Life in the countryside and the peasant's discontent - Lee Yu See

1. The Peasants' Plight

A western journalist reported on 3rd July,1979 in Peking ---- they were sleeping under the huge Zhengyangmen Gate, filthy children, red-eyed women, sullen men --- a new, usually unseen social force marring Peking's antiseptic streets like a boil about to burst .....

Hundreds of (other) vagrants --- an unprecedented phenomenon here --- are sleeping inside the Supreme Court building, the post office and sometimes even along the famous Avenue of Eternal Peace.... The vagrants are allowed to nest in places not usually visited by foreigners, but Chinese see them... Late last year when, people from outlying areas began to stream into Peking with injury claims, political difficulties and job demands, some observers estimated that tens of thousands of persons were sleeping rough somewhere in the city. Those at Zhengyangmen Gate reported a cleanup before this year's May Day festival, with many persons sent home. But they guessed that several thousand like them still remained in the capital.1

Indeed by January 1979, hundreds and thousands of peasants from different, provinces had arrived in Peking. Many had walked all the way to Peking (some from far away provinces). It was estimated that 34,000 peasants actually went into the city with nine times as many being barred from entering Peking. Only temporary make-shift shelters were obtained in the severe cold of 10 degrees centigrade. Some were known to have been frozen to death. The peasants were petitioning to those in high authorities, asking to see them, and some organised marches and processions some of which were joined by the young people spearheading the democratic movement for a more detail discussion on the democratic movement.

It was also reported that on 27th January, the Chinese New Year Eve, CCP chairman Hua Guo-feng had invited 30,000 guests for celebrations at the People's Great Hall. When Hua and the guests were toasting and having their social dances, several hundred thinly and inadequately dressed peasants were asking to see Hua and they were driven away by the guards: two were arrested and reported to have been beaten up.

What do the peasants want?

The western journalist quoted in the first paragraph is correct saying that the peasants had come with injury claims, political difficulties and job demands. But perhaps he had not made sufficient count of the fact that the peasants are also demanding an improvement in their material well-being in the countryside. In their banners which carried in their marches, they shouted aloud: "anti- persecution anti-hunger."

The events in Peking point to the fact that all is not well in the countryside in China today.

Yet it has been commonplace belief, not only among the Maoists but also others on the 'left', be they economists, sociologists and laymen, that China has for long solved the food problem and been self-sufficient in grains. To many people who are concerned with problems of development in the 'third world', China serves as an example and a model.

All one can say now is that the propaganda of the Chinese communists has been swallowed hook, line and sinker too easily. And to those who have visited China and come out with rosy pictures, we can simply note that they had gone on guided tours and were led by the Chinese communists to look at thing which they wanted the visitors to see.

For now, even Vice Premier Teng Hsiao-ping has said, recently at a national conference in Science (held between 17th March and 31st Mach 1978) that "although several billion people are working on getting enough to eat, we have not really solved our problems of food."

Reality in the countryside in China today, and for most of the time during the past thirty years under the bureaucratic rule of the communists is one of poverty and deprivation.

The present situation is not as bad as that between 1960 and 1962. During those three years (as a result of natural calamities but more importantly as a result of the disastrous policies of Mao Tse-tung --- explained in a section below), there were widespread famines and starvation. In those days, the peasants were having to eat wild potatoes much of them poisonous and many died as a result of eating them. Little girls were married off to some of the slightly better off areas in exchange for small amount of rice and sweet potatoes. Peasants in the worst affected regions in Shangtung, Kiangsu and Anwei were going to other provinces.

Some from Anwei went to Fukien which was equally suffering from famine. Many were begging and falling sick. One hundred and twenty thousand people from the Kwantung Province streamed across the border into Hong Kong within one week in 1962. In 1959, the people of Hong Kong were already sending eight hundred and seventy thousand food parcels to their relatives, in China via the post but by 1961, it had increased to three million seven hundred thousand. During the three years, it was estimated that fifty million people died of starvation and malnutrition.

