmin gongshe fejin dadui bu hu yi fen qian you ban tuoyoursquoeryuan ban cheng quan tuo baoyuyuan de zhuanti cailiao (1959 nian) 阳城县应
朝人民公社飞进大队不花一分钱由半托幼儿园办成全托保育园的专题材料
(1959年 ) [Dedicated Materials on How the Feijin Brigade of the Yingzhao Commune of Yangcheng County Converted Half-care Kindergartens into Full-care Nurseries Without Spending a Penny]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 18ndash11
HAN 144
ltUNgt
space Children were sent to the kindergarten to eat and rest during the day and were sent home at night The installation of see-saws and spinning chairs might seem like nothing compared to modern kindergartens but it was quite advanced for the time The Nanguan Village Kindergarten was commended as a model kindergarten in the county immediately upon its founding Observers from other parts of the country were often given tours of the facility Li Dequan 李德全 at the time serving as deputy chairman of the Chinese Peoplersquos Politi-cal Consultative Conference (cppcc) National Committee lauded the kinder-garten after making an inspection
Another school to be held up as a county-level model was the Yongquan Kindergarten 涌泉幼儿园 of Wuxiang County A busy-season childcare cen-ter founded in 1951 was its predecessor which was founded after the peoplersquos commune movement of 1958 The school was enlarged to include a nursing room (breastfeeding room) a childcare center and a kindergarten all in one full-time (ie boarding) facility that provided care for 134 children ldquoThe entire facility included three halls (dining hall lecture hall and shower hall) and six rooms (washroom exhibition room isolation room receiving room health room and infant room) In order to improve the childrenrsquos lives the school included a vegetable garden and fruit orchard as well as facilities for raising sheep pigs and chickens The childrenrsquos meals were improved slightly every five days and greatly every half month to ensure their nutritional needs were metrdquo In 1959 the kindergarten was again enlarged this time adding over thirty teachers and over thirty rooms The children were given cookies and candies at fixed intervals and all children had to wear identical uniforms31 The Yongquan Kindergarten is also a privately run school still operating today According to local accounts the village kindergarten was founded at the same time as pub-lic canteens The commune allocated the school a courtyard and appointed female activists as teachers As the school was well run county officials often sent groups to make observations there32
Busy-season childcare centers opened during the era of cooperatization made use of traditional household child-rearing techniques Sending children to kindergartens for centralizedcare however was something quite new for rural society Rural communes were able to provide facilities and equipment that met the standards of the time but a lack of experience on the part of the staff thrust many rural kindergartens into a mire of difficulties from their very first day of operation The kindergarten of the Daoping Production Team
31 Wuxiang funuuml yundong shiliao xuanbian di 3 ji 127 and 14232 I interviewed the 76-year old Wang Guifen in Yongquan Village Wuxiang County on
February 17 2013 Two of Mrs Wangrsquos children had attended the Yangquan Kindergarten
145From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
道坪生产队 of the Yuci County Satellite Commune 榆次县卫星公社 had two teachers and thirty students when it first opened To prevent the chil-dren from running away the teachers locked the doors causing the children to cry for an entire day One parent said ldquoI canrsquot trust these people who lock my children in the kindergarten to cry all dayrdquo All kids were gone from the kindergarten within a matter of days33 In another example shortly after the opening of the Dajia Production Team 大甲队 Kindergarten of the Hongx-ing Peoplesrsquo Commune 红星公社 Wanrong County 万荣县 the two teachers on staff were completely unable to control the crying screaming and fighting of the several dozen students Parents were dissatisfied and soon thereafter the school was closed34 Faced with these problems in newly established kin-dergartens local governments sought to find women with more child-rearing experience to serve as teachers asked parents to donate toys and ordered teachers to make toys to attract students Local officials also demanded that teachers pay attention to education as well as supervision and proposed the introduction of pre-school lessons Teachers in the Daoping Production Team Kindergarten divided class levels based on the studentsrsquo situations and de-veloped curricula for music handicrafts drawing arithmetic environmental understanding and other areas Both students and parents were happy and the kindergarten was saved from the brink of collapse35 Teachers at the Da-jia Kindergarten created all manner of toys for the kids and taught them to sing dance and play games Such toy creation greatly enriched the childrenrsquos lives The experience of the Dajia Kindergarten was held up and introduced by county and township government officials who in 1959 sent a total of 200 people over six observation tours to inspect the facility36
Shortly after the advent of the peoplersquos commune the government began placing great emphasis on kindergartens at this point a large number of model kindergartens were established in response While one must com-mend attempts and explorations made in childcare at this time for the sake of improving welfare in rural China one must also note that many mistakes were
33 Yoursquoeryuan de jiaoyangmdashtuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan gongzuo jingyan xuanji zhi yi《幼儿园
的教养工作mdashmdash 托儿所幼儿园工作经验选辑之一》[The Education Work of KindergartensmdashVolume One of Selected Works on the Work Experience of Childcare Centers and Kindergartens] ed Shanxi Provincial Department of Civil Affairs and Shanxi Pro-vincial Womenrsquos Federation 山西省民政厅山西省妇女联合会 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 1959) 25
34 Ibid 2035 Ibid 2736 Ibid 21ndash24
HAN 146
ltUNgt
made at this time as a result of adventurism and exaggerated reporting The political environment at the time was of course one of the pursuits of ldquofirst big and second publicrdquo37 in peoplersquos communes and of making a ldquoGreat Leaprdquo in all areas For example in October 1958 the Fenghuo Peoplersquos Commune 烽火人
民公社 Qin County announced that over the course of only seven days it had realized full-time childcare via the construction of fifty-three kindergartens to which 1480 children were sent38 The Xiangyuan County 襄垣县 Womenrsquos Federation announced that over twenty days of bitter battle a total of 1414 childcare centers and kindergartens had been founded across the county and that 964 percent of all children were receiving collective education39 The Chengguan Peoplersquos Commune 城关人民公社 Fanzhi County announced that it had built fifty-seven kindergartens by the end of 1959 with fourteen youth canteens serving them County officials further announced that 100 per-cent of children in the county were attending the kindergartens and that this was done to meet the especially large ldquoGreat Leaprdquo of 196040 Many of these fig-ures were exaggerated of course Through interviews I conducted with women over the age of seventy-five in the capital of Fanzhi County I discovered that none of them had formed a particularly deep impression of the establishment of the kindergartens They did recall that kindergartens had been founded in the county capital at the same time as public canteens but they attracted few children and were soon disbanded Per their recollections most children in the villages were looked after by older family members at home some older children watched over the play of younger children out on the land Li Baoting 李宝廷 formerly the chief accountant for the Dongshandi Commune Brigade 东山底公社大队 told me that at the time a sign reading ldquokindergartenrdquo was
37 Translatorrsquos note This is a popular slogan of the time meaning that communes are better the bigger and the more non-private they are
38 ldquoShanxi sheng funuuml shehui zhuyi jianshe jiji fenzi daibiao huiyi fayan gao 山西省妇女
社会主义建设积极分子代表会议发言稿 [Manuscript of Speeches Delivered at the Shanxi Provincial Congress of Women Socialist Construction Activists]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 156ndash136
39 Shixian wu hua jiefang le funuuml laodongli 《实现五化解放了妇女劳动力》 [Bringing About the Five Changes Liberated Female Labor] ed Shanxi Provincial Womenrsquos Federa-tion 山西省妇联 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 1958) 23
40 Fanzhi County Chengguan Commune Womenrsquos Federation 繁峙县城关公社妇联会 ldquoChengguan gongshe guanyu samba jie qian funuuml gongzuo renwu ji yaoqiu (1960 nian 2 yue 7 ri) 城关公社关于三八节前妇女工作任务及要求 (1960年2月7日 ) [Cheng-guan Communersquos Work Tasks and Requirements of Womenrsquos Work Prior to the March 8 Womenrsquos Day Holiday]rdquo Xinzhou Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 32ndash19
147From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
hung outside somebodyrsquos house just to maintain the appearance of there being a kindergarten in case higher-ranking officials came to inspect41
iv Collective Welfare Enterprises under the Governmentrsquos Guidance
Over less than ten years rural childcare services evolved from busy-season childcare centers to model kindergartens There were also great changes to the nature methods and significance of childcare services These changes re-flected explorations and attempts made by local governments and the public to build an ideal society
(A) From Nursemaids to Kindergarten TeachersWith the movement to establish kindergartens begun in 1958 nursemaids were replaced by childcare workers nursery teachers and kindergarten teachers No longer were the positions filled by older local women who lacked the ability to work outside the home They were instead filled by women of outstand-ing political character chosen by commune leadership and now they received regular training from higher-level departments
In 1958 the Jishan County 稷山县 government began pushing for the large-scaleestablishment of kindergartens The County Bureau of Culture and Edu-cation selected nearly 700 teachers from all the cooperatives of the county for training centered in political education Culture and education officials also increased childcare professionalsrsquo skills levels through observation studies the convening of on-the-spot meetings lectures and other methods To further guide the work being done in kindergartens the Bureau of Culture and Educa-tion issued several pamphlets including ldquoA Primer on Kindergartens and Pre-school Educationrdquo 幼儿园和幼儿教育的基础知识 and ldquoRural Kindergarten Workrdquo 农村幼儿园工作 These pamphlets provided work and rest schedules and curriculum schedules for all kindergartens in the county42 The Nanguan Village Yingzhao Peoplersquos Commune Yangcheng County made these demands for selecting kindergarten workers ldquoThey must be politically reliable hold prestige among commune members have amiable attitudes and love chil-drenrdquo The commune organized professional education activities for teachers every seven days convened meetings on residential issues at the kindergarten
41 From interviews I conducted with Jia Zhenghua (78 years old) Du Qiaoyun (89 years old) Li Yingying (82 years old) Li Xianying (78 years old) Li Baoting (78 years old) and others in Fanzhi County Shanxi Province on February 20 2013
42 Yoursquoeryuan de jiaoyangmdashtuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan gongzuo jingyan xuanji zhi yi 5ndash7
HAN 148
ltUNgt
every ten days and convened meetings with mothers twice a month43 In September 1959 the government of Chengguan Town Fanzhi County and the local Womenrsquos Federation jointly issued a notice on group training for all kindergarten teachers in the townrsquos jurisdiction The notice demanded that all areas dispatch ldquopeople who are politically clear and ardently love womenrsquos and childrenrsquos workrdquo and added that ldquoit is absolutely forbidden to not send enough peoplerdquo44 The quality of rural kindergarten teachers was improved through the governmentrsquos selection and training programs these programs formed the foundationfor the establishment of model kindergartens At the same time changes to the identities of youth educators reflected the change that had taken place in rural childcare from popular organizations formed voluntarily for mutual benefit into collective social enterprises under the direct guidance of the government
(B) From Decentralized Childcare to Concentrated CareDuring the era of the peoplersquos commune local governments began promoting the ldquobigrdquo and the ldquopublicrdquo in their construction of kindergartens in response to the ideology of ldquofirst big and second publicrdquo which prevailed at the time Such an ideology was a radical departure from the traditional household childcare methods previously employed
In May 1958 the Beiliu Qingfeng Brigade 北留庆丰大队 of Yangcheng Coun-ty founded a kindergarten In April officials announced that the kindergarten was now providing full-time care and had been selected as an advanced work unit in socialist construction by the county government45 In 1958 the Xiawudu Farm 下五渡农场 of the Kuangqu Commune 矿区公社 of Yangquan City 阳泉市 founded a kindergarten Attendance at this school escalated from 22 to 116 ie attendance by 100 percent of children living in the schoolrsquos jurisdiction This facility was selected as an advanced work unit in agricultural socialist
43 ldquoYangcheng xian yingzhao renmin gongshe fejin dadui bu hu yi fen qian you ban tuoyoursquoeryuan ban cheng quan tuo baoyuyuan de zhuanti cailiao (1959 nian)rdquo
44 Fanzhi County Chengguan Town Peoplersquos Committee 繁峙县城关镇人民委员会 ldquoGuanyu 1960 nian lsquosan barsquo jie qian xunlian yi pi baoyuyuan baojianyuan jieshengyuan de tongzhi (1960 nian 2 yue 22 ri) 关于 1960年 ldquo三八 rdquo 节前训练一批保育员保健员
接生员的通知 (1960年2月22日 ) [Notice on Training a Slew of Nursemaids Health Workers and Midwives Before the ldquoMarch Eighthrdquo Holiday of 1960 (February 22 1960)]rdquo Xinzhou Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 32ndash27
45 ldquoBeiliu qingfeng dadui yoursquoeryuan shi zenme ban qilai de (1958 nian 11 yue) 北留庆丰
大队幼儿园是怎么办起来的 (1958年 11月 ) [How the Kindergarten of the Beiliu Qingfeng Brigade was Established (November 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 157ndash50
149From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
construction46 The Hongqi Peoplersquos Commune 红旗人民公社 Xiabai Town-ship 下柏乡 Jiang County 绛县 instituted the ldquocommunal living institution for childrenrdquo soon after founding a kindergarten All forty-one students boarded there eating and sleeping in the school47 Children at the boarding kindergar-ten of the Fenghuo Commune Qin County were each given monthly allocations of twenty jin of refined grains and half a jin of starch noodles in addition to daily allocations of half a jin of vegetables All other food consumed was reim-bursed on the basis of actual consumption with the commune settling monthly accounts for the school Individual production teams were tasked with deliver-ing coal to the school and it was mandated that the children not eat the same meal twice in a week The commune further planned to provide two coats to the children every year48 In 1959 The Yuci Satellite Commune Daoping Kin-dergarten announced that 100 percent of children in the jurisdiction were in attendance that a youth canteen had been established and that each child was guaranteed a daily ration of 12 liang [a unit of measure equal to 50 grams] of processed grains The children were given physical inspections by the school and the local health center once a week Their hair was cut once a month and their clothes washed once every seven days All children were given masks49
If one puts aside the possible exaggerations in the above figures and looks only at the governmentrsquos approbation of these model kindergartens one can see that concentrated care conducted in the form of a public welfare enter-prise was the direction and objective of rural kindergarten construction in the era of the peoplersquos commune However such kindergartens that exemplified the positive nature of collectivization were not suitable to rural social condi-tions at the time On the one hand it was very difficult for local governments which were under tight economic constraints to guarantee the meeting of standards for the supply of material resources to these kindergartens in the long term On the other hand full-time ldquocollective youth living institutionsrdquo ran counter to traditional rural concepts of child-rearing In the materials I reviewed I found many instances of parents unwilling to send their children to these kindergartens
46 Shi Yuying 师玉英 ldquoWomen de yoursquoeryuan shi ruhe ban hao de (1958 nian 12 yue) 我们的幼儿园是如何办好的 (1958年 12月 ) [How Our Kindergarten Was Founded ( December 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 163ndash8
47 Chen Yanjiao 陈燕皎 ldquoQuanxin quanyi peiyu zuguo de huaduo (1958 nian 11 yue) 全心全意培育祖国的花朵 (1958年 11月 ) [Cultivating the Flowers of our Ancestral Homeland With All Our Hearts (November 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 156ndash85
48 ldquoShanxi sheng funuuml shehui zhuyi jianshe jiji fenzi daibiao huiyi fayan gaordquo49 Yoursquoeryuan de jiaoyangmdashtuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan gongzuo jingyan xuanji zhi yi 16ndash18
HAN 150
ltUNgt
(C) Transitioning from a Focus on Womenrsquos Liberation to a Focus on Childrenrsquos Education
The primary objectives for the founding of childcare centers in the era of the agricultural cooperative were liberating women and enlarging the labor pool By the era of the peoplersquos commune changes had taken place in the objects of this service following changes to the nature of childcare By this time pre-school education had come to the forefront and the core objective of this edu-cation had become the fostering of successors to the enterprise of communism
In 1958 the Jishan County Bureau of Culture and Education noted that the objective behind founding kindergartens was to liberate female labor and educate the younger generation in the spirit of communism ldquoThe concrete task in kindergarten education is to develop children into a new generation of communism endowed with culture the love of labor and healthy bodiesrdquo50 The Womenrsquos Federation of Fanzhi County demanded that ldquochildren entering kindergartens receive pre-school education and become good children who are polite understand reason are brave are vivacious and have worry-free demeanorsrdquo51 Some kindergarten teachers who had received training began to attempt new methods per government demands on kindergarten education Chen Yanjiao 陈燕皎 a teacher in the kindergarten of the Hongqi Peoplersquos Commune of Xiabai Township Jiang County was also the deputy secretary of the communersquos youth league committee and director of the communersquos womenrsquos federation She proposed moral character education that taught chil-dren to love labor love studying and love their motherland She developed vegetable gardens in the kindergarten which the children watered weeded and fertilized She taught her students stories of the martyrdom of Huang Ji-guang 黄继光 and Liu Hulan 刘胡兰 as well as reading and singing52 The kindergarten of the Xiawudu Farm of the Yangquan Mining District Commune divided children into different grades according to their age and organized a health group and singing team to take to the streets and spread official politi-cal teachings of the time Teachers there also taught morning exercises games and dance in addition to formal classes to all able students They also brought the children out into the fields to observe planting to work sites to observe the construction of buildings and to wild areas surrounding the village to observe
50 Yoursquoeryuan de jiaoyangmdashtuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan gongzuo jingyan xuanji zhi yi 251 Fanzhi County Womenrsquos Federation 繁峙县妇联会 ldquoGao hao yoursquoeryuan ji dian jianyi
(1958 nian 8 yue) 搞好幼儿园几点意见 (1958年8月 ) [Some Opinions on Founding Kindergartens (August 1958)]rdquo Xinzhou Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 25ndash40
52 Chen Yanjiao
151From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
nature thus enriching the childrenrsquos lives53 The Guanjiabao 贯家堡 Kinder-garten of Taigu County 太谷县 established a curriculum that included classes in languages arithmetic handicrafts music and sports Teachers there ldquooften tookthe children outdoors where they learned the difference between wheat and chives and between corn and sorghum The children heard the whirring of electrical waterwheels and the rumbling of boilers they saw the deep green of grain seedlings and lush orchards full of fruithellip This fostered in the children a sense of respect for workers and peasants ardent love of work and labor and an attitude of stewardship toward public propertyrdquo54
As peoplersquos communes were integrated with local governments at the time kindergartens a collective welfare enterprise were constructed on a large scale over a very short period of time Rural kindergartens were the continuation and development of busy-season childcare centers but they were also suscep-tible to the influence of the vogue of communism and fantastical notions well ahead of their time To a certain extent this trend led to rural kindergartensrsquo being out of touch with rural realities at the time With the onset of the three years of hardship most rural kindergartens were closed at the same time as rural public canteens and childcare reverted to previous models of neighbors helping each other or care by grandparents Nevertheless rural kindergartens of this era left behind experiences in increasing professionalism among teach-ers and developing pre-school education that deserve to be commended today
Rural childcare service providers in the Peoplersquos Republic of China evolved from busy-season childcare centers to public welfare kindergartens Through-out that process there were popular innovations made in pre-school education on the basis of the real needs of rural areas but there were also problems asso-ciated with exaggerated reporting and adventurism A look back on the history and summarizing the lessons learned helps us achieve a deeper understanding of the changes that took place to Chinese rural society in that particular era and of the efforts and explorations by the government and the public to build an ideal society Moreover such a reflection can also be valuable towards ef-forts to resolve some of todayrsquos rural social issues particularly those related to children left behind in the villages by their migrant parents For example we must build a rural pre-school education and supervision system based on the true needs of rural society In this we must avoid vanity projects and projects meant to advance officialsrsquo political careers The government can try to
53 Shi Yuying54 Luuml Fenghua 吕凤花 ldquoDang hao peiyu zuguo huaduo de yuanyishi (1958 nian 12 yue)
当好培育祖国花朵的园艺师 (1958年 12月 ) [How to Be Good Gardeners Cultivating the Flowers of our Ancestral Homeland (December 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 155ndash32
HAN 152
ltUNgt
encourage private capital and civic organizations to establish different forms of childcare service organizations which would with policy guidance develop into mutually beneficial sustainable enterprises While supervising rural childcare organizations the government should also make use of resource advantages to improve childcare conditions and play a greater role in improving the quality of childcare workers So doing would allow rural children to be both cared for and educated in a way that would satisfy parents children and the government
References
ldquoBa haizi song dao nongmang tuorsquoersuo qu 把孩子送到农忙托儿所去 [Send Children to Busy-Season Childcare Centers]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 June 1 1955 No 3
ldquoBaiyangyu nongye shengchan hezuoshe shixing nannuuml tong gong tong chou funuuml canjia shengchan de jijixing gengjia tigao 白羊峪农业生产合作社实行男女同
工同酬 妇女参加生产的积极性更加提高 [Baiyangyu Agricultural Cooperative Implements Equal Pay for Equal Work for Men and Women Womenrsquos Proactivity in Participating in Production Further Increased]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 September 5 1953 No 2
ldquoBeiliu qingfeng dadui yoursquoeryuan shi zenme ban qilai de (1958 nian 11 yue) 北留庆丰
大队幼儿园是怎么办起来的(1958年 11月) [How the Kindergarten of the Beiliu Qingfeng Brigade was Established (November 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 157ndash50
Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu xia 《若干重大决策与事
件的回顾》下 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 2008)
Cao Guanqun 曹冠群 ldquoJinyibu jiefang funuuml laodongli wei duokuai haosheng di jianshe shehui zhuyi fuwu 进一步解放妇女劳动力为多快好省地建设社会
主义服务 [Further Liberating Female Labor Serves the Faster More Economical Construction of Socialism]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 June 2 1958 No 2
Chen Yanjiao 陈燕皎 ldquoQuanxin quanyi peiyu zuguo de huaduo (1958 nian 11 yue) 全心全意培育祖国的花朵(1958年 11月) [Cultivating the Flowers of our Ancestral Homeland with All Our Hearts (November 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 156ndash85
Fanzhi County Chengguan Commune Womenrsquos Federation 繁峙县城关公社妇联会 ldquoChengguan gongshe guanyu samba jie qian funuuml gongzuo renwu ji yaoqiu (1960 nian 2 yue 7 ri) 城关公社关于三八节前妇女工作任务及要求(1960年2月7日) [Chengguan Communersquos Work Tasks and Requirements of Womenrsquos Work Prior to the March 8 Womenrsquos Day Holiday]rdquo Xinzhou Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 32ndash19
153From Busy-Season Childcare Centers to KINDERGARTENS
ltUNgt
Fanzhi County Chengguan Town Peoplersquos Committee 繁峙县城关镇人民委员会 ldquoGuanyu 1960 nian lsquosan barsquo jie qian xunlian yi pi baoyuyuan baojianyuan jiesh-engyuan de tongzhi (1960 nian 2 yue 22 ri) 关于 1960年ldquo三八rdquo节前训练一批保
育员保健员接生员的通知(1960年2月22日) [Notice on Training a Slew of Nursemaids Health Workers and Midwives Before the ldquoThree Eightrdquo Holiday of 1960 (February 22 1960)]rdquo Xinzhou Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 32ndash27
Fanzhi County Womenrsquos Federation 繁峙县妇联会 ldquoGao hao yoursquoeryuan ji dian jianyi (1958 nian 8 yue) 搞好幼儿园几点意见(1958年8月) [Some Opinions on Found-ing Kindergartens (August 1958)]rdquo Xinzhou Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 25ndash40
Fanzhi County Womenrsquos Federation 繁峙县妇女联合会 ldquoTiejiahui xiang Nanguan cun gongnong lianmengshe shi zenyang ban qi tuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan de (1956 nian 7 yue 3 ri) 铁家会乡南关村工农联盟社是怎样办起托儿所幼儿园
的(1956年7月3日) [How the Worker-Peasant Alliance of Nanguan Village Tiejia-hui Township Established Childcare Centers and Kindergartens (July 3 1956)]rdquo Xinzhou City Xiaruyue Commune Dagou Brigade Archives 6ndash2
Luuml Fenghua 吕凤花 ldquoDang hao peiyu zuguo huaduo de yuanyishi (1958 nian 12 yue) 当好培育祖国花朵的园艺师(1958年 12月) [How to Be Good Gardeners Cultivat-ing the Flowers of our Ancestral Homeland (December 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 155ndash32
ldquoNanyujiao nongyeshe zuzhi nongmang tuorsquoersuo tengchu you xiaohai funuuml canjia tianjian shengchan 南余交农业社组织农忙托儿所腾出有小孩妇女参加
田间生产 [Nanyujiao Agricultural Cooperative Organizes Busy Season Childcare Centers Frees Women with Children to Participate in Agricultural Production]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 July 7 1954 No 2
ldquoNongmang tuorsquoer huzhuzu 农忙托儿互助组 [Busy-Season Childcare Mutual Aid Groups]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 May 17 1952 No 3
Qi County Democratic Womenrsquos Federation 祁县民主妇女联合会 ldquoQiuji funuuml gong-zuo anpai de chubu yijian (1956 nian 10 yue 3 ri) 秋季妇女工作安排的初步意见
(1956年 10月3日) [Initial Opinions on Womenrsquos Autumn Work Plans (December 3 1956)]rdquo Qi County Li Village Archives 42ndash63
ldquoQuan sheng funuuml daibiao huiyi jueding funuuml ying zuo de shiqing 全省妇女代表会
议决定妇女应做的事情 [Province-wide Womenrsquos Congress Determines Things Women Should Do]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 November 10 1949 No 2
ldquoQuwo Dongcheng cun chengli le tuorsquoersuo jiejue le dai haizi funuuml de xuexi kunnan 曲沃东城村成立了托儿所 解决了带孩子妇女的学习困难 [Dongcheng Vil-lage of Quwo Founds Childcare Center Solves Difficulties Experienced by Women with Children in Attending School]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 December 1 1952 No 4
ldquoQuwo xian renmin weiyuanhui guanyu dali juban nongmang tuorsquoersuo de jinji tong-zhi (1956 nian 5 yue 28 ri) 曲沃县人民委员会关于大力举办农忙托儿所的紧急
HAN 154
ltUNgt
通知(1956年5月28日) [Urgent Notice of the Quwo County Peoplersquos Committee on Striving to Establish Busy Season Childcare Centers]rdquo Houma City Shangpingwang Village Archives 131ndash5
ldquoShanxi sheng funuuml shehui zhuyi jianshe jiji fenzi daibiao huiyi fayan gao 山西省妇
女社会主义建设积极分子代表会议发言稿 [Manuscript of Speeches Delivered at the Shanxi Provincial Congress of Women Socialist Construction Activists]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 156ndash136
Shi Yuying 师玉英 ldquoWomen de yoursquoeryuan shi ruhe ban hao de (1958 nian 12 yue) 我们的幼儿园是如何办好的(1958年 12月) [How Our Kindergarten Was Founded (December 1958)]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 163ndash8
Shixian wu hua jiefang le funuuml laodongli 《实现五化解放了妇女劳动力》 [Bring-ing About the Five Changes Liberated Female Labor] ed Shanxi Provincial Womenrsquos Federation 山西省妇联 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 1958)
ldquoSigouhui cun de funuuml bianyang la 寺沟会村的妇女变样啦 [The Women of Sigouhui Village Have Changed]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 August 14 1952 No 2
ldquoTunliu xian Xigu cun nongmang tuorsquoersuo ban de geng hao le 屯留县西故村农忙
托儿所办得更好了 [Childcare Centers in Xigu Village Tunliu County Now Better Run]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山西农民》 April 21 1952 No 2
Wuxiang funuuml yundong shiliao xuanbian di 2 ji《武乡妇女运动史料选编》第2 集 [ Selected Historical Materials from the Womenrsquos Movement in Wuxiang Vol 2] ed Wuxiang County Womenrsquos Movement History Office 武乡县妇运史办公室 (1985)
ldquoXinhe cun chengli le baomu xiaozu dai haizi de funuuml shang le minxiao 新河村成
立了保姆小组 带孩子的妇女上了民校 [Xinhe Village Has Established a Nurse-maid Group Women with Children Now in Peoplersquos School]rdquo Shanxi nongmin 《山
西农民》 December 14 1952 No 4ldquoYangcheng xian yingzhao renmin gongshe fejin dadui bu hu yi fen qian you ban
tuoyoursquoeryuan ban cheng quan tuo baoyuyuan de zhuanti cailiao (1959 nian) 阳城
县 应 朝 人 民 公 社 飞 进 大 队 不 花 一 分 钱 由 半 托 幼 儿 园 办 成 全 托 保 育 园 的 专
题材料(1959年) [Dedicated Materials on How the Feijin Brigade of the Yingzhao Commune of Yangcheng County Converted Half-care Kindergartens into Full-care Nurseries Without Spending a Penny]rdquo Yangcheng County Nanguan Village Archives 18ndash11
Yoursquoeryuan de jiaoyang gongzuomdashtuorsquoersuo yoursquoeryuan gongzuo jingyan xuanji zhi yi 《幼儿园的教养工作mdashmdash 托儿所幼儿园工作经验选辑之一》 [The Edu-cation Work of KindergartensmdashVolume One of Selected Works on the Work Experi-ence of Childcare Centers and Kindergartens] ed Shanxi Provincial Department of Civil Affairs and Shanxi Provincial Womenrsquos Federation 山西省民政厅山
西省妇女联合会 (Shanxi renmin chubanshe 1959)
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_009
ltUNgt
chapter 7
Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960smdashAn Inquiry Focused on Jiangsu Province
Wang Yugui1
Abstract
