|
China The 1950s
During the 1950s the government of the new People's Republic
made a concerted effort to redistribute land more equitably.
Although many peasants owned part or all of the small holdings they
farmed before 1949, tenancy was common, especially in south China.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) implemented land reforms in areas
under its control even before 1949, and subsequently landlords and
wealthy peasants became targets of party attack. Their elimination
as a class was a major aim of the land reform movement begun under
the Agrarian Reform Law of June 28, 1950
(see The Transition to Socialism, 1953-57
, ch. 1). Collectivization of agriculture, which
was accomplished in several stages, began about 1952.
The first stage of land reform was characterized by mutual aid
teams. The mutual aid system was kept simple at first, involving
only the temporary sharing of labor and some capital; individual
households remained the basic unit of ownership and production. In
1954 mutual aid teams were organized with increasing rapidity into
agricultural producers' cooperatives, which differed from mutual
aid teams in that tools, draft animals, and labor were shared on a
permanent basis. Cooperative members retained ownership of their
land but secured a share in the cooperative by staking their plots
along with those of other members in the common land pool. By 1956
the transformation of mutual aid teams into agricultural
cooperatives was nearly complete. By the end of that year,
moreover, the great majority of cooperatives had moved to a still
higher stage of collectivization, having become advanced producers'
cooperatives. These cooperatives contrasted with those of the
earlier stage in that members no longer earned income based on
shares of land owned. Instead, collective farm profits were
distributed to members primarily on the basis of labor
contributions. The average cooperative was made up of 170 families
and more than 700 people. Although small private plots were
permitted, most of the land was owned collectively by the
cooperative. Another development in this period was the
establishment of state farms in which land became the property of
the state
(see Planning and Organization
, this ch.).
This degree of collectivization was achieved with much less
turmoil than had occurred during collectivization in the Soviet
Union. As in the Soviet Union, however, investment in the
agricultural sector was kept low relative to industrial investment
because planners chose to achieve more rapid growth of basic
industries. But collectivization did not prevent the growth of
agricultural production; grain production, for example, increased
by 3.5 percent a year under the First Five-Year Plan (1953-57).
Growth was achieved mainly through the intensified use of
traditional agricultural techniques, together with some technical
improvements.
Once collectivization was achieved and agricultural output per
capita began to increase, the leadership embarked on the extremely
ambitious programs of the Great Leap Forward of 1958-60 (see
table 11, Appendix A). In agriculture this meant unrealistically high
production goals and an even higher degree of collectivization than
had already been achieved. The existing collectives were organized
very rapidly into
people's communes (see Glossary),
much larger
units with an average of 5,400 households and a total of 20,000 to
30,000 members on average. The production targets were not
accompanied by a sufficient amount of capital and modern inputs
such as fertilizer; rather, they were to be reached in large
measure by heroic efforts on the part of the peasants.
Substantial effort was expended during the Great Leap Forward
on large-scale but often poorly planned capital construction
projects, such as irrigation works. Because of the intense pressure
for results, the rapidity of the change, and the inexperience and
resistance of many cadres and peasants, the Great Leap Forward soon
ran into difficulties. The peasants became exhausted from the
unremitting pressure to produce. The inflation of production
statistics, on the theory that accuracy mattered less than
political effect, resulted in extravagant claims. Disruption of
agricultural activity and transportation produced food shortages.
In addition, the weather in 1959-61 was unfavorable, and
agricultural production declined sharply
(see
fig. 9). By the early
1960s, therefore, agriculture was severely depressed, and China was
forced to import grain (during the 1950s it had been a net
exporter) to supply urban areas. Otherwise, an excessive amount of
grain would have been extracted from rural areas
(see Economic Policies, 1949-80
, ch. 5).
Data as of July 1987
|
