ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF COMMUNIST CHINA'S COMMUNES 1959-60

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• Document Page Count: 66
• Document Creation Date: December 27, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 12, 2013
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: October 1, 1960
• Content Type: REPORT

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SECRET
Economic Intelligence Report
N? 121
ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF COMMUNIST CHINA'S COMMUNES
1959-60
CIA/RR ER 60-29
October 1960
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Office of Research and Reports
SECRET
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SECRET
Economic Intelligence Report
ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF COMMUNIST CHINA'S COMMUNES
1959-60
CIA/RR ER 60-29
WARNING
This material contains information affecting
the National Defense of the United States
within the meaning of the espionage laws,
Title 18, USC, Secs. 793 and 794, the trans-
mission or revelation of which in any manner
to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Office of Research and Reports
SECRET
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FOREWORD
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This 50X1
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report reappraises the early phases of the commune movement,
describes the present-day commune, and evaluates its current role and
effectiveness. A brief survey of the recently revived urban commune
also is included.
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CONTENTS
Summary and Conclusions
I. Introduction and Background
Page
1
7
A.
Commune-1 and Commune-2
7
B.
Marxist Concepts
7
C.
Commune-1
9
D.
Decline of Commune-1
12
E.
Reevaluation of Commune-1
14
II.
Commune-2, the Present-Day Rural Commune
15
A.
Party Line
15
B.
Size and Structure of Commune-2
19
1. Size
19
2. Party Apparatus
20
3. Superstructure of the Commune
21
4. Production Brigade
23
5. Production Team
24
C.
Planning and Decision Making
24
D.
Role of the Commune in Modernizing Agriculture . . . .
27
E.
Commune Industry
29
F.
Sources and Uses of Commune Income
31
1. At the Top Level
31
2. At the Production Brigade Level
32
3. Sources of Peasant Income, Incentives, and Private
Production
34
G.
Communal Living and the Family
37
III.
Economic Role and Effectiveness of the Rural Commune . .
40
Iv.
Urban Commune
42
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Appendixes
Page
Appendix A. Chronology of Major Developments in the History
of the Commune Movement in Communist China . . . 45
Appendix B. Photographs
51
Illustrations
Figure 1. Communist China: fdrientation Ma27 inside back
cover
Figure 2. Communist China: Organization of a Rural Commune
(Chart)
21
Figure 3. Communist China: Tractor Station of an Advanced
Commune in Kwangtung Province (Photograph) fol-
lowing page 28
Figure 4. Commune Members Terracing a Graveyard on a Hillside
in South China (Photograph) 52
Figure 5. Irrigating and Applying Fertilizer in the Winter
While Snow Was Still on the Ground in the
"August 1" Commune near Nan-ch'ang in Central
China (Photograph) 53
Figure 6. Communist China: Field Workers Team in Hsin-chiao
Peoples Commune near Canton (Photograph) 53
Figure 7. Communist China: Blacksmith Shop in Hsin-chiao
Peoples Commune near Canton (Photograph) 54
Figure 8. Communist China: Workers in a Village in
Hsin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton
(Photograph) 54
Figure 9. Communist China: Health Clinic in a Building in
Hsin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton
(Photograph)
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10. Communist China: Messhall in Hsin-chiao Peoples
Commune near Canton (Photograph)
Figure 11.
Communist China: Entrance to a "Leap Forward"
Messhall of the Taku Camp in Hsin-chiao Peoples
Commune near Canton (Photograph)
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ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF COMMUNIST CHINA'S COMMUNES*
1959-60
Summary and Conclusions
In its original form the commune movement in Communist China was one
of the most radical experiments in social engineering attempted in mod-
ern times. During the initial phase of the movement, in the fall of
1958, the regime set out to control nearly every aspect of the work and
life of Chinese peasants by means of communes, new monolithic political-
economic-social units run on semimilitary lines.
In mid-1960, after a year and a half of "tidying up," the commune
retains few of its original radical characteristics, although remaining
a strong ideological force. The process of moderating radical features
of the commune and narrowing its economic responsibilities began in
December 1958 and was completed in August 1959, at which time the com-
mune was stabilized in its present-day form. Early factors contributing
to the moderating moves were Soviet criticism and mounting complaints of
peasants and junior officials. Eventually even the top leadership be-
came aware of the poor economic performance of the commune, and, in
August 1959, Premier Chou En-lai publicly admitted that the commune had
been overcentralized and had been too egalitarian and extravagant.