After 1962, the Chinese economy as a whole recovered but with the exception of those living in the model communes which are constantly visited by foreigners and those market-gardening in the outskirts of big cities like Peking, Shanghai and Canton, most peasants in the Chinese countryside have continued and are continuing to find that they lack adequate food, adequate clothing and the money to purchase daily essentials. In the province of Honan, in order that the problem of food becomes less acute, during the period when there is not a great demand for labour in the field, old men together with women and children were released from the communes to beg from elsewhere. Particularly during the very lean years, the members of the communes obtained official documents from the Party Secretary of the commune to go to other provinces like Kwangtung, Kwangsi, etc. They are allowed to travel on trains free of charge and with young and old, they beg as they roam by sleeping in the streets. The coins they collect by begging are exchanged into notes and sent back home for the young people who stay behind.

In Szechuan particularly in the eastern and northern parts, the peasants find the amount of staple food distributed to them can only last for eight or nine months. So in order to economise, they eat the stem of the sweet potato plant which used to be taken to feed pigs in older times. In Kweichow, some peasants go up to the mountains in groups to eat edible wild plants.

Rice has been known to be the staple food of many in China. Yet for many peasants, the chief source of calories has been sweet potatoes and to them white rice is reserved for festivals and the sick. In the supply of rice, the peasants in the food producing areas of Chekiang, Hunan and Hupeh are slightly better off and yet in these areas where good harvests of rice are possible, the peasants are required to work harder. But similarly to the peasants in other regions, they are so poor that they do not have resources to procure sufficient salt, or soap.

During the planting, ploughing and harvesting seasons, the peasants in China labour for fifteen to sixteen hours. One might expect that they can get a little rest at other times. But nay, when they are not busy in the fields, they are mobilised to labour in mending roads, irrigation projects, and other construction works --- very often in cold freezing weather and even at festival times. On average, each member of a commune labours this way for one hundred days out of the 365 in a year. Such labour is unpaid.

While the barefoot doctors have helped to eliminate epidemics in the Chinese countryside, they are not equipped to tackle illness arising out of under nourishment. Since everyone is supposed to work hard in the field, a sick person will be taken to the hospital in the town which is often many miles away (sometimes on foot on the piggy-back of a relatives, in areas which are hilly) only when the person is very sick. The sick person dies on arrival.

2. The Peoples' Commune: Liberation or Enslavement?

Much has been written by the Maoists and their apologists on collectivization of agriculture in the form of the Peoples' Communes and how the Communes led to high increase in productivity and are themselves representing a socialist transformation of society.

A Maoist apologist rationalised thus: immediately after the completion of land reform in 1953, attempts were made to speed up the process of agricultural cooperation through the campaign to set up mutual aid teams. The next stage of the movement saw them made 'socialist' in their essential features ...Mao and his followers insisted on an accelerated pace of cooperatisation with a view to raise agricultural productivity and to halt the polarization of classes in the countryside .... Mao considered.... the collectivization movement in China was an attempt to bring about a "cultural revolution" in the countryside and thereby transforming the relations of production.

Under certain circumstances, the Maoists argue, it is only through the changes in the relations of production and the ideological superstructure that the productive forces can develop rapidly .... By "relations of production", the Chinese refer not only to the "ownership system" and "distribution system" but also to "social relations in the production process". The Chinese leave little doubt as to essential elements of these "social relations". They refer particularly to the "Three Major Differences" the differences between town and country, between workers and peasants, the separation between manual and mental labour. A socialist transformation of the relations of production would necessitate, among other things, the progressive narrowing and ultimate elimination of these differences. It is equally important to note the Chinese conception of the productive forces... The Chinese recognise three components of the productive forces instruments of labour, objects of labour, and the labourers, with their production experience, skill and political consciousness.... the Chinese stress that it is PEOPLE with their [correct] political consciousness that is most important and decisive. By calling forth the political and productive initiative of the people, it is held, the productive forces could be pushed ahead even without significant changes in the instruments and objects of labour. But this necessitates the transformation of people's consciousness as well as the relations of production....In China,... the collectivization movement was aimed to effect above all a socialist transformation of the relations of production in the countryside.

