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A Tenth Aniiversary Appraisal: Collectivisation in Retrospect: The “Socialist High Tide” of Autumn 1955–Spring 19561

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Kenneth R. Walker
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Extract

In July 1955 Mao Tse-tung made one of his rare public policy statements when he addressed party secretaries of provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions “on the question of co-operativisation.” It proved to be one of the most important speeches in recent Chinese history, terminating a dispute about the nature and timing of agricultural socialisation which had been going on inside the Chinese Communist Party for three years. Coming from Mao, this was not merely a contribution to the debate, but the final, authoritative pronouncement on what policy should be. Its impact was swift and dramatic. At that time only 16.9 million (14·2 per cent.) of the 120 million peasant families in China were members of co-operatives, almost all of which were semi-socialist in character. Hardly any fully socialist collectives existed. But between autumn 1955 and spring 1956, a “high tide of socialism in the countryside” transformed most of Chinese agriculture, replacing the traditional small privately-owned farms by large co-operatives and collectives. By May 1956,91·2 per cent. of China's rural households had joined co-operatives, 61·9 per cent. of them collectives.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 26 , June 1966 , pp. 1 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1966

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References

2 Tse-tung, Mao, “On the Question of Agricultural Cooperativisation,” 07 31, 1955Google Scholar. Hsin Hua Yueh-pao (New China Monthly), LXXIII, No. 11, 1955, pp. 1–8Google Scholar.

3 State Statistical Bureau, Statistical Materials on Agricultural Cooperativisation and the Distribution of the Product in Cooperatives during 1955 (Peking: Statistical Publishing Company, 1957)Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 See, for example, Yang, C. K., A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Cambridge: M.I.T., The Technology Press, 1959)Google Scholar; Chao, K. C., Agrarian Policy of the Chinese Communist Party 1921–1959 (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1960)Google Scholar; Li, C. M., The Statistical System of Communist China (Berkeley: Un. of California Press, 1962)Google Scholar; Liu, T. C. and Yeh, K. C., The Economy of the Chinese Mainland. National Income and Economic Development 1933–1959 (Princeton: Princeton Un. Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

6 Numerous references include: Mao Tse-Tung: (i) “Economic and Financial Questions,” (ii) “Get Organised,” (iii) “On Coalition Government,” (iv) “The Present Situation and our Tasks,” (v) “Speech to Cadres of Shensi, Suiyuan region: in Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1963–5) 4 volumesGoogle Scholar. Li-t'ing, Yü, New Democratic Economic Theory (Hong Kong: New Democracy Publishing House, 1949)Google Scholar; Yün, Chi, “The Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives of the Present Stage in China: High Level Forms of Labour Mutual Aid,” Hsueh-hsi (Study), No. 4, 1952, pp. 28–32Google Scholar. (”For a while it [Chinese industry] still cannot put out large batches of agricultural machinery to assist the peasants; thus in China, at present, we still have not prepared the conditions for carrying out agricultural collectivisation.”) Hsiao-ts'un, Sun and Hsi-lin, Hsiao, “Some Problems in Promoting the Mutual Aid Cooperation Movement,” New China Monthly, No. 6, 1953, pp. 143–146Google Scholar. Kai-lung, Liao, “Study the resolution of the C.C.P. Central Committee On Agricultural Producers' Mutual Aid Cooperation,” Study, No. 5, 1953, pp. 7–8Google Scholar. (”But only by first carrying out industrialisation can we refit Chinese agriculture with agricultural machinery, and only then on a basis of the peasants' agreement, can we carry out full collectivisation, that is agricultural socialisation; otherwise it is impossible.”) Tzu-hui, Teng, “Basic Tasks and Policy Principles in Village Work,” July 2, 1953, New China Monthly, No. 8, 1953, pp: 49–52Google Scholar. (”[we must] wait until State industrial development is able to supply agriculture with the machinery it needs, and at that time Soviet type collective farms, using machines, can gradually grow in China and greatly spread. That is, we can complete the socialist reform of agriculture.”)

7 “Questions and Answers Concerning The Socialisation of Agriculture,” The Present Situation and Our Tasks (Hong Kong: New Democracy Publishing House, 1949), pp. 144–152Google Scholar. See also speeches by Mao, note 6. Chi Yün, “The Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives of the Present Stage in China”: “the use of transitional forms of collective labour based on private property, on the way to socialism, is an adaptation of Marxist-Leninist theory to Chinese conditions.” Chi considered that an important function of mutual aid teams was that they “infuse the peasants with collective consciousness.”

8 North East Bureau of the Central Committee of the C.C.P., “Summing Up Agricultural Production this year in the North East and Fixing Next Year's Production Tasks,” December 11, 1948, Problems of Agricultural Construction (Liberation Publishing Company, 1949)Google ScholarPubMed. This argued that the rise of a new, rich peasantry after the land reform was inevitable and need not be feared; in fact, it was “a necessary law of socialist economic development.”

