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Notes on Hua-tung Commune

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Ward Morehouse
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Extract

This report is based on a visit to Hua-tung people's commune in Kwangtung province. The visit was arranged as part of the programme of the New York State Study Group on Modern China, which travelled in China during July 1973.

Type
Reports from China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 67 , September 1976 , pp. 582 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1976

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References

1. Charles Hoffman of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Andrew Nathan of Columbia University, both members of this study group, were good enough to read the manuscript, comparing it with their notes and making several suggestions and corrections. Needless to say, the responsibility for the report in its present form is entirely mine.

2. “A Kwangtung commune,” FEER, 17 December, 1964, pp. 564–67. This commune was used by T’ao Chu in the early 1960s to introduce a “responsibility system” by which individual peasants were made responsible for the production of a predetermined quota of output, a system subsequently attacked; see, for example, “T’ao Chu is the vanguard in promoting ‘production quotas set at household level’ of China's Krushchev,” by “10,000-li East Wind” of Red Flag of Sun Yat-sen University, Red H.Q. of Canton Combined Committee for Criticism of T’ao Chu, Nan-fang jih-pao (Southern Daily) (Canton), 26 July 1967, in Survey of China Mainland Press (Hong Kong), No. 4011.Google Scholar

3. CCAS, China!: Inside the People's Republic (New York: Bantam, 1972), especially pp. 150–56,170–71,237–40,281 and 286.Google ScholarPubMed

4. “People's communes: how to use the standard visit,” New Left Review, February 1975. The article first appeared in French in Esprit, June 1974, pp. 999–1011.

5. See ibid. Tables 1 and 2 for additional data on land use and agricultural production. There are some not insignificant differences between Derek Davies’ 1964 figures on land use and the figures which were given in 1973 and 1974 to Aubert and myself. By way of illustration:

6. See Aubert, “People's communes,” for further analyses of the meaning of the food grain yield figures and for additional data on income and agricultural production. Aubert considers the 1972 yield of 1,125 catties per mou to apply to total cereal production (i.e. including barley). According to his figures, the rice yield (from two crops) was 1,080 catties per mou. See also my Table 2 below.

7. See ibid, especially Tables 2 and 3.

8. Ibid. Table 3.

9. Aubert (“People's communes”) reported that the commune owned 11 tractors with a h.p. of 35, 11 of 48 and 2 of 28, while my figures show 22 large, commune-owned tractors ranging from 26 to 80 h.p. The tractors owned by production teams and brigades are in smaller h.p. ranges of 10–12 h.p. A decade earlier, Davies reported 25 tractors of the following types and sizes: 8 35 h.p. (British Massey Ferguson), 14 45 h.p. (Rumanian), 2 25 h.p. (Czech), and 1 54 h.p. (Chinese).

10. For further discussion of the rural industrial system in China, see the work of Sigurdson, Jon, e.g. “Rural industrialization in China: approaches and results,” World Development, July-August 1975, pp. 527–38.Google Scholar