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China Mechanization
Post-Mao reforms dramatically affected farm mechanization. Most
commune tractor stations were disbanded, and farm households were
allowed to purchase equipment. The percentage of privately owned
tractors increased from near zero in 1975 to more than 80 percent
in 1985. The area plowed and planted by machine decreased in this
period, but peasant use of tractors and trucks to transport goods
soared dramatically. As much as 60 percent of tractor use was
devoted to local hauling. Firms manufacturing farm machinery
adjusted to the shift in rural organization by producing more small
tractors, appropriate tractor-drawn equipment, better quality hand
tools, and food and feed processing equipment. A rural electric
power system--dams, generators, and transmission lines--had been
under construction since 1949, and in 1987 most villages had access
to electricity. In the period of the Four Modernizations, rural
electric power consumption rose by 179 percent, from 18.3 billion
kilowatt-hours in 1975 to 51.2 billion kilowatt-hours in 1985.
Despite the large stock and high production rate of tractors,
most farm tasks in the mid-1980s were performed manually. Rice
continued to be transplanted by hand, as local engineers had yet to
develop and produce rice transplanters in substantial quantities.
Only 36 percent of the land was plowed by machines, only 8 percent
sown by machines, and only 3 percent of the crop area was harvested
by machines. Draft animals continued to be important sources of
power, and the number of animals increased sharply in the post-Mao
period. Success in mechanization enabled surplus rural laborers to
leave the fields to find jobs in rural industry and commerce. In
the 1980s most observers believed that China would continue for
some time to use mechanization to solve labor shortages at times of
peak labor demand and to concentrate mechanization in areas of
large-scale farming, as in the North China Plain and the northeast.
Data as of July 1987
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