Just as in the rest of China the effects of the ldquofive things in voguerdquomdashmost notably the ldquovogue of communismrdquomdashwere extremely severe in rural Suzhou during the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo and peoplersquos commune movements As the entire Party was commit-ted to redressing ldquoleftistrdquo errors in the early 1960s the local governments of rural Su-zhou began the task of cataloguing funds and materials that had been appropriated from production brigades communes and individuals during the Great Leap Forward movement with the aim of making restitution or reparation Reviewing the experi-ence and lessons of this work in rural Suzhou is of particular significance to our further understanding and evaluations of the peoplersquos commune movement as well as further-ing research in the history of peoplersquos communes
Keywords
peoplersquos communes ndash reparation and restitution work ndash rural Suzhou
In the 1960s the entire Party and governments across the country began to redress egregious errors made during the Great Leap Forward movement At the same time the national government began making comprehensive
This essay was one of the results of the research performed by the author during his project ldquoStructural Transformations to the Ownership System and Socioeconomic Changes to Rural Areas of Contemporary Jiangnanrdquo《所有制的结构性变革与当代江南农村社会经济
的变迁》 (Project Serial No Su Guihua 苏规划[09ndash3001]) subsidized by the Jiangsu pro-vincial governmentrsquos ldquoNinth Five-Year Planrdquo social sciences fund
1 Wang Yugui (王玉贵 ) was born in 1965 and is a doctorate of history and lecturer in the his-tory department of Jiangsu University
WANG156
ltUNgt
adjustments to the economy and severe hardship was soon mitigated One important measure taken to redress previous ldquoleftistrdquo mistakes and correct the economy was to settle accounts and make restitution for errors stemming from poor leadership the negative effects of the vogue of communism and ldquomis-appropriation of resources and personnelrdquo which had taken place during the peoplersquos commune movement Until now no academic research has been pub-lished on this topic Having made a deep reading of a large volume of materials to serve as the basis of this essay which focuses specifically on Jiangsu Province I hope to make a contribution in the further study of the issue of restitution
i
Amid the Great Leap Forward and the peoplersquos commune movements launched in 1958 poor leadership led to many egregious errors including ldquorunning into communismrdquo the large-scale establishment of public canteens The enthusi-asm of the timeled to the widespread emergence of the ldquofive things in voguerdquo2 most particularly the ldquovogue of communismrdquo (a trend by which egalitarian-ism was held supreme and labor and material resources were transferred ar-bitrarily regardless of which commune they belonged to) In November 1958 Mao Zedong 毛泽东 commenced an initiative to redress some of these errors demanding that ldquoold accounts must be settledrdquo and held that ldquosettling accounts is the only way to realize the objective value of thingsrdquo3 Thereafter govern-ments across the country began making initial settlements and restitution and reparation for ldquomisappropriations of funds and materialsrdquo The Suzhou govern-ment in April 1959 began launching pilots in settlement and restitution work in some communes and production teams in Changshu County 常熟县 Wu County 吴县 and other areas officials also made reparation to people in some areas for what had been appropriated from them during the ldquoGreat Forging of Steel and Ironrdquo movement4 However this work came to a grinding halt when
2 Translatorrsquos note In addition to the ldquovogue of communismrdquo the ldquofive things in voguerdquo also included boastful aggrandizement arbitrary commands cadre exceptionalism and counter-productive direction of production
3 Peoplersquos Republic of China State Agriculture Commission General Office 中华人民共和国
国家农业委员会办公厅 Nongye jitihua zhongyao wenjian huibian (1958ndash1981) xia 《农
业集体化重要文件汇编 (1958~1981)》下 [Selected Important Documents on Agricultural Collectivization (1958ndash1981) Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1981) 163
4 ldquoChangshu xian diyi er pi gongshe suanzhang dahui de zongjie (chugao) 常熟县第一
二批公社算账大会的总结 (初稿 ) [Summary of the Changshu County Conference
157Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
at the Lushan Conference the decision was made to launch party-wide criti-cism and clampdown of the so-called ldquorightist opportunismrdquo
As the consequences of the mistakes of the Great Leap Forward further intensified large numbers of abnormal deaths occurred in many rural areas across the country Even southern Jiangsu a region long known to be prosper-ous was no exception The Bacheng Commune 巴城公社 of Kunshan Coun-ty 昆山县 was worst affected with 558 deaths between November 1959 and February 1960 a loss of 38 percent of the total rural population Among the dead were 180 people of working age and 168 children or seniors 178 were ab-normal deaths ie thirty-two percent of the total One hundred and thirty-one of those who died had a pre-existing disease which were exacerbated by food shortages they accounted for twenty-three percent of total deaths A total of 1263 members of the commune or 78 percent of the total population had contracted edema cyanosis wasting disease gynecological diseases or other diseases Most brigades in the region saw their food supplies exhausted some for thirty days but most for around forty days The most severely affected bri-gades were without food supplies for over sixty days In these instances great numbers of people fled the famine At the apex of the flight 1312 peoplemdash92 percent of the total rural population in the areamdashwere on the move looking for food The most severely affected brigade was the Yangmu Brigade 杨木大队 where thirty-nine percent of commune members took to flight5 In 1959 594 members of the Zhouzhuang Commune 周庄公社 were diagnosed with ede-ma that number rose to 1394 in 1960 Over two years 500 members of that commune died from starvation Of those 482 were members of the Panlong Brigade 蟠龙大队 There 115 people contracted edema fifty-two women contracted amenorrhea and four women suffered uterine prolapse Fourteen
on Settlements in the First and Second Batches of Communes (Draft)]rdquo June 3 1959 H5-1-1959-34 Peasant and Worker Department of the Suzhou Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China 中国共产党苏州地委农工部 ldquoWu xian puzhuang gongshe de liang bi zhang 吴县浦庄公社的两笔账 [Two Accounts of the Puzhuang Commune of Wu County]rdquo April 3 1959 ldquoChangshu xian dirsquoer pi suanzhang dahui youguan shuzi tongji 常熟县第二批算账大会有关数字统计 [Relevant Figures and Statistics from the Changshu County Conference on the Second Batch of Settlements]rdquo May 1959 ldquoChangshu xushi pian suanzhang dahui de zongjie baogao 常熟徐市片算账大会的总结报告 [Sum-mary Report on the Settlement Conference for the Xuzhou Region of Changshu]rdquo (original report untitled this title was formulated by the author) June 3 1959 H5-2-1959-59
5 Kunshan County Committee of the Communist Party of China 中共昆山县委员会 ldquoGuanyu bacheng gongshe zaocheng duanliang siwang shijian de diaocha baogao 关于巴城公社造成断粮死亡事件的调查报告 [Investigative Report Regarding In-cidents of Running out of Food and Deaths in the Bacheng Commune]rdquo June 20 1960 H1-2-1960-209
WANG158
ltUNgt
members of the brigade starved to death6 The emergence of the above situ-ations caused central policy-making departments to become more deeply aware of the severity of rural circumstances as a result restitution work found its way back onto the agenda In November 1960 the ccp Central Committee issued the ldquoUrgent Directives on Current Policy Issues in Rural Peoplersquos Com-munesrdquo 关于农村人民公社当前政策问题的紧急指示信 The directives called for earnest accounting and decisiverestitution to be made for any hous-es furniture land vehicles livestock agricultural products and by-products building materials or any other property seized without compensation as a result of the vogue of communism which had swept through the Great Leap Forward and peoplersquos commune movements In cases where the seized objects were still available they must be returned In all other cases reparation must be made after the fair value of the misappropriated objects had been deter-mined7 Not long thereafter the ccp Central Committee issued the ldquoInstruc-tions on the Thorough Implementation (of the Urgent Directives)rdquo 关于贯彻
执行〈紧急指示信〉的指示 which read as follows ldquoThorough accounting of and decisiverestitution for all misappropriated funds and materials are im-perative This is the only way to further improve the incentives of the masses to work In some cases some communes and brigades will be unable to afford restitution and may not be able to guarantee full settlement prior to the spring plowing of next year In these cases provincial prefectural sub-provincial and county governments should prepare funds to assist these communes and bri-gades In cases where provincial sub-provincial and county governments fall short financially the central government will provide necessary assistancerdquo8 In December that year the ccp Central Committee convened a working meet-ing to discuss further cleaning things in up in rural areas and in the communes and issues related to the thorough implementation of the urgent directives of the ldquoTwelve Instructionsrdquo After the meeting the Central Committee issued the ldquoccp Central Committee Summary of Minutes of the Discussions of Cleaning
6 Martial Protection Division of the Zhouzhuang Commune 周庄公社武保科 ldquoDui panlong dadui gaizao fucha qingkuang de zongjie 对蟠龙大队改造复查情况的总结 [Summary of Circumstances Discovered During a Reinvestigation of Reforms Implemented in the Pan-long Brigade]rdquo September 1 1961 Zhouzhuang County Committee of the Communist Party of China 中共周庄公社党委 ldquoSan nian lai gongzuo de jiancha baogao 三年来工作的检
查报告 [Report on Investigations into Work Done These Past Three Years]rdquo September 15 1961 Zhouzhuang Town Archives
7 cpc Central Literary Research Department 中共中央文献研究室 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 13 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第 13 册 [Selected Important Doc-uments Since the Founding of the Nation Vol 13] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996) 662
8 Ibid 679
159Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
Things up in Rural Areas and Communes and Several Policy Issuesrdquo 中央工作会
议关于农村整风整社和若干政策问题的讨论纪要 which made clearer and more concrete stipulations regarding restitution and reparation work9 This document mandated that officials act decisively in making restitution for all misappropriated funds and materials made since the beginning of the peoplersquos commune movement and that they proceed in accordance with the principle of ldquoleaving nothing that had been misappropriated unaccounted or uncompensated forrdquo Officials were to use the restitution process to solidify the three-tier ownership system of peoplersquos communes the foundation of which was the production team Restitution was to be made to educate both cadres and the masses and to help everybody better understand the Marxist prin-ciple of not exploiting peasants and the principles of exchange of equivalents and ldquoto each according to his contributionsrdquo Restitution work the document declared must walk the road of the masses must adhere to democratic prin-ciples and must advocate the partyrsquos policies to the masses All matters related to restitution work were to be fully discussed in poor peasant committees or commune member congresses Restitution was to be made in all instances in which the majority of masses present found them necessary The document declared that reparation is to be resorted to only whenrestitution was not fea-sible In cases where reparation is made the money comes from three sources namely in descending order are cash resources of the commune or brigade then small public cash reserves of county governments or public enterprise work units and finally extra budgetary funds and state-allocated stipends of provincial prefectural or autonomous region governments It was forbidden for departments at all levels to take out bank loans to pay for reparations or to use the moneyfor any other purpose Settlements were to be made in full for all cases in which cadres had embezzled funds or overdrawn from public accounts
Mao placed great emphasis on restitution work often stressing that efforts tocorrect the ldquofive things in voguerdquo ought to focus on the ldquovogue of commu-nismrdquo according to whose core principles there would be egalitarianism in materials supply and food provision and production resources of production brigades are subject to indiscriminate appropriation by the commune10 He further noted that ldquothe question of restitutionis very important we must car-ry out this work inearnestrdquo ldquoCounty and commune governments must make
9 Nongye jitihua zhongyao wenjian huibian (1958ndash1981) xia 435ndash43610 cpc Central Literary Research Department 中共中央文献研究室 Jianguo yilai Mao
Zedong wengao di 9 ce 《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第9 册 [Mao Zedong Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 9] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996) 352
WANG160
ltUNgt
restitutioneven if they have to sacrifice family enterprises and go bankrupt That is because we have exploited the peasantry which is absolutely not al-lowed by Marxism Our misappropriation of the fruits of peasant labor are more egregious than the exploitation by landlords and capitalists At least capitalists have to pay something for what they take albeit less than the equiv-alent value but we give nothing at all in our misappropriation We must per-sist in making restitution all departments all industries and all enterprises must persist in making restitution for all items misappropriated It would even be acceptable for commune resources to be exhausted by saidrestitution to have only a few people and a few grass huts leftrdquo ldquoCounty governments and communes as well as all relevant departments must make restitution those with material resources should compensate with material resources and those with money must compensate with moneyrdquo ldquoAny government body school factory or military unit that misappropriated must make restitutionrdquo ldquoTo cor-rect the lsquovogue of communismrsquo we must truly make good on our pledge to make restitution We would learn nothing if we did not experience some pain and suffering in this process The only way to understand the Marxist principle of exchange of equivalents is through experiencing some pain and sufferingrdquo He further noted that ldquothere must be boundaries set in restitution and repara-tion The state will pay a portion of restitution in relation tothe large-scale con-struction of hydraulic projects transportation projects and processed foods production hubs Counties and communes cannot be made to make those portions of restitution or reparation which the state should make Cadres at the county and commune levels must be convinced of the justification forres-titution their errors cannot be corrected if they are notrdquo11 On January 8 1961 Mao made the following comments upon hearing the report of leading cad-re of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee ldquoIt is not enough for only the central and provincial governments to have resolve We will fail if prefectural and county governments lack resolve If prefectural and county governments have resolve then even if some communes or production teams fail it will be only a question of time We must make them truly understand the difference between communism and socialism and the difference between ownership by all the people and collective ownership We cannot exploit the peasantry exchanges must be made among equals We can exploit landlords exploiting peasants is unheard of Such an ideadoes not buildsocialism but destroys itrdquo12
11 Mao Zedong wenji di 7 juan 《毛泽东文集》第7 卷 [Collected Works of Mao Zedong Vol 7] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1999) 227ndash228
12 Gu Longsheng 顾龙生 Mao Zedong jingji nianpu 《毛泽东经济年谱》 [Economic Chronicles of Mao Zedong] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1993) 528ndash529
161Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
On January 9 after hearing reports at a central working conference he said that he had written a draft for the ldquoThree Great Disciplinary Laws and Eight Matters of Attentionrdquo 三大纪律八项注意 Part of this document read ldquoAr-ticle Five Those things which are borrowed must be repaid Article Six Res-titution must be made for those things that are destroyed Here we primarily mean that one may not engage in appropriating from othersrdquo13 On January 18 he made the following comment at the Ninth Plenum of the Eighth ccp Na-tional Congress ldquoWe must resolutely implement central control over account-ing exchange of equivalents distribution according to contribution and the principle of the more one works the more one getsrsquo Leaders in rural areas must resolutely rectify the lsquoFive Things in Voguersquo should makerestitution or repara-tion in all instances where they are warranted and may not choose not tordquo14 It was Maorsquos belief that ldquoresolutely correcting errors of uncompensated appro-priations making full restitution or reparationrdquo was ldquothe only way to promote the development of agricultural production the only way to create beneficial conditions for industrial development and the only way to further solidify the alliance of workers and peasantsrdquo15 In May of that year Liu Shaoqi 刘少奇 returned to his home to conduct an investigation In a discussion with resi-dents of his native Tanzichong Village 炭子冲村 he said that restitutionwork ldquomust not be left half-finished or disposed of perfunctorily We must make firm settlements of every account and be prepared to experience some pain in this processrdquo ldquoOnce accounts are settled in full you should mark this by erecting a stele or hanging a framed catalogue [of what has been done] in the communerdquo ldquoWe must pass the lesson not to commit this error again down through the generationsrdquo16 Around this same time the Central Secretariat convened several meetings at which it was ordered to conduct concrete investigations and make arrangements for restitution work in rural areas17
It was on this basis that in June 1961 the ccp Central Committee issued the ldquoRegulations on Persisting in Correcting the Errors of Uncompensated Appropriations and Making Thorough Restitution and Reparationrdquo 关于坚决
13 Ibid 530ndash53114 Ibid 53515 Nongye jitihua zhongyao wenjian huibian (1958ndash1981) xia 44716 Liu Shaoqi xuanji xia juan 《刘少奇选集》下卷 [Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi Vol 2]
(Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1985) 33117 Yang Shangkun 杨尚昆 Yang Shangkun riji xia 《杨尚昆日记》下 [Diary of Yang
Shangkun Vol 2] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 2001) 28ndash30 34 35 and 38 Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu xia 《若干重大决策与
事件的回顾》下 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1993) 908
WANG162
ltUNgt
纠正平调错误彻底退赔的规定 18 which further clarified and solidified regulations regarding the scope of restitution concrete principles work plans leadership organization the raising of materials and money and other areas The Regulations stipulated that the time period to be covered in the restitu-tion of uncompensated appropriations would begin primarily from the time of the founding of peoplersquos communes Although restitution should be made in full for any appropriation from commune members that took place before the establishment of communes said accounts were not to be considered ldquoun-compensated appropriationrdquo Restitution was to be made primarily in kind and reparation wasresorted to only if needed The principle of compensating all whose property was lost due to uncompensated appropriations was to be persisted in In cases in which means of production means of making a living or labor had been thus appropriated those materials urgently necessary for production or making a living by the peasantry were to be repaid first Restitu-tion work was to be conducted in installments over time in a planned and orderly manner All restitution workwas to be finished in five years The task of ensuring supply of all construction materials farm implements and oth-er tools required to make restitution was enjoined to relevant departments which were to adopt feasible effective measures and organize production Res-titution committees or restitution groups were to be established at every level of government from the center down to the production team which were also to establish task forcesto oversee all aspects of restitution work These task forces were to oversee allocations and manufacture of all materials required in restitutionwork and investigate and resolve all disputes arising from restitu-tion work Restitution work the Regulations demanded was to fully walk the ldquomass linerdquo
ii
The Regulations were made in response to the situation across the entire coun-try and to a certain extent were meant to confer guiding principles Beginning in late 1960 the Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee first selected regions heavily affected by uncompensated appropriations launching the first pilot in restitutionwork in the Mocheng Commune 莫城公社 of Changshu County
18 Huang Daoxia et al 黄道霞等 Jianguo yilai nongye hezuohua shiliao huibian 《建国以
来农业合作化史料汇编》 [Compiled Historical Materials on Agricultural Cooperati-zation Since the Founding of the Nation] (Beijing Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe 1992) 688ndash690
163Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
in accordance with the unified deployments of both the Central Committee and Jiangsu Provincial Committee in order to provide a true basis for restitu-tion work to be performed in the Suzhou region19 Upon the basis of initial experience gained in cleaning up the communes the Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee issued several documents including the ldquoOpinions on Handling the Several Concrete Issues of Correcting the Errors of Uncompensated Appro-priations and Making Thorough Restitution (Draft)rdquo 关于纠正平调错误彻
底退赔中若干具体问题的处理意见(初稿) the ldquoOpinions on Handling the Several Concrete Policy Issues of Restitution Workrdquo 关于退赔工作中若
干具体政策问题的处理意见 the ldquoOpinions on Handling the Several Con-crete Issues of Restitution Work in the Mocheng Commune (Discussion Draft)rdquo 莫城公社关于退赔中若干具体问题的处理意见(讨论稿) and oth-ers20 These documents provided detailed concrete stipulations for policies and work deployments taking place in restitution in the Suzhou region
The above documents raised the following opinions regarding housing is-sues (1) Cases in which commune membersrsquo houses had been destroyed were to be handled in one of the two following methods In the first full restitution was to be made to those who had lost everything due to the taking of all or some of the materials of their houses In the second in cases in which part or most of the materials of a house were taken restitution was to be made for all materials taken as well as all labor and construction fees (2) In cases in which commune members were rallied to pull down a house restitution was to be made on the basis of actual damage done as well as for costs due to material losses excepting in those cases in which people were paid fees for having their houses pulled down in accordance with regulations (3) Full restitution was to be made for all building materials subject to uncompensated appropriations (4) In all cases in which commune membersrsquo houses had been occupied the original inhabitants were to be restored and rent to be paid for the duration of the occupation All damage done to such housing was to be fully repaired Any costs incurred from any repair or additions work done to such housing
19 cpc Suzhou City Committee Party History Research Department 中共苏州市委党史研
究室 Zhongguo gongchandang Suzhou dashiji 《中国共产党苏州大事记》[Record of Major Communist Party of China Events in Suzhou] (Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe 2000) 90
20 These documents can be found in the Suzhou City Archives Suzhou Prefectural cpc Com-mittee Peasant and Worker Division under Nos 56 and 57 in the permament category and No 86 in the long-term category See also ldquoXiong Renmin tongzhi zai suanzhang tuipei huiyi shang de fayan (jilu gao) 熊人民同志在算账退赔会议上的发言(记录稿) [The Speech of Comrade Xiong Renmin at the Conference on Settling Accounts and Mak-ing Restitutions (Transcription)]rdquo January 20 1961 H5-1-1961-56
WANG164
ltUNgt
during the period of occupation was to be deducted from rents Rent was to be exempted in cases when housing was occupied for grand tactics operations the construction of irrigation works or temporary support provided by visiting members of other communes however the sponsor of such activities was to be liable for making full restitution for any damage done to such housing (5) In cases in which the pulling down or occupation of a house caused its occupants to incur moving costs or renovations costs or in which furniture household implements or other property were damaged or lost as a result of the pulling down or occupation and in which the masses could testify to the veracity of the situation restitution was to be made on the basis of these losses in addi-tion to the loss of the house itself (6) Restitution was not to be made in the fol-lowing cases in which authorities did not deem losses to fall within the scope of uncompensated appropriations those commune members whose houses had been pulled down or occupied but who had been given new houses which were lost due to fire and those commune members who had sold their hous-es to other commune members or to the production team on the basis of an agreement but who were in disputes regarding the sale of their house owing to incomplete payments made (7) The county government was to be respon-sible for making restitution for all damages and construction costs incurred as a result of the tearing down of houses done for the Great Forging of Steel and Iron the large-scale construction of ponds and dykes the large-scale construc-tion of pig farms the construction of concentrated settlements the large-scale establishment of public canteens and assembly halls the construction of kin-dergartens or the celebrations for the tenth anniversary of the founding of the country excepting all materials to be compensated by the work unit respon-sible for the uncompensated appropriation
The documents made the following stipulations regarding farm imple-ments (1) All large and mid-sized farm implements paid for and introduced into common ownership at the time of the advanced agricultural cooperative were to be settled as old accounts In cases in which full payment had not been made interest should be made on the remaining sum calculated based on bank interest rates over the period of time over which local authorities had ex-ceeded the originally determined date of payment (2) All large and mid-sized farm implements which had not been formally appropriated by cooperatives but which had been collectively used following the peoplersquos commune move-ment could either be paid for by the commune or returned to their original owners with a reasonable compensation for time used (3) All privately owned small farm implements were to be handled on the basis of the individual com-mune memberrsquos circumstances Commune members who had experienced normal damages to implements which they had used themselves were to be
165Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
solely responsible for such damages Restitution was to be made for damages incurred as a result of military units waging battle No restitution was to be made for those implements which had been returned to original owners after uncompensated appropriations but rent was to be paid for the duration of the uncompensated transfer The production brigade was to be responsible for making restitution for damages incurred to small implements seized and dam-aged due to collective usage as a result of blind direction of production caused by the merger of multiple teams Production teams were to conduct invento-ries and proactively return all implements which had been circulated to them from other teams All implements which went unclaimed were to become common property of the production team The production team was to make restitutionfor all damages incurred as a result of usage by the production team
The documents made the following stipulations regarding land (1) For all land which had been occupied by county governments communes or any public enterprise work unit restitutionwould be made by the unit responsible for the uncompensated appropriationfor both land usage and crops destroyed All land which had been seized but not used was to be returned in full to the production brigade and rent and agricultural taxes were to be paid for the du-ration of the land seizure (2) In cases in which land had been dug up packed down or rendered useless either the county government or the host unit was to be responsible for restitution depending on circumstances (3) All cultivat-ed and uncultivated land planted by public enterprise work units was to be returned unconditionally to the production team of original ownership (4) In cases in which buildings on homestead plots had been razed but new housing had been allocated to original occupants the homestead plot in question was to be returned to the production team In such cases in which new housing had not been allocated to original occupants the plot was to be restored to the original occupants
The documents made the following stipulations regarding labor (1) The county government or commune was to be responsible for paying labor com-pensations in cases in which either the county government or communersquos name had been invoked in making an uncompensated appropriation of labor (2) Mandatory labor performed in any of the ldquolarge-scalerdquo projects was allowed to be exempt from compensation (3) Labor settlements were to be made ac-cording to average unit prices effective in the years 1958 and 1959
The documents made the following stipulations regarding uncompensated appropriations of furniture utensils and construction materials (1) Restitu-tion was to be made for materials costs and labor costs for constructing kitch-en stoves in all cases in which commune membersrsquo kitchen stoves had been removed during any of the ldquolarge-scalerdquo movements regardless of whether the
WANG166
ltUNgt
original materials had been removed The county government was to make restitution in all cases of destruction of kitchen stoves performed during the Great Forging of Steel and Iron The commune was to be responsible in all cases of destruction of kitchen stoves performed during the manure collection movement The production team was to be responsible in all cases in which kitchen stoves were destroyed for the large-scale establishment of public can-teens (2) The production team was to be responsible for making restitution for damages incurred to utensils borrowed from commune members for the large-scale establishment of public canteens but it was not necessary to return those utensils which commune members had been encouraged to donate for collective use in public canteens (3) The work unit in charge of any ldquolarge-scalerdquo movement which had borrowed and damaged utensils of commune members was to be responsible for making restitution (4) It was not necessary to compensate commune members for any vegetables provided for common consumption in public canteens