9 Ti-hsin, Hsü, New Democracy and the Chinese Economy (Hong Kong: New Tide Publishing House, 1948)Google Scholar.

10 Central Committee of the C.C.P., “Resolution on Mutual Aid Cooperation“ (February 15, 1953), Study, No. 5, 1953, pp. 3–6Google Scholar.

11 It is interesting to note the government's changing attitude towards the unemployment problem. In 1949 it believed that the surplus labour released by teams and co-operatives would make an essential contribution to the “industrial reserve army” needed by an expanding industrial sector during the new democratic period (“Questions and Answers Concerning the Socialisation of Agriculture”), but by 1952 it realised that this was not the case. Rising labour productivity in industry, the entry of women into the labour market, insufficient arable land, the land reform and establishment of mutual aid teams, had all combined to create more unemployment. Now it was argued that the rising number of underemployed and unemployed in rural China could not be absorbed by the towns. Instead, it was necessary, via mutual aid teams and co-operatives, to employ them in agricultural work such as livestock-rearing, forestry, land reclamation, water conservation and new, highly labour-intensive farming methods. See “Resolution on the Problem of Labour Employment,” Study, No. 6, 1952, pp. 32–35Google Scholar.

12 It has not been possible to discover the exact date of the new approach to collectivisation. The first statement of it known to the writer is Tzu-yang, Chao, “On a basis of greatly promoting co-operativisation, strengthen the technical reform of agriculture and overall development of agricultural production,” Nan-fang Jih-pao (Southern Daily), Canton, 08 12, 1954Google Scholar. See also Tzu-hui, Teng, (i) “Questions regarding Rural Work and the Socialist Reconstruction of Agriculture“ (speech to first National People's Congress, autumn 1954), in Financial and Economic Work during the Past Five Tears (Peking: Financial and Economic Publishing Company, 1953), pp. 24–31Google Scholar, (ii) “Chinese Agriculture Marches Along the Road of Socialist Reconstruction,” New China Monthly, No. 11, 1954, pp. 128–131Google Scholar. The new policy does not appear to have been part of the first statements of the “general line” for the transition to socialism, as is shown by a publication of January 23, 1954: “Why Must We Carry out the Socialist Reconstruction of the Small Agricultural Economy?”, Chieh-fang Jih-pao (Liberation Daily), January 23, 1954, republished in Study Problems and Explanations Regarding the General Line During the Transition (Shanghai: People's Publishing House, 1954), pp. 39–43Google Scholar.

13 Looking back on the collectivisation of agriculture in 1957, Feng Ho-fa wrote: China, according to Marxist-Leninist universal truth and the successful experience of the Soviet revolution, synthesised the actual practice of China's revolution and made a new contribution to the socialist reform of agriculture. The ??? feature of China's treatment of the socialisation of agriculture is ??? there was co-operativisation [including collectivisation] and then mechanisation, taking the social and technical reform of agriculture as two steps. China, while still lacking agricultural mechanical equipment for agricultural production, nevertheless could still lead the peasants to abandon the individual economy of taking one household, one family as the main [unit] and follow the path of the co-operativised, collective economy, carrying out the social reform of agriculture and preparing the conditions for proceeding to carry out its technical reform.

Ho-fa, Feng, How to Pass from Capitalism to Socialism (Peking: San Lien Shu-tien, 1957), p. 40Google Scholar.

14 The “stages” were regarded as a “development law”: from small to big, low to high, temporary to permanent teams and then to co-operatives: “this general law of development is not to be changed at will by people.” Sun Hsiao-ts'un and Hsiao Hsi-lin, “Some Problems in Promoting the Mutual ??? Co-operation Movement.”

15 Central Committee of the C.C.P., “Resolution on Developing ??? Producers' Co-operatives,” December 16, 19S3, New China Monthly, No. 1, 1954, pp. 142–147Google Scholar.

16 As early as 1949, Heilungkiang province had 0·246 million mutual aid teams, incorporating 65 per cent. of its peasant households; Shansi had 88,000, including 17 per cent. of households. In 1950, 55 per cent. of peasant families were members of teams in the three northeastern provinces of China. Statistical Materials on Agricultural Co-operativisation.

17 Central Committee of die C.C.P., “Resolution on Agricultural Producers’ Mutual Aid Co-operation,” February 15, 1953, Study, No. 5, 1953, pp. 3–6Google Scholar.

18 “Decision on Agricultural Production in 1952,” Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily), February 27, 1952. This called for 80–90 per cent. of households to be “organised” in the old liberated areas by the end of 1953 and in the new liberated areas a year later.

