Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
climate in the 1970s, an initiative that was hailed as another ‘liberation’.
Even when a television programme provides accounts of
China’s success in feeding its huge population, it may use pictures of
Xiaogang Village as the background. However the media and those
who join the chorus fail to mention how much the state has donated
to this village to promote it as a model of the household responsibility
system. In spite of government’s pouring money into the village
it is still poor today, so poor that its leaders are reported to have
visited the still collectivized Nanjie Village to consider the possibility
of re-collectivization (Yuan Wenbiao 2006).
The official history propagated by the media claims that the dismantling
of the collective system by Xiaogang Village was so effective that
grain output in the village increased from an annual 30,000 jin to 120,000
jin in 1979. What the media do not want to reveal is that 30,000 jin was the
yield in 1978 when there was a terrible drought, whereas on average the
annual output was 190,000 to 200,000 jin during the collective period. In
1979, the year when the land was divided up, the output actually went
down 40 per cent compared the annual average under the collective
system. Some years later the media claimed that in 1997 the village
yielded an output of 1,200,000 jin, indicating that this was a tremendous
success of post-Mao reform. Again what the media did not say is that the
figures were the total amount of grain yielded in several villages that
had been amalgamated and were jointly renamed Xiaogang Village (Lao
Tian 2007b).
Another aspect in manufacturing the truth about this village is also
revealed in the e-media. In 1978, due to the drought that year, other
villages all started to contract responsibility to small teams while still
maintaining the collective system. However, the situation in Xiaogang
Village was so divisive and there was so much internal tension, even
among members of the same lineage, that they were not able to form
teams. It was under these circumstances that the village head Yan
Junchang decided that the land was to be carved up among the households.
The so-called historical act had nothing to do with the villagers’
courageous rebellion against the collective system. It had more to do
with the village leaders’ inability to get the village organized.
The legacy of Mao and the e-media
Information of this kind can be increasingly seen in the e-media for
three main reasons. The first is that the consequences and problems of
the reform policies are now being seen and felt by the majority of the
people, as discussed in other chapters. There is backlash against at
least some of the reform policies. 9 The second reason is that e-media
has become more user-friendly and more accessible. As a result the
[ 156 ]