The documents made the following stipulations regarding waters and fish ponds (1) All occupied rivers on which taxes were paid were to be returned to their original work units with rent and agricultural taxes paid for the duration of the occupation (2) Reimbursements were to be paid for all unreasonable prices paid for fish ponds used collectively by communes
The documents also made the following concrete stipulations regarding uncompensated appropriations of agricultural products and processed food products and fields used for high-yield experiments as well as pricing stan-dards for restitution (1) For all cases of unreasonable prices given for copper iron tin timber bamboo fishing nets and other materials seized for the ldquosev-en contributionsrdquo of the peoplersquos commune movement restitution was to be made to make up deficiencies in prices paid (2) Commune members who sold large quantities of means of production or living to meet distribution require-ments during the time of large-scale investments were to be compensated (3) Many commune membersdonated their own grain to public canteens and some exhausted their own grain quota through consuming meals at the pub-lic canteens There are three types of settlement for such a situation First no refund was necessary in cases where canteens had issued the member meal coupons in equivalent value For those whose ration of food had been fully used by the public canteens compensation in kind would be made to them when and if a bumper harvest made a surplus available For those who had consumed above and beyond what their quota allowed they would have to pay back the extra-quota portion provided this did not cut into their current rations (4) For those cases in which households had been raided for grain the following stipulations were made For those households which had been
167Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
raided in 1958 but which belonged to communes that passed ldquoeat all you canrdquo policies in canteens reimbursement was to be paid for all grain seized but no in-kind compensation would be given All grain seized from households dur-ing home raids as part of the ldquostamping out underreporting of yields and keep-ing the unreported portion to oneselfrdquo campaign of 1959 was to be restored to original owners These policies were a synthesis of relevant central policies and concrete stipulations made in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region 苏州专
区 They were highly feasible and targeted and so I have given a detailed de-scription of them here
In order to strengthen integrated leadership and comprehensive planning of restitution work the Suzhou sub-provincial regional government and all party committees and organizations of the region established restitution offic-es or restitution task forces under the guidance and organization of rural work departments and financial departments per the instructions of superiors party committees of work units at the county level and below were given pri-mary responsibility over this work Archival records indicate that once restitu-tion work formally began restitution organs at every level convened meetings with financial planning commercial and other departments to discuss and address relevant issues The Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee convened several standing committee meetings and standing committee meetings with wider attendance then committee members to establish restitution work plans make decisions solve problems and provide guidance for the continu-ation of the work That is how restitution work in the Suzhou area was begun
The first order of business in making accurate restitution was to make a close accounting of all uncompensated appropriations Just as in the rest of the country various forms of uncompensated appropriations in Suzhou most notably those which took place as a result of the ldquovogue of communismrdquo were particularly egregious during the Great Leap Forward movement There were however some notable differences between uncompensated appropriations in Suzhou and those elsewhere in China In most of the country the ldquovogue of communismrdquo mostly affected the large-scale establishment of public canteens and in the founding of public enterprises by communes Uncompensated ap-propriations took place in even more projects in the Suzhou area the dredg-ing of the Taipu River 太浦河 the Liu River 浏河 the Wangyu River 望虞河 and Zhangjia Harbor 张家港 other irrigation works projects which took place at the same time as the Four Major Projects 四大工程 including Yanglint-ang 杨林塘 in Taicang 太仓 the Dongheng River 东横河 in Jiangyin 江阴 Xuputang 许浦塘 in Changshu the Western Tai Lake Dam 西太湖大堤 in Wu County the destruction of land crops and objects on the land such as houses and so on as a result of said dredging costs for the promulgation of
WANG168
ltUNgt
advanced tools and small tools land resources given by the collective and individual commune members for the Great Forging of Steel and Iron labor and materials appropriated without compensation for transportation projects as well as houses demolished land occupied crops destroyed and other rel-evant objects such means of production as new farm implements machinery chemical fertilizers and pesticides promulgated or provided by industrial and commercial public enterprises for which prices were set very low or not set at all funds allocated by the state for construction such as funds intended to compensate for the restoration of the Shanghai-Nanjing Road or for pro-vincial irrigation works projects which were misappropriated land laborers and capital seized or appropriated without compensation by government organs military units public enterprises and other such units in the develop-ment of departmental business activities such as labor used for technologi-cal innovation houses dismantled and trees chopped peasant land occupied for production self-sufficiency means of production and labor used without compensation for experiments in high yield agriculture and land occupied by government organs or public enterprises for blind construction or expansion21 It is easy to see that the scope of uncompensated appropriations was wider and their consequences more severe in the Suzhou area
Just as in the rest of the country steady progress was made in giving full accounting for uncompensated appropriations in Suzhou Statistics from spring of 1961 indicate that the total value of uncompensated appropriations from the entire region was 5115 million yuan of which 27588599 yuan were from the county level or higher22 Statistics recalculated in June 1961 indicate that the regional total was in fact 534005 million yuan of that total 271183 million yuan was owed to individual commune members 169428 million yuan to collectives and 93394 million yuan to distributions Of the total sum 2165 million was the responsibility of county-level and higher governments 1621 million of communes and higher and 1554 million of production teams and brigades23 Further rough calculations made in February 1962 indicated that
21 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu xian yishang jiguan dui renmin gongshe suanzhang tuipei de chubu fangrsquoan (chugao) 苏州专区县以上机关对人民公社算账退赔的初步方案(初
稿) [Initial Plan for Settlements and Restitutions to be Made in Peoplersquos Communes by Organs at the County Level and Higher in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region (Draft)]rdquo January 7 1961 H5-1-1961-56
22 See cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Restitutions Office 中共苏州地委退赔办公
室 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu tuipei fangrsquoan 苏州专区退赔方案 [Suzhou Sub-provincial Re-gion Restitutions Plan]rdquo January 12 1962 H5-1-1962-63
23 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Settlement Fulfillment Leading Group (中共苏
州)地委算账兑现领导小组 ldquoGuanyu dangqian suanzhang tuipei qingkuang de
169Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
the regional total of uncompensated appropriations was 11810 million yuan of that total eighty million yuan (sixty-eight percent) was owed to commune members and 3810 million (the remaining 32 percent) was owed to collec-tives24 A further rough calculation performed not long thereafter again raised the figure to 15174 million yuan with 10174 million yuan (sixty-seven percent) owed to commune members 2700 million (178 percent) to be distributed into collective incomes and 2300 million (152 percent) belonging to collective ac-cumulations This round of uncompensated transfer calculation set the state restitution burden at 8481 million yuan (558 percent) the county burden at 2716 million yuan (eighteen percent) and the peoplersquos commune burden at 2417 million yuan (sixteen percent) The final assessments of objects subject to uncompensated appropriations were as follows 154487 houses razed 145697 mu of land destroyed 506955 million working days of labor 765899 woks and 49863 million farm implements25 Final tallies are shown in Table 71
An examination of uncompensated appropriations of houses further in-dicates the severity of the problem in Suzhou Incomplete statistics indicate that a total of 62044 households and 154487 total structures were destroyed in the region (statistics released in late October 1962 set the total of structures at over 17780026 but the figure was later revised to 154270)27 Of structures destroyed 84584 or 548 percent were tile-roof houses and the remaining
baogao 关于当前算账退赔情况的报告 [Report on Current Conditions of Settle-ments and Restitutions]rdquo June 9 1961 and ldquoGuanyu dangqian suanzhang duipei de qin-gkuang he yijian 关于当前算账退赔的情况和意见 [Opinions on and the Current Situation of Settlements and Restitutions]rdquo June 24 1961 H5-1-1961-56
24 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Workers and Peasants Committee 中共苏州地委
农村工作部 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu tuipei fangrsquoan de kuangji shuoming 苏州专区退赔方
案的匡计说明 [Explanation of Rough Estimates of the Restitutions Plan in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region]rdquo February 2 1962 H5-1-1962-63
25 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Restitutions Office 中共苏州地委退赔办公室 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu tuipei fangrsquoan 苏州专区退赔方案 [Restitutions Plan of the Suzhou Sub-Provincial Region]rdquo February 12 1962 H5-1-1962-63
26 Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee Settlement Fulfillment Leading Group Office 中共
苏州地委退赔领导小组办公室 ldquoGuanyu tuipei fangwu gongzuo huiyi qingkuang he jindong mingchun yijian de baogao 关于退赔房屋工作会议情况和今冬明春意
见的报告 [Report on Conditions of the Working Meeting of Housing Restitutions and Opinions for Winter this Year and Spring Next Year]rdquo October 30 1962 H5-1-1962-63
27 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu tuipei fangwu anzhi chaiqian hu gongzuo qingkuang he yijian (chuxi sheng tuipei huiyi ziliao) 苏州专区退赔房屋安置拆迁户工作情况和意见(出席
省退赔会议资料) [Conditions of and Opinions on Restitutions to Households Re-located after Forcible Demolition of their Homes in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region (Materials from the Provincial Restitutions Conference)]rdquo March 7 1964 H5-1-1964-74
WANG170
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 7
1 Ac
coun
ting
for u
ncom
pens
ated
app
ropr
iatio
ns in
the S
uzho
u re
gion
by c
ateg
ory
Obj
ect o
f unc
ompe
nsat
ed
tran
sfer
Uni
tQ
uant
ityCa
sh e
quiv
alen
t (y
uan)
Not
es
1La
ndRe
stitu
tion
on c
olle
ctiv
e la
nd su
bjec
t to
unco
m-
pens
ated
app
ropr
iatio
ns w
as g
ener
ally
cal
cula
ted
for a
ppro
pria
tions
occ
urrin
g up
to sp
ring
1961
Fo
r exa
mpl
e o
rigin
ally
land
des
troy
ed b
y
irrig
atio
n w
orks
con
stru
ctio
n w
as c
ompe
nsat
ed
at a
rate
of t
wo
year
s of n
orm
al p
rodu
ctio
n
ie 1
45 y
uan
per m
u b
ut n
ow o
nly
62 is
giv
en
No
com
pens
atio
ns w
ere
give
n fo
r lan
d de
stro
yed
by ir
rigat
ion
wor
ks c
onst
ruct
ed b
y co
mm
unes
Land
des
troy
ed b
y irr
igat
ions
w
ork
cons
truc
tion
Mu
585
263
636
mn
Land
affe
cted
but
not
des
troy
ed
by ir
rigat
ions
wor
k co
nstr
uctio
nM
u40
145
512
000
Requ
isiti
oned
for i
nfra
stru
ctur
eM
u19
790
237
48 m
nO
ccup
ied
Mu
253
1063
270
0Cr
ops d
estr
oyed
Mu
273
2621
780
0
2H
ousi
ngH
ouse
s dem
olis
hed
with
out r
eloc
atio
n w
ere
com
pens
ated
at a
rate
of 2
60 y
uan
per s
truc
ture
H
ouse
s raz
ed w
ere
com
pens
ated
at a
rate
of 1
25
yuan
per
stru
ctur
e fo
r rel
ocat
ed h
ouse
hold
s H
ouse
s occ
upie
d w
ere
com
pens
ated
by
the
pay-
men
t of t
hree
yea
rs o
f ren
t and
the
cost
s of r
e-pa
irs n
eces
sary
afte
r sev
eral
yea
rs o
f occ
upat
ion
Des
troy
edSt
ruct
ures
134
838
471
93 m
nRe
loca
ted
Stru
ctur
es19
649
153
1 m
nO
ccup
ied
Stru
ctur
es17
983
04
316
mn
3La
bor
Labo
r req
uisi
tione
d by
the
coun
ty g
over
nmen
t fo
r the
con
stru
ctio
n of
irrig
atio
n w
orks
was
co
mpe
nsat
ed a
t sev
en ji
ao p
er d
ay N
o co
mpe
n-sa
tions
wer
e pa
id fo
r any
labo
r on
cons
truc
tion
of ir
rigat
ion
wor
ks b
y co
mm
unes
Irrig
atio
n w
orks
100
00
labo
r day
s4
608
2510
60
mn
Infra
stru
ctur
e an
d ot
her
100
00
labo
r day
s46
13
369
04 m
n
171Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
Data
sou
rce
Suz
hou
Pre
fect
ural
Par
ty C
omm
itte
e Re
stit
utio
n Of
fice
中共
苏州
地委
退赔
办公
室 ldquo
Suzh
ou z
hua
nqu
tuip
ei f
angrsquo
an
苏州
专区
退赔
方案
[Su
zhou
Sub
-pro
vinc
ial
Regi
on R
esti
tuti
on P
lan]
rdquo Fe
brua
ry 12
196
2 H
5-1-
1962
-63
4M
ater
ial g
oods
and
oth
erFa
rm m
achi
nery
and
impl
emen
ts in
clud
e sm
all
impl
emen
ts o
f com
mun
e m
embe
rs su
bjec
t to
unco
mpe
nsat
ed a
ppro
pria
tions
The
re a
re a
to
tal o
f 997
259
hou
seho
lds i
n th
e en
tire
regi
on
the
num
ber o
f suc
h im
plem
ents
was
roug
hly
cal-
cula
ted
at fi
ve p
er h
ouse
hold
Far
m im
plem
ents
al
so in
clud
e w
oks a
nd so
up p
ots t
aken
for t
he
Gre
at F
orgi
ng o
f Ste
el a
nd Ir
on t
he n
umbe
r of
such
impl
emen
ts w
as ro
ughl
y ca
lcul
ated
at s
ix
per h
ouse
hold
The
num
ber o
f bric
ks a
nd ti
les
was
roug
hly
calc
ulat
ed to
be
740
00 p
er b
rigad
e
ther
e w
ere
3627
brig
ades
in th
e re
gion
The
qu
antit
y of
woo
d an
d ba
mbo
o w
as ro
ughl
y es
ti-m
ated
to b
e 12
50 d
an p
er b
rigad
e T
he a
mou
nt
of a
gric
ultu
ral p
rodu
cts a
nd b
y-pr
oduc
ts w
as
roug
hly
estim
ated
to b
e 80
0 da
n pe
r brig
ade
Ca
pita
l doe
s not
incl
ude
the
usin
g of
brig
ade
ac-
cum
ulat
ions
by
com
mun
es T
he o
ther
cat
egor
y in
clud
es o
bjec
ts o
n la
nd d
estr
oyed
in W
ujia
ng
Coun
ty b
y th
e dr
edgi
ng o
f the
Tai
pu R
iver
whi
ch
acco
unte
d fo
r 391
000
yua
n in
loss
es
Farm
mac
hine
ry a
nd
impl
emen
tsPi
eces
498
63 m
n17
452
mn
Boat
sEa
ch1
202
841
400
mn
Plow
oxe
nH
ead
417
417
1 m
nFu
rnitu
rePi
eces
598
35 m
n17
95
mn
Live
stoc
kH
ead
862
501
725
mn
Fow
lEa
ch23
542
589
00Br
ick
and
tile
Piec
es25
389
mn
380
8 m
nW
ood
and
bam
boo
Dan
440
7 m
n22
035
mn
Agric
ultu
ral p
rodu
cts a
nd
by-p
rodu
cts
Dan
246
2 m
n7
4047
mn
Capi
tal
Yuan
345
000
WANG172
ltUNgt
699903 or 452 percent were thatched cottages Razings of entire areas destroyed 196 natural villages six small towns 217 homestead plots 6810 households and 22103 structures About 20000 households and 45000 structures were destroyed as a result of piecemeal demolitions28 The Xieqiao Commune 谢桥公社 of Changshu County was the most severely affected in the region There a total of 1632 households were razed or 2087 percent of total households affecting 6998 people or 2571 percent of the population A total of 5520 structures were razed including 40575 thatched cottages and 14625 tile-roof buildings29 Large numbers of structures in the Jinxing 金星 Mingxing 明星 and Chenqiao 陈桥 Brigades of the Xieqiao Commune were razed as a result of the rerouting of the Wangyu River the Great Forging of Steel and Iron the large-scale establishment of collective settlements and stud farms and the large-scale establishment of public canteens Statistics indicate that in these three brigades 244 householdsmdash4326 percent of the totalmdash and 830 structuresmdash3679 percent of the totalmdashwere razed affecting 1047 people 4345 percent of the total population The campaign to reorganize production teams and villages alone led to the destruction of eleven villages and ten production teams as well as 171 householdsmdash70 percent of total households razed in the three brigadesmdashand 583 structuresmdashlikewise seventy percent of total structures razed The Jinxing Brigade saw the destruc-tion of five villages three production teams and fifty-nine households or seventy percent of total households The Mingxing Brigade saw the destruc-tion of three villages two production teams and forty-five households or sev-enty percent of total households The Chenqiao Brigade saw the destruction of three villages five production teams and sixty-seven households also
Explanation One reason for the discrepancies between earlier and later figures of demol-ished housing lay in the fact that some cases of house demolition were only later included in the scope of restitutions as policies were adjusted and the degree of restitution work escalated further clarifying the situation of uncompensated transfers Another reason is that some demolished houses which were initially included in the scope of uncom-pensated appropriationsrestitutions were later removed from that scope as conditions became clearer
28 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu pingdiao tuipei qingkuang 苏州专区平调退赔情况 [Conditions of Restitutions for Uncompensated Transfers in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region]rdquo March 13 1962 H5-1-1962-63
29 ldquoGuanyu Changshu xian Xieqiao gongshe chaiqian minfang anzhi qingkuang de diaocha 关于常熟县谢桥公社拆迁民房安置情况的调查 [Investigation into Conditions of Forced Demolition and Relocation of Members of the Xieqiao Commune of Changshu County]rdquo October 6 1962 H1-2-1962-270
173Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
seventy percent of total households30 These three brigades were a heavily-hit disaster area of the Xieqiao Commune
Progress was slow in restitution work at the outset One reason for the de-lay lay in the major adjustments being made to the national economy in the 1960s which intertwined many areas of work together and made the overall situation highly complex Another reason was an insufficient understanding of the importance of restitution work on the part of leaders in some areas which slowed the pace of their work and slowed overall progress of the entire enterprise31 On top of that the work itself was quite intricate and difficult Most officials lacked experience at the beginning and were unclear on which losses of property should be considered uncompensated appropriations how to calculate figures for those losses which were thus deemed and finally how to go about paying restitution Such lack of experience too affected the pace of work By the end of 1961 a total of 46927 million yuan in restitution had been paid in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region That figure consisted of 1455 million yuan in material goods 23247 million yuan in cash 4254 million yuan of debt repaid with objects of similar value and 4871 million yuan of bank promissory notes32 Progress in the various localities of the region was poorly balanced Progress was relatively fast in Suzhou City (and suburbs) where work entered its final stages after March 1961 A total of over 459000 yuan was disbursed around the city (and suburbs) accounting for 779 percent of total restitution
30 ldquoGuanyu (Changshu xian) Xieqiao gongshe jinxing mingxing chenqiao 3 dadui chaiq-ian hu anzhi qingkuang de chubu diaocha baogao 关于 (常熟县 )谢桥公社金星
明星陈桥3个大队拆迁户安置情况的初步调查报告 [Investigative Report on the Conditions of Households Who Were Relocated after Forced Demolition of their Houses in the Jinxing Mingxing and Chenqiao Brigades of the Xieqiao Commune of Changshu County]rdquo (the authorship and time of publication of this document are un-clear) H1-2-1962-270
31 See ldquoXiong Renmin tongzhi zai suanzhang tuipei huiyi shang de fayan (jilu gao)rdquo ldquoMocheng gongshe guanyu jianjue jiuzheng pingdiao cuowu chedi tuipei gongzuo de chubu fangrsquoan 莫城公社关于坚决纠正平调错误彻底退赔工作的初步方案 [Mocheng Communersquos Initial Plan for Resolutely Redressing the Errors of Uncompen-sated Transfers and the Work of Full Restitutions]rdquo 1961 H5-1-1961-57 and ldquoGuanyu Wu xian Xietang gongshe shenxu dadui jiehe tiaozheng hesuan danwei zuohao suanzhuang tuipei gongzuo de qingkuang 关于吴县斜塘公社沈许大队结合调整核算单位做
好算账退赔工作的情况 [Conditions of Combining Adjusted Accounting Units in Or-der to Properly Perform Restitution Work in the Shenxu Brigade of the Xietang Commune of Wu County]rdquo March 1 1962 H5-1-1962-64
32 Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee Restitutions Office ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu tuipei fangrsquoanrdquo
WANG174
ltUNgt
for uncompensated appropriations A total of over 152000 yuan was paid out in material goods 331 percent of total compensations paid out at the time33
In mid-June 1961 Chen Yun 陈云 at the time deputy chairman of the ccp Central Committee and deputy premier of the State Council traveled to Su-zhou to convalesce and conduct research He convened symposiums of both county committee secretaries and production brigade branch secretaries He was highly concerned with restitution work and gave concrete instructions in this area34 After the ldquoConference of 7000 Cadresrdquo of 1962 the understanding of the entire party of the severity and danger of ldquoleftistrdquo mistakes was further deepened and more emphasis was placed on restitution work As a result restitution work in Suzhoumdashas in the rest of the countrymdashwas ramped up the emphasis now being on persistently implementing the ldquorepay debts to the point of bankruptcyrdquo spirit of the Ninth Plenum of the Eighth ccp Congress35
Restitution work in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region consisted primarily of settlements and restitution made for housing land instruments (including those used for production and living) labor and other areas Letrsquos first take a look at how restitution was handled for labor At the height of the Great Leap Forward movement mistakenly high estimates of agricultural yields led to the assumption that agricultural issues had been solved As a result large numbers of young capable laborers were removed from the front lines of agriculture and sent to work on the Great Forging of Steel and Iron the large-scale es-tablishment of commune and brigade public enterprises and all manner of irrigation works projects On top of all that were blind direction of production large-scale recruitment for grand tactics campaigns and so on uncompensat-ed appropriations were particularly severe in the area of labor For an example letrsquos take a look at the Baowei Production Brigade 保圩大队 of the Weitang Commune 渭塘公社 in Wu County There labor provisions for agriculture decreased yearly beginning in 1957 while at the same time the proportions of old weak infirmed handicapped and female increased Table 72 shows these trends
Although Southern Jiangsu Province has long been plagued by a dearth of land for its abundant population the area has long been home to agricultural
33 Zhongguo gongchandang Suzhou dashiji 9334 Ibid 9435 Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee Settlement Fulfillment Leading Group Office
ldquoGuanyu tuipei fangwu gongzuo huiyi qingkuang he jindong mingchun yijian de baogaordquo ldquoSong Lianfang buzhang zay sheng tuipei hui shang fayan gao 宋连芳部长在省退赔会
上发言稿 [Speech of Minister Song Lianfang at the Provincial Conference on Restitu-tions]rdquo 1962 (no exact date specified) H5-1-1962-63
175Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 7
2 La
bor p
lann
ing
cond
ition
s in
the B
aowe
i brig
ade o
f the
Wei
tang
com
mun
e of W
u co
unty
Indu
stry
1957
1958
1959
1960
Peop
le
empl
oyed
Perc
enta
ge
of to
tal (
)
Peop
le
empl
oyed
Perc
enta
ge
of to
tal (
)
Peop
le
empl
oyed
Perc
enta
ge
of to
tal (
)
Peop
le
empl
oyed
Perc
enta
ge
of to
tal (
)
Agric
ultu
re72
396
91
640
879
156
877
852
575
21
Side
line
indu
strie
s7
094
152
0644
603
547
74
Wel
fare
60
818
247
354
843
616
Com
mun
e-ru
n in
dust
ry1
014
243
330
411
375
3
Irrig
atio
n1
014
50
6914
192
10
14Tr
ansp
orta
tion
and
ship
ping
91
236
081
30
42
Cultu
re a
nd
educ
atio
n2
027
101
3818
247
223
15
Data
sou
rce
ldquoW
eita
ng g
ongs
he
baow
ei d
adui
lao
li d
iaoc
ha
qing
kuan
g 渭
塘公
社保
圩大
队劳
力调
查情
况 [
Find
ings
of
a La
bor
Inve
stig
atio
n in
th
e Ba
owei
Bri
gad
e of
th
e W
eita
ng C
omm
une]
rdquo Ju
ly 15
196
0 H
5-1-
1960
-48
WANG176
ltUNgt
production and operations methods suitable to local conditions and a high population density ie intensive agriculture maintained by a vast labor pool With a large number of laborersin small areas multiple cropping allowed farmers to achieve higher labor productivity Surplus labor was funneled into family side businesses and handicraft industries which were highly developed Shortly after the advent of the peoplersquos commune movement there were no substantive changes to methods of agricultural production and operations ie levels of production but there were great changes to the organizational methods employed in production and operations Household economies were abolished as vestiges of the private ownership system at this point the sole income of all households came from collective production units When young able-bodied laborers were taken out of agricultural production the repercus-sions weregrave Moreover agricultural production is highly seasonal early or late planting or harvesting bears an extremely negative impact on overall agricultural yields Low agricultural yieldsled to insufficiencies in basic rural rations which in turn adversely affected the physical health of agricultural laborers Declines in the health of laborers then gave rise to a vicious cycle In response to this situation governments at every level in Suzhou began conduct-ing sweeping investigations of labor infringements and labor appropriations Officials then began taking measures to rectify the situation adopting such methods as planning squeezing protecting reforming managing regulating and others in order to solve labor insufficiencies in the agricultural sector Squeezing and protecting helped solve current issues Planning and manag-ing were used for the long term Reforming and regulating were used as assur-ances that the problem be fundamentally solved Here ldquoplanningrdquo refers to the guiding policy of ldquocomprehensive planning with agriculture as the foundation and grain as the guiding principlerdquo which demanded a plan considering all fac-tors comprehensive planning and reasonable arrangements of proportions of labor sent to every battle front in rural areas ldquoSqueezingrdquo refers to squeezing all possible labor out of every single industry by every means conceivable in order to support agricultural production ldquoProtectingrdquo refers to cherishing and protecting labor and ensuring that all available labor be able to participate in the production battle front full of vigor ldquoReformingrdquo refers to persisting in the mass line large-scale reforms to tools large-scale technological innovations in agriculture and the technical revolution ldquoManagingrdquo refers to strengthening of the management of operations in communes and brigades ldquoRegulatingrdquo re-fers to the establishment of institutions and regulations on the administration and demand for labor Relevant documents made concrete stipulations regard-ing the above in order to cause labor management to be truly standardized and achieve results in the real world The ccp Suzhou Prefectural Committee
177Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
Rural Work Department issued fifteen regulations regarding labor administra-tion summarized as follows (1) From now onward integrated administration must be implemented over rural labor No one may wantonly transfer laborers much less organize labor cooperatives or use grand tactics at will which thwart the labor usage plans of contracting units The organization of labor coopera-tives must be conducted voluntarily by parties involved and approved by the party committee one level above (2) All personnel hired privately or recklessly by any commune system or work unit since 1960 must be identified and sent back to their original production units (3) All communes and brigades which use labor to go through back doors or engage in cooperatives must be identi-fied and sent back (4) No government or department at any level is permitted to seize laborers at will If indeed labor is required permission must be granted by the county committee Earnest investigations must be conducted for all la-borers already thus seized all those who should not have been appropriated must be sent back to the countryside (5) No commune is permitted to estab-lish its own full-time construction team (6) Industrial enterprises founded by communes are in no case allowed to siphon off rural laborers within the next two years Such enterprises should be conducted in accordance with the spirit of small-scale production during the busy farming season and large-scale pro-duction during the slack farming season Some personnel may be transferred to assist during the busy season and all laborers may be transferred during the slack season This will lead to gains in both industry and agriculture with-out the need to bring on additional laborers (7) Brigades may not establish dedicated transportation teams All boats and laborers already appropriated from production teams must be returned to their original production teams for participation in agricultural production (8) All agricultural schools red and expert schools and agricultural middle schools founded in communes must go on holiday during the busy farming season All staff of these schools ex-cepting those required for production within the school must be returned to their original brigades to participate in production during these holidays (9) Government organs schools and public enterprises may not seize agricultural labor in the development of production in secondary enterprises All laborers already thus seized must be returned to the countryside (10) All song-and-dance troupes must conduct activities in their spare time none may be released from their duties (11) Earnest efforts should be made to persuade commune mem-bers who have absconded to return home and to participate in production They should be given necessary help in the resolution of difficulties in produc-tion and in their lives and should not be discriminated against or attacked (12) The training of peoplersquos militias must be conducted during the slack farm-ing season (13) All communes and directly subordinate public enterprises
WANG178
ltUNgt
must comprehensively list out projects in order of priority and down-size all non-production work forces Brigades may not hire dedicated correspondents purchasing agents or accountants (14) The following stipulations are hereby made regarding determining staff numbers and quotas in welfare enterprises secondary industry production enterprises and so on one cook is to bear the meal burden of at least 50 people one gardener is to bear the meal burden of at least 50 people one childcare worker is to supervise at least 10 children and one pig keeper is to tend to at least 30 pigs (15) There must be a universal tidy-ing up of all rural labor Labor levels are to be reappraised in order to provide good conditions for planned production and labor arrangements36 Per these regulations all county governments made efforts to rectify labor which had been appropriated without compensation and shore up the agriculture On the whole there were no great variations to this work and the work was mostly completed by the second half of 1961 after all large-scale campaigns concluded in particular commune-founded enterprises Laborers who had been appropri-ated without compensation were not only returned to the agricultural produc-tion front line but also received corresponding compensations