19 Kang, Kao, “Overcome the Erosion of the Party by Bourgeois Thoughts; Oppose Rightist Thinking Within the Party,” January 10, 1952, Study, No. 1, 1952, pp. 9–12Google Scholar. Also Chi Yün, “Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives of the Present Stage in China.

20 For information about the rural problems immediately following the land reform, see Chinese Academy of Sciences Economics Research Institute, Compendium of Materials on Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives during the Reconstruction Period of the national Economy, 1949–1952 (2 volumes) (Peking: 1957)Google Scholar. Although this is primarily concerned with the 1952 campaign, its province-by-province surveys do contain useful information on the shortage of producer goods, etc., following land reform. The chapter on Kiangsi (II, pp. 1056–1062) is particularly good.

21 In Kwangtung, where only 0·82 mou per head was allocated to beneficiaries of the land reform (Southern Daily, January 18, 1954), the decrease in the average size of farms was especially great. The Kwangtung People's Government “Report on Agricultural Production and Tree Preservation,” Ch'ang Chiang Jih-pao (Yangtze Daily), November 28, 1951, stated that in 13 hsien where land reform had finished, in spring 1952, there was only one draught animal per 88 mou and one farm implement per household. (The approximate requirement of draught animals was one per 12–35 mou.) Further details are given in Kwangtung People's Government “Directive on Opening up the Spring Arable Production,” Southern Daily, March 1, 1952.

22 C. K. Yang, A Chinese Village. This had been a problem in the land reform carried out in the old liberated areas during 1947. “Protect Draught Animals,” September 25, 1948, Problems of Agricultural Construction.

23 Kang, Kao, op. cit., claimed (01 10, 1952)Google Scholar, that 60–70 per cent. of peasants in Heilungkiang and Kiangsu were involved in borrowing and lending relationships.

24 l-po, Po, “Strengthen the Party's Political Work in the Villages,” Study, No. 6–7, 1951, pp. 30–32Google Scholar.

25 The best single source covering all aspects of the campaign is the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Compendium of Materials.

26 Ibid. II, p. 909. Also editorial: “Strengthen Leadership over the Spring Ploughing; Achieve a Timely Sowing,” People's Daily, March 20, 1952.

27 Compendium of Materials, II, p. 1057. In Kwantung there was only a slight variation in the wording: “mutual aid is advocated by Chairman Mao; not to carry it out, therefore, is to be unpatriotic.” Ibid. II, p. 1088.

28 Ibid., II, p. 1167.

29 Kiangsi peasants called mutual aid teams “labour reform brigades.” Ibid., II, p. 1057.

30 A cadre in Shantung forced peasants to dig up cotton in order to replant with better seed, at gun point. Others forced peasants to use new implements, dig wells and lend money to the teams. There were killings, “struggle meetings” and designation of peasants as rightists, etc. In reporting these facts, the People's Daily, editorial of February 11, 1953, “Suppress the Work Style of Coercion,” stated that this kind of behaviour “in our party organisation is not exceptional.”

31 For example, in Kwangsi, , Compendium of Materials, II, p. 1100Google Scholar. Landlords and rich peasants were taken into teams in Kwangsi and cadres of the peasants associations created during the land reform (who were often poor peasants) were debarred from holding office. In Kiangsi, on the other hand, it was reported that government cadres who were organising teams refused to allow middle peasants to become team captains. Ibid., II, p. 1067.

32 In Kiangsi this led middle peasants to attempt to form “middle peasants' teams” or to sell their animals. Ibid.

33 Statistical Materials on Co-operativisation.

34 Compendium of Materials, II, p. 1025.

35 Tie, Lin, “How One Hundred Thousand Co-operatives in Hopei were Reorganised and Consolidated,” People's Daily, 10 30, 1955Google Scholar.

36 Compendium of Materials, II, p. 1055.

37 Ibid., p. 983.

38 There were no co-operatives in Kwangtung until spring 1954.

39 Central Committee of the C.C.P., “Directive to Party Committees at All Levels on the Spring Arable Production,” March 16, 1953, New China Monthly, No. 4, 1953, pp. 121–122Google Scholar.

40 Ibid. Cadres had not followed up the land reform with assurances to peasants that private land would not be nationalised, “thus settling their feelings towards production.” Violation of the middle peasants' interests in teams had “injured the incentive to produce of the large majority of independent peasants in the population of the new [liberated] areas.”

41 Political Bureau, “Directive on Stopping the Blind Flow of Peasants into the Cities,” April 17, 1953, New China Monthly, No. 5, 1953, pp. 177–178Google Scholar.

42 A very useful analysis of this problem, in English, is Kojima, Reiitsu, “Grain Acquisition and Supply in China,” Contemporary China, V, 1961–1962, pp. 65–88Google Scholar.