So within two months after Mao Tse-tung had issued the directive in the summer of 1958 to form Peoples' Communes, the five billion peasants in the seven hundred and forty thousand agricultural producers' cooperatives were organised and transformed into twenty-six thousand Peoples' Communes.

With so much confidence that his theory would work, Mao spoke of enormous increases in agricultural (and industrial) production. The red banners of "general policy of socialist construction" (the joint development of industry and agriculture by the simultaneous utilisation of modern and traditional productive methods, and "the Great Leap Forward" (the attempt to vastly increase production especially steel and power ) and "the peoples communes" were raised sky high. The result? Three years of famines, starvation and economic difficulties as described in the section above.

What happened? Firstly within a short period of time, large scale People's Communes were set up, incorporating the former agricultural producers' co-operatives, and the Communes often contain 5,000 to 6,000 households. A system of free supply of grain was introduced along with communal mess hall, nurseries, laundress, etc. Child care, medical services, and education were free. All private plots of land were eliminated and all houses, livestock, farming tools, cooking utensils or fruit trees became communally owned. It must be pointed out that in the beginning, the idea of the commune appealed to many of the peasants and the masses show unheard of creativity and spirit and were in fact carrying out great experiments in socialism. Yet too, in the process, it was clear that many in the countryside, particularly the middle peasants, were resisting the switch over to communes. And so on the eve of communisation, these peasants would have slaughtered all of their livestock and poultry and eaten up everything they possessed so that these things would not be taken away from them. As a result of such activities, shortly after the establishment of the communes, the supplies of non-grain foodstuff became scarcer and scarcer.

But everyone was soon to be disillusioned when the real meaning of communisation was realised.

In reality, the Great Leap was primarily a production drive and the People's Communes were but tools which would mobilise labour on a large scale and in a more specialised fashion to bring about great increases in agricultural production to further a process of industrialisation which would enable the country to catch up with the towns.

Speaking about the advantages of Peoples' Communes, Mao was frank in pointing out "the good thing about it [the Peoples' Commune] is that it brings the workers, peasants, traders, students and soldiers together so that it is easier to lead."

"To lead" to the Chinese communists is "to control".

Communization meant "politics in command", "the party secretary in command", "the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of the party secretary of the commune", "the militarization of organisations", with combat-like actions and activities and "the collectivisation of all aspects of life".

In other words, after the peasants joined the communes, they found that they were coerced by political, military and police pressure to carryon production. They were forced to labour. In order that not one minute was lost, the peasants received technical training and ideological education while they were having their meals. Communal dining halls and child care meant all women would be required to work in the fields and the construction works like all men. Like serfs and slaves, in exchange for the "free meals", the Chinese peasants had 'sold' their whole bodies and time to the Party which organised them into a tightly controlled regiment. They became a simple number, to be working, days or nights, in accordance to the will of the Party cadres. Yet the "meals" they got in return very often were not properly cooked and often too, peasants had to walk a long distance to arrive at the communal mess hall to wait long hours to be served.

As for the fruits of labour, the state took thirty percent or more. As to the remainder, some was to be used as a source of capital to develop fishery, livestock, forestry, schools, communal facilities etc. and some used to finance the office, the activities and the livelihood of the party cadres. In the end, little was left to the members of the commune. Hopeh, Sechuan, Kwangtung etc. Many others were engaging in passive resistance, in the form of going slow and damaging farm tools etc.

What however led to the disastrous famines and starvation that took place in 1960 to 1962 was the fact that under the authoritarian leadership of many inexperienced party cadres, new but unproven methods were experimented in massive scale in an endeavour to increase production. Such practices led to disastrously lean harvests even in the richer region in southern China. The massive irrigation project in the dry plains in northern China was to turn the, wheat producing region into a high yield rice producing area. The failure of the rash project led to the destruction of large areas of arable land. Further aggravating the situation was the fact that the party cadres continued to report bumper harvests to their superiors resulting in nearly every grain from the commune being sent away to the state. The severe drought and natural calamities and the withdrawal of Russian aid and the demand by the Russians for the repayment of their loans were but the last straws leading to the death and starvation of millions.