Next came land settlements and land restitution During the Great Leap Forward a great quantity of precious land resources was squandered due to infringements and appropriations made during the various large-scale cam-paigns These appropriations were particularly injurious to Jiangsu a province in which land resources were tight to begin with As such in accordance with demands from the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee the Suzhou regional government began processing initial settlements and restitution for all agricul-tural land that had been requisitioned but not used requisitioned but not en-tirely used and appropriated without compensation At the outset however many work units that had engaged in uncompensated appropriations pos-sessed an insufficient understanding of the importance of the work Some gave back much less than they had taken Some made airs of returning land but in truth retained control Some gave back land while taking more at the same time Some gave back public land but not private land Some production teams feared that a return of land which had been subject to uncompensated appro-priations would increase the teamrsquos requirements for grain production which would in turn further strain commune members these teams were not terribly eager to reclaim taken lands an attitude that further slowed work progress By
36 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Workers and Peasants Committee 中共苏州地委
农村工作部 rdquo Guanyu zhengdun nongcun laodongli wenti zuotan huiyi de qingkuang 关于整顿农村劳动力问题座谈会议的情况 [Conditions of the Symposium on Rectifying Rural Labor Issues]rdquo August 3 1960 H5-1-1960-48
179Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
June 1962 settlements had been made on only 261279 mu of agricultural land in the region Of that total 690045 mu were deemed land leftover from exces-sive requisitioning Another 934627 mu had been subject to uncompensated appropriations and another 509518 mu of land was compensated as a result of destruction by the leveling or digging up of fields Another 4786 mu fell into the category of ldquovegetables replaced with grainrdquo Another 4164 mu fell into the category of fixed quotas or fixed obligations as a result of continued cultivation by state-run farms and public enterprises37 In March 1963 to respond to this situation and in accordance with the spirit of State Council instructions the ldquoSixty-Article Regulations for Agriculturerdquo 农业六十条 and other relevant documents the ccp Suzhou Prefectural Committee Restitution Work Leading Group made the following concrete regulations (1) Regarding the issues of re-turning ownership of land to production teams The ldquoRegulationsrdquo stipulate that all land requisitioned but not used be unconditionally returned to produc-tion teams that no requisitioning fees be levied and that ownership of the land go to the state In cases of need arising hereafter the land will be returned for usage at no cost after approvals procedures are completed All production team land requisitioned without compensation must be unconditionally re-turned with ownership going to the production team In addition compensa-tions must be paid for all losses incurred during the time of occupation (2) The spirit of State Council regulations is to be abided in the question of handling crops The principle of ldquohe who planted shall reaprdquo shall be observed for crops already mature or nearing maturation For crops still far from maturation seedlings shall be handed over and the production team shall pay compensa-tions for seeds and labor at its discretion (3) Production teams are responsible for the protection of buildings and other fixture and may not destroy them If a production team wishes to borrow one it must obtain permission from the original work unit All small attachments related to production teams which are not needed by original work units may be given to that production team for use after a price is reached through negotiations (4) All mature land received by production teams shall be included within planning area and state requisi-tioning requirements will be levied thereupon All land which was only mildly damaged and can be restored to full arability through minor efforts shall be included within planning area in the first year such land will be appropriately cared for so as to establish a quota for grain production and in the second year state grain requisitioning requirements will be levied thereupon All land
37 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Rural Work Department 中共苏州地委农村工作
部 ldquoGuanyu qingli tudi de qingkuang baogao 关于清理土地的情况报告 [Report on Conditions of Land Settlements]rdquo June 19 1962 H5-1-1962-65
WANG180
ltUNgt
which was heavily damaged and thus requires the expenditure of a great deal of production team labor to return to arability shall be considered uncultivat-ed land and measures for handling the cultivation of uncultivated land shall be observed (5) All land belonging to private citizens of cities or towns and any other private land not part of collectives shall be directly handed over to production teams by the work unit which has occupied it No private citizen may receive land If any person desires to plant land he may join a local com-mune and transfer into an agricultural registration he shall then be allocated a plot of land for personal needs as a member of a commune (6) Some work units which make seasonal use of large swaths of farmland may adopt one of the following measures according to their own conditions The first is that the unit may use a production team for planting with duties regularly rotated but this may not affect usage on the part of the work unit The second is that the unit may plant the land itself and establish its own tasks of turning production over to higher authorities The third is that the unit may reduce its scope re-serving a portion and withdrawing from a portion per the principle of econo-mizing land use (7) The following measures may be employed for large swaths of arable land surrounded by containing walls or fences per concrete condi-tions The first is to reduce the size of the wall and free up some land The sec-ond is for commune members to enter the walled-in area to plant The third is for a work unit to plant the land and establish tasks of turning production over to higher authorities (8) All land occupied by schools except areas necessary for exercise and approved agricultural middle schools or other production land belonging to specialized schools must be returned in entirety to produc-tion teams No excuses of necessity for labor training or living welfare will be accepted for the continued occupation of such land If the return of such land leads to difficulties in procuring ample vegetables to eat local commercial de-partments and production teams shall be responsible for supplying such In individual cases in which a school is located in a remote area or is responsible for a large number of people and local commercial departments and produc-tion teams are unable to meet their vegetable needs a certain amount of vegetable-planting land may be reserved with permission from the local coun-ty committee (9) Per the central tenet of the ldquoSixty-Article Regulations for Agriculturerdquo land planted by communes and brigades must generally be va-cated and returned to production teams In some cases in which there is a con-crete value to retaining said land with permission from the county committee it shall be acceptable to vacate a portion and retain a portion or to retain the land in entirety (10) A great number of issues are involved in land belonging to state-run farms vegetable bases belonging to cities and towns land belonging to laogai [reform through labor] units land belonging to military departments
181Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
and other land occupied under special circumstances Preliminary opinions should be established through consultations with relevant units and control-ling departments and reported in a dedicated report to the research depart-ments of all party committees for handling38 Although some areas continued to handle things in their own fashions39 after the issuance of these highly oper-able ldquoregulationsrdquo the majority of local governments rapidly came in line with the work of land settlements and restitution After further comprehensive ear-nest land settlements a total of 13857421 mu of land occupied but not used or occupied without compensation had been returned across the Suzhou region by September 1963 That total added to all the land returned in the years prior accounted for over ninety percent of the 45103 mu in the region that had been requisitioned or occupied since 1958 (not including land destroyed for the con-struction of irrigation works) At this point basically all land that could be returned had been returned40 This process spurred the development of pro-duction increased incomes of production teams and commune members and solidified the collective economy Its effects were particularly striking for com-munes and teams in the outskirts of towns and cities which had always been heavily populated but poorly endowed in land and in which land requisition-ing had been heavy-handed
Restitution work related to housing was the most difficult of all restitution tasks its progress also the slowest One reason for such difficulty is that of all the things that were appropriated without compensation housing accounted for the largest proportion Another reason was that housing was most closely related to the daily lives of commune members moreover there is no substi-tute for housing which made this issue closest to the hearts of commune mem-bers At the time fund raising for house building materials such as timber and bamboo was the most difficult By March 1962 restitution had been made for only 46450 structures only thirty percent of the total for which restitution was due Of that total an equivalent of 22075 structures (fourteen percent) were
38 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Restitutions Leading Group 中共苏州地委退赔领
导小组 ldquoGuanyu tuipei fangwu qingli tudi huiyi de qingkuang baogao 关于退赔房屋
清理土地会议的情况报告 [Report on the Conference on Restitutions Housing and Land Settlements]rdquo March 24 1963 H1-2-1963-306
39 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Restitutions Office 中共苏州地委退赔办公室 ldquoGuanyu Wu xian jinshan gongshe qingli tuipei tudi qingkuang de baogao 关于吴县金
山公社清理退还土地情况的报告 [Report on Land Settlements and Restitutions in the Jinshan Commune of Wu County]rdquo June 6 1963 H5-2-1963-111
40 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Rural Work Department ldquoGuanyu qingli tudi gongzuo zongjie 关于清理土地工作总结 [Summary of Land Settlement Work]rdquo H5-1-1963-70
WANG182
ltUNgt
compensated in the form of state-owned housing Another 16393 structures (eleven percent) were compensated through the tearing down of state-owned housing to construct new buildings or the reconstruction of old buildings The funding for 7962 structures (five percent) was raised independently by the public and the remaining percentage of restitution was paid out in cash41 Support for restitution work picked up and the pace of said work accelerated beginning in the second half of 1963 as the economy further recovered The Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee reported to the Jiangsu Provincial Com-mittee that a total of restitution for 94900 structuresmdashmade either through compensations or the construction of new housingmdashhad been made in the re-gion as of the end of August accounting for 599 percent of the 158500 private structures destroyed in the region42 In October of that year the Suzhou Pre-fectural Commissionerrsquos office arranged for 20000 stalks of bamboo outside of state planning figures to be brought in from Jiangxi province Thereafter the Jiangsu provincial government appropriated 60000 yuan and 200 cubic meters of timber to the Suzhou region for house restitution In November the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region Supply and Marketing Cooperative Means of Production Station arranged for 15000 stalks of bamboo outside of state planning to be brought in from Anhui province43 By Spring Festival of 1964
41 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu pingdiao tuipei qingkuang 苏州专区平调退赔情况 [Conditions of Restitutions for Uncompensated Transfers in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region]rdquo March 13 1962 H5-1-1962-63
42 Zhongguo gongchandang Suzhou dashiji 10543 The above materials came from the following sources in this order cpc Suzhou Prefec-
tural Committee Restitutions office and Suzhou Provincial Supply and Marketing Coop-erative Suzhou Sub-provincial Region Office 中共苏州地委退赔办公室江苏省供
销合作社苏州专区办事处 ldquoGuanyu fenpei yipi jihua wai maozhu yong yu shenghuo he tuipei jianwu de tongzhi 关于分配一批计划外毛竹用于生活和退赔建屋的通
知 [Notice on Unplanned Allocation of Bamboo to be Used for Living and Restitutions to Reconstruct Houses]rdquo October 21 1963 Jiangsu Provincial Dedicated Bureau of Finance for Suzhou and cpc Suzhou Prefectural Restitutions Office 江苏省苏州专员公署财政
局中共苏州地委退赔办公室 ldquoGuanyu fenpei yi pi tuipei jingfei de tongzhi 关于
分配一批退赔经费的通知 [Notice on Allocating Funding for Restitutions]rdquo October 21 1963 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Restitutions Office and Jiangsu Provincial Dedicated Planning Committee for Suzhou 中共苏州地委退赔办公室江苏省苏
州专员公署计划委员会 ldquoGuanyu fenpei yi pi tuipei zhuanyong mucai de tongzhi 关于分配一批退赔专用木材的通知 [Notice on Allocation of Wood to be Used for Res-titutions]rdquo October 21 1963 cpc Suzhou Prefectural Committee Restitutions Office and Jiangsu Provincial Supply and Marketing Cooperative Sub-provincial Region Office 中共
苏州地委退赔办公室江苏省供销合作社苏州专区办事处 ldquoGuanyu fenpei yi pi anpai shenghuo zhuanyong maozhu de tongzhi 关于分配一批安排生活专用毛竹
183Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
a total of 92499 structures had been built as restitution accounting for 5997 percent of all private structures that had been razed Initial plans indicated that 111 communes (fifty-one percent of the total) and 1872 brigades (sixty-eight percent of the total) had resolved or basically resolved the housing prob-lems for households in urgent need44 By March the number of structures built as restitution rose to 93999 accounting for over 60 percent of razed private housing structures accounting for about ninety percent of all rural households45 Statistics indicate the following allocations from the provincial and sub- provincial regional governments used for housing restitution from 1962 to spring of 1965 6375 cubic meters of wood 93600 stalks of bamboo 2975 tonnes of coal 299 million bricks and 1059 million tiles46 A total of 101377 structures were constructed for restitution in the region accounting for 657 percent of total razed structures See Table 73 for details
Statistics from June 1964 indicate that by the time restitution work ended in the region about 9000 housing structures which should have been compen-sated had not been The most seriously affected region was Changshu County with over 5000 structures for which restitution had not been made The least affected region was Wujiang County 吴江县 with only over 200 such struc-tures47 See Table 74 for detailed figures
的通知 [Notice on the Allocation of Bamboo to be Used for Living]rdquo November 23 1963 H5-2-1963-110
44 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu tuipei fangwu anzhi chaiqian hu gongzuo qingkuang he yijian (chuxi sheng tuipei huiyi ziliao) 苏州专区迟赔房屋安置拆迁户工作情况和意见(出
席省退赔会议资料) [Conditions of and Opinions on the Work of Restitutions and Relocations for Razed Households in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region]rdquo March 7 1964 H5-1-1964-74 Figures given in some documents may be erroneous For example statis-tics issued in October 1963 indicate that a total of 94092 structures for restitutions had been constructed this figure is only 593 percent of the total number of houses razed See ldquoTuipei huiyi qingkuang de baogao 退赔会议情况报告 [Report on Conditions at the Restitutions Conference]rdquo October 25 1963 H5-1-1963-69
45 ldquoGuanyu jieshu tuipei fangwu anzhi chaiqian hu gongzuo de chubu fangrsquoan 关于结束退
赔房屋安置拆迁户工作的初步方案 [Initial Plan for Ending the Work of Relocating Families of Razed Homes]rdquo April 1964 H5-1-1964-74
46 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu 1961 nian dao 1964 nian fenpei tuipei jianwu wuzi huizongbiao 苏州
专区 1961年到 1964年分配退赔建屋物资汇总表 [Summary Table of Resources Allo-cated to the Construction of Restitutions Housing in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region from 1961 to 1964]rdquo July 12 1965 H5-1-1965-77
47 Suzhou Prefectural Party Committee Restitutions Office 中共苏州地委退赔办公室 ldquoDangqian tuipei anzhi gongzuo qingkuang 当前退赔安置工作情况 [Current Condi-tions of the Work of Restitutions and Relocation]rdquo June 13 1964 H5-1-1964-74
WANG184
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 7
3 Re
stitu
tion
and
relo
catio
n (f
or ra
zed
hous
es) i
n th
e Suz
hou
regi
on
Uni
t St
ruct
ures
Regi
onFo
rcib
le re
loca
tions
Relo
catio
ns a
nd re
stitu
tion
Hou
seho
lds
Stru
ctur
es
raze
dTo
tal
stru
ctur
esPe
rcen
tage
of
tota
l str
uctu
res
raze
d (
)
By y
ear
Prio
r to
1962
Spri
ng 19
62 to
w
inte
r 196
3Sp
ring
1963
to
win
ter
1964
Spri
ng 19
64 to
w
inte
r 196
5
Tota
l59
904
154
269
101
377
657
719
1715
987
724
36
230
Wux
i4
994
117
756
063
515
4387
51
313
341
521
Jiang
yin
476
411
702
636
054
546
351
011
420
294
Shaz
hou
166
2933
259
262
3779
184
552
951
52
397
52
433
Chan
gshu
186
1955
842
344
235
617
222
695
627
02
764
312
0Ta
ican
g1
950
628
84
489
714
3758
611
120
Kuns
han
511
114
201
128
995
908
103
995
163
258
628
2W
u Co
unty
383
08
717
427
149
3184
785
530
15
Wuj
iang
400
712
485
663
453
248
285
141
331
25
80
Data
sou
rce
Suz
hou
Pre
fect
ural
Par
ty C
omm
itte
e Re
stit
utio
n Of
fice
ldquoSu
zhou
zh
uanq
u tu
ipei
anz
hi f
angw
u qi
ngku
ang
苏州
专区
退赔
安置
房屋
情况
[Co
ndit
ions
of
Hou
sing
Res
titu
tion
and
Rel
ocat
ions
in t
he
Suzh
ou S
ub-p
rovi
ncia
l Re
gion
]rdquo Ju
ly 8
196
5
H5-
1-19
65-7
7
185Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
Policies regarding restitution to be made for implements for production or liv-ing consistently emphasized that material goods should be used for restitution in a maximum of cases but in most actual cases damage to small farm imple-ments was officially deemed to have fallen within the scope of ldquonormal wear and tearrdquo and thus no restitution was made (generally all implements thus af-fected were small farm implements belonging to rural citizens the majority of large farm implements had been bought with cash or collective sharehold-ing into collectives at the time of the cooperative movement) As there were a great quantity of classifications for ldquoliving implementsrdquo it was difficult to make objective verifications of circumstances on the basis of which to make resti-tution The more feasible option was to appraise their value and compensate with promissory notes
Beginning in the second half of 1963 some local governments of the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region began preparing to wrap up restitution work
Table 74 Plans for final tasks in housing restitution and relocations in the Suzhou sub- provincial region
Unit Structures
Region Number of restitution structures still required
Structures razed for mid to large sized irrigation works
Structures razed for small irriga-tion works
Structures razed for oth-er large-scale campaigns
Total 5094 3048 846 1200Changshu 2500 1784 416 300Shazhou 1591 856 250 485Wujiang 301 258 10 33Wuxi 332 100 232Jiangyin 250 150 50 50Kunshan 120 20 100
Explanation (solution) Materials on hand in each county sufficient to construct 700 to 800 structures provincially-allocated materials and funding sufficient to construct around 1500 structures local government resources plus mass-raised funds sufficient to construct 1000 to 1300 struc-tures 1400 to 1800 structures still lackingData source ldquoQuan zhuanqu tuipei anzhi saowei renwu guihua 全专区退赔
安置扫尾任务规划 [Plans for Final Tasks in Housing Restitution and Reloca-tions across the Sub-Provincial Region]rdquo July 16 1965 H5-1-1965-77
WANG186
ltUNgt
in accordance with the unified deployments of superior governments48 After April 1964 the entire region had entered the final stages of restitution work49 All restitution work was completed by the second half of 1965 with relevant organs withdrawing from the process and handing down the small quantity of remaining issues to civil affairs departments for integrated processing A total value of over 23 million yuan in material goods and cash had been distrib-uted in the region all allocated from the provincial and sub-provincial govern-ments50 A large quantity of promissory notes was also issued as restitution in the region See Table 75 for details
iii
One can arrive at the following conclusions after an objective consideration of the above historical processes First rural restitution work in Suzhou was conducted and completed within the scope stipulated by central policy frame-works just like all other work Also like all other work rural restitution work went through repetitions as a result of changes to central policies The overall trend however was one toward continual deepening and thoroughness which not only redeemed the image of the party and government which had been adversely affected for a time but also played an important positive role in the rapid restoration of agriculture and alleviation of difficulties across the vast countryside Second insufficient understanding of the importance of restitu-tion work and insufficiently thorough comprehension of policies on the part of some cadre in addition to the problems caused by the various ldquothings in voguerdquo gave rise to the following malpractices in restitution work (1) The on-slaught of uncompensated appropriations hit as fiercely and as quickly as a lightning strike but restitution work proceeded slowly incomprehensively and in some cases not at all owing to a number of factors Some rural households did not receive restitution of material goods of guaranteed quality sufficient
48 ldquoTuipei anzhi gongzuo qingkuang yu yijian (taolun gao) 退赔安置工作情况与意见
(讨论稿) [Conditions of and Opinions on the Work of Restitutions Relocations (Dis-cucssion Draft)]rdquo December 7 1963 H5-2-1963-109
49 ldquoGuanyu jieshu tuipei fangwu anzhi chaiqian hu gongzuo de chubu fangrsquoanrdquo50 ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu peitui anzhi gongzuo qingkuang he quanmian jieshu de yijian 苏州专
区退赔安置工作情况和全面结束的意见 [Conditions of Restitution Work of Hous-ing Relocation in the Suzhou Sub-provincial Region and on Bringing Said Work to a Com-plete Close]rdquo (date and authorship unclear) H5-1-1965-77 The actual figure was likely 2331972 yuan See ldquoSuzhou zhuanqu 1961 nian dao 1964 nian fenpei tuipei jianwu wuzi huizongbiaordquo
187Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 7
5 Pr
omiss
ory n
otes
issu
ed a
s res
titut
ion
in th
e Suz
hou
regi
on
Uni
t Yu
an
Coun
tyQ
uant
ity is
sued
Qua
ntity
re
calle
d by
ba
nks
Qua
ntity
unr
ecal
led
Tota
lBr
igad
es a
nd
prod
uctio
n te
ams
Com
mun
e m
embe
rsO
ther
Tota
lBr
igad
es a
nd
prod
uctio
n te
ams
Com
mun
e m
embe
rsO
ther
Tota
l5
785
102
333
952
02
350
561
769
3915
413
54
172
260
240
693
91
762
025
762
54W
uxi
134
090
858
628
675
414
022
543
71
053
984
463
885
652
099
Jiang
yin
948
040
651
004
267
064
299
7241
665
453
138
643
550
410
540
9Sh
azho
u53
935
314
498
738
433
662
946
466
407
831
3137
926
413
011
Chan
gshu
708
642
284
507
377
168
469
6723
639
547
224
716
429
526
173
746
217
Taic
ang
765
898
351
975
413
923
238
472
527
426
277
960
246
950
251
6Ku
nsha
n30
568
628
903
016
656
711
2523
456
120
379
016
261
145
10W
u Co
unty
865
7536
470
425
3518
060
685
1518
700
422
45W
ujia
ng10
900
099
526
194
739
272
266
817
734
759
674
580
60
Data
sou
rce
Suz
hou
Pre
fect
ural
Par
ty C
omm
itte
e Re
stit
utio
n Of
fice
ldquoSu
zhou
zh
uanq
u tu
ipei
qip
iao
qing
kuan
g 苏
州专
区退
赔
期票
情况
[Co
ndit
ions
of
Prom
isso
ry N
otes
for
Res
titu
tion
in t
he
Suzh
ou S
ub-p
rovi
ncia
l Re
gion
]rdquo O
ctob
er 15
196
4 H
5-1-
1965
-77
WANG188
ltUNgt
quantity or fair pricing by the conclusion of reparations work but instead received promissory notes that could not be redeemed in the short term this led to further intangible losses (2) Many material goods that had been subject to uncompensated appropriations had been depreciated but restitution work was conducted in accordance with careful calculations and strict budgets Offi-cials in many areas feared ldquoexcessiverdquo restitution would burst budgetary limits and chose not to make restitution in many cases Some opportunistic cadre members profited from the campaign through embezzlement Others took more than their fair share misappropriated funds made unjust allocations or redeemed promissory notes ahead of time These behaviors exacerbated the already poor situations of those whose property had been subject to un-compensated appropriations making both living and production more diffi-cult for rural citizens When making restitution for appropriated houses some substituted shoddy materials for good ones cut corners in craftsmanship or sold inferior goods at high prices All the above compounded the dissatisfac-tion of rural citizens at the time and detracted from the image and prestige of the party and government51 (3) Some official documents of the time clearly stipulated that losses attributable to blind direction of production should be accounted for politically and not economically52 As the Great Forging of Steel
51 ldquoGuanyu tongrsquoan gongshe suanzhang tuipei gongzuo de jiancha baogao 关于通安公社
算账退赔工作的检查报告 [Investigative Report on the Settlement and Restitution Work of the Tongrsquoan Commune]rdquo H5-2-1961-86 See also Suzhou Prefectural Party Com-mittee Restitutions Office (中共苏州)地委退赔办公室 ldquoGuanyu Kunshan xian tuipei minfang zhuanyong qicai de shengchan diaobo shiyong qingkuang xiang diwei de baogao 关于昆山县退赔民房专用器材的生产调拨使用情况向地委的报
告 [Report to Prefectural Party Committee on the Production Allocation and Utilization of Materials for Construction of Restitutions Housing in Kunshan County]rdquo April 16 1962 ldquoChangshu xian zai tuipei jianhuan fangwu zhong cailiao bei tanwu nuoyong he ganbu duo zhan de qingkuang 常熟县在退赔建还房屋中材料被贪污挪用和干部多占
的情况 [Building Materials Meant for Restitutions Housing Embezzled or Excessively Appropriated by Cadres in Changshu County]rdquo H5-2-1962-97
52 Losses attributable to blind direction of production during the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo were enormous A rough accounting conducted by the Jiangyin County Party Committee Res-titutions Office regarding the Beiguo Commune of that county indicated that during the three years of the ldquoGreat Leap Forwardrdquo the commune lost 313 million jin of grain over 15 million cubic meters of lumber over 2500 dan of tree wood over 1500 dan of bamboo over 9500 dan of firewood and about 150000 days of labor totaling about 670000 yuan 40 yuan per capita or 130 yuan per household See ldquoGuanyu shengchan xia zhihui feng suo zaocheng de jingji sunshi de diaocha 关于生产瞎指挥风所造成的经济损失的
调查 [Investigation into Economic Losses Caused by the Wind of Blind Direction of Pro-duction]rdquo September 16 1961 H5-2-1961-86
189Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
and Iron had been a mass movement of the entire party and entire popula-tion no compensations were to be made for labor contributed thereto Many reparation for objects damaged as a result of uncompensated appropriations was calculated according to the prices of these objects at the time of the ap-propriation and not at the time of reparation53 There had been a great in-crease to prices of the vast majority of commercial goods between the time of uncompensated appropriations and the time of restitution work Such price increases were yet another great intangible loss suffered by rural citizens at the time In addition officials in many places unable to make a clear accounting of values or losses of instruments or farm implements either opted to make no restitution or handled the matter with a symbolic promissory note (4) In the end central authorities stepped in to prevent grassroots cadres from trying to get out of returning objects which should be returned and from stubbornly holding their hands out for more government money as well as to make sure that restitution work wouldteach people a profound lesson As such the cen-tral government made the following clear regulation in the question of resti-tution the principle of ldquohe who decides shall be responsible for restitutionrdquo shall beadhered to and grassroots cadre shall be the first ones forced to make thorough restitution ldquolest they learn nothingrdquo54 Mao Zedong had this to say ldquoWhen it comes to restitution do not first look for money from the state but counties and communes should try to make restitution using their own funds even if risking bankruptcy In the end it will suffice for the state to provide a slight degree of subsidies otherwise counties and communes will become dependent on the staterdquo55 This regulation played a positive role in increasing work incentives among grassroots cadre and gave them the resolve to persist in restitution work and helped them gain the trust of the people improve rela-tions between officials and the public further development of work that fol-lowed and so on There were however some problems Those grassroots work units (and cadres) which had benefited from uncompensated appropriations were also themselves victims there were often great limitations to the mate-rial goods and money in their possession to be used for restitution Thus the continual emphasis on making grassroots units (and cadres) responsible for
53 ldquoXiong Renmin tongzhi zai suanzhang tuipei huiyi shang de fayan (jilu gao)rdquo ldquoGuanyu jiuzheng pingdiao cuowu chedi tuipei zhong ruogan juti wenti de chuli yijian (chugao) 关于纠正平调错误彻底退赔中若干具体问题的处理意见(初稿) [Opinions on Handling Several Concrete Problems of Restitutions and Thoroughly Redressing the Errors of Uncompensated Transfers]rdquo August 31 1961 H5-1-1961-56
54 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 13 ce 67955 Gu Longsheng 539
WANG190
ltUNgt
restitution put them in an awkward predicament If they didnrsquot make restitu-tion they would face censure from superiors and dissatisfaction from citizens but if they wanted to make restitution they were faced with insufficient re-serves of material goods and cash Grassroots cadres often went to great lengths to perform this thankless duty but seldom were met with satisfaction from ei-ther above or below In many cases they either made restitution at qualities or quantities less than demanded or had to resort to substituting shoddy ma-terials or falsifying reports No matter which route they chose relations with superior policy-making bodies and the masses were doomed to deteriorate These doomed relationships were one of the major reasons for the launching of the socialist education movement targeting grassroots cadres that followed soon thereafter56 Third the myriad problems that emerged amid the restitu-tion campaign should lead us to a deeper understanding of this principle any major policy that closely affects the personal interests of the masses should be subject to repeatedtestingon the basis of scientific evidence until proven sound before it is issued
References
Bo Yibo 薄一波 Ruogan zhongda juece yu shijian de huigu xia 《若干重大决策与事