43 Editorial, “Increasing Grain Production is the Major Task of the Agricultural Production Front,” People's Daily, April 13, 1953: “Of course, because Chinese agriculture at present is still mainly a small agricultural economy, we definitely cannot adopt the administrative methods of direct planning and command—compel peasants to raise grain production—but we can only adopt economic methods of work via market activity, and methods of political work the peasants can accept to attain it.” Tzu-hui's, Teng speech, “Basic Tasks,” of 07 2, 1953Google Scholar, contained the following warning to cadres who were looking towards an early socialisation of agriculture:

If you consider that the individual [independent] peasants currently do not occupy an extremely important status, that the mutual aid co-operation movement can, within a short period, take in all peasants, that now, apart from a very small number, the peasants can already accept the system of collective farms, then you are without doubt absolutely mistaken.

44 See especially Sun Hsiao-ts'un and Hsiao Hsi-in, “Some Problems in Promoting the Mutual Aid Co-operation Movement,” and Central Committee, “Resolution on Mutual Aid Co-operation.”

45 Chen, Wu, “In Developing Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives We Must Adopt the Methods of Persuasion, Example and State Assistance,” Study, No. 8, 1954, pp. 21–24Google Scholar. Chen referred to spring 1955 as a period of “struggle against subjectivism, bureaucratism and arbitrary orders.”

46 “Kwangtung Carries Out Policies to Raise Peasants' Incentive to Produce,” People's Daily, August 24, 1953.

47 Statistical Materials on Agricultural Co-operativisation.

48 Lin T'ie, “How One Hundred Thousand Co-operatives in Hopei were Reorganised.”

49 Statistical Materials on Co-operativisation.

50 Editorial, “We Must Concentrate Effort on Consolidating the Existing Ninety Thousand Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives,” People's Daily, May 26, 1954.

51 Central Committee, “Resolution on Developing Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives” (12 16, 1953Google Scholar).

52 Statistical Materials on Co-operativisation.

53 See Central Committee, “Resolution“ of December 16, 1953; editorial, “We Must With a Great Fanfare Publicise the General Line for the Transition Period Among the Peasants,” People's Daily, 12 9, 1953Google Scholar.

54 “Why Must Grain be Sold to the State?”, Southern Daily, December 1, 1953. Thus, Kwangtung cadres, having been guilty of adventurism in summer 1953, were now criticised for being too conservative. It is worth noting that T'ao Chu, in November 1955, confirmed that the pressure for “stable productive relations” was so strong in the second half of 1953 that a proposal was made (by whom is not revealed) to postpone the introduction of the government's all-important Central Purchase and Central Supply Scheme for grain into Kwangtung and Kwangsi for six months. Chu, T'ao, “Strengthen the Leadership, Guarantee Quality and Carry Out the Co-operativisation Tasks Throughout Kwangtung,” Southern Daily, 11 25, 1955Google Scholar.

55 Editorial, “Correctly Implement the Central Committee's Resolution on Developing Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives,” People's Daily, January 9, 1954, reprinted in New China Monthly, No. 2, 1954, pp. 147–149.

56 Editorial, “Actively Direct the Stable, Step-like Progress; Strive to Achieve the Plan for Developing Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives,” People's Daily, January 16, 1954, reprinted in New China Monthly, No. 2, 1954, pp. 149–151.

57 Teng Tzu-hui, “Questions Regarding Rural Work.”

58 Statistical Materials on Agricultural Co-operativisation.

59 “All areas of Kwangtung, after Completing Their Grain Levying and Purchasing Tasks, Actively Open a Co-operative Campaign,” Southern Daily, January 17, 1955.

60 Statistical Materials on Agricultural Co-operativisation. This was the lowest membership rate in China.

61 Ibid.

62 The best general account of the campaign is: State Council “Resolution on the Spring Arable Production“ (March 3, 1955), Compendium of Laws and Regulations of the Chinese People's Republic (Peking: Legal Publishing House, 1956), I (September 1954–June 1955), pp. 368–376Google Scholar. A good survey is also given by Wu Chen, “In Developing Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives We Must Adopt the Methods of Persuasion.” For a report on the campaign in Kwangtung see Tzu-yang, Chao (Head of the Rural Work Bureau for South China), Concrete Principles and Tasks in Kwangtung Agricultural Production (Canton: Southern People's Publishing House, 1954)Google Scholar. Chao classified 30 per cent. of co-operatives and teams in Kwangtung as “healthy”; 50 per cent. had many problems concerning mutual benefit, some “blindness” and weak cadres; 20 per cent. were “bad,” characterised by coercion.

63 Editorial, “Mutual Aid Teams are the Important Foundation of Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives,” People's Daily, January 19, 1954, reprinted in New China Monthly, No. 2, 1954, pp. 151–152.

64 Wu Chen, “In Developing Agricultural Producers' Co-operatives We Must Adopt the Methods of Persuasion.”

65 Editorial, “Hold Fast to the Principles of Mutual Benefit and Voluntariness,” Szechuan Jih-pao (Szechuan Daily), January 17, 1955.