In August 1959, formal action was taken to decentralize ownership of
the principal means of production from the commune to the production
brigade, the next lower level of control, roughly equal in size to the
precommune cooperative farm. To doctrinaire Communists this action was
an ignominious retreat from ownership on a large scale to ownership on
a small scale. The right of the commune to conscript peasant labor and
to siphon off brigade income was sharply restricted. The top level of
the commune continued to operate and own enterprises, and a few com-
munes, such as the showplaces exhibited to foreign tourists, retained
some measure of their original importance. Nevertheless, after August
1959 the commune became in essence a federation of cooperatives consoli-
dated with local government, and it possessed no function not held pre-
viously by the township government, which it had replaced in 1958. The
status of the commune was further reduced in the spring of 1960, when
the regime began encouraging growth of the state farm, an alternative
form of agricultural organization.
* The estimates and conclusions in this report represent the best judg-
ment of this Office as of 1 August 1960.
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Bolstering of the commune concept -- badly needed if the concept was 1
to be saved at all -- began in August 1959 with reassertions periodi-
cally repeated since then that the commune (1) was still regarded as the
best form for transition from collective ownership to ownership by all
the people (state ownership -- for example, a state farm), and there-
after for the transition from socialism to communism; (2) contained
seeds of communism; and (3) would be a mainstay of the program for eco-
nomic development throughout the period of building socialism. The re-
gime has tried to silence domestic critics by reminding them that the
commune is a valuable product of the thought of Mao Tse-tung and that
only imperialists and right opportunists would criticize it. The re-
newed campaign to glorify the rural commune has been conducted more at
the ideological than the practical level. The campaign has not included
efforts to revive the economic authority of the original commune but has
emphasized the importance of the messhall system now operated by the
production brigade and has insisted on the superiority of the commune
system as the means of reaching ultimate Communist goals. Peasants are
taught to think of themselves as members of a commune, not just a pro-
duction brigade.
The average rural commune today is a community of 5,000 households
farming 10,000 acres of land. Since August 1959 the basic agricultural
production unit has been the production brigade in which some 250 house-
holds farm 500 acres. Communes and brigades are tightly controlled
through the Party apparatus, which now includes millions of Party mem-
bers recently recruited in the countryside, primarily among leaders at
the brigade level.
The level of administration in the commune, like that in the town-
ship which it replaced, is the lowest level of local government con-
cerned with rural affairs and operates a variety of economic enterprises,
such as a breeding farm, a blacksmith shop, and a flour mill, primarily
to provide services to its agricultural elements. The Party committee
attached to the commune oversees planning in the commune and supervises
the implementation of state policy by the commune and its brigades. Re-
sponsibility for directing the work of the individual peasants and de-
termining individual incomes has resided with the production brigade
since August 1959. The brigade manages messhalls, retail stores, ele-
mentary schools, nurseries, and homes for old people within the commune.
The production team, lowest echelon in the commune, is known as the
"basic contracting unit" because it performs specific farm tasks -- such
as cultivating certain fields or caring for a certain number of ani-
mals -- and is assigned quotas under a contract signed with the produc-
tion brigade.
During 1959 the Chinese Communists quietly abandoned their policy,
adopted in 1958, of rapidly industrializing the countryside through the
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medium of the commune. The regime currently gives little encouragement
to commune industry that is not useful to the agricultural activities of
the commune. According to official data, as of the end of 1959, there
were only 200,000 commune factories employing 5 million full-time
workers. During 1959 these factories produced about 10 billion yuan*
worth of goods in terms of the gross value of output. These figures are
of the same order of magnitude as figures reported for the predecessors
of commune industry -- the rural handicraft workshops and rural subsidi-
ary occupations.
The recently accelerated program for modernizing agriculture in Com-
munist China may turn out to be the salvation of the rural communes,
which have been assigned a key role in carrying out the program. To
carry out its new role, the commune has been designated the primary
agency for owning large and modern machinery, operating experimental
agricultural stations, and running agricultural schools.