As the three banners policies failed dismally, Mao Tse-tung's power was reduced and he had to resign the State Chairmanship although he retained the, Chairmanship of the Party. Liu Shao-chi, Teng Hsiao-ping and others now took command of the economy and they adopted a series of policies to minimize the economic crisis. The size of the communes was reduced, consisting of an average of 1622 households in 1963 instead of the original average of 5,000. The production team, which had in 1963 an average membership of 24 households, instead of the commune became the accounting unit. The production team was supposed to own the land, certain agricultural implement, domestic animals, and have autonomy with regard to production operations, use of labour, management, and distribution of income. The experiments in free supply of grain on a commune-wide scale were wound up together with the mess halls. Liu Shao-chi also advocated san zi yi bao (the extension of plots for private use and free markets, the increase of small enterprises with sole responsibility for their own profits or losses, and the fixing of output quotas based on the household. 2

"Four Freedoms" (freedom to practise usury, hire labour, buy and sell land and engage in private enterprises).

The implementation of Liu Shao chi's policies which shamelessly made use of the material incentive and material guarantee, revived to a certain extent labour enthusiasm and at the same time, the economy was salvaged and rehabilitated. Mao Tse-tung found Liu's policies obnoxious and he was right in seeing that the over-all effect was to bring about a situation where the peasant's view was limited to producing for the immediate small group or family of which he was a part.

3. Learning from Tachai

Mao held on his own ideas and in 1966, he was to initiate the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to regain power and to continue with his grand design for the Chinese peasantry and society.3 While he was preparing the actual comeback, in 1964 Mao launched a movement with the proclamation of the slogan, "In agriculture, learn from Tachai!"

What is the Tachai road and what is there to learn from Tachai? A booklet called New China's First Quarter-Century issued by the Foreign Languages Press in Peking in 1975 puts it this way: Tachai began to organise mutual-aid teams in 1946. An agricultural producers' cooperative was formed in 1953 which developed into one of the advanced type and finally, in 1956; into a brigade of the Tachai People's Commune.... After more than 20 years of struggle Tachai today is a flourishing, prosperous socialist new village... Tachai is a standard-bearer in continuing the revolution in the rural areas after the transformation of the system of ownership. The people of Tachai have blazed a path for all the Chinese peasants in building a socialist new countryside through consistently following the principle of putting politics in command and placing Mao Tse-tung Thought before everything else, giving full play to the spirit of self-reliance and hard struggle and displaying the communist style of love for the motherland and the collective.

The team "hadn't much in the way of labour or tools, but it had plenty of unity and mutual help and worked hard collectively". Then "in the autumn of 1953 ... the Party branch drew up a ten-year plan for building fields .... It was necessary to terrace the strips of land on the slopes and build fields in the gullies to give good yields despite drought or water-logging.... In the winter of 1955 all 58 able-bodied peasants in the village were sent to work on a project to convert Wolves' Haunt Ravine into 13 productive fields. They worked right through the winter and into spring in freezing wind and snow, throwing up 38 retaining walls across the rugged ravine with stone slates hewn out of the hillsides .... Then a terrific summer downpour in 1956 washed away the fruits of their hard labour .... but the people were not disheartened and went back to work again that winter .... And as if to test the will of the Tachai people, an even heavier rain fell in the summer of 1957. The reservoir and retaining walls crumbled. Even the roads were carried away ..... A meeting of Party members was called and another for the poor and lower-middle peasants to ginger up everybody's will to fight. With cadres and the masses united as one they launched their third assault on Wolves' Haunt.

This was a, tougher campaign than the previous two. For 27 days cadres and members of the co-op battled in snow and freezing weather. Chia Chin-tsai, deputy secretary of the Party branch, wielded the exhausting 19-kg hammer which the landlord in the old society had ordered made especially for him so as to get more work out of him ..... For a whole decade the people worked on like this and brought their plan to fruition ... In 1963 Tachai met another disastrous natural calamity. Heavy pain lashed down wildly on Tachai for seven straight days and nights, devastating most of the fields the people of Tachai had so assiduously built over the previous ten years crops were swept away or flattened, roads were washed out and 97 percent of the houses were badly damaged ... Firmly standing by the Party Branch, they (the poor and middle peasants) .... determined to restore production and rebuild their shattered homes through self- reliance and hard work. Four times they sent back the relief grain, and even with this set back they still reaped a bumper harvest that year, enabling every brigade member to receive his full share of grain as planned. What's more; they fulfilled their original targets for putting aside grain reserves and selling surplus grain to the state."