66 The significance of crowning with hats and of public ridicule in Chinese society is well indicated in the following extract from Tse-tung's, Mao “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” March 1927, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1964), I, p. 37Google Scholar.

A tall paper hat is stuck on the head of one of the local tyrants or evil gentry, bearing the words “Local tyrant so-and-so.” … He is led by a rope and escorted with big crowds in front and behind. … This form of punishment more than any other makes the local tyrants and evil gentry tremble. Anyone who has once been crowned with a tall paper hat loses face altogether and can never again hold up his head. Hence many of the rich prefer being fined to wearing the tall hat.

67 “How to Treat the Individual Peasants,” Cheng-chih Hsueh-hsi (Political Study), No. 5, 1955, pp. 25–29Google Scholar.

68 Yen, Li, “In Running the Co-operatives we Must Rely on the Poor and Lower Middle Peasants,” People's Daily, 12 27, 1955Google Scholar. Out of 2,182 co-operatives in Fengjun county, during 1954 rich and upper middle peasants controlled positions of leadership in 407 co-operatives; in 54 co-operatives none of the members were poor peasants.

69 Figures collected from many sources, including national and provincial newspapers, suggest that in many provinces the number of pigs reached its peak in 1953 or 1954, fell sharply during 1955 to a low point in spring-summer 1956, and only regained its pre-co-operativisation level at the end of 1957:

In Chekiang, where over 80 per cent. of households reared pigs and household income from pigs was second only to grain, after September 1954 numbers were reported to decline rapidly as slaughter and death from lack of fodder increased. The Chekiang Daixly referred to a “great wave of selling” before the co-operativisation campaign got under way: editorial, “Develop Pig Production, Strive to Fulfil this Year's Tasks for Producing and Marketing Pigs,” Chekiang Jih-pao (Chekiang Daily), February 9, 1955. In Szechuan, , where the death rate among draught animals was also very high, the provincial committee issued orders in January and again in February 1955 to try to “stabilise the attitude to rearing of peasants who are both inside and outside the co-operatives“: “Energetically Solve the Problem of Draught Animals in the Spring Ploughing,” Szechuan Daily, 03 3, 1955Google Scholar

70. However, it was officially stated that in Hopei, while natural disasters and fodder supplies had been partly to blame, “the main cause was the long repayment period and low prices fixed for members' oxen in the co-operativisation campaign.… Thus the question of draught animals becomes one of the central problems in the mutual benefit and unity between poor peasant members and middle peasant members.” “The Experience and Lessons of Hopei Province's Handling of the Draught Animal Problem in Co-operatives,” People's Daily, June 11, 1955, reprinted in New China Monthly, No. 7, 1955, pp. 180–181.

71 State Council, “Resolution on the Spring Arable Production.” Also “Make a Point of Emphasising that the View—‘Vacillation of Peasants is Inevitable’—Is Mistaken,” Political Study, No. 5, 1955, pp. 34–37Google Scholar.

72 Editorial, “On Allocating Village Work for the Spring Season,” People's Daily, March 5, 1955.

73 Editorial, “Why Must We Emphasise the Work of Consolidating the Co-operatives?”, People's Daily, February 28, 1955; State Council, “Resolution on Spring Arable Production,” Tzu-ch'eng, Lo, “On the Work of Consolidating the Co-operatives,” Study, No. 6, 1955, pp. 5–8Google Scholar.

74 San p'ing literally means “three estimates.” It was the official, short-hand phrase referring to the valuation of co-operative members' land, animals and tools either to determine their rent or the terms on which they would be brought into collective ownership.

75 The People's Daily editorial, “Correctly Put Across the Concrete Policies of Co-operativisation to the Vast Number of Peasants,” March 14, 1955, summed up: At present the most important key to raising the peasants' incentive, apart from improving the central purchase and supply of grain, is to reform and consolidate the co-operatives according to the principles of voluntariness and mutual benefit.

76 The opening words of the State Council “Resolution on the Spring Arable Production Work” (March 1955) emphasise this:

If growth of agricultural production does not catch up, it is bound to affect the First Five-Year Plan, the speed of industrialisation, continuous improvement in the standard of living and thus the consolidation of the rural-urban alliance.

77 Chih-fu, Ku, “Obligations of Co-operativisation towards Light Industry,” Study, No. 12, 1955, pp. 3–4Google Scholar. However, in 1954 other light industries had only been able to operate at much lower capacity: soap 40 per cent., flour 54 per cent., tobacco 30 per cent.

78 State Statistical Bureau, Ten Great Years (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1959)Google ScholarPubMed.