件的回顾》下 [A Look Back on Several Major Policies and Events Vol 2] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1993)
CCP Central Party Document Research Department 中共中央文献研究室 Jianguo yilai Mao Zedong wengao di 9 ce 《建国以来毛泽东文稿》第9 册 [Mao Zedong Manuscripts from After the Founding of the Nation Vol 9] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996)
CCP Central Party Document Research Department 中共中央文献研究室 Jianguo yilai zhongyao wenxian xuanbian di 13 ce 《建国以来重要文献选编》第 13 册 [Selected Important Documents Since the Founding of the Nation Vol 13] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1996) 662
The Peoplersquos Republic of China State Agriculture Commission General Office 中华
人民共和国国家农业委员会办公厅 Nongye jitihua zhongyao wenjian huibian
56 See ldquoHengtang gongshe shuangqiao dadui zai qing jingji dingrsquoan tuipei gongzuo zhong cunzai de jige wentirdquo 横塘公社双桥大队在清经济定案退赔工作中存在的几个
问题 [Some Problems Existing in the Restitution Work of the Plan to Clean up Finances in the Shuangqiao Brigade of the Hengtang Commune] in Shejiao qingkuang jianbao (wu) 《社教情况简报》(五) [Brief Report on Conditions of the Socialist Education Movement (Five)] October 28 1965 Suzhou City Archives
191Restitution Paid by Rural Peoplersquos Cooperatives in the 1960s
ltUNgt
(1958ndash1981) xia 《农业集体化重要文件汇编(1958~1981)》下 [Selected Impor-tant Documents on Agricultural Collectivization (1958ndash1981) Vol 2] (Beijing Zhong-gong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1981)
Suzhou City Party Committee Party History Research Department 中共苏州市委
党史研究室 Zhongguo gongchandang Suzhou dashiji 《中国共产党苏州大事
记》 [Record of Major Communist Party of China Events in Suzhou] (Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe 2000)
Gu Longsheng 顾龙生 Mao Zedong jingji nianpu 《毛泽东经济年谱》 [Economic Chronicles of Mao Zedong] (Beijing Zhonggong zhongyang dangxiao chubanshe 1993)
Huang Daoxia et al 黄道霞等 Jianguo yilai nongye hezuohua shiliao huibian 《建国
以来农业合作化史料汇编》 [Compiled Historical Materials on Agricultural Cooperatization Since the Founding of the Nation] (Beijing Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe 1992)
Liu Shaoqi xuanji xia juan 《刘少奇选集》下卷 [Selected Works of Liu Shaoqi Vol 2] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1985)
Mao Zedong wenji di 7 juan 《毛泽东文集》第7 卷 [Collected Works of Mao Zedong Vol 7] (Beijing Renmin chubanshe 1999)
Yang Shangkun 杨尚昆 Yang Shangkun riji xia 《杨尚昆日记》下 [Diary of Yang Shangkun Vol 2] (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 2001)
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_00
ltUNgt
chapter 8
Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises and the Rise of Rural Private Enterprises in Gaoyang County Hebei Province in the Early Days of Reform and Opening
Feng Xiaohong1
Abstract
In the late 1970s and early 1980s Commune Brigade Enterprises (cbes) grew rapidly under the collective ownership system with support from state policies After the im-plementation of the household contract responsibility system cbes changed rapidly some spun directly into individually-owned business or private enterprises and some contracted out under different variations of the responsibility system There is a close connection between the transformation of cbes and the rise of rural private enterpris-es with the former being the starting point for the latter The transformation of cbes into rural private enterprises led to accumulations of valuable experience and lessons for later reforms to small and mid-sized urban enterprises
Keywords
Commune and Brigade Enterprises ndash transformation ndash private enterprises
A great deal of economic research has been done on Commune Brigade Enterprises (cbes) which were most common in the late 1970s and early 1980s particularly in the development circumstances existential issues and reform
This essay was one of the initial products of the Hebei Provincial Social Sciences Fund project ldquoTypical Cases of Chinarsquos Rural Industrializationmdasha Study of the Hundred Year History of the Textile Industry in Gaoyang Hebei as well as the Laws that Governed its Developmentrdquo《中国乡村工业化的典型个案mdashmdash 河北高阳织布业百年历程及发
展规律研究》 (HB07LS002) 1 Feng Xiaohong (冯小红 ) holds a doctorate in history and is an associate professor in the
history department of Handan College
193Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
directions for such enterprises at the time As cbes gradually faded from existence research in this field also declined with only a few doctoral and masterrsquos theses published on the subject Most of these theses however focused on the period of time ending in the mid-1980s very few drew connections be-tween cbes and the development of rural private enterprises that followed2 After the mid-1980s a large number of academics in economics and the other social sciences conducted research on rural private enterprises focusing pri-marily on their present conditions prospects for future development and theories for understanding them Very little of this research however drew connections between rural private enterprises and cbes For example Zhang Renshou 张仁寿 et al noted in their research of the ldquo Wenzhou Modelrdquo that the splitting up of cbes had been one of the channels by which Wenzhoursquos cottage industries had arisen but they did not perform detailed analysis on the exact process by which cbes had developed into cottage industries Shi Jinchuan 史晋川 et al on the other hand concluded that cbes had not at all been the logical starting point for the development of private enterprises in Wenzhou3 To this end I have made an initial study into the development and transformation of cbes and the rise of rural private enterprises in the early years of Reform and Openingmdashfocusing specifically on Gaoyang County 高阳县 Hebei Province4mdashin order to show the historical relationship between the two
2 For a more comprehensive list of research performed into Commune and Brigade Enterprises see the references section of Liu Yantaorsquos (刘燕桃 ) ldquoHebei sheng shedui qiye yanjiu河北省社队企业研究 [Research into Enterprises Managed by Communes and Pro-duction Teams in Hebei Province]rdquo (2008 masterrsquos thesis Hebei Normal University)
3 Zhang Renshou and Li Hong 张仁寿李红 Wenzhou moshi yanjiu《温州模式研
究》[A Study of the Wenzhou Model] (Zhongguo Shehui kexue chubanshe 1990) 47 Shi Jinchuan Jin Xiangrong and Zhao Wei 史晋川金祥荣赵伟 Zhidu bianqian yu jingji fazhan Wenzhou moshi yanjiu《制度变迁与经济发展温州模式研究》[Institu-tional Changes and Economic Development Study of the Wenzhou Model] (Zhejiang daxue chubanshe 2002) 64
4 The primary reason that this essay focuses on Gaoyang County Hebei Province is that the textile industry there has developed for 100 years making it a typical case in the field of eco-nomic history For more research into the Textile Industry of Gaoyang County see also Gu Lin 顾琳 Zhongguo de jingji geming ershi shiji de xiangcun gongye 《中国的经济革命二
十世纪的乡村工业》 [Chinarsquos Economic Revolution Rural Industry in the 20th Century] translated from the Japanese by Wang Yuru et al 王玉茹等 (Jiangsu renmin chubanshe 2009) Zhao Zhilong 赵志龙 ldquoGaoyang fangzhiye de bianqian (1880ndash2005) 高阳纺织业
的变迁 (1880~2005) [Changes in the Gaoyang Textile Industry (1880ndash2005)]rdquo (2005 doctoral thesis Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and Feng Xiao-hong 冯小红 ldquoGaoyang zhibuye de jindaihua Jincheng 高阳织布业的近代化进程 [The
FENG 194
ltUNgt
i Outline of the Development of Commune and Brigade Enterprises in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s
cbes gradually grew out of traditional rural handicrafts and family side indus-tries as well as from commune and brigade industries and sideline industries cbes came into existence shortly after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China and later evolved through the adjustments and cutbacks of the 1960s and the winding development path of the 1970s The Third Plenum of the Elev-enth Communist Party of China (ccp) Congress issued the ldquoResolutions on Several Issues of Accelerating the Development of Agriculturerdquo 关于加快农
业发展的若干问题的决定 which proposed the following
There must be great development of Commune and Brigade Enterprises and we must gradually increase the proportion of income from cbes to total income of the three-tiered economy of communes5 Agricultural products and by-products should gradually transition to being processed by cbes in all cases when doing so is economically reasonable Urban fac-tories must allocate a portion of their production capacity for products or parts which are suitable forbeing processedin rural areas to cbes in a planned manner they should also give equipment and technical support The production supply and marketing of cbes should come in different forms and should link up with every level of national economic planning in order to ensure unobstructed supply and marketing channels The state government shall grant tax breaks or tax exemptions to cbes on the basis of their differing situations6
Shortly thereafter the State Council issued the ldquoRegulations on Several Issues of the Development of Commune and Brigade Enterprisesrdquo 关于发展社
队企业若干问题的规定 which established the guiding policy for the de-velopment of cbes established the business scopes funding sources and ownership structures of cbes and called for all industries to actively support
Gaoyang Textile Textile Industryrsquos Course of Modernization]rdquo (2002 masterrsquos thesis Hebei University)
5 Translatorrsquos note The three tiers are communes brigades and production teams6 Xin shiqi nongye he nongcun gongzuo zhongyao wenxian xuanbian 《新时期农业和农
村工作重要文献选编》 [Selected Important Works on Agriculture and Rural Work in the New Era] ed cpc Central Committee Literary Research Department and State Council Development Research Center 中共中央文献研究室国务院发展研究中心 (Bei-jing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1992) 39
195Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
the development of cbes7 Having been thus commanded by the central government local governments around the country responded by issuing concrete measures supporting the development of cbes The Gaoyang County government issued six measures in 1979 the primary contents of which were as follows incorporate cbes into state planning and industry in the county capital shall support cbes8
With the support of party committees and governments at every level cbes developed rapidly from 1978 to 1980 which turned out to be a short period of prosperity Per statistics released by the Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises by April 1978 110 brigades in the county (fifty-nine per-cent) had established enterprises of one kind or another and 580 production teams (thirty percent) had begun industrial or sideline enterprise production9 By July 1978 the number of brigades running enterprises rose to 175 (ninety-seven percent) and the number of production teams running enterprises rose to 710 (forty-six percent)10 Over the short span of a few months the number of county brigades operating cbes grew fifty-nine percent and the number of pro-duction teams operating cbes grew twenty-two percent extremely fast growth
See Table 81 for the basic conditions of commune and brigade enterprises in Gaoyang County between 1978 and 1980
Table 81 shows that over the three-year period from 1978 to 1980 Gaoyang County experienced growth in both the number of cbes and the number of people employed in cbes The countyrsquos gross domestic product (gdp) grew
7 ldquoGuowuyuan banfa lsquoguanyu shedui qiye ruogan wenti de guiding (shixing caorsquoan) de tong-zhi (1979 nian 7 yue 3 ri) 国务院颁发〈关于社队企业若干问题的规定(试行草
案)〉的通知 (1979 年7月3日 ) [Notice Regarding the State Councilrsquos lsquoRegulations on Several Issues of Commune and Brigade Enterprises (Trial Draft) (July 3 1979)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 10-276-3
8 ldquoGaoyang xian yi jiu qi jiu nian shedui qiye fazhan guihua (1978 nian 12 yue) 高阳县一
九七九年社队企业发展规划 (1978年 12月 ) [Gaoyang County Development Plan for Commune and Brigade Enterprises in 1979 (December 1978)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-557-4
9 ldquoKaizhan duozhong jingying dali fazhan shedui qiye wei nongye dagan kauishang jilei daliang zijin (1978 nian 4 yue 14 ri) 开展多种经营大力发展社队企业为农业
大干快上积累大量资金 (1978年4月 14日 ) [Develop Multiple Forms of Operations Strive to Develop Commune and Brigade Enterprises Go All Out and Go Fast to Accu-mulate Large Quantities of Capital for Agriculture (April 14 1978)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-1-1
10 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju yi jiu qi ba nian shang ban nian gongzuo zongjie (1978 nian 7 yue 24 ri) 高阳县社队企业局一九七八年上半年工作总结 (1978年7月24日 ) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Work Summary for the First Half of 1978 (July 24 1978)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-1-2
FENG 196
ltUNgt
342 percent from 1978 to 1979 We are unable to compare 1980rsquos figures with those from the two previous years as the Bureau of cbes began reporting total revenues instead of gdp for that year nevertheless growth to the number of people employed by cbes in 1980 would seem to indicate a continued growth to gdp in that year
cbes in Gaoyang County were distributed over a wide range of industries County cbe Bureau data indicate that county cbes were involved in over sixty fields and manufactured over 400 varieties of products County cbes were pri-marily involved in textiles export processing the repair and manufacture of small and mid-sized farm implements planting and husbandry construction tile kiln operation and food processing11 See Table 82 for details
Table 82 shows the industries over which cbes were distributed in Gaoyang County Some industries were omitted from the table as their output values were small or their business activities hard to categorize including brigade-run commercial enterprises (commission stores) traditional handicrafts (straw-weaving wooden forks brooms whips shoe soles and reed mats)
11 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu shedui qiye ziyuan he jingji qingkuang de huibao (1980 nian 8 yue 13 ri 高阳县社队企业局关于社队企业资源和经济情况的汇报
(1980年8月 13日 ) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Re-port on the Resources and Economic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises (August 13 1980)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-6-1
Data source ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu yi jiu qi ba nian gongzuo zongjie baogao 高阳县社队企业局关于一九七八年工作总结报告 [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Work Summary Report for 1978]rdquo ldquoYi jiu qi jiu nian shedui qiye jiben qingkuang dengjibiao 一九七九年社队企业基本情况登记表
[Registration Form of Basic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises in 1979]rdquo and ldquoYi jiu ba ling nian shedui qiye jiben qingkuang dengjibiao 一九八 年社队企业
基本情况登记表 [Registration Form of Basic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises in 1980]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-1-4 26-4-1 and 26-5-1Note Figures from 1979 and 1980 were calculated based on 1978 constant prices figures for 1980 are total revenues
Table 81 Basic conditions of commune and brigade enterprises in Gaoyang County 1978ndash1980
Year Number of cbes Number of people employed by cbes gdp (yuan)
1978 1051 9650 1448 million1979 1171 15148 19438 million1980 1238 16723 1593 million
197Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
Table 82 Primary industry distribution of commune and brigade enterprises in Gaoyang County 1980
Industry Fields Product varieties
Annual income (yuan)
Machinery Farm machinery repair and manufacture industrial equipment (electrical materials) metals for production metals for daily use
66 6846292
Smelting Small castings factories 4 207000
Chemicals Plastic processing rubber processing manufacture of daily use chemical products (glasses)
13 52534
Forestry Wood processing 5 43300Construction materials
Construction teams brick factories tile kilns treated felt asbestos tile processing
23 1930250
Textile sewing and leather
Textile acrylic fiber processing sewing leather goods dye houses cotton processing synthetic fibers
60 2858292
Paper-making and culturaleducation goods
Embroidery arts and crafts (enamel balls cloisonneacute wickerwork) pa-permaking printing carpets
44 955785
Food Rice and noodle processers vinegar factories canteens oil mills tofu factories sugar refineries popsicle producers
63 346359
Other Mops pharmaceuticals tobacco factories inns for carters chaste tree weaving bicycle repairs and parts carpet factories tarpaulin painting coal briquettes
13 673300
Agriculture Orchards breeding stations 21 71114Total All 45 fields 312 13984226
Data source ldquoQuan xian gongshe dadui qiye jiben qingkuang huiji (1980 nian 6 yue 26 ri) 全县公社大队企业基本情况汇集 (1980年6月26日 ) [Compilation of Materials on Basic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Across the County (June 26 1980)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-7-1
FENG 198
ltUNgt
transportation industries (the Jiucheng Brigade transportation team and the Nanjie transportation team) small-animal husbandry and fisheries (fish bees and rabbits) plant-product industries (mushrooms) and so on12
Before 1979 cbes were run the same way agricultural enterprises had been using the ldquobig pot of ricerdquo method13 (ie recording workpoints) From 1979 to 1980 as the household contract responsibility system was introduced some cbes began to adopt the system of contracting out an entire task with a quota and the system of giving rewards for exceeding said quota In one example the Tuanding Brigade 团丁大队 electrical materials factory was permitted to hire a total of nine people Its quota for annual net income was 10000 yuan for which each employee would be rewarded eight workpoints per day and given an eight percent bonus If the factory earned 15000 yuan an additional twelve percent bonus would be paid on the extra 5000 yuan on top of the original eight percent bonus and daily workpoints would be increased to nine If another 5000 yuan was earned the staff would be given a fifteen percent bonus on that 5000 yuan and daily workpoints would be increased to ten If the factory failed to meet the quota however one workpoint per day per worker would be deducted for every 1000 yuan by which the factoryrsquos earnings fell short The Yangjiawu Brigade implemented a system in which three things were fixed fixed size of the staff fixed tasks and fixed rewards and punish-ments The number of workers was set at thirty-two and the quota for monthly net income was set at 2000 yuan which if accomplished would mean the staff would receive a seven percent bonus The staff would be given a fifteen percent bonus on any revenue earned on top of the quota of 2000 yuan in addition to eight workpoints If the quota was not met no rewards would be given and the staff rsquos salaries would be docked by the percentage of the amount by which they fell short14
12 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye fenlei dengjibiao (1981 nian 8 yue) 高阳县社队企业分类
登记表 (1981年8月 ) [Registrations of Commune and Brigade Enterprises by Category in Gaoyang County (August 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-571-19
13 Under this kind of management enterprises were fully financially supported by the gov-ernment so it mattered little how well or poorly they performed similarly salary was guaranteed and was not linked with job performance
14 ldquoShedui qiye kai xin hua tong xin tong de gao sihua ndash xiyan gongshe yi jiu qi jiu nian shedui qiye gongzuo zongjie (1979 nian 12 yue 20 ri) 社队企业开新花同心同德搞
四化mdashmdash 西演公社一九七九年社队企业工作总结 (1979年 12月20日 ) [New Blos-soms on Commune and Brigade Enterprises Bringing About the Four Changes with One Heart and One Mind ndash Work Summary of Commune and Brigade Enterprises in Xiyan Commune 1979 (December 20 1979)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-4-2
199Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
ii Changes to cbes after the Implementation of the ldquoBig Responsibility Systemrdquo in Agriculture
In 1979 the Gaoyang County government began to implement the household responsibility system in agriculture By the end of 1982 1646 of the countyrsquos total 1652 production teams had implemented its main form the Household Responsibility System15 which fomented major changes to cbes
(A) The Quantity of cbes Decreased DramaticallyThe implementation of the Household Responsibility System also known as the ldquobig responsibility systemrdquo exerted an enormous effect on cbes most no-tably in a rapid decline to their number At the end of 1980 there were 1238 cbes in Gaoyang County thirty-five run at the commune level 424 at the bri-gade elevel and 779 at the production team level16 By the end of 1981 there were only 580 cbes in the county forty at the commune level 246 at the bri-gade level and 294 at the production team level17 By the end of 1982 there were only 248 cbes remaining in the county thirty-five at the commune level 210 at the brigade level and a paltry three at the production team level18 On the whole after the ldquobig responsibility systemrdquo was put in place the reduction to the number of cbes at the commune level was minimal brigade-run cbes were reduced by half and nearly all production-team-run cbes vanished
(B) New Trends Emerged in Management MethodsThree different trends emerged in management methods of cbes after the implementation of the ldquobig responsibility systemrdquo
15 ldquoGaoyang xian jiben qingkuang (fu yi jiu ba san nian guomin jingji zhongyao zhibiao shexiang) (1982 nian 12 yue) 高阳县基本情况(附一九八三年国民经济重要指标
设想 )(1982年 12月 ) [Basic Conditions in Gaoyang County (Including Tentative Impor-tant Indicators for the National Economy in 1983) (December 1982)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-584-6
16 ldquoYi jiu ba ling nian shedui qiye jiben qingkuang 一九八年社队企业基本情况 [Basic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises in 1980]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-5-1
17 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju yi jiu ba yi nian gongzuo jianjie he yi jiu bae r nian jianyao anpai 高阳县社队企业局一九八一年工作简结和一九八二年简要安排 [Brief Work Summary of the Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises for 1981 and Brief Plans for 1982]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-11-1
18 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu yi jiu ba er nian gongzuo jianjie (1882 nian 12 yue 23 ri) 高阳县社队企业局关于一九八二年工作简结 (1982年 12月23日 ) [Brief Work Summary of the Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises for 1982 (December 23 1982)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-11-3
FENG 200
ltUNgt
1 Some cbes were forced to shut down The primary reasons were as follows (1) Machinery manufacturers such as the Gaozhuang Communersquos 高庄公社 repair and manufacturing plant were forced to close due to long-term substandard technology and balance sheet losses (2) Some enterprises such as the Taokou Brigadersquos 陶口大队 asbestos plant and the Zhaobu Brigadersquos 赵布大队 pearlite factory were forced to close due to lack of reliable materials sources or regular sales channels (3) Some enterprises such as small castings factories and hardware manufacturers were forced to close due to poor management and sustained unprofit-ablity or losses19
2 Some cbes attempted to emulate the responsibility system which had been implemented in agriculture This trend took place in most commune-run enterprises and a portion of brigade-run enterprises This trend came in one of two forms either contracting by the factory direc-tor personally or contracting by the collective Collective contracting was more common happening in sixty-five percent of cases20 In most cases where the ldquobig responsibility systemrdquo was adopted meaning that the commune or the brigade relinquished direct management of the enterprise and allowed the contracting party to take full control All tools and equipment were handed over to the factory director or collective who was in turn responsible for autonomous direction of the factory Profit distributions were handled via various methods They include the following (1) ldquoContracts based on fixed output quotas in which factories retain all output in excess of quotas and exercise full control over how extra profitsaredistributedrdquo In this method the commune or brigade established a fixed sum to be paid at a regular interval by the contracting party All profits earned in excess of that sum went to the contracting party the commune or brigade did not interfere in allocations of profits earned in excess of the pre-established sum One example was the leath-er factory of the Bianjiawu Brigade 边家务大队 Biandukou Commune
19 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu shedui qiye qingkuang de diaocha baogao (1981 nian 8 yue 25 ri) 高阳县社队企业局关于社队企业情况的调查报告 (1981年8月25日 ) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Investigative Report on the Basic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises (August 25 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-9-18
20 ldquoDangqian shedui qiye ji ge qingkuang de huibao (1983 nian 11 yue 13 ri) 当前社队企业
几个情况的汇报 (1983年 11月 13日 ) [Report on Some Present Situations of Commune and Brigade Enterprises (November 13 1983)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-15-5
201Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
边渡口公社 21 (2) ldquoContracts based on fixed output requirement extra profits to be divided and piece-rate wagesrdquo In this method the commune or brigade seta fixed output sum for the contractor All profits earned in excess of that amount were to be divided between the contractor and the commune or brigade at a pre-determined ratio The commune or brigade also paid a piece-rate wage to the contractor One example was the Gaozhuang Communersquos machine kiln22 (3) ldquoContracts based on fixed output requirements bonuses to be paid for extra profits and fixed wag-esrdquo In this method the commune or brigade established a fixed amount of output to be produced by the contractor at a regular interval The con-tractor was paid a bonus at a fixed rate for any profits earned in excess of the output quota The commune or brigade also paid the contracting party a fixed wage One example was the Pukou Communersquos 浦口公社
repair and manufacturing plant23 (4) ldquoContracts based on fixed output requirement and floating wagesrdquo In this method the commune or bri-gadeset a fixed output requirement to be fulfilled by the contractor at a regular interval The amount of basic wage is set which would increase or decrease as a percentage of the amount of money earned above or below the output requirement24 (5) ldquoFixed output requirment bonuses paid for extra profits and profit splittingrdquo In this method the commune or brigade set a fixed output requirement The contractor would receive fixed bonuses for exceeding that quota and all profits were split between the contractor and the commune or brigade at a pre-determined ratio One example was the Bianjiawu Brigadersquos textile plant25
3 Some cbes handed their operations over to rural households to be directly run as part of the individual economy This trend was most prominent in production-team-run enterprises and a portion of brigade-run enterprises The production team was the basic unit for agriculture and industrial and sideline industry production During the era of col-lectivization production teams containing industrial or sideline industry enterprises generally divided their members into two groups agricultural
21 ldquoBianjiawu dadui shixing baogandaohu de zuofa (1981 nian 4 yue 29 ri) 边家务大
队实行包干到户的做法 (1981年4月29日 ) [Bianjiawu Brigade Adopts Methods of Responsibility System (April 29 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 10-168-10
22 ldquoDangqian shedui qiye ji ge qingkuang de huibao (1983 nian 11 yue 13 ri)rdquo23 Ibid24 Ibid25 ldquoBianjiawu dadui shixing baogandaohu de zuofa (1981 nian 4 yue 29 ri)rdquo
FENG 202
ltUNgt
and sideline industries with the workpoint system used to govern both After the implementation of the household contract responsibility sys-tem those production team members who had originally been assigned to sideline industries were also allocated land At this time the level of agricultural mechanization was extremely low nearly all planting was done by hand This low level of mechanization required these production team members to expend a great deal of time and energy in the fields for which they were responsible which made concentrated production in industrial and sideline industry enterprises unsustainable Given these conditions the most common and most practical option of production teams was to sell equipment to people in rural areas at cut-rate prices or in some cases to just give them out for free Some brigades opted for similar measures as well The Liguozhuang Brigade 李果庄大队 of the Xiaowang Guozhuang Commune 小王果庄公社 for example directly allocated the looms from its textile factory to individual housholds who then operated the business in their own homes with all income going to said households and the collective taking only commissions26 Several production teams of Jilang Village 季郎村 Xingnan Commune 邢南公
社 sold their acrylic fiber plants to rural individuals at low prices after the household contract responsibility system had been put in place The production teams of the Nanyuba Brigade 南于八大队 Yuba Commune 于八公社 which had either individually or jointly established eight acrylic fibers plants maintained ldquobig responsibility systemrdquo operations for nearly a year after the implementation of the Household Responsibil-ity System thereafter all the production teams sold the plants to those people who had been operating them Some places implemented the ldquobig responsibility systemrdquo in name but in truth allowed the individual econ-omy to take charge The textile factory of the Luotun Brigade 骆屯大队
of the Beisha Commune 北沙公社 for example contracted its looms out to individual households at the fixed price of five yuan per year per loom At that time five yuan was approximately equivalent to the annual depreciation cost of a loom and so this method was tantamount to handing looms to rural households free of charge In other areas poor management led to instances of ldquosolo practitionersrdquo Managing cadres taking special privileges in the textile factory of the Liuhetun Brigade
26 ldquoFahui youshi yang chang bi duan geti jingji xunmeng fazhan ndash liguozhuang dadui jingyan (1982 11 yue 20 ri) 发挥优势扬长避短个体经营迅猛发展mdashmdash李果庄大队经验 (1982年 11月20日 ) [Taking Advantage of Strengths Downplaying Weaknesses Rapid Growth of Small Privately-owned Enterprises ndash the Experience of the Liguozhuang Brigade]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-11-45
203Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
六合屯大队 of the Xingnan Commune caused a mass uproar which led to the closing of the factory and distribution of its machinesamong local residents27
(C) Industries Suitable to Rural Household Operations Began Trending Toward the Individual Economy
The majority of enterprises in industries suitable for operation by rural house-holds such as textiles garments embroidery straw and wicker weaving parts repairs and so on gave their equipment directly to rural households who then became part of the individual economy Such methods brought about the transformation of the collective economy into the individual economy cbes not suitable to household operation or those in suitable industries but of large scale such as some textile plants electrical materials plants plastic compres-sion plants rice and flour processors brick and tile kilns orchards restaurants hotels and so on opted instead to implement the Household Responsibility System
