THE GREAT REVERSAL The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 ...

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the peasants first gave support to the Communist Party because it led the resistance waragainst Japan or the liberation war against the Guomindang. Years of armed struggle haddeveloped a core of politically aware peasant cadres who later led the land reform and thecooperative movement, and led both fairly well, in many localities at least. Anhui, on the otherhand, had gone through no such history. Liberated by northern armies in 1949, Anhui wentthrough land reform under outside leadership in 1952, then without any trial period of mutualaid, plunged into a land-pooling movement that leaped from the lower to the higher stage inthe course of a few months. In the lower stage land shares counted when distributing.income, in the higher stage only labor counted. Before the latter could even pretend toachieve consolidation the commune movement carried egalitarianism to unprecedentedextremes. Joint tillage never recovered prestige.According to Wang Yongxi the cooperative movement in Anhui violated two fundamentalprinciples of rural organization: the principle that peasant participation must be voluntary,based on the economic success of local models, and the principle that income must bedistributed on the basis of work performed. Party leaders, ignoring these fundamentals,rushed the peasants into advanced levels of cooperation before they saw any convincingevidence of advantages to be gained and set up forms of income distribution that dividedearnings more or less equally per capita, without regard for individual effort expended.Inexperienced local leaders, unable to generate any production enthupage52siasm under the new share-and-share-alike system, ended up using their power to feathertheir own nests. Periodically those who exposed, challenged, and replaced them, when facedwith the same inertia, ended up applying the same values and began to serve themselvesrather than the community. When thirty years after liberation Anhui peasants failed togenerate levels of per capita production any higher than those with which they started out,men like the current first secretary of the Party Committee, Wang Yuxin, his deputy SongLinsheng, and Deputy County Chairman Wang Changtai decided it was time for an agonizingreappraisal, time to reverse course.Wang Yuxin said the decision took courage because what they decided to try out was avariant of Liu Shoaqi's notorious "Three Freedoms, One Contract," a policy denounced overthe years as "capitalist road." Wang and his colleagues introduced it in two stages. First theyurged the peasants to split their production teams into small groups, each one of which thencontracted to grow crops on designated plots of land. When this brought some positiveresults in 1979, the leaders urged the peasants to go further and contract land family by familyaccording to a system that they called "Da Bao Gan" (the all-inclusive contract). Da Bao Gancan best be described as "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's while I take the rest formyself."Fengyang peasants, frustrated by what they came to look on as their cooperativestraitjacket, wanted an average per capita share of land to work, but they did not wantproduction quotas, percentage bonuses, sliding-scale obligations. They wanted to know
what the government, the public sector, absolutely had to have from the land in the way ofcash and kind. Then they promised to deliver this minimum without question just so long asthey could do what they pleased with the balance of their crops.Secretary Wang went along with this. At the provincial level Wan Li backed him up, and sothe "responsibility system," in the form of the all-inclusive contract, was born. In Fengyangcounty, where there is more land per capita than almost anywhere else in China, each familygot on the average the use of 2 mou (1/3 acre) of land per person. In return for this eachpromised to pay its national agricultural tax in kind to turn over a small sum for the support oflocal (brigade and commune) officials, and to sell to the state at established prices the lowfixed quotas of grain that tradition had set for every mou. This arrangement,because it demanded relatively little, unleashed the energy and enthusiasm of the peasantsand pushed production ahead in striking fashion. Overall grain production figures for thecounty showed a steady rise:page 531977 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1978 (drought) . . . . . . . . . . .1979 (group contracts). . . . . . .1980 (family contracts). . . . . . .1981 (family contracts). . . . . . .1982 (family contracts). . . . . . .180,000 longtons147,500 " "220,000 " "251,000 " "320,000 " "359,000 " ""I thought we would get results with this system," said Secretary Wang, "but I neverthought the results would be so striking and so sustained. It has been a surprise to me, it hasbeen a surprise to everyone."During each crop season after 1979 the peasants got up earlier, worked harder, stayedlonger in the fields than before and they accomplished each day much more than they everhad since pooling their land in 1956. As a result they finished off most of each year's work ina few intense months, then stood idle for the remainder of the season. "In our cooperativedays," said Yang Chiangli, "we used to work all day, every day, year-in and year-out, but wegot almost nothing done -- work a little, take a break, work a little more, take another break.We felt harassed and we produced very little. What we were doing looked like work but infact we were stalling around. Now we make every minute count. Our labor produces results.We earn a good living and we have time on our hands, lots of time."With Deputy County Chairman Wang Changtai's help I examined several householdaccounts in detail. Here are the figures for Li Wanhua of Zhanglaozhuang team,