The commune has three main financial problems, as follows:
(1) determining how far to go in limiting consumption, (2) setting the
size of the brigade contribution to the investment fund of the commune,
and (3) determining how much of personal consumption by commune members
is to be distributed as "free supply" according to the communistic prin-
ciple of distribution according to need. When commune accounts were
carefully checked for the first time in 1959, the regime discovered that
the commune organization had not greatly increased productivity, that
annual per capita disposable income in the countryside was still ex-
tremely low (officially estimated for 1959 at 85 yuan, or the equivalent
of US $35), and that it was impractical to try to lower the proportion
of brigade income allocated for consumption or to increase the amount
for investment. Rural income today is therefore distributed for approx-
imately the same uses as in precommune times. In the average brigade,
60 percent goes for consumption, 25 percent for production costs (feed,
seed, and fertilizer), 7 percent for taxes, and 8 percent for investment
and welfare. The levy paid over to the commune, which probably averages
1 percent, comes out of this last category. This contribution by the
brigade to the commune has been kept small since August 1959. Poor bri-
gades have been exempt, and richer ones have been reported contributing
from 0.3 to 2.5 percent of their gross income.
After August 1959 the rule was laid down that no brigade should dis-
tribute more than 2,1.0 percent of the consumption fund as free supply and
that the average should be 30 percent. This restriction, accompanied by
* The yuan is the basic unit of currency in Communist China. It is
worth US 4o.6 cents at the pound sterling cross rate of exchange.
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a return to the system of calculating wages on the basis of workpoints*
assigned for each job performed, effectively restored material incen-
tives. Nevertheless, even Mao Tse-tung is said to have admitted that
the able-bodied single worker who contributes the most while receiving
no more return than the others is a type who continues to give trouble
in the commune. The concern of the regime about incentives also was re-
flected in its decision during 1959 to encourage peasants to cultivate
small private garden plots, raise hogs and chickens, and engage in other
sideline occupations in their spare time. When the welfare budget of
the commune and brigades was slashed in 1959, it became impossible to
supply commune members with the wide range of services advertised by the
original commune. The only services usually made available now are the
messhall, nursery, and home for old people, with the last now open only
to old people without working relatives.
Although the process of collectivization has weakened family ties,
the family in the present-day commune is still a fairly strong social
unit. It lives together in a small dwelling, has a small garden plot,
and is responsible as a unit for financing the care and education of de-
pendents. Little remains of the policies of 1958 desiigned to separate
members of the family and to transfer loyalty of individuals from the
family to the collective body. If sustained over a prolonged period of
time, such attempts might well have constituted an effective means for
enforcing birth control.
Now that the authority of the commune level has been curtailed and
basic responsibility delegated to the brigade, the present rural organi-
zation performs more adequately the tasks of organizing labor for farm
work and for delivering grain to the state. The commune is a logical
level of administration for operating machine tractor stations and
agricultural experimental stations in Communist China. The commune does
less well in encouraging peasants to carry out sideline occupations,
traditionally an important subsidiary source of farm production and in-
come in China. Comsumption of food in most areas has been adequately
controlled by the messhall system, which, however, does not run smoothly.
Now that the commune has been stabilized in its present limited role,
it may not undergo further major change for some years. Too much pres-
tige is tied up in the commune concept for it to be easily abandoned al-
together, although recent experimentation with the state farm reveals
that the commune is no longer an untouchable organization. Also, it is
doubtful that the regime will move sharply in the other direction and
try to restore functions of the original commune. Although some Chinese
* The term workpoint is a nonmonetary unit of labor similar to the
Soviet term trudoden except that it is based on 1 hour's labor instead
of 1 day's.
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Communists may still retain their admiration for a large comprehensive
rural unit and be encouraEed by Mao Tse-tung's doctrine of "uninter-
rupted revolution" to experiment again, the top leadership probably is
disillusioned with the original commune. Feeling that the present com-
mune works adequately and that alternatives are unattractive, the regime
has given notice that the rural commune will be around for a long time
in its present form, with the production brigade the basic unit. This
policy was clarified in April 1960 by T'an Chen-lin, a prominent Party
spokesman on rural affairs, who said that the commune would not evolve
to the next stage -- a return to ownership at the commune level -- until
certain preconditions were met, the most important of which was the re-
quirement that rural per capita disposable income rise above 85 yuan,
the level of 1959, to between 150 and 200 yuan.