79 Li Hsien-nien, “Report on the 1954 (actual) and 1955 (proposed) State Budgets.”

80 Ku Chih-fu, “Obligations of Co-operativisation.” Industrial production in Shanghai fell by 4·5 per cent. in 1955. Kc-chien, Ch'en and Min-chung, Kan, The Objective Basis of the Rapid Attainment by China of Higher Stage Agricultural Co-operattvisation (Shanghai: People's Publishing House, 1956)Google Scholar.

81 Ten Great Years.

82 T. C. Liu and K. C. Yeh, The Economy of the Chinese Mainland.

83 “Several Key Questions in Raising Agricultural Production in Kwangtung,” Southern Daily, February 11, 1953.

84 From figures in Kwangtung Provincial People's Government Statistical Bureau, ”Report on the Situation Concerning the Increase in Grain Production in Kwangtung during 1954,” Southern Daily, 12 19, 1954Google Scholar. The estimate of 1952 grain production had already been increased by 11 per cent.

85 From figures in Kwangtung Province Statistical Bureau, “Report on the State of Agricultural Production in Kwangtung during 1955,” Southern Dally, 12 28, 1955Google Scholar.

86 The first estimate for 1954, 220 hundred million catties, was first reduced to 214,, then to 200 and finally amended to 219.

87 Tzu-yang, Cho, “Questions Concerning Agricultural Co-operativisation and Measures to Fulfil the Agricultural Plan,” Southern Daily, 09 25, 1955Google Scholar.

88 Ibid. Chao also stated that probably 70 per cent. of the Five-Year Plan target for increasing grain output would have to be fulfilled in the last two years.

89 In Kwangtung, orders to increase the grain levy by 5 per cent. to assist disaster areas were resisted by “base-ist” cadres or cadres who yielded to local pressures to retain more grain. See Southern Daily, November 15, 16 and 20, 1954, February 17, 1955.

90 The winter sown area in Kwangtung was 3 million mou greater than in the previous year but output fell, partly because of the seed shortage. (Southern Daily, April 2, 1955). In June, it was reported that West Kwangtung had 40 per cent. less seed than it required to fulfil its plan (Southern Daily, June 12, 1955).

91 Hsien-nien, Li, “Financial Work and Agricultural Co-operativisation,” Ta Kung Poo, 11 8, 1955Google Scholar.

92 R. Kojima, “Grain Acquisition and Supply in China.”

93 South China Bureau of the Central Committee of the C.C.P., “Directive on Doing the Preparatory Work of the Spring Ploughing Well and Strengthening the Field Management of the Winter Ploughing and Spring Crop,” Southern Daily, 01 16, 1955Google Scholar.

94 State Council “Resolution on the Spring Arable Production.”

95 In Kwangtung by 10 per cent. Chu, T'ao, “All Must Strive to Fulfil this Year's Plan for Agricultural Production,” Southern Daily, 02 15, 1955Google Scholar.

96 In parts of Kwangtung the supplementary supplies were large enough (a) to reduce peasants’ incentive to fight the spring drought (Southern Daily, April 23, 1955) and (b) to allow peasants to waste grain on livestock (Southern Daily, June 20, 1955).

97 Editorial, “Firmly and Unequivocably Implement the Party's Grain Policies,” Southern Dotty, June 28, 1955.

98 “We Must Implement Policies Correctly,” People's Daily, September 19, 1955.

99 Editorial, “Do not Neglect Leadership of the Mutual Aid Teams,” People's Daily, May 7, 1955.

100 While introducing the First Five-Year Plan to the National People's Congress in July 1955, Li Fu-ch'un said that some people considered the plan to be too ambitious and were advocating slower industrialisation because otherwise it would impose an excessive burden on the peasants. Li replied that the Plan targets had already been reduced but, though still high, they could be achieved. Fu-ch'un, Li, “Report on the First Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy,” First Five-Year Plan of the C.P.R. for the Development of the National Economy, 1953–1957 (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1955), pp. 159–238, pp. 183 and 196Google Scholar.

101 Liao Lu-yen claimed that, on average, co-operatives had raised crop yields by 15–20 per cent. and he considered that this could be “relied upon.” Lu-yen, Liao, “Report on the State of Agricultural Production in 19S4 and Measures to Increase Present Production,” March 3, 1955, Rural Work Problems of 1955 (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1955), pp. 10–23Google Scholar.

102 An unrivalled collection of materials, on how co-operatives of every province had handled all kinds of problems, an instruction book for cadres, is: General Office of the Central Committee of the C.C.P., The Socialist High Tide in the Chinese Countryside (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1956), 3 volumesGoogle Scholar. Many of the reports were first published separately between 1954 and 1956.

103 Lo Tzu-ch'eng, “On the Work of Consolidating the Co-operatives,” painted a very gloomy picture of the state of co-operatives.

104 “How to Treat Peasants Demanding to Leave Co-operatives Correctly,” Political Study, No. 5, 1955, pp. 43–44Google Scholar. The deteriorating grain situation has already been documented.