Page 1 and 2: THE GREATREVERSALThe Privatization
Page 3 and 4: This essence was known to many in C
Page 5 and 6: Introduction:China'sRuralReformsThe
Page 7 and 8: concern was, of course, the country
Page 9 and 10: I looked down in growing disbelief
Page 11 and 12: edefining what the word meant. Cert
Page 13 and 14: themselves, communists had, perforc
Page 16 and 17: It is against the background of Chi
Page 18 and 19: eformers. Throughout the whole cour
Page 20 and 21: in China. It emphasizes above all t
Page 22 and 23: Is Red," that solemn hymn to Mao Ze
Page 24 and 25: Hard work to transform the land was
Page 26 and 27: If meeting nonrelated young people
Page 28 and 29: and three times elevated to top pos
Page 30: can supply the raw material for lin
Page 34 and 35: Construction Bureau who wanted to n
Page 36 and 37: had already found wives and several
Page 40 and 41: Zhanglaozhuang brigade, Ershihying
Page 42 and 43: see Gaojen commune. There 7,300 abl
Page 44 and 45: in 1978), (3) they planted large ar
Page 46 and 47: can do so will others not denounce
Page 48 and 49: destroyed all economies of scale an
Page 50 and 51: The rejection of the above proposit
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Page 54 and 55: page 71in some of the new industrie
Page 56 and 57: page 74Reformin Stride:Rural Change
Page 58 and 59: authorities is that it automaticall
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Page 62 and 63: than it contributes itself, it is a
Page 64 and 65: mechanization plan could have done
Page 66 and 67: page 86units, taking a mature sheep
Page 68 and 69: measures are necessary.Since these
Page 70 and 71: tremely hard to carry out. Most mea
Page 72 and 73: 60,000 mou. This would make seasona
Page 74 and 75: lock the gates at Qinghua and other
Page 76 and 77: programs that discourage production
Page 78 and 79: 19781979198019811982198319841985467
Page 80 and 81: Peasants who opt for transport on t
Page 82 and 83: policy. Yet they are much touted by
Page 84 and 85: millions of mu of badly eroded slop
Page 86 and 87: page 111culture must also be modern
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The Problem of UnemploymentThe most
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mechanization of the more advanced
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tractor and/or implement tire that
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difficult form of cooperation. Betw
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In order to mechanize agriculture s
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Today's reports credit reform at Da
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were deducted from net income befor
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trees that appear to be, if not aba
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denounced by the central government
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spirit of Dazhai's citizens and to
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Ironic Lessons, Past and PresentIn
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Mao'sRuralPoliciesRevisitedA questi
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point frequently raised by the refo
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page 145Furthermore, the state help
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mechanisms rather than government d
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tractors who leased collective ente
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All this alarmed certain forces in
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terthrusts over the years. All of t
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exercises." Just as happened during
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every region.In the fourth place, b
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preserve a strong collective core.
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Finally, China's independent nation
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The World Bank strategy of opening
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people. They want to transform the
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The reformers hoped and planned tha
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TiananmenMassacre:June 1989It's imp
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left, and then there would be a new
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the beginning of it. Once the army
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and I asked him why on earth he wen
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have been doing this work for many
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going to sweep everybody out, so th
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affront, as turmoil, as chaos, and
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