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China Decollectivization
Under the collectivized system, grain production kept up with
population growth (China's population nearly doubled from 1950 to
1980), and the rural population was guaranteed a secure but low
level of subsistence
(see Population
, ch. 2). But the collectivized
system seemed to offer few possibilities for rapid economic growth.
There was some discontent with a system that relied so heavily on
orders from above and made so little allowance for local conditions
or local initiative. In the late 1970s, administrators in
provincial-level units with extensive regions of low yields and
consequent low standards of living began experimenting with new
forms of tenure and production. In most cases, these took the form
of breaking up the collective
production team (see Glossary),
contracting with individual households to work assigned portions of
collective land, and expanding the variety of crops or livestock
that could be produced. The experiments were deemed successful and
popular, and they soon spread to all districts. By the winter of
1982-83, the people's communes were abolished; they were replaced
by administrative townships and a number of specialized teams or
businesses that often leased such collective assets as tractors and
provided services for money.
The agricultural reforms of the early 1980s led to a
confusingly large number of new production arrangements and
contracts. Underlying the variability of administrative and
contractual forms were several basic principles and trends. In the
first place, land, the fundamental means of production, remained
collective property. It was leased, allocated, or contracted to
individual households, but the households did not own the land and
could not transfer it to other households. The household became, in
most cases, the basic economic unit and was responsible for its own
production and losses. Most economic activity was arranged through
contracts, which typically secured promises to provide a certain
amount of a commodity or sum of money to the township government in
return for the use of land, or workshops, or tractors.
The goal of the contracting system was to increase efficiency
in the use of resources and to tap peasant initiative. The rigid
requirement that all villages produce grain was replaced by
recognition of the advantages of specialization and exchange, as
well as a much greater role for markets. Some "specialized
households" devoted themselves entirely to production of cash crops
or provision of services and reaped large rewards. The overall
picture was one of increasing specialization, differentiation, and
exchange in the rural economy and in society in general. Rural
incomes increased rapidly, in part because the state substantially
increased the prices it paid for staple crops and in part because
of economic growth stimulated by the expansion of markets and the
rediscovery of comparative advantage.
Data as of July 1987
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