iii The Rise of Rural Private Enterprises
In the mid-1980s rural private enterprises in Gaoyang County experienced explosive growth and became the primary means by which riches were made in the countryside By the end of 1982 there were a total of 5753 households who either specialized in a single type of production activities in an agriculture-related industry or made notable contribution to the local tax revenue and 885 partnership enterprises in the county28 By the end of 1983 the numbers were 8791 and 1257 respectively By the end of 1984 the numbers were 13466 and 1760 respectively29
Rural private enterprises rose primarily by the following three methods
27 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu dangqian shedui qiye qingkuang he anpai yijian de baogao (1981 nian 5 yue 10 ri) 高阳县社队企业局关于当前社队企业情况和安
排意见的报告 (1981年5月 10日 ) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Report on Current Circumstances of Gaoyang Commune and Brigade Enter-prises and Opinions on Planning (May 10 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-9-10
28 ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei guanyu yi jiu ba er nian gongzuo qingkuang de baogao (1983 nian 2 yue 26 ri) 中共高阳县委关于一九八二年工作情况的报告 (1983年2 月26日 ) [cpc Gaoyang County Committee Report on Work Conditions of 1982 (February 26 1983)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-584-1
29 ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei yi jiu ba si nian gongzuo zongjie (1985 nian 1 yue 2 ri) 中共
高阳县委一九八四年工作总结 (1985年 1月2日 ) [cpc Gaoyang County Committtee Work Summary for 1984 (January 2 1985)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-598-1
FENG 204
ltUNgt
(A) Privately or Individually Owned Businesses That Had Evolved Directly from cbes Grew Rapidly Accounting for the Largest Share in Private Enterprises
The textile industry which was suitable to household operation was the most typical example At the end of 1981 cbes around the county owned a total of over 2000 looms By the end of 1982 that figure had grown to 3001 with 804 collectively owned and 2197 individually owned30 By January 1984 there were 4790 looms in the county all owned by either individuals or partner-ships Of that total 4207 belonged to individually-owned businesses of which there were 4512 in the county the remaining 583 belonged to partnerships of which there were over 100 in the county31 By the end of 1984 there were over 6000 looms in the county with fifteen villages dedicated to the textile industry A total of over 20000 laborers manned those looms but the total of industry workers topped 40000 if one counts pre-production and post-production ser-vice workers The Gaoyang textile industry turned out sixty million meters of fabric of all varieties sold in fifteen provinces direct-controlled cities and au-tonomous regions in the South Southwest Northeast North and Northwest making the textile industry the predominant industry of Gaoyang Countyrsquos rural areas32 The brigade-run textile factory of Liguozhuang a village special-izing in textiles claimed only seventy manually powered looms and annual per capita revenue of only twenty-nine yuan in 1979 After the looms had been distributed to local households the majority used the manual looms for only four or five months before using accumulated capital to buy electric looms By 1982 not a single manual loom remained in the village which now claimed 470 electric looms and annual per capita revenue of 1564 yuan The twelve-person household headed by Han Pingrsquoan 韩平安 which had hitherto lived in abject poverty bought two electric looms a few months after the brigade-run factory had folded Thereafter the household needed to weave only one roll of fabric to achieve an average daily revenue of ten yuan and an average annual revenue
30 ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu yi jiu ba er nian gongzuo jianjie (1882 nian 12 yue 23 ri)rdquo
31 ldquoGaoyang xian nongcun gongfuye fuwu gongsi guanyu dangqian nongcun gongfuye qing-kuang de diaocha baogao (1984 nian 1 yue 25 ri) 高阳县农村工副业服务公司关于当
前农村工副业情况的调查报告 (1984年 1月25日 ) [Gaoyang County Rural Industrial and Sideline Industry Service Company Investigative Report on Current Rural Industrial and Sideline Industry Conditions (January 25 1984)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-16-1
32 ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei guanyu da bu shengchan de diaocha baogao (1985 nian 7 yue 18 ri) 中共高阳县委关于大布生产的调查报告 (1985年7月 18日 ) [cpc Gaoyang County Committee Investigative Report on Widespread Distribution of Production (July 18 1985)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-599-24
205Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
of over 3600 yuan33 By 1985 there were 615 electric looms in the village and annual textile revenue totaled 515 million yuan or 1327 yuan per capita34
The acrylic knitting industry was another typical example Gaoyangrsquos knit-ting industry was concentrated in Nanyuba Village of the Yuba Commune Nanjianwo Village 南尖窝村 of the Jianwo Commune 尖窝公社 and Jilang Vil-lage of the Xingnan Commune all located to the west of the county capital All knitting in these villages had previously been controlled by production-team-run enterprises which owned over 200 looms collectively The knitting industry grew rapidly after the machines had been distributed to individual households By January 1984 there were over 1000 looms in the three villages which were posting annual revenues of over five million yuan primarily from the sale of scarves35
(B) A Large Portion of Private Enterprises Rose by Copying cbre Products
After the implementation of the ldquobig responsibility systemrdquo some people for-merly employed in cbes on the strength of the technical and management skills they had acquired as well as the network of relationships they had built during their stints in cbes established individually-owned kiosks or partner-ship enterprises which copied the products made in cbes For example prior to 1980 there had been four production-team-run felt factories in Taokoudian Village 陶口店村 Pukou Township 蒲口乡 After the household contract responsibility system had gone into place former felt factory workers got to-gether to raise the funds to build thirteen felt factories on the strength of the technical and management expertise they had acquired in the cbe Another example centers on the brigade-run glasses factory of Xiwangcaozhuang Vil-lage 西王草庄村 Jianwo Township 尖窝乡 With the new responsibility sys-tem in place thirty-two rural households emulated the former cbe and col-lectively founded nine small glasses factories The compression molding plant of Sanfangzi Village 三坊子村 Longhua Township 龙化乡originally imple-mented collective contracting unified direction of labor by the production
33 ldquoFahui youshi yang chang bi duan geti jingji xunmeng fazhan ndash liguozhuang dadui jing-yan (1982 11 yue 20 ri)rdquo
34 ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei bangongshi guanyu liguozhuang cun gongtong zhifu de diaocha baogao 中共高阳县委办公室关于李果庄村共同致富的调查报告 [cpc Gaoyang Committee General Office Investigative Report on Liguozhuang Villagersquos Collective Wealth Creation]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-609-14
35 ldquoGaoyang xian nongcun gongfuye fuwu gongsi guanyu dangqian nongcun gongfuye qingkuang de diaocha baogao (1984 nian 1 yue 25 ri)rdquo
FENG 206
ltUNgt
team led to over-involved management and low production proactivity on the part of laborers After 1983 some local households left the plant this led to the founding of twenty partnership enterprises and the establishment of sixteen specialized households36
(C) Some Private Enterprises Arose from the Contracting Out of cbesBeginning in 1981 the cbes of Gaoyang County all began to implement con-tracting systems mostly modeled on the Household Responsibility System nearly all brigade-run enterprises that had not been dissolved opted to use this method This method was effective at boosting work incentives but many contractors neglected maintenance and repair of equipment and facilities in their pursuit of ever higher profits This method gave rise to the phenomena of ldquomaking exhaustive useof equipmentrdquo and ldquopillaging-style productionrdquo There were abuses of profit sharing systems and a lack of awareness of public accu-mulations negatively influenced and limited the expansion and reproduction of enterprises Many such enterprises had no choice but declare bankruptcy after only a few years cbes that implemented the contract responsibility sys-tem provided good conditions for the rise of private enterprises in one of two ways The first was it allowed the contractor to accumulate capital technology and management experience which laid the foundations for the later estab-lishment of a private enterprise The Gaoyang County cbe Bureau came to the following conclusion when summarizing the issues inherent to cbe contract-ing ldquoAll those people whose had had their lsquotuitionrsquo paid by town or village col-lective enterprises in either business or production technology all took off on their own to start their own businesses once they had gained enough business or production technology knowledge and accumulated enough capitalrdquo37 The
36 ldquoGaoyang xian fazhan nongcun shangpin shengchan dianxing cailiao xuanbian (xubian yi) (1984 nian 10 yue) 高阳县发展农村商品生产典型材料选编 (续编一 )(1984年
10月 ) [Selected Materials on Typical Cases of the Development of Rural Commercial Products in Gaoyang County (Continuation One) (October 1984)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 32-3-7
37 ldquoXiang (zhen) cun ban jiti qiye ruhe shixian zheng qi fenkai zizhu jingying ndash Gaoyang xian xiangzhen qiye guanli xianzhuang ji jinhou yijian de diaocha (1986 nian 9 yue 5 ri) 乡(镇)村
办 集 体 企 业 如 何 实 现 政 企 分 开 自 主 经 营 mdashmdash高 阳 县 乡 镇 企 业 管 理 现
状及今后意见的调查 (1986年9月5日 ) [How the Government was Separated from Enterprises and Autonomous Operations Were Brought About in Township (Town) and Village-run Collective Enterprises ndash Current Conditions in Management of Town and Vil-lage Enterprises in Gaoyang County and Opinions for the Future (September 5 1986)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-21-10
207Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
second way was for private enterprises to use factories or equipment which had been left idle after the bankruptcy of a cbe In one example a newly es-tablished partnership enterprise made use of the factory and machinery of the village-run textile factory of Zhaoguanzuo Village 赵官佐村 Xingnan Town-ship by buying shares of the village collective to found a wool factory (which produced carpets)38
I summarized the above three methods from the overall course of develop-ment of private enterprises in Gaoyang County In many cases a combination of these methods was used in individual industries or villages in which cases the rise of private industries could be attributed to the ldquointerlaced influence ef-fectrdquo The development of private industries under the influence of the ldquocopy-ing effectrdquo could be characterized as coming in waves or growing progressively After the first individually-owned business and partnership enterprises spun out of former cbes had begun to achieve economic success other rural house-holds were quick to emulate their models Thus came the second and third waves in the development of rural private enterprises Once a particular indus-try had grown in a given village surrounding villages were sure to quickly copy expanding the scale of that industry For this reason the countryside played host to specialized production zones characterized by ldquosmall scales and large communitiesrdquo By 1987 Gaoyang County had become host to six specialized production zones ldquoone big and five smallrdquo The ldquoone bigrdquo was the textile indus-try which covered fifteen towns 149 villages over 3900 individually-owned or partnership enterprises 6500 looms over 23000 specialty workers and an-nual revenues of over twenty million yuan The ldquofive smallrdquo were the electronic materials plastics garments felt and cloisonneacute industries These industries collectively covered one or two towns over a dozen villages production zones encompassing over 10000 people and annual output values of over ten million yuan39
In conclusion the course of development of rural industries in Gaoyang County indicates that there was a close historical connection between the
38 ldquoZhaoguanzuo cun hu lianban qiye shi yi tiao hao luzi (1986 nian 10 yue 15 ri) 赵官佐
村户联办企业是一条好路子 (1986年 10月 15日 ) [The Joint Founding of Enterprises by Households in Zhaoguanzuo Village is a Good Road (October 15 1986)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-608-22
39 ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei guanyu xiangzhen qiye da diaocha de baogao (1987 nian 6 yue 7 ri) 中共高阳县委关于乡镇企业大调查的报告 (1987年6月7日 ) [cpc Gaoyang County Committee Report on the Great Investigation into Town and Village Enterprises (June 7 1987)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-620-19
FENG 208
ltUNgt
transformation of cbes and the rise of rural private enterprises Some cbes evolved directly into private enterprises Others provided production samples capital technology management experience and sales channels for the rise of private enterprises Viewed from this perspective the transformation of cbes was the starting point for the development of the rural private economy fol-lowing Reform and Opening The transformation of cbes into rural private en-terprises led to the accumulation of valuable experience and lessons for later reforms targeting small and mid-sized urban enterprises
References
ldquoBianjiawu dadui shixing baogandaohu de zuofa (1981 nian 4 yue 29 ri) 边家务大队实
行包干到户的做法(1981年4月29日) [Bianjiawu Brigade Adopts Methods of Re-sponsibility System (April 29 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 10-168-10
ldquoDangqian shedui qiye ji ge qingkuang de huibao (1983 nian 11 yue 13 ri) 当前社队企
业几个情况的汇报(1983年 11月 13日) [Report on Some Present Situations of Com-mune and Brigade Enterprises (November 13 1983)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-15-5
ldquoFahui youshi yang chang bi duan geti jingji xunmeng fazhan ndash liguozhuang dadui jingyan (1982 11 yue 20 ri) 发挥优势扬长避短个体经营迅猛发展mdashmdash李果庄
大队经验(1982年 11月20日) [Taking Advantage of Strengths Downplaying Weak-nesses RapidGrowth of Small Privately-owned Enterprises ndash the Experience of the Liguozhuang Brigade]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-11-45
ldquoGaoyang xian fazhan nongcun shangpin shengchan dianxing cailiao xuanbian (xu-bian yi) (1984 nian 10 yue) 高阳县发展农村商品生产典型材料选编(续编一)(1984年 10月) [Selected Materials on Typical Cases of the Development of Rural Commercial Products in Gaoyang County (Continuation One) (October 1984)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 32-3-7
ldquoGaoyang xian jiben qingkuang (fu yi jiu ba san nian guomin jingji zhongyao zhibiao shexiang) (1982 nian 12 yue) 高阳县基本情况(附一九八三年国民经济重要指
标设想)(1982年 12月) [Basic Conditions in Gaoyang County (Including Tentative Important Indicators for the National Economy in 1983) (December 1982)]rdquo Gaoy-ang County Archives 1-584-6
ldquoGaoyang xian nongcun gongfuye fuwu gongsi guanyu dangqian nongcun gongfuye qingkuang de diaocha baogao (1984 nian 1 yue 25 ri) 高阳县农村工副业服务公
司关于当前农村工副业情况的调查报告(1984年 1月25日) [Gaoyang County Rural Industrial and Sideline Industry Service Company Investigative Report on Current Rural Industrial and Sideline Industry Conditions (January 25 1984)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-16-1
209Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye fenlei dengjibiao (1981 nian 8 yue) 高阳县社队企业分类
登记表(1981年8月) [Registrations of Commune and Brigade Enterprises by Cat-egory in Gaoyang County (August 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-571-19
ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu dangqian shedui qiye qingkuang he anpai yijian de baogao (1981 nian 5 yue 10 ri) 高阳县社队企业局关于当前社队企业情况
和安排意见的报告(1981年5月 10日) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Report on Current Circumstances of Gaoyang Commune and Brigade Enterprises and Opinions on Planning (May 10 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-9-10
ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu shedui qiye qingkuang de diaocha baogao (1981 nian 8 yue 25 ri) 高阳县社队企业局关于社队企业情况的调查报告(1981年8月
25日) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Investigative Report on the Basic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises (August 25 1981)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-9-18
ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu shedui qiye ziyuan he jingji qingkuang de huibao (1980 nian 8 yue 13 ri 高阳县社队企业局关于社队企业资源和经济情况的汇
报(1980年8月 13日) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterpris-es Report on the Resources and Economic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises (August 13 1980)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-6-1
ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju guanyu yi jiu ba er nian gongzuo jianjie (1882 nian 12 yue 23 ri) 高阳县社队企业局关于一九八二年工作简结(1982年 12月23日) [Brief Work Summary of the Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enter-prises for 1982 (December 23 1982)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-11-3
ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju yi jiu ba yi nian gongzuo jianjie he yi jiu bae r nian jian-yao anpai 高阳县社队企业局一九八一年工作简结和一九八二年简要安排 [Brief Work Summary of the Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises for 1981 and Brief Plans for 1982]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-11-1
ldquoGaoyang xian shedui qiye ju yi jiu qi ba nian shang ban nian gongzuo zongjie (1978 nian 7 yue 24 ri) 高阳县社队企业局一九七八年上半年工作总结(1978年7月24日) [Gaoyang County Bureau of Commune and Brigade Enterprises Work Summary for the First Half of 1978 (July 24 1978)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-1-2
ldquoGaoyang xian yi jiu qi jiu nian shedui qiye fazhan guihua (1978 nian 12 yue) 高阳县一
九七九年社队企业发展规划(1978年 12月) [Gaoyang County Development Plan for Commune and Brigade Enterprises in 1979 (December 1978)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-557-4
ldquoGuowuyuan banfa lsquoguanyu shedui qiye ruogan wenti de guiding (shixing caorsquoan) de tongzhi (1979 nian 7 yue 3 ri) 国务院颁发〈关于社队企业若干问题的规定(试行草案)〉的通知(1979年7月3日) [Notice Regarding the State Councilrsquos lsquoRegula-tions on Several Issues of Commune and Brigade Enterprises (Trial Draft) (July 3 1979)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 10-276-3
FENG 210
ltUNgt
ldquoKaizhan duozhong jingying dali fazhan shedui qiye wei nongye dagan kauishang jilei daliang zijin (1978 nian 4 yue 14 ri) 开展多种经营大力发展社队企业为农业大
干快上积累大量资金(1978年4月 14日) [Develop Multiple Forms of Operations Strive to Develop Commune and Brigade Enterprises Go All Out and Go Fast to Accumulate Large Quantities of Capital for Agriculture (April 14 1978)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-1-1
ldquoShedui qiye kai xin hua tong xin tong de gao sihua ndash xiyan gongshe yi jiu qi jiu nian shedui qiye gongzuo zongjie (1979 nian 12 yue 20 ri) 社队企业开新花同心同
德 搞 四 化 mdashmdash西 演 公 社 一 九 七 九 年 社 队 企 业 工 作 总 结 (1979年 12月 20日 ) [New Blossoms on Commune and Brigade Enterprises Bringing About the Four Changes with One Heart and One Mind ndash Work Summary of Commune and Bri-gade Enterprises in Xiyan Commune 1979 (December 20 1979)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-4-2
Shi Jinchuan Jin Xiangrong and Zhao Wei 史晋川金祥荣赵伟 Zhidu bianq-ian yu jingji fazhan Wenzhou moshi yanjiu 《制度变迁与经济发展温州模式
研究》 [Institutional Changes and Economic Development Study of the Wenzhou Model] (Zhejiang daxue chubanshe 2002)
ldquoXiang (zhen) cun ban jiti qiye ruhe shixian zheng qi fenkai zizhu jingying ndash Gaoyang xian xiangzhen qiye guanli xianzhuang ji jinhou yijian de diaocha (1986 nian 9 yue 5 ri) 乡(镇)村办集体企业如何实现政企分开自主经营mdashmdash高阳县乡镇
企业管理现状及今后意见的调查(1986年9月5日) [How the Government was Separated from Enterprises and Autonomous Operations Were Brought About in Township (Town) and Village-run Collective Enterprises ndash Current Conditions in Management of Town and Village Enterprises in Gaoyang County and Opinions for the Future (September 5 1986)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-21-10
Xin shiqi nongye he nongcun gongzuo zhongyao wenxian xuanbian 《新时期农业和
农村工作重要文献选编》 [Selected Important Works on Agriculture and Rural Work in the New Era] ed CCP Central Committee Literary Research Department and State Council Development Research Center 中共中央文献研究室国务院
发展研究中心 (Beijing Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe 1992)ldquoYi jiu ba ling nian shedui qiye jiben qingkuang 一九八年社队企业基本情况
[ Basic Conditions of Commune and Brigade Enterprises in 1980]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 26-5-1
Zhang Renshou and Li Hong 张仁寿李红 Wenzhou moshi yanjiu 《温州模式研
究》 [A Study of the Wenzhou Model] (Zhongguo Shehui kexue chubanshe 1990)ldquoZhaoguanzuo cun hu lianban qiye shi yi tiao hao luzi (1986 nian 10 yue 15 ri) 赵官佐村
户联办企业是一条好路子(1986年 10月 15日) [The Joint Founding of Enterprises by Households in Zhaoguanzuo Village is a Good Road (October 15 1986)]rdquo Gaoy-ang County Archives 1-608-22
211Transformations to Commune and Brigade Enterprises
ltUNgt
ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei bangongshi guanyu liguozhuang cun gongtong zhifu de diaocha baogao 中共高阳县委办公室关于李果庄村共同致富的调查报
告 [CCP Gaoyang Committee General Office Investigative Report on Liguozhuang Villagersquos Collective Wealth Creation]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-609-14
ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei guanyu da bu shengchan de diaocha baogao (1985 nian 7 yue 18 ri) 中共高阳县委关于大布生产的调查报告(1985年7月 18日) [CCP Gaoyang County Committee Investigative Report on Widespread Distribution of Production (July 18 1985)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-599-24
ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei guanyu xiangzhen qiye da diaocha de baogao (1987 nian 6 yue 7 ri) 中共高阳县委关于乡镇企业大调查的报告(1987年6月7日) [CCP Gaoyang County Committee Report on the Great Investigation into Town and Village Enterprises (June 7 1987)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-620-19
ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei guanyu yi jiu ba er nian gongzuo qingkuang de baogao (1983 nian 2 yue 26 ri) 中共高阳县委关于一九八二年工作情况的报告(1983年
2月26日) [CCP Gaoyang County Committee Report on Work Conditions of 1982 (February 26 1983)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-584-1
ldquoZhonggong Gaoyang xianwei yi jiu ba si nian gongzuo zongjie (1985 nian 1 yue 2 ri) 中共高阳县委一九八四年工作总结(1985年 1月2日) [CCP Gaoyang County Committtee Work Summary for 1984 (January 2 1985)]rdquo Gaoyang County Archives 1-598-1
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_0
ltUNgt
chapter 9
Analysis of the Construction of Village Collective Economic Organizations and Related Issues in Changshu CitymdashFour Case Studies
Zheng Yougui1
Abstract
In the 1980s Changshu City was designated a pilot area for agricultural moderniza-tion reforms Over the years a number of features and trends in village cooperative economic organizations in Changshu City as a whole and the four model villages forrural modernization became increasingly evident They include a simplified orga-nizational structure a new kind of relationships with the government town manage-ment of village accounts and professionalization of village officials These measures have had many positive effects including rapid economic growth for Changshu City and increases in thevalue of village collective assets revenue for village governments employment participation in non-agricultural industries among rural population and village resident incomes The entry of rural Changshu City into this state ofsound de-velopment wasan inevitable consequence of the evolution on the Southern Jiangsu Model
Keywords
Changshu City ndash village collective economy ndash Bixi Road ndash Southern Jiangsu Model
i Success of the ldquoBixi Roadrdquo and the ldquoSouthern Jiangsu Modelrdquo
Changshu City 常熟市 is located in southern Jiangsu Province In the early 1980s the successful experience of Bixi Township 碧溪乡 Changshu City which came to be known as the ldquoBixi Roadrdquo was affirmed by Li Peng 李鹏 and
1 Zheng Yougui (郑有贵 ) is an associate research fellow in the Contemporary Agricultural History Department of the Ministry of Agriculturersquos Institute of Rural Economics
213Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
other central leaders2 and caught the attention of the entire country The ldquoBixi Roadrdquo means simultaneous development of industrial and agricultural Town-ship Village Enterprises (tves) with the bulk of said tves operating within the collective economy In other words the ldquoBixi Roadrdquo was what would later give rise to the ldquoSouthern Jiangsu Modelrdquo The primary characteristics of ru-ral Southern Jiangsu were a strong collective economy and coordinated de-velopment between agriculture and industry In the 1980s Changshu City was designated a pilot area for agricultural modernization reforms and at present the rural areas of Changshu are considered to be at the forefront of rural ar-eas in East China To research this topic we selected the four Changshu vil-lages of Jiangxiang 蒋巷 Menglan 梦兰 Kangbo 康博 and Changnan 常南 which are outstanding among the total of 410 villages located in Changshu and all of which are key model villages for rural modernization in the city (only ten villages were thus designated in all of Changshu) Three of these villages were responsible for the creation of three ldquofamous Chinese brandsrdquo Bosideng Menglan and Longliqi The other one was responsible for the creation of a provincial ldquofamous brandrdquo The Party secretary of each of these villages was ei-ther a delegate to the Sixteenth National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (ccp) or a delegate to the National Peoplersquos Congress They were given esteemed titles such as outstanding ccp member national model workers Chinese rural celebrities and so on It would seem likely that some common factors were behind the success of so many famous villages and enterprises within a single county-level city I studied these four villages of Changshu City and their unusually high level of development in an attempt to discover those common factors and trends that may suit the needsof future rural economic development
ii Organization and Construction of Changshursquos Village Collective Economies and Their Operation
There are four characteristics of the organization and construction of village collective economies in Changshu in recent years as well as their operation
2 On an observations tour on January 8 1986 Li Peng noted the following of Bixi Township it was centered on the collective economy with a focus on the industrial economy it walked a road of common prosperity and it persisted in the direction of socialism He also had this to say ldquoShirk off commonness without leaving the township enter the factory without entering the city both industrial and agricultural collectively grow rich the town is small but well informed build two civilizationsrdquo
ZHENG214
ltUNgt
1 Simplification of Village Political OrgansThere were originally three government organs presiding over village gover-nance in Changshu City the village party branch committee the village peo-plersquos committee and village economic cooperative Now only the village party branch committee and village peoplersquos committee remain There is no longer an independent body controlling village collective economic organization village collective assets are now controlled by the village peoplersquos committee
2 Emergence of New Government-Enterprise RelationsIn traditional government-enterprise relations the village government controls local enterprises However new government-enterprise relations emerged in Jiangxiang Menglan Kangbo and Changnan In these four villages while it is the same person who serves as both village Party secretary and as the president of the dominant local enterprise this does not mean that there is no separa-tion between government and business or that the village government controls theenterprise The actual nature of government-enterprise relations in these four villages is that as the pillar company grows the government becomes in-creasingly extricated from it The village governmentthen implements either a shareholding or contracting system on the enterprise and the enterprise be-gins to exert influence on local governance Such exertion of influence can be seen primarily in two phenomena The first is that in Changnan Kangbo and Menglan the village Party secretary took up that position only after having become president of the local pillar company The second is that once those company heads had become local Party secretaries they worked to help in-crease the income and improve welfare for the entire village population3 while at the same time promoting further development in rural modernization and establishing allocations of resources such as village land that served the inter-est of their companies
3 ldquoTown Management of Village AccountsrdquoThe central government has demanded implementation of openness in village government affairs and finances in order to reduce the burden on rural citi-zens this means allowing rural citizens oversight of village affairs and finances Local governments across the country made explorations in this area While investigating the countryside of Xianyou County 仙游县 Fujian Province in May 2002 I observed that villages there had established sound institutions for
3 The presidents of Bosideng Longliqi and Menglan do not receive salaries from their villages but their companies provide such resources as employment opportunities capital for mod-ernist construction and so on to the villages
215Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
village finance regulation as well as dual-oversight thereover ldquoDual-oversightrdquo means openness of village affairs and finances to enable oversight by the local population as well as oversight by superior tiers of government Town govern-ments there have implemented a system of monthly concentrated accounting of village finances officials in town government oversight stations perform a concentrated auditing of income and expenditures from the previous month and fix any problems as soon as they emerge In late June 2002 the Changshu City government instituted the ldquotown management of village accountsrdquo policy to further computerize the work of regulating village collective finances and assets In concrete terms this policy dictates that each town government estab-lish village-level financial regulation service centers where officials are com-missioned by village leadership to make an accounting of the books prepared by village governments under the unified leadership of the town economic service center This policy operates under the principle of the ldquofive constantsrdquo They are Work units at the village level that keep independent accounts re-main constant ownership of usage rights to and beneficiaries of village assets (capital) remain constant the bodies authorized to manage village finances village debtsmdashboth what it owes and what is owed to the villagemdashremain constant approval procedures for expenditures and income on village capital remain constant and the final constant is that village accountants must be officials within the system The policy further stipulates that no work unit or individual has the right to make uncompensated appropriations divert funds or violate any legal rights of the village collective economic organization The policy also laid out a set of corresponding regulation institutions including primarily a system for village financial regulation pre-approved budgets and financial accounting for villages openness of village affairs and finances a contract management system for village economies assessments based on maintaining or increasing the value of village collective assets (to determine the compensation and promotions of local officials) a system for managing records a system of job responsibility for financial and accounting personnel a system for assessing bonuses and punishments and so on The directorship of town government village-level financial regulation service centers is held by the leading cadre for rural economics in the town economic service center The centers are staffed by one chief accountant (usually one chief accountant per four to six villages) a certain number of bookkeepers and only one village accountant per village The Changshu government sees the ldquotown manage-ment of village accountsrdquo policy as an important attempt in rural financial regulation reforms officials are promoting it as an important corresponding measure in reforms to rural taxation The thorough implementation of this measure in Changshu is advantageous to strengthening oversight over the use