Since Mao came out victorious in the Cultural Revolution and was able to gain a position of predominance in the bureaucracy, the policies of Liu Shao-chi fell into disgrace. Material incentives were severely condemned and restricted and the peasantry was urged and led to emulate Tachai. Again Mao dreamt that if every production brigade in the countryside emulated from Tachai, there would be "flourishing, prosperous socialist new villages" all over China.

But reality was harsh on Mao and was to lead to the downfall of his followers, the Gang of Four, almost immediately after his death.

Learning or emulating from Tachai, within the context of communes, production brigades and teams being bureaucratically dominated and run on authoritarian lines by the Party secretaries and cadres can only mean hard labour to the peasants. The peasants were urged and organised to work enthusiastically, for long hours and in "snow and freezing weather", to be "wielding exhausting 9-kg hammers which the landlords specially made to get more work out of them", to "send back relief grains" , to be "fulfilling targets and selling surplus grain to the state despite bad weather or setbacks".

Often party secretaries and cadres of the communes set very high targets and reported harvests much higher than the actual would, in order to impress their superiors that their units were like Tachai. Under such cases, the production brigades or communes had to yield to the state an amount much greater than otherwise. At harvest times, the party cadres came to the villages en masse. The pretext was to help in the harvest. In reality, they were to make sure the peasants submitted the exact amount to the state.

False reporting of production over and above actual production was prevalent during the Great Leap and was equally prevalent since the Great Leap. This must be considered to be a major cause of the famines which took place in 1960-62 and near-starvation conditions that the peasants in China found themselves in all these years.

Deputy Secretary of the regional committee of the Party, the Chum Kaing region of Kwangtung Province, Pei Chun-fun was purged recently for false reporting. It was found that when Pei was responsible for the May Chan Commune of the Chui Man County, he falsely reported twenty nine million catties of grain production in excess of actual production. The Commune was thus made to be a model commune of the County and as a result, Pei Chun-fun became a member of the Tenth National Party Congress of the Party. Then he was transferred to the Hai Hong County where he set down the target of one billion catties and insisted that the party cadres at all the lower levels set down and met their respective targets. As, a result, commune members in the County found a continuous drop in grain distribution and cash reward year after year. The People's Daily, which reported the case, also pointed out that when the masses became dissatisfied, Pei and his subordinates, persecuted them with barbarous means. Over a hundred people were beaten up and some died.

The Peoples Daily also last year reported another case of false reporting in An Shan County in Hunan Province. An Shan County was one of the first "progressive counties that learnt from Tachai". However, since 1975, production had progressively fallen for three years --- production in 1977 dropped to four billion and thirty million catties, i.e. 24% less than 1974. Yet the party leaders responsible for the region, in order to hang on to the glory of being a "progressive county that learnt from Tachai" did not dare to report the actual figure of output. False figures were submitted and as a result, the peasants in the County suffered much in their livelihood. To learn from Tachai, many party cadres also took it to mean to do something spectacular like "converting the Wolves' Haunt Ravine into productive fields." In many cases, massive manpower and resources were used up, and though taking years turned out to be a sheer waste of resources. One example is the case of using up in three years, an amount of five hundred thousand yuans RMB, with the help of peasants "voluntary labour" in the communes as well as those in the factories, shops and government departments in the county to set up embankments and retaining walls by the side of a river to bring about one thousand extra mus (one mu is 1/15 hectare) of fields! 4

While the peasants suffered from hard labour and dire poverty, the Party secretaries and cadres have become in fact the new "landlords" of the Chinese countryside. Vested in the hands of the party secretary of the commune is the power of the party, the power of the government bureaucracy, and the financial- and economic power. They are privileged and are not hesitant in making use of their power to further their material well-being. They may ask the ordinary members of the commune to fix up their houses without paying. Their houses may be bigger than those landlords of the past. They place their relatives in favourable positions.