105 The People's Daily editorial, “Do Not Neglect Leadership of the Mutual Aid Teams,” discussing the question of attracting middle peasants, into co-operatives, concluded “there is still not a trend towards their joining in large numbers.”

106 Liao Lu-yen, “Report on the State of Agricultural Production.”

107 Li Hsien-nien, “Financial Work and Agricultural Co-operativisation.”

108 “Experience-ism” is a translation of the same Chinese term as “empiricism.” In the Dictionary of New Terms (Shanghai: Ch'un Ming Publishing House, 1952), p. 5086Google ScholarPubMed, the former is listed under “social section,” the latter under “philosophical section.” Experience-ism is the extreme opposite of dogmatism “but they are both subjectivism and in the end share the same characteristic—one-sidedness. Experienceism emphasises personal, one-sided knowledge, blindly takes partial direct experience as the. standard of all truth. The error of experience-ism is that it lacks wide cognition and denies the value of theory and its role as a guide to action.” The New Small Dictionary of Knowledge (Nanking: South Kiangsu Publishing Co., 1953), p. 206Google Scholar: “… experience is specific, narrow, by no means usable for general situations.… Only by dialectically matching experience with theory and then, via analysis and induction, raising it to become a principle, a theory, can it be used.”

109 Mao Tse-tung, “On the Question of Agricultural Co-operativisation.”

110 In 1954, according to a national survey, there was already considerable inequality of ownership between poor and rich peasants:

Source: Ta-lin, Tung, Agricultural Co-operation in China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1959), pp. 30 and 38Google Scholar.

111 For example, Shu-ying, Han and Che-min, Wang, “From Mao Tse-tung's ‘On the Question of Agricultural Co-operativisation’ Know and Study the Important Significance of Marxist-Leninist Philosophy,” in a pamphlet of the same title (Shanghai: People's Publishing House, 1956), pp. 13–29Google Scholar(first published Kuangming Daily, November 30, 1955):

Mao Tse-tung's method of viewing problems is correct; in past Party struggles, Mao has always stood higher than other people, has seen further, in the last analysis has genuinely grasped the nature and spirit of Marxist-Leninist philosophy and has been good at using it to examine problems arising in China's revolution(p. 14).

112 Yün, Ch'en, “Mao Tse-tung's report ‘On the Question of Agricultural Co-operativisation ‘is a Model Combination of Theory and Reality,” People's Daily, 11 13, 1955Google Scholar, reprinted in Collected Essays on the Socialist Reform of Agriculture (3rd collection) (Peking: Financial and Economic Publishing House, 1957), pp. 121–128.

113 Li-Ch'un, Hsu, “The Theoretical Force of Mao Tse-tung's ‘On the Question of Agricultural Co-operativisation,” Study, No. 12, 1955, pp. 17–20Google Scholar.

114 Nan-sen, Hwang and Ch'ing-shu, Wang, On the Objective Foundation of the Co-operativisation High Tide in China (Shanghai: People's Publishing House, 1956)Google Scholar.

115 Han Shu-ying and Wang Che-min, “From Mao Tse-tung.…”

116 T'ao Chu, “Strengthen the Leadership…” and Chu, T'ao, “The Great Development of Co-operativisation in New Areas and the Question of Guaranteeing Quality,” Study, No. 12, 1955, pp. 5–9Google Scholar. T'ao claimed that the class structure of Kwangtung, however, particularly favoured co-operativisation. Poor peasants still accounted for 40 per cent. of the total, poor peasants who had achieved middle peasant status (after the land reform) did not exceed 30 per cent., and of those 70 per cent. were lower middle peasants.

117 Reports from Chekiang, and Hopei, are published in New China Monthly, No. 11, 1955, pp. 144–147Google Scholar.

118 Central Committee of the C.C.P., “Resolution on the Question of Co-operativisation” (October 11, 1955), New China Monthly, No. 11, 1955, pp. 9–13Google Scholar.

119 Ch'en Ko-chien and Kan Min-chung, The Objective Basis… of Higher Stage Co-operativisation, states that “a great many areas” did not go via co-operatives “or even teams” but instead formed collectives which, in some cases, covered entire hstang. While most writers at the time sought to explain the leap into collectives, Tung Ta-lin, Agricultural Co-operation in China, chose to pretend thai it had not happened: “Socialist transformation of agriculture in China was carried out in a gradual and systematic way” (p. 55). “As a matter of fact, in the course of its development the co-operative of the semi-socialist type had gradually created all the necessary conditions for its transition to a fully socialist type” (p. 58).

120 These areas had a good basis for collectivisation. By summer 1955, 34 per cent. of households in the north-east provinces had joined co-operatives, 41 per cent. in Shansi and 35 per cent. in Hopei. Some hsien and hsiang had up to 80 per cent. membership. Central Committee, “Resolution on the Question of Co-operativisation.”