ZHENG216
ltUNgt
of village collective assets and the imposition of regulation measures over collective assets It is also beneficial to standardizing the work order of ac-countants and financial management behaviors as well as to improving the pre-approved budget and accounting system for village-level finances It is beneficial to reducing the number of village-level officials by choosing for the best to decreasing non-production expenditures to increasing and stabiliz-ing village collective revenues and to feasibly reducing the burden on rural citizens
4 Increased Professionalism among Village OfficialsIncreased professionalism among village officials can be seen primarily in the following two areas (1) Open hiring ensures that outstanding talent from technical and vocational schools are attracted to village governments The Changshu City government has executed a policy of open hiring of village officials which has been met with a positive response over 100 graduates of technical and vocational schools have been appointed as ldquovillage officialsrdquo In one example from Jiangxiang Village one three-year technical school graduate was first employed as an assistant in the village government but later came to be appointed deputy director of the village peoplersquos committee owing to excel-lent work performed (2) The government has eliminated worries about the future on the part of officials through basic compensations institutions as well as granting them pension insurance and health insurance this enables them to cast themselves into their work mind and body ldquoBasic compensationsrdquo for village officials (in reality their wages) and bonuses are based on such stan-dards as increases to the value of village collective assets economic growth population figures and so on Village officialsrsquo basic compensations and in-surance fees come ldquoprimarily from the village with planning from the town and subsidies from the cityrdquo On the whole village officials earn more than the average rural per capita income In 2001 basic compensations for village officials in Changshu fell generally in the range of 15000 to 20000 yuan but many also earned bonuses (in some cases bonuses far exceeded yearly basic compensations)
iii The Effectiveness of Economic Models in the Four Villages
The operations of village collective economic organizations in Changshu are effective primarily in the following areas First the economy of Changshu City is growing rapidly In 2001 the cityrsquos gross domestic product (gdp) was 303 bil-lion yuan a year-on-year growth of 176 percent and its fiscal revenues totaled
217Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
3046 billion yuan a year-on-year increase of twenty-five percent Also in 2001 the per capita savings rate was 19000 yuan Second village collective assets are gaining value In 2000 for example the total value of all village collective assets in the city grew by over 100 million yuan over the previous year which breaks down to an average increase of over 200000 yuan per village Of all vil-lages in the city over seventy percent realized increases to village collective net assets the average net increase to village collective assets in those villages was over 600000 yuan Less than thirty percent of villages experienced net losses to village collective assets Third village governments had large quantities of financial resources available for spending In 2001 the average quantity of fi-nancial resources available for the year at the village level in Changshu was 101 million yuan In 2002 those villages with financial resources available for the year totaling 300000 yuan or less were deemed financially troubled villages and financial subsidies were allotted to them Fourth the ratio of rural citizens (those with agricultural household registrations) employed in non-agricultural industries was high with over two thirds of rural citizens employed in non-agricultural industries Fifth rural per capita net incomes were high in 2001 the average rural per capita income in the city was 5853 yuan 25 times the national average
Next we shall evaluate the effectiveness of the village collective econom-ic organizations in Jiangxiang Menglan Kangbo and Changnan based on their economies collective assets and citizen income and welfare levels (see Table 91 for an outline)
First letrsquos look at the village economies The overall economies of all four villages were large and have already entered the track of rapid development Industry provided the largest contribution to economy in each village as each village is home to one large-scale pillar enterprise that accounts for a large proportion of total village gdp The village-collective-run enterprise in Jiangx-iang Jiangsu Changsheng Group Co Ltd accounts for 897 percent of total vil-lage gdp which is low compared to the other villages but still a generally high figure all other industrial agricultural and service companies in the village account for minuscule proportions of total village gdp These four pillar en-terprises cannot be considered tves in the traditional sense of that term They are modern corporations with human resources and branding strategies that have achieved success through product quality The ldquofamous Chinese brandsrdquo Bosideng Menglan and Longliqi as well as Jiangsu provincial ldquofamous brandsrdquo are their important intangible assets as well as the basis for their strength in market competition Officials in all four villages have enacted policies of ldquousing industry to build the countrysiderdquo thus simultaneously promoting rural indus-trialization and agricultural and rural modernization
ZHENG218
ltUNgt
Second total asset values of village collectives were either maintained or increased Government-enterprise separation has been implemented in all four villages No matter whether a given village government has enacted reforms to property rights institutions the pillar enterprises in all four villages have grad-ually established modern corporate systems and have either maintained or in-creased total collective asset values through system protections The methods through which village collective asset values are increased can be divided into two types The first is used in Jiangxiang Village where there have been no property rights reforms enacted in village collective enterprises but the pillar enterprise has still grown quickly bringing the total value of village collective assets up with it Village government revenues there are high coming from en-terprise contracting revenue operations revenue and housing rental revenue The second method is employed in Menglan Kangbo and Changnan Villages where the pillar enterprises are shareholding corporations There are great in-centives under such conditions for enterprise operators to earn profits and so the enterprises have a strong capacity for sustained growth As the enterprises grow so do dividends paid on village collective shares Village government
Table 91 Conditions in the Four Villages in 2001
Jiangxiang Menglan Kangbo Changnan
Total population 739 812 1672 2680Total households 187 197 430 900Total arable land (million mu) 1049 1045 2525 2577gdp (million yuan) 5800 8133 83093 25438Industrial sales revenue (million yuan)
25018 46188 258036 83552
Industrial profits and taxes (million yuan)
2416 5290 44386 13138
Village collective assets (million yuan)
10465 1336 3885 728
Available resources for year (million yuan)
606 308 1243 960000
Per capita income (yuan) 9500 9021 6419 5550New village construction (structures)
86 39 210 Preparing
Old village restoration (structures)
197
219Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
revenues in those three villages come primarily from corporate dividends collective-held shares contracting fees paid for small enterprises that the village founds with earnings from the sale of its shares real estate and rent paid for housing and other collective-owned assets The governments of these villages have a great deal of financial resources available every year
Third citizen incomes and collective welfare levels are relatively high The pillar enterprises of the four villages have solved the employment issues for village labor4 and have made enormous contributions to increasing local in-comes Economic strength of the village collectives has provided conditions for the improvement of welfare for all village citizens and has solved such problems as enterprise labor senior care healthcare employment insurance and so on The villages are also mostly newly constructed Jiangxiang Meng-lan and Kangbo have already completed construction of new villages or reno-vations of existing villages and Changnan is currently in the planning phase for new village construction which will take place soon
In summary the villages of Changshu City particularly the four on which we are focusing are in a good state with rapidly growing economies village collective asset values increasing and citizen income and welfare levels on the rise Next letrsquos take a look at the conditions of each of the four villages individually
1 Jiangxiang VillageLeader Chang Desheng 常德盛 the village Party secretary has been a ccp member for over 30 years was a delegate to the 16th ccp National Congress has been named outstanding Party member and also serves as chairman and presi-dent of the Jiangsu Changsheng Group Co Ltd 江苏常盛集团有限公司
Economic conditions Under the leadership of Chang Desheng the village has provided an excellent development environment for locals to become wealthy The government has enacted policies of people should do what they are best suitable for whether it be agricultural sideline industries or business and the most suitable model should be adopted whether it is as part of a col-lective or privately operated The village government operates a contracting system for collective enterprises It encourages the development of individual and private enterprises for which officials have opened a dedicated industrial zone and issued a policy whereby enterprises pay no fees to the village col-lective for their first sixteen years of operation Village gdp was 27890 billion yuan in 2001 to which the collective-run enterprise Jiangsu Changsheng Group Co Ltd contributed 897 percent Total economic output of individual and
4 These enterprises also attract a great deal of laborers from outside their villages as well as a great deal of graduates from specialized and vocational schools
ZHENG220
ltUNgt
private industrial enterprises was 2232 million yuan contributing eight per-cent of village gdp The agricultural economic output of the village was 360 million yuan contributing 13 percent to village gdp and economic output of tertiary industries was 280 million yuan contributing one percent to village gdp
Pillar enterprise The village-collective-run enterprise Jiangsu Changsheng Group Co Ltd is the dominant company in the village In 2001 the companyrsquos industrial sales revenue totaled 25018 billion yuan in addition to profit and tax revenue of 2416 million yuan Even after the two rounds of property rights reforms to tves in Changshu City Changsheng has remained a collective-run enterprise as compared to the other three villages all of which have enacted shareholding systems
Collective assets As the pillar enterprise remains village-owned the value of collective assets in this village is high 10465 billion yuan In 2001 the vil-lage government had a large amount of disposable financial resources for the year 606 million yuan most of which came from Changsheng which paid 588 million yuan to the collective for the year accounting for 932 percent of all disposable government income Table 92 shows collective revenues and ex-penditures in Jiangxiang
The greatest portion of collective expenditures went to welfare and ben-efits which accounted for 571 percent of total expenditures The second great-est portion went to agricultural investments (mostly ecological construction including bamboo forests and orchards) accounting for 326 percent of the total this is attributable to the villagersquos policy of ldquousing industry to build the countrysiderdquo Operating expenditures were low leaving a total of 147400 in surplus funds Management fees made up the smallest portion of all expen-ditures coming in at only 39 percent This trend is in stark contrast to most villages in the country where management fees represent a large proportion of total expenditures
Agriculture Rights to land in the village are auctioned by the collective on the basis of the household contract responsibility system (the village govern-ment provides 600 jin of rice per mu free of charge) to fifteen major plant-ing households Newly-constructed ecological gardens (bamboo gardens orchards and so on) are run directly by the village government as agricultur-al factories the government hires a small number of old farmers to cultivate these areas at their leisure for which hourly wages are paid
Citizen income and welfare levels The villagersquos per capita income is high reaching 9500 yuan in 2001 Welfare distributions are also high in the village (see Table 92) Now sixty-eight local households reside in small villas con-structed by the village government
221Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
2 Menglan VillageLeader Qian Yuebao 钱月宝 serves as village Party secretary was a delegate to the Ninth and 10th National Peoplersquos Congresses was named one of the ten most distinguished women in the country and is chairman and president of the Jiangsu Menglan Group Co 江苏梦兰集团公司
Pillar enterprise Jiangsu Menglan Group Co is the dominant company in the village Its primary constituent enterprises hold assets valued at 450 mil-lion yuan In 2001 the company earned sales revenues of 460 million yuan and additional profits and taxes of fifty-three million yuan
Unit Yuan
Table 92 Village-level collective revenues and expenditures in Jiangxiang Village 2001
Revenue Expenditures Notes
Item Sum Item Sum
Total revenues 64826 mn Total expenditures
62526 mn Agricultural investments include 164000 yuan in field and irrigation con-struction 823600 yuan for rural road and bridge construction and 10513 mn yuan in orchard cultivationManagement fees include cadre compen-sations entertainment fees and office feesWelfarebenefits expen-ditures include special care for servicemen sup-ply stipends cooperative healthcare payment of senior pensions greening fees and social welfare enterprises
Operating revenues
544200 Operating expenditures
396800
Fees for contracting out water resources
13900 Agricultural investments
20389 mn
Rent income 2000 Management fees
244900
Money paid up by collective enterprises
588 mn Welfarebenefits expenditures
3572 mn
Additional revenue from two taxes
12500 Enterprise investments
Other revenues
30000 Other expenditures
Previous yearrsquos balance
172000 Balance on year
230000
ZHENG222
ltUNgt
Collective assets A total net asset is value at 1366 million yuan and dispos-able government financial resources in 2001 totaled 308 million yuan The vil-lage collective owns fifteen percent of Jiangsu Menglan Group
Agriculture Rights to the over 1200 mu of farmland in the village are auc-tioned out on the basis of the Household Responsibility System (grain rations and a certain quantity of liquid petroleum gas are provided free of charge) for scale operation to two major planting households and three village-run con-tracted farms
Citizen income and welfare levels The villagersquos per capita income is high reaching 9021 yuan in 2001 Welfare distributions are also high in the village Enterprises in the village have to provide pension workersrsquo injury unemploy-ment health and maternity insurance to all employees and are responsible for paying pensions to the over 170 seniors residing in the village Some citizens reside in small villas constructed by the village government which has also built a rehabilitation and activities center a tennis facility a rural citizen park a supermarket and other corresponding facilities
3 Kangbo VillageLeader Gao Dekang 高德康 serves as the village Party secretary was a delegate to the Tenth National Peoplersquos Congress is a rural celebrity in Chi-na and is the chairman and president of the Jiangsu Bosideng Corp Ltd 江苏波司登股份有限公司
Pillar enterprise Jiangsu Bosideng Corp Ltd is the dominant company of the village This is the most economically viable of all four of the village pillar companies in this study Its assets were valued at 2284 billion yuan and its net assets at 580 million yuan at the end of 2001 The companyrsquos operating assets totaled 236 billion yuan on the year
Collective assets Village collective assets total 3885 million yuan and dis-posable government financial resources in 2001 totaled 1243 million yuan
Agriculture The village operates the household contract responsibility system
Citizen income and welfare levels In 2001 per capita net income was 6419 yuan and some citizens now reside in the Kangbo Gardens (a villa complex) constructed by the village government
4 Changnan VillageLeader Xu Zhiwei 徐之伟 serves as the village Party secretary and as chairman and president of the Jiangsu Longliqi Group 江苏隆力奇集团
Pillar enterprise Jiangsu Longliqi Group is the dominant company of the vil-lage In 2001 its industrial sales revenues totaled 830 million yuan in addition to 130 million yuan in profits and taxes
223Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
Collective assets Collective net assets are valued at 728 million yuan and disposable government financial resources in 2001 totaled 960000 yuan
Agriculture The village operates the household contract responsibility system
Citizen income and welfare levels There are 457 agricultural laborers 1024 construction and industrial laborers and 519 tertiary industry laborers in the village Per capita net income was 5550 yuan in 2001 A high-standard villa area is currently being planned
A look at the effectiveness of operations of the collective economic or-ganizations of these four villages leads us to the following conclusions The economic models of Changshu City and these four village collectives are all beneficial to economic growth increases to collective asset values gains to per capita income levels and improvement of welfare distributions
iv Lessons and Further Discussion
There are lessons to be learned from the economic models being practiced by these four successful village collectives in Changshu but there are also some issues which merit further exploration
1 Is the Professionalization of Officials Something That Necessarily Occurs When the Economic Development Reaches a Certain Level
As the countryside develops socially and economically so does the demand for high quality talent there Officials in economically developed Changshu City put this in practice by hiring graduates from specialized and vocational schools The professionalization of officials means viewing village government positions as job positions and several conditions must be met for this to be accomplished First graduates of specialized and vocational schools need to be able to earn a relatively ideal salary in rural government positions Second these graduates need to have a purpose in their jobs so as to have some value to their lives Third there must be an economic foundation in the village town or county in which they work sufficient to pay the salaries of professionalized officials These conditions have been met in fiscal affairs of Changshu at the village town and county levels as well as in the state of socioeconomic de-velopment of some villages So now there are many graduates of specialty and vocational schools employed as ldquovillage officialsrdquo in Changshu In other words it is the strong economy and developed society of Changshu that have made the professionalization of officials possible which presents us with a ques-tion is the professionalization of officials an inevitable trend once a place reaches a certain degree of economic strength Also would we thwart the
ZHENG224
ltUNgt
professionalization of officials by demarcating village community economies as cooperative economies These are practical questions but also questions that must be answered through theoretical inquiries
2 Should We Classify Village Community Economic Organizations as Collective Economic Organizations or as Cooperative Economic Organizations
In political terms the model of economic organization at the village level in Changshu can be summarized as follows the only controlling political bodies are the village Party committee and the village peoplersquos committee village economic cooperatives have been abolished and village officials are becoming increasingly professionalized In terms of management there has been a separation of government from enterprises and two groups oversee collective assets (primarily land real estate enterprises or shares in corpora-tions) and operations thereof this ensures either maintenance of or gains to total asset values The ldquotown management of village financesrdquo policy is advan-tageous to reducing the burden on rural citizens as it reduces the number of village officials Under this model enterprises grow rapidly and rural citizens experience increased incomes The value of collective assets is secure and col-lective income can grow stably primarily from business revenues contracting fees of collective assets dividends from collective-held corporate shares and so on All of this goes to ensure continued improvement to villagersrsquo well-being and welfare In other words this system has propelled rural Changshu into a positive development state in which the economy grows fast collective assets maintain or increase in value and citizen incomes and welfare continue to grow This model which has been highly efficient in economically developed regions is worthy of our attention No political bodies are established to guide the collective economy in regions where village collectives are of strong eco-nomic viability (nearly 10 years of successful operations demonstrate the ef-ficiency of this mode of administration) that ought to tell us something about the necessity of such bodies in ldquoempty shell villagesrdquo This fact also presents us with a question should we define village community economic organiza-tions as collective economic organizations or as cooperative economic orga-nizations There is great dissent regarding this question in academic circles as different methods are employed in different areas In some places village community economic organizations are called cooperatives but this is a fact in name only as they are not operated on the principles of the cooperative system This trend can be seen in the following areas First the directors of cooperatives are appointed the position usually filled by the Party secretary or director of the village peoplersquos committee but appointment of a leader does
225Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
not conform to the principles of cooperatives If we persist in calling village community economic organizations cooperative economic organizations it will be very difficult for the leader of a cooperative to also be the leader of a village peoplersquos committee selected under the system of autonomy of village residents If it does end up being the same person then wersquoll have double the democracy and double the costs (the costs of elections committee meetings and so on) and that is not beneficial to reducing the burden on rural citizens Second the objective behind merging administrative villages is to reduce the number of village officials and thus reduce the burden on rural citizens Such a merging is extremely necessary but it is a government action If the assets of village collectives were merged in the same way (which would be in real-ity tantamount to a redistribution of the collective property rights of village residents) it would not be a voluntary union asked for by villagers That is to say that if collectives were made into cooperatives the various property rights of the members of those cooperatives would not be truly protected Third the law stipulates that land belongs to village collectives village residents who leave community economic organizations cannot take the land with them Thus if village community economic organizations are run under a system of autonomy by village residents and all land belongs to the collective we should clarify that village community economic organizations are in fact col-lective economic organizations under the direct control of the village peoplersquos committee (in theory it should be a relationship of agency by commission ie village residents entrust the peoplersquos committee with the power to regulate) and we should not insist on calling them cooperative economic organizations Such a move would be beneficial both to reducing the number of village-level officials and to shrinking the burden on rural citizens Of course if a commu-nity economic organization just so happens to operate on the principles of a cooperative then it should be called a cooperative economic organization
3 Is the Entry of Rural Changshu into a Positive Development State of Rapid Economic Growth Sustained or Increased Values of Collective Assets and Rising Village Resident Income and Welfare Levels the Inevitable Result of the Southern Jiangsu Model
This model which establishes mechanisms for rapid economic growth ensures value retention or value growth of collective assets and brings about increases to village resident incomes and welfare levels has long been a major topic of discussion All four of our focus villages entered a positive develop-ment state of rapid economic growth sustained or increased values of collec-tive assets and rising village resident income and welfare levels regardless of whether the pillar enterprise had been subject to shareholding reforms There
ZHENG226
ltUNgt
are two primary reasons for this phenomenon First each village has a good leader Jiangxiang has been under the control of public servant Chang Desheng who disregards personal gains and losses and gives his absolute all for the de-velopment of the collective enterprise The governments of Menglan Kangbo and Changnan have all implemented shareholding systems in their pillar en-terprises but resident incomes and welfare levels have risen in those three vil-lages as well That is because the chiefs of theirpillar enterprises also serve as local Party secretaries who solve the employment issues for their villages and bring about general prosperity through growing the pillar enterprise and driv-ing development of related industries They also give back to the community5 Second each village has delinked government from business and enacted both systems for collective asset management and modern corporate governance structures To improve collective asset management the Changshu City gov-ernment has enacted assessment protocols by which the salaries and bonuses of village officials are linked to the maintenance and growth of collective asset values This linking ensures maintenance or growth of collective asset values and encourages officials to make active use of said assets which in turn leads to stable income for the village collective and ensures increases to income and welfare levels for citizens All four of the villages delinked government from business and established modern corporate governance structures regardless of whether they enacted shareholding systems and the contracting system was implemented in those enterprises not subject to property rights reforms Village collective enterprises now employing the shareholding system have ex-perienced rapid growth as a result of ample incentives on the part of operators The reason that these villages have entered a positive development state of rapid economic growth sustained or increased values of collective assets and rising village resident income and welfare levels is therefore the competence of village leaders and the effectiveness of village political institutions
Further analysis indicates that the entry of rural Changshu into this posi-tive state is indeed the inevitable consequence of the Southern Jiangsu Model There are two reasons I came to this conclusion The first is that the Southern Jiangsu Model laid a solid foundation for village collective economies Even if the village collective sells its shares in the mainstay foundation it is rewarded with a sizeable amount of capital which can be used to invigorate collective assets and spur value increases thereto The second is that changes to politi-cal institutions have been reliant upon government ways and means Some
5 They also engage in a number of activities to give back to society outside of their villages Examples include the founding of the ldquoBosideng Ten Million Yuan Green Hope Project Fund to Protect Our Mother Riverrdquo and the adoption of a great number of orphans
227Analysis of the Construction OF ECONOMIC ORGANIZATIONS
ltUNgt
village collectives have not sold out and still retain a few points or in some cases over ten percent of the ownership of pillar enterprises the dividends from which represent an important contribution to collective income If we defined the Southern Jiangsu Model on the basis of ownership alone then aca-demics would conclude that the Southern Jiangsu Model has already run its course If however we see the Southern Jiangsu Model as an extension and a development of the ldquoBixi Roadrdquo then the Southern Jiangsu Model should still have more to offer
ltUNgt
Part 2
Flows of Goods Money and People
∵
copy koninklijke brill nv leiden 6ensp|enspdoi 06397890043493_0
ltUNgt
chapter 10
The History of Rural Private Lending in Hubei Province 1952ndash1954
Su Shaozhi and Chang Mingming1
Abstract
Private lending had long been an important component of the rural financial system before the liberation of China Surveys conducted in rural Hubei Province from 1952 to 1954 indicated that owing to economic backwardness the weakness of household economies lack of a sound social security system and non-existence of a modern fi-nancial system private lending after 1949 was subject to some suppression Neverthe-less lending also saw some development and was characterized by relative procedural simplicity and lower interest rates Most private lending after 1949 was done to provide mutual aid The expansion of state banking services into the countryside as well as the rise of such modern financial organizations as rural credit cooperatives shrank the space for private lending but they were in no way able to completely replace the role played by private lending