They rape. They persecute people they don't like. They have the power to deduct work-points of the members. They could stop the supply of grains to let the members starve. They give orders to anyone they want to carry out errands for them. Most of them are corrupt. It is useless to complain to their superiors because the superiors usually protect them. (Hence so many saw it necessary to go to Peking). 5

The Peasants sigh, "We are now worse than horses and cattle because they were given free time to eat grass. We have not the "slightest freedom --- not even the freedom to have a belly-full meal." 6 Lee Chui-pei, someone who had lived in the villages in Southern China is to write, "The Chinese villages have gradually become a system of serfdom unparalleled anywhere." 7

Under Mao, the, peasants in fact were unenthusiastic about production, sabotaging tools and machines, collectively stealing produce, even assassinating local party cadres in power positions.

4. The Way Ahead: Teng –Hua's way versus Self-Management

The Chinese bureaucracy, having set the goals of the Four Modernizations (in agriculture, industry, science and technology and national defence), is most concerned about agricultural development particularly an increase in productivity in the countryside.

The Chinese bureaucracy in developing the present strategy have even gone so far in admitting that "over the past ten years, because of the interference and sabotage of Lin Piao and the Gang of Four and the deficiency and mistakes in our work, a very unreasonable burden has been placed on the peasants. A great part of this unreasonable burden is in essence exploitation of the peasants. This

is an urgent problem which has to be resolved in the countryside."

On 5th July, 1978, The People's Daily published The Experience of Shan Heung

It was reported that agricultural production had been found stagnant for four consecutive years in Shan Heung County of the Hunan County's Party leaders and those of the different levels below sought to re-strengthen their work, it was discovered that the peasants of the production teams were laid heavy burdens on their backs from eight sides:

1/ certain units were using the labour, material and financial resources without payments to the production teams to carry out "non-productive" constructions e.g. building many offices for the county's administration.

2/ The party cadres and officials of some units were corrupt, extravagant in expenses, dining and drinking frequently, stealing and seized away the fruits of labour of the commune members. Some went so far as to expropriate the collective savings and capital of the teams.

3/ The communes had to finance the livelihood of an extraordinary number of non-productive officials and cadres (including those temporary ones arriving to promote state directives and the managerial staff of the teams. Ordinary commune members also had to pay the expenditure on constructing high schools, broadcasting facilities, tractors, etc. They also had to pay fees for livestock maintenance, machinery maintenance, water storage maintenance, maintenance of various small scale enterprises, maintenance of cooperative medical facilities etc.

4/ When different levels of government construct rural cultural, educational, sanitary, health or transport facilities, large portions of the expenditure had also to be born by the production teams. Often the subsidies from the state for teachers, for immunisation of diseases of live stock etc. were used by the county or the commune for other purposes. In the end the peasants had to bear the actual expenses. Finally, there were also the road maintenance fees, water irrigation fees etc.

5/ Party cadres and officials made use of the financial resources to purchase bicycles, watches, radios etc. or to repair their own houses without paying back.

6/ Party cadres and officials expropriated for themselves payments made by their superiors who utilised labour power from the communes. It was said that out of a payment of eighty-two yuans RMB; for each labour power used, the peasant was paid only 0.15 yuan.

7/ There had been an excessive amount of basic constructions on the fields. Since 1975, on average, twenty million labour days were used for such constructions. To engage in such works, the peasants had to bring their own money, food, and tools.

8/ The industrial divisions of the county also engaged in the exploitation of the peasants. Some charged high prices. Some provided low quality products. Some cheated in quantities provided. Some agricultural machinery, on arrival at the fields, was useless. And the peasants commented," Selling the cow in exchange for an iron one, but the iron one becomes a dead one!" (For more information on this see The Experiences of Shan Heung which has been quoted from here).