121 Ta-chang, Li, “The State of the Co-operativisation Campaign in Szechuan,” June 26, 1956, Hsin Hua Pan-yueh K'an (New China Fortnightly), No. 15, 1956, pp. 39–41Google Scholar.

122 Ibid. Chi Ch'en, “Szechuan Villages with a Rich Harvest,” People's Daily, June 11, 1956. Both warned against speedy collectivisation in Szechuan.

123 “The Method of Estimating land Productivity in Newly Formed Co-operatives of Three Hsiang, Kiukong hsien,” Southern Daily, October 29, 1955.

124 ibid.; editorial, “Organise More and Better Co-operatives,” Southern Daily, November 1, 1955; editorial, “In the Centre of San P'ing We Must Preserve Mutual Benefit,” Southern Daily, November 4, 1955.

125 An informative general account of this and other features of the “high tide” is given by Tzu-hui, Teng, “The State of Co-operativisation and Future Work Tasks,” People's Daily, 05 8, 1956Google Scholar, reprinted in New China Fortnightly, No. 12, 1956, pp. 49–50. In Kwangtung 2–3 yuan was a common price paid to peasants for a small draught animal. A co-operative in Linping hsien collectivised one animal at 0·3 yuan, which was the purchase price of 6 eggs. See editorial, “Stop the Continued Occurrence of the Phenomenon of Great Numbers of Draught Animal Deaths,” Southern Daily, March 12, 1956. While co-operatives could thus acquire small animals virtually free from members, in the market they had to pay high prices, presumably for working beasts. For example, co-operatives in Taishan hsien paid 86 yuan per draught animal in November 1955 (“Co-operatives in the Second District of Taishan Hsien Actively Plan to Solve the Difficulty of Inadequate Draught Animal Power,” Southern Daily, November 28, 1955). By virtually confiscating small young animals, collectives put the entire future supply of working animals in jeopardy. In 1955, over 62 per cent.of female cows in Kwangtung did not become pregnant and over 70,000 died of cold, famine and neglect: Kwangtung People's Committee, “Directive on Guaranteeing the Fulfilment of Cattle Production Tasks for 1956 and 1957,” Southern Daily, 12 31, 1955Google Scholar.

126 Ch'en Ko-Chien and Kan Min-chung, The Objective Basis. In Eastern Kwangtung rents were excessively depressed (Southern Daily, December 5, 1955); throughout Kwangtung the co-operatives tended to discriminate against poor peasants by fixing rent according to actual, not potential, productivity of land. (Editorial, “In the Centre of San P'ing We Must Preserve Mutual Benefit.”)

127 T'ao Chu, “Strengthen the Leadership,” and “The Great Development of Co-operativisation.”

128 En-lai, Chou, “Political Report,” January 14, 1956, New China Fortnightly, No. 5, 1956, pp. 1–10Google Scholar.

129 “Draft Outline of the Plan for the Development of Chinese Agriculture, 1956–1967,” January 23, 1956, New China Fortnightly, No. 4, 1956, pp. 2–5Google Scholar.

130 In Kwangtung there was a close correlation between the target for grain production and planned rate of collectivisation. Following the call for a “leap” in 1956, the provincial authorities raised the 1956 target of grain several times between the end of 1955 and 1956 to a level far higher than its 1957 First Five-Year Plan target had been. The 1957 Target at End of 1955 was 244 (hundred million catties); The 1956 targets were revised as follows: 248, 260, 260–276, 269, 279. Thereafter, the targets were reduced once again. The plan, at the end of 1955, to have 385 collectives in Kwangtung by spring 1956, was raised to one of 10,000 in February. By April 1956 the fact that 44 per cent.of households were already in collectives was said to be “in the spirit of the long-term plan for agriculture.”

131 Hwang Nan-sen and Wang Ch'ing-shu, On the Objective Foundation.

132 Ch'ih, Ch'en, On Co-operativisation (Peking: People's Publishing House, 1956), pp. 52–53Google Scholar.

133 Hwang Nan-sen and Wang Ch'ing-shu, On the Objective Foundation, Ch'en Ch'ih, On Co-operativisation; Ch'en Ko-chien and Kan Min-chung, The Objective Basis claimed that the number of hours worked in the collective sector by upper middle peasants was “generally” 35 per cent. below that of poor peasants.

134 Statistical Materials on Agricultural Co-operativisation. Only figures for the 26,005 purely agricultural co-operatives have been used; those for the 728 vegetable co-operatives in the State Statistical Bureau's survey have been excluded.

135 Editorial, “Spread the Good Points About High Level Co-operatives to Peasants,” Southern Daily, October 7, 1956.

136 Chu, Tao, “Problems Concerning Agricultural Co-operativisation and Agricultural Production,” Southern Daily, 12 30, 1955Google Scholar.