Keywords
borrowing rates ndash lending forms ndash loan uses ndash influencing factors
From the end of Land Reform to the peak of the agricultural collectivization movement private lending remained a major component of Chinarsquos rural fi-nancial system Chinese government policies first encouraged freedom and then came to chastise the ldquofour great freedomsrdquo one of which was the free-dom to lend money privately At the same time officials attempted to bring about collectivization quickly to solve the production and living difficulties of rural citizens and to excoriate the exploitative practice of usury However
1 Su Shaozhi (苏少之 ) is a professor in the Institute of Chinese Economic History of Zhong-nan University of Economics and Law Chang Mingming (常明明 ) holds a PhD from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law
SU AND CHANG232
ltUNgt
some materials indicate that even during the eras of agricultural cooperatives and peoplersquos communes rural private lending including loan sharking had not been eradicated Following Reform and Opening rural private lending has reemerged and many are placing a great deal of attention on this issue this is what piqued our interest in rural private lending in the 1950s It is unfortu-nate that little research has been done on this topic to date In this essay we attempt to provide further insight into the issue of private lending in Chinarsquos countryside from the years from 1952 to 1954 with a particular focus on Hubei Province
i The Development of Rural Private Lending in Hubei from 1952 to 1954
(A) Rural Private Lending in Hubei a Year or Two after Land Reforms1 Private Lending Following Land ReformsDebt burdens on poverty-stricken peasants in China before 1949 were partic-ularly heavy Studies have shown that between fifty to sixty percent of rural households in Hubei were in debt in the 1930s and 1940s2 Land reforms led by the ccp abolished the debts owed by the laboring masses to the landlord class
After 1949 Hubei a newly liberated area launched a movement to de-crease rents decrease interest and in some cases return deposits made prior to land reforms In the land reforms that began there in autumn of 1950 all debts owed by rural citizens (nongmin alternatively referred to as peasants) to landlords were forgiven as ordered by the Central Peoplersquos Government State Administrative Council in the ldquoMeasures for Handling Rural Debt Disputes in the Countryside of New Areasrdquo 新区农村债务纠纷处理办法 The measures ordained thatall other debtsbe handled based on their specific circumstances For disputes in which laboring peasants owed debts to rich peasants and the interest owed was equal to the principal interest was eliminated and only the principal would need to be repaid In cases in which interest was twice the principal or more both interest and principal were forgiven In cases in which interest was less than the principal the creditorrsquos rights of the rich peasant remained in force In cases in which interest was greater than the principal but less than twice the principal the debt agreement was cancelled once twice the interest was paid The measures for handling debts owed to rich peasants
2 Li Jinzheng 李金铮 Minrsquoguo xiangcun jiedai guanxi yanjiu《民国乡村借贷关系研究》 [A Study of Rural Lending Relationships in the Republic of China] (Beijing Renmin chuban-she 2003) 25
233The History of Rural Private Lending in Hubei Province
ltUNgt
were also observed in cases in which peasants and other laborers had incurred interest-bearing debt prior to liberation to those who made a living from interest on loans or to schools Debts owed to ancestral temples religious tem-ples or other social organizations were generally cancelled Both interest and principal were required to be repaid in all debts owed to public granaries per original agreements regardless of who the borrower was All debts owed in the transaction of material goods or other commerce were also to be resolved on the basis of original agreements signed by both parties All ordinary debts incurred by peasants to other peasants prior to 1949 also remained in effect3 Thus even after land reforms some old debts lingered in the countryside
A survey conducted in Yangbu Township 杨步乡 Mianyang County 沔阳县 indicated that by the end of 1952 there were still debts between twenty householdsmdash543 percent of the total of 368 households in the areamdashleftover from before land reforms4 Another survey conducted in Xishui County 浠水
县 indicated that in early 1953 there were still debts leftover from before 1949 affecting seventy householdsmdash3153 percent of the 222 households investi-gated in six selected areas of Nanyue Township 南岳乡 5 These two surveys were conducted in small areas with few samples taken and there was a great disparity in the situations they reported Another survey conducted in seven Hubei townships in early 1953 indicated debts from before land reforms still af-fected 780 households 2281 percent of the total 3419 households in the survey Of those 548 householdsmdash1602 percent of total householdsmdashwere borrow-ers borrowing on average 1043 jin of grain (investigators denominated debt of both material goods and money in grain at the time) per household Another 232mdash679 percent of total householdsmdashwere lenders lending on average 943 jin of grain (calculated in the same way as for borrowers) per household6 This
3 Zhongguo tudi gaige shiliao xuanbian 《中国土地改革史料选编》 [Selected Historical Materials from Chinarsquos Land Reforms] (Guofang daxue chubanshe 1988) 677ndash678
4 ldquoMianyang xian yangbu xiang tugai hou nongcun jingji jiben qingkuang diaocha 沔阳县杨
步乡土改后农村经济基本情况调查 [An Investigation into Basic Rural Economic Con-ditions in Yangbu Township Mianyang County after Land Reforms]rdquo April 1953 Hubei Pro-vincial Archives SZ18-1-42
5 Wang Xuezhe 王学者 ldquoXishui xian nanyue xiang nongcun siren jiedai guanxi diaocha 浠水
县南岳乡农村私人借贷关系调查 [An Investigation into Rural Lending Relationships in Nanyue Township Xishui County]rdquo Renmin ribao 《人民日报》 August 8 1953
6 Original data came from ldquoJingzhou zhuanqu nongcun siren jiedai qingkuang 荆州专区
农村私人借贷情况 [Private Lending in the Countryside of the Jingzhou Sub-provincial Region]rdquo March 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-42 ldquoDangyang xian guanling xiang jingji diaocha 当阳县关陵乡经济调查 [Economic Investigation of Guanling Township Dangyang County]rdquo March 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives and ldquoGuanghua xian bailiansi
SU AND CHANG234
ltUNgt
investigation took a large quantity of samples and so was more indicative of the general situation of old debt in rural Hubei at the time Although the find-ings of the above surveys were not entirely similar on the whole they all indi-cate that even after the elimination of debt owed by peasants to the landlord class carried out during land reforms some degree of debt between peasant households incurred prior to land reforms lingered
Most debt incurred before 1949 that remained unpaid in the Nanyue Town-ship survey existed between peasants but some was owed to rich peasants those who made a living from interest on loans and business people Most borrowers were poor peasants and vagrants accounting for 8677 percent of all borrowers Peasants by and large believed that the capital issued as debt by rich peasants those who made a living from interest on loans and busi-nesspeople (282 percent of lenders) had been accumulated through exploita-tion and thus they were generally unwilling to repay said debts Of all debt between peasants incurred prior to 1949 385 percent of borrowers had paid a total of interest less than the amount of principal and 118 percent had paid one to two times the principal in interest Only 47 percent had paid over two times the principal in interest and 45 percent had paid neither interest nor the principal Borrowers who had borrowed little and had the ability to repay had all repaid their debts Some poor peasants and hired farmhands in difficult situations took the initiative in negotiating with creditors and arrived at agree-ments to repay the debt in installments or to postpone debt repayment Some non-repayment of debt on the part of peasants was attributable to economic hardship Some others however thoughtthey might put it off indefinitely since they were not going to be able to repay fully anyway some tried torepudiate their debt altogether Most of those who had paid two times their principal in interest either negotiated to have the debt cancelled or simply desisted from repaying
2 Development of Borrowing and Lending One or Two Years after Land Reforms
The feudal land system was abolished after land reforms and peasants were given new life both politically and economically Nevertheless sluggishness of economic development in rural areas kept the majority of rural families at a very low economic level A sampling survey conducted at the time indicated that at the completion of land reforms the average rural household in Hubei
xiang tugai hou nongcun jingji dioacha baogao 光化县白莲寺乡土改后农村经济调查
报告 [Investigative Report into the Rural Economy of Bailiansi Township Guanghua County After Land Reforms]rdquo January 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-47
235The History of Rural Private Lending in Hubei Province
ltUNgt
was in possession of 1209 mu of arable land 052 cows 001 horses 002 donkeys 072 pigs and 41 structures their farm implements were crude and untidy and average income was low Peasant households operated small-scale economies had low capacity for both production and withstanding natural disasters earned low incomes and lacked accumulation These facts meant that they would experience difficulties in both production and daily life when-ever a natural or man-made disaster hit At the time there was neither a sound social security system nor a modern rural financial system So when peasants landed on hard times their best option was often to borrow money from pri-vate citizens to tide them over
We shall first examine borrowing and lending that occurred after land reforms and then come back to make comparisons with old debts remaining from before land reforms The findings of asurvey conducted in early 1953 of 3419 households in five townships of the Jingzhou Sub-provincial Region 荆州专区 one township of Dangyang County 当阳县 and one township of Guanghua County 光化县 concerning borrowing and lending that oc-curred after rural land reforms and comparisons to old debts are contained in Table 101
Data in the table indicate that 781 of the 3419 householdsmdash2284 percentmdashin the survey either borrowed or lent after land reforms Of those 484 householdsmdash146 percent of total households surveyedmdashwere borrowers with average household borrowing at 540 jin The other 297 householdsmdash869 percent of total households surveyedmdashwere lenders The proportion of house-holds in a debt relationship to total households held roughly steady before and after land reforms but the proportion of borrowers was slightly lower and the proportion of lenders slightly higher There was a great change however in amounts borrowed Old debts accounted for 6861 percent of the total of 833277 jin of grain borrowed both before and after land reforms with new debts accounting for only 319 percent New debt borrower households were in debt for an average of 540 jin of grain only 5177 percent of the average debt of 1043 jin borrowed by old debt households The number of households that neither borrowed nor lent was approximately the same before and after land reforms but quantities borrowed after land reforms were much smaller than before
Another survey conducted in eleven townships of rural Hubei indicated that excluding landlord households about ten percent of rural households had been lenders prior to 1949 with an average of 80000 jin of grain lent per township After land reforms the percentage of lending households held relatively steady coming in at 98 percent but the volume of the loans had dropped dramatically down to an average of 25000 jin of grain per township
SU AND CHANG236
ltUNgt
Tabl
e 10
1 Ne
w a
nd o
ld p
rivat
e len
ding
rela
tions
hips
in se
ven
tow
nshi
ps o
f rur
al H
ubei
pro
vinc
e in
1952
Num
ber o
f bo
rrow
er
hous
ehol
ds
Perc
enta
ge
of to
tal
hous
ehol
ds
Tota
l gra
in
borr
owed
(jin
)Av
erag
e gr
ain
borr
owed
per
ho
useh
old
(jin)
Num
ber
of le
nder
ho
useh
olds
Perc
enta
ge o
f ho
useh
olds
su
rvey
ed
Tota
l gra
in
lent
(jin
)Av
erag
e gr
ain
lent
(jin
)
Old
deb
t54
816
03
571
716
1043
232
697
218
755
943
New
deb
t48
414
16
261
561
540
297
869
415
262
140
Data
sour
ce ldquo
Jingz
hou
zhua
nqu
nong
cun
sire
n jie
dai q
ingk
uang
荆州
专区
农村
私人
借贷
情况
[Pri
vate
Len
ding
in t
he C
ount
rysi
de o
f th
e Jin
gzho
u Su
b-pr
ovin
cial
Reg
ion]
rdquo M
arch
1953
Hub
ei P
rovi
ncia
l Ar
chiv
es S
Z18-
1-42
ldquoDan
gyan
g xi
an g
uanl
ing
xian
g jin
gji d
iaoc
ha 当
阳县
关陵
乡
经济
调查
[Eco
nom
ic In
vest
igat
ion
of G
uanl
ing
Tow
nshi
p Da
ngya
ng C
ount
y]rdquo
Mar
ch 19
53 H
ubei
Pro
vinc
ial
Arch
ives
SZ18
-1-47
and
ldquoGua
nghu
a xi
an b
aili
ansi
xia
ng t
ugai
hou
non
gcun
jing
ji di
oach
a ba
ogao
光化
县白
莲寺
乡土
改后
农村
经济
调查
报告
[Inv
esti
gati
ve R
epor
t in
to t
he
Rura
l Ec
onom
y of
Bai
lian
si T
owns
hip
Guan
ghua
Cou
nty
Afte
r La
nd R
efor
ms]
rdquo Ja
nuar
y 19
53 H
ubei
Pro
vinc
ial
Arch
ives
SZ1
8-1-4
7Exp
lana
tion
Bo
rrow
ing
figu
res i
n th
e ab
ove
tabl
e ar
e m
uch
grea
ter
than
len
ding
fig
ures
Thi
s phe
nom
enon
is p
rim
aril
y be
caus
e le
nder
s wer
e un
wil
ling
to
exp
ose
thei
r w
ealt
h fo
r fe
ar t
heyrsquo
d be
dep
icte
d as
hig
h-in
tere
st u
sure
rs L
ow r
epor
ting
of
quan
titi
es l
ent
mad
e it
dif
ficu
lt t
o as
cert
ain
the
trut
h of
the
situ
atio
n A
s bor
row
ers h
ad l
ess t
o fe
ar f
rom
bei
ng t
ruth
ful
it is
lik
ely
that
the
fig
ures
the
y re
port
ed w
ere
clos
er t
o th
e tr
uth
Rep
orti
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rend
s wer
e si
mil
ar in
inve
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atio
ns c
ited
bel
ow
237The History of Rural Private Lending in Hubei Province
ltUNgt
Of that total forty percent had been borrowed forcibly with less than 15000 jin of grain per township loaned voluntarily7 So if one excludes lending done by landlords and rich peasant households there was a great reduction to the scale of lending between peasant households
Next we shall take a look at the class distribution of rural private lending after land reforms A survey conducted of 3165 rural households8 indicated that 701 rural households (2215 percent) had engaged in either entered new borrowing or lending between the end of land reforms and the end of 1952 Of those 426 (1346 percent of total households surveyed) were borrower house-holds borrowing on average 403 jin of grain per household There were 275 lender households (896 percent of total households) lending an average of 3853 jin per household
The majority of new borrower households were poor peasant and hired farmhand households accounting for 632 percent of total borrower house-holds and borrowing 629 percent of total grain lent However only 171 per-cent of households in the poor peasant and hired farmhand class were bor-rowers slightly higher than the average percentage of borrowers per class but they borrowed slightly less on average than other classes averaging only 389 jin per household One major change in the class distribution of borrowing and lending from Old China to the Peoplersquos Republic of China was that poor peas-ant and hired farmhand households came to account for a large proportion of lender households in the Peoplersquos Republic of China accounting for 5564 percent of total lender households and lending 5381 percent of total grain lent Of course such a fact does not indicate that poor peasant and hired farm-hand households had more surplus capital than households in other classes it is rather representative of the fact that over fifty percent of all rural house-holds at this time fell into this class A total of 965 percent of all households in the poor peasant and hired farmhand class were borrowers slightly higher than the average for all classes but their average total lent was 373 jin slightly
7 ldquoNongcun jiedai qingkuang yu huoyue nongcun jiedai wenti (caorsquoan) 农村借贷情况与活
跃农村借贷问题(草案) [Rural Lending Conditions and the Issue of Invigorating Rural Lending (Draft)]rdquo 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ-18-1-40
8 ldquoJingzhou zhuanqu nongcun siren jiedai qingkuang 荆州专区农村私人借贷情况 [Pri-vate Lending in the Countryside of the Jingzhou Sub-provincial Region]rdquo March 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-42 ldquoDangyang xian guanling xiang jingji diaocha 当阳县关陵乡
经济调查 [Economic Investigation of Guanling Township Dangyang County]rdquo March 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-47 and ldquoGuanghua xian bailiansi xiang tugai hou nongcun jingji dioacha baogao 光化县白莲寺乡土改后农村经济调查报告 [Investigative Re-port into the Rural Economy of Bailiansi Township Guanghua County After Land Reforms]rdquo January 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-47
SU AND CHANG238
ltUNgt
less than the average for all classes In terms of both lending and borrowing poor peasant and hired farmhand households had experienced a boost to their economic status after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China If we combined figures for the poor peasant and hired farmhand class the middle peasant class and other laboring classes we would see that they accounted for 939 percent of all borrowing households 9745 percent of all grain bor-rowed 9419 percent of all lending households and 9427 percent of all grain lent These figures indicate that most borrowing and lendingthat took place in the countryside since the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China occurred among the laboring masses
Lastly letrsquos take a look at the overall situation of borrowing and lending in rural China at the time both old and new A survey conducted of 6795 house-holds in four townships of the Xiangyang region 襄阳地区 five townships of the Xiaogan region 孝感地区 and five townships of the Jingzhou region from late 1952 to early 1953 indicated that 1760 households (259 percent) were in lending relationships Of those 1171 households (1723 percent of total house-holds surveyed) were borrower households and 589 (867 percent of total households surveyed) were lender households Of the households covered in this survey a higher proportion were either borrowers or lenders than had been in the one represented in Table 101 as this survey included old debt but the total of old and new debt in this survey was much lower than in the previ-ous survey That is because old and new debts were listed in the previous sur-vey but in reality many households with new debt also had old debt making it difficult to list out the ratios of old and new independently In class distribu-tion of debt 952 percent of all borrower households and 928 percent of total grain borrowed in both old and new debts came from the classes of poor peas-ants hired farmhands middle peasants and laborers These classes accounted for 8811 percent of all lender households and 8432 percent of all grain lent in-dicating that on the whole most lending was taking place between households of the laboring masses and most of it was done toward objectives of mutual aid or mutual succor
On the whole there was new development in rural private lending in Hubei over the one to two years following land reforms but said development was not vigorous In other words rural private lending had fallen into stagnation That does not mean that all old debts remaining after the cancellation of all debts to the landlord class had fallen into a state of near-death but rather that there were relatively few new debts The survey depicted in Table 101 indicates that the quantity of lending occurring in new debt was only thirty-one percent that of old debt (all debts owed to the landlord class were cancelled as were most debts owed to rich peasants or those who made a living from interest on loans
239The History of Rural Private Lending in Hubei Province
ltUNgt
most borrowingand lending existed between households of the laboring mass-es) Of course such a comparison is of only relative significance To determine whether rural private lending relationships had fallen into stagnation we must perform analysis of actual supply and demand for private lending existing in rural economic life at the time The rural household economy was weak follow-ing land reforms Over half of rural households were still poor peasants From the perspective of the difficulties they faced in both production and living ru-ral demand for private lending was quite strong With the national economy still in tatters state banks were eeking together capital to give loans to rural citi-zens and the government was still actively advocating for and organizing rural credit cooperatives indicating both the demand for capital in the countryside and the lack thereof There were countless instances of rural citizens on hard times ldquoforcibly borrowingrdquo from their more affluent neighbors indicating that capital issued by state banks and credit cooperatives as loans as well as capital freely lent between rural households was insufficient to meet rural demand Thus private lending needed to be further developed to meet demand
Now letrsquos look at the supply of private capital Although wealth was redis-tributed following land reforms there was still some idle capital in the coun-tryside available for private lending Surveys indicated that the average middle peasant household in the Jingzhou Sub-provincial Region had lent out 1000 jin of grain prior to 1949 but the lending figure had dropped to 450 jin after land reforms9 The reason for this drop was that middle peasant households were unwilling to lend even if they had excess grain for fear of ldquoexposing wealthrdquo or ldquostanding outrdquo or ldquoelevating statusrdquo or being labeled ldquousurersrdquo A survey con-ducted of 275 rural households of Yutai Township 雨台乡 in Jiangling 江陵 Zhonghe Township 中和乡 in Gongrsquoan 公安 Dengping Township 邓平乡 in Echeng 鄂城 and other townships of the Jingzhou Sub-provincial Region indi-cated that these households collectively possessed 265000 jin of surplus grain an average of 964 jin per household and the average townshiprsquos middle peas-ant households sat on a total of between five to ten thousand yuan in surplus capital Very little however was lent out A survey conducted in four town-ships of the Xiangyang Sub-provincial Region indicated that only 64 percent of surplus social capital was used in lending and lending was well developed in fewer than ten percent of townships10
9 ldquoJingzhou zhuanqu nongcun siren jiedai qingkuang 荆州专区农村私人借贷情况 [Private Lending in the Countryside of the Jingzhou Sub-provincial Region]rdquo March 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-42
10 ldquoNongcun jiedai qingkuang yu huoyue nongcun jiedai wenti (caorsquoan)rdquo
SU AND CHANG240
ltUNgt
Most rural borrowing at the time was done just to meet living needs to tide a household over for a year or a season of famine or other unexpected hard-ships Stagnation in rural private lending made it difficult for rural households to make it through hard times An oft-heard phrase at the time was ldquoall four doors are closed tight and we cannot borrow moneyrdquo
(B) Reasons for Stagnation in Private Lending Measures Taken to Resolve the Issue and Their Results
1 Reasons for the Stagnation of Rural Private Lending after Land Reforms
Land reforms cancelled all debts owed to the landlord class This was a severe blow to the creation of debt as the landlord class owned the most private prop-erty The primary causes of stagnation in rural private lending following land reforms were egalitarian ideology and policies skewed against private lending This stagnation was manifested in the following areas
(a) Deviations in the implementation of land reform policies between different areas A distinction was made in land reform policies of the Peoplersquos Republic of China regarding ldquothose who made a living from interest on loansrdquomdashzhaili shenghuozhemdash(the term ldquousurerrdquo gaolidaizhe was generally avoided to reduce contention over whetherone gavehigh or low interest loans) and ldquothe landlord classrdquo The law read as follows ldquoThose who have issued a large amount of debt over a long period of time and rely solely or primarily on income from this debt for a living shall be accorded the status of lsquothose who make a living from interest on loansrsquo The property of people in this class is not to be touched during land reforms but all debts incurred by peasants and laborers to such persons prior to 1949 shall be handled in accordance with measures for han-dling debt incurred before 1949 owed by peasants to rich peasants In other words interest shall be forgiven and only principal repaid for debts in which accumulated interest is twice the principal and payments shall be altogether halted on repayment of debts for which accumulated interest is twice the prin-cipal or even morerdquo11 In the actual implementation of land reform policies however many of those who made a living from interest on loans rich peas-ants and affluent middle-income peasants were mistakenly labeled as mem-bers of the ldquoexploiter classrdquo for having engaged in lending at interest and were thus mistakenly accorded the status of landlords or other classes and conse-quently subject to persecution For example twelve households who made a living from interest on loans in Yihe Township 义和乡 Yingcheng County 应城县 were struggled against had all debts owed to them cancelled and had
11 Zhongguo tudi gaige shiliao xuanbian 725
241The History of Rural Private Lending in Hubei Province
ltUNgt
all their property confiscated12 The result of these actions was that rural citi-zens came to believe that lending was the primary form of feudal exploitation that lending was ldquoillegalrdquo and ldquounreasonablerdquo and that it was not an error to renege on debts
(b) There were no legislative protections for rural private lending after land reforms After the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China no system of civil laws was established Rural private lending relationships were adjusted primarily through policies Policies of land reforms differentiated between dif-ferent kinds of old debt and officials announced that ldquoyou shall henceforth be free to lend and interest shall be determined by negotiations between both partiesrdquo They further decreed that disputes arising from rural debts should generally be resolved through the peoplersquos government or peasant association with jurisdiction those disputes which local governments could not resolve were to be passed up to county-level justice administration organs for adjudi-cation There was not however a clear basis for said adjudication The primary method actually used to resolvedebt matters was consultation or mediation held by rural government authorities or peasant associations In the materials wersquove been able to find all instances of forcible borrowing were either tac-itly allowed or in some cases directly organized by grassroots authorities We found no instances of authorities forcing debtors to repay their private debts
(c) Old debts that remained after land reforms were not well handled Re-payment on most of these debts were postponed for a long time Creditors did not dare to put pressure on debtors for to collect repayment both debtors and creditors decided to wait and see what was coming Some townships badly mangled the handling of old rural debts The method employed by officials in Guandu Township Songzi was to cancel interest and order repayment of only principal for debts in which the debtor had the ability to pay immediately debts which could not be immediately repaid were classified as new debts at two percent interest Officials in Yannian Township 延年乡 Zhongxiang 钟祥 outright abolished all old debts existing between peasant households13
(d) The principle of voluntary lending was violated in new lending Offi-cials in some townships stressed ldquounity and fraternal loverdquo or ldquomutual aid and mutual lendingrdquo This principle encouraged some peoplemdashincluding both offi-cials and members of the publicmdashwho were too lazy to work for themselves to coerce households with excess grain to put it up for loans For example
12 ldquoXiaogan zhuanqu wu ge xiang nongcun jingji diaocha 孝感专区五个乡农村经济
调查 [A Rural Economic Investigation into Five Townships of Xiaogan Sub-provincial Region]rdquo 1953 Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-14
13 ldquoJingzhou zhuanqu nongcun siren jiedai qingkuangrdquo
SU AND CHANG242
ltUNgt
three rich peasant households of Gaoqiao Township Enshi were coerced into putting 610 jin of grain up for loan by a mob shouting ldquovoluntary lendingrdquo14
(e) Interest was not clearly stipulatedon new debts and high-interest lend-ing was not clearly differentiated from ordinary lending The bulk of the masses had only one all-inclusive concept ldquolending money at interest is illegalrdquo Some people knew the policy of ldquoallowing free lending and interest to be negotiated by both partiesrdquo but did not know exactly how much interest was legal For ex-ample one middle peasant in Zhouyan Township 周严乡 Xianning 咸宁 had this to say ldquoIn lending if the interest is too low then itrsquos not worth it If itrsquos too high yoursquoll try to get interest from him but hersquoll come after your principalrdquo15 This statement is highly representative of general thinking on the part of the erarsquos middle peasants who dared not to lend
2 Policies to Invigorate Rural Private Lending and Their EffectsTo promote rural private lending and invigorate the rural economy the South-central Military Administrative Commission 中南军政委员会 issued ten pol-icies regarding spring plowing and production at the opportune moment of spring plowing in both 1950 and 1951 calling for free lending in the countryside On March 6 1953 the Commission issued a decree this time clearly calling for ldquoprotection of the freedom to lendrdquo Governments at all levels around Hubei began enacting clear measures to resolve the situation Those measures called for actions in the following areas
(a) The proper handling of old debt As detailed above old debt accounted for 8405 percent of all rural debt at this time Most creditors belonged to the poor peasant hired farmhand middle peasant or other laboring classes Thus even though their private property rights were upheld some old debts were labeled high-interest or usurious as interest in these debts was several times or in some cases dozens of times the principal Officials made the following regulations to protect creditorsrsquo rights as well as to ensure the ability of debtors to repay First creditorsrsquo rights in debts between peasants and other laboring classes incurred before 1949 were upheld but interest was cancelled in all debts in which interest was twice the principal or more For debts in which interest was between one and two times the principal the debt was restructured and interest determined by negotiation Interest was to be renegotiated in debts in which interest owed was less than the principal to be calculated based on the time of non-payment Second officials reaffirmed debts incurred by peasants
14 ldquoEnshi gaoqiao xiang nongcun jingji diaocha 恩施高桥乡农村经济调查 [Rural Eco-nomic Investigation of Gaoqiao Township Enshi]rdquo Hubei Provincial Archives SZ18-1-47
15 ldquoNongcun jiedai qingkuang yu huoyue nongcun jiedai wenti (caorsquoan)rdquo