Having painted a fairly accurate picture of how peasants in the Chinese countryside have been exploited; by the state and party bureaucrats, Teng and Hua felt the solution lied in purging a few of the most corrupted and hated officials and strengthening the leadership at different levels from the County Party Committees downwards. Teng and Hua continued to believe in the Leninist myth of a vanguard and a leadership. They felt that all might be boiled down to a question of leadership, and if the leaders have the correct ideas and attitude or if the bad leaders were replaced by good ones, all would be resolved.

In the final analysis, there is little difference between the Mao Tse-tung system and the Teng-Hua system. Both systems are bureaucratically run and managed in an authoritarian way by a self perpetuating class of bureaucrats.

It would be mistaken to consider as some Maoists (e.g. Charles Bettelheim) continue to argue that Mao's road was the socialist road and those in command now are revisionist. It is true that Mao believed in a quicker pace of collectivisation and talked about the communes in terms of total abolition of private ownership, free supply of grains etc. But there is nothing socialist about collectivisation or abolition of private property if societies (or communes) continue to be hierarchically divided into order-givers and order-takers as it was the case under Mao-dominated China. Maoist policies too demonstrated collectivisation by itself was no guarantee to increase in productive forces. In fact they showed that collectivisation coupled with bureaucratic management can obstruct the development of productive forces by destroying the initiative of the people [peasants].

On the other hand the failure of Maoist policies does not go on to show, as the supporters of the free enterprise system would claim, that communism (which implies but is not equal to collectivisation) must fail because it fetters individual initiative. The peasants had produced better and more when material incentives were widely approved and practised and when the individuals' interests were appealed to. One had to admit that the peasants farm their own self private plots with extra care ----in the morning before dawn and in the night when they don't have to take part in collective work, the peasants are found on their own private plots. Travellers in the countryside will not find difficulties in noticing the existence of isolated pockets in the fields where crops appear to be extra green and more flourishing. Those are the private plots of the peasants which have been given great care.

It is also an undeniable fact that when production on private plots was condemned, supplies of pork and other secondary commodities would be lowered, affecting both the country's export and the living standard of the peasants. Nevertheless, these must be seen within the context of a/ the peasants are so poor that they are very much dependent on that little extra production they can obtain from the self private plots for survival and b/ the peasants have been totally disillusioned with a collective system in which they are but slaves of the party.

Indeed the Teng-Hua strategy might lead to an increase in productivity but it must be born in mind that even if their targets of productions and 'modernisation' are achieved, it will not be socialism for the Chinese masses. One can also predict with certainty that before long, bureaucratic control and management will lead to the stagnation of the productive forces.

To the anarchists, the Chinese experience can only lead to the strengthening of their conviction: self-management must be the basis of their new collective society.

August, 1979

By: Lee Yu See

• 1Jay Hatthews in the International Herald Tribune 4th July, 1979.
• 2Tae Kai-kui: 'Agricultural Collectivization and Socialist Construction: The Soviet Union and China' in China Towards Modernisation published by the HK Federation of Students, 1977, pp 277-318.
• 3For a fuller understanding of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, read The Revolution is Dead; Long Live the Revolution edited by Mok Chiu Yu, published by the 70s Biweekly, Hong Kong 1976. For a shorter analysis, read the article by Kan San: 'The GPCR: the Chief Mandarin Asked for Rebellion' collected in Three Essays on the New Mandarins published by Minus 6, Hong Kong, 1978.
• 4Reported in the 20th issue of the Cheng Ming magazine, June 1979, p36-37. Cheng Ming is a monthly periodical published in Hong Kong which is pro-Peking government and is generally regarded as a semi-official publication.
• 5Quoted in the first issue of Huang He, May 1976, p2. Huang He is a magazine published by a group of ex-Red Guards who have been disillusioned with the Maoist regime and fled to Hong Kong.
• 6Cheng Ming, June 1979 p 36.
• 7Huang He, May 1976, p21. There may remain a problem to explain the 'success' of Tachai, which had been observed by many visitors. The following comment by a party cadre from a production brigade in Peking is revealing. Reported in the 18th issue of Cheng Ming, April 1979, the cadre said, "If our production brigade had been supplied with as much investment and loans from the state as some others we might have got somewhere."