The commune movement has had a greater impact on rural than on urban
society. There has been little economic justification for communes in
cities, where economic activity already was highly organized and con-
trolled by the government: Nevertheless, the regime decided in March
1960 to revive the original urban commune movement that had never really
been implemented and that had been suspended since December 1958. By
20 May 1960, 42 million city dwellers, nearly one-half of the total
urban population, had joined urban communes. Less disruptive than rural
communes, the urban communes have been primarily organizations set up to
promote collective living and to organize housewives into neighborhood
workshops. From initial reports, it appears that urban communes do not
try to run large factories and major economic institutions of a city.
Urban messhalls seem to be as poorly run as those in the rural areas.
The Chinese Communists have not as yet claimed for the urban commune
such communistic features as the free supply system that has charac-
terized the rural commune. Urban commune industry has inherited the
functions of handicraft producer cooperatives, petty household industry,
and peddlers, which, before their curtailment in 1958, were important
for subcontracting work for state factories, for producing a wide vari-
ety of "daily use" items and construction materials, and for supplying
services for local use. The regime has said that it intends to expand
the role of the urban commune when conditions permit, but the record of
difficulties encountered by both urban and rural communes to date indi-
cates that such expansion will not be an easy task.
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I. Introduction and Background
A. Commune-1 and Commune-2
The rural commune* in Communist China has attracted worldwide
attention because of its unique potential for controlling the work and
life of its peasant members and because of the willingness of the regime
at first to exercise this potential to an extreme, Orwellian degree.
The commune was established universally in Communist China during a
whirlwind campaign that reached its peak during September 1958. The
initial energy of the campaign was soon spent, however, and from Decem-
ber 1958 through August 1959 the rural commune passed through phases in
which radical features were moderated and economic responsibilities nar-
rowed. The commune was stabilized in August 1959 when it was formally
reorganized and its status was reduced, in essence, to that of a federa-
tion of cooperatives combined with local government. The way in which
production is now collectivized differs little from the Soviet or the
precommune Chinese farming systems. The Chinese commune, however, does
differ from those systems in one important respect: it has collecti-
vized consumption to a greater degree, primarily through the institution
of the messhall.
The first commune form established in August 1958 differed so
greatly from the reorganized form decreed in August 1959 that these
forms can be regarded as two distinct types. When necessary to avoid
ambiguity, this report will use the term commune-1 to designate the form
established in 1958 and the term commune-2 to designate the form estab-
lished in 1959.
These terms
refer to rural communes. The report also will deal briefly with the
version of the urban commune established in 1960, which so far has been
less significant economically and less disruptive than the rural commune.
B. Marxist Concepts
Before analyzing the development of the Chinese Communist com-
mune, it is useful to review basic Marxist concepts that affect policies
for socializing agriculture in China. According to concepts adhered to
by both Moscow and Peking, socialism is a lower phase of Communism. The
two concepts are distinguished primarily by their systems of distribu-
ting products for consumption. Under socialism, distribution is based
on labor performed, but under the pure Communist state, attainable only
after products are in abundant supply, distribution will be according to
* For an orientation map of Communist China, see Figure 1, inside back
cover.
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need. According to?the timetable the Chinese have set themselves, they
will continue building socialism for another decade or so before they
will be in the transition to Communism. Although the problem of attain-
ing Communist ideals, therefore, would not seem to be of immediate im-
portance, nevertheless, Chinese leaders have found it useful since 1957
to stress these ideals in support of their vigorous efforts to step up
the pace of economic and ideological change. The population often has
been exhorted not to allow itself to stagnate but to engage in "uninter-
rupted revolution" and to keep working toward goals of pure Communism,
or at least to keep them constantly in mind as ultimate goals. To
underscore their determination to keep evolving, Chinese policymakers
have tried to insure that both commune-1 and commune-2 contain communis-
tic features in rudimentary form. The feature that gets principal bill-
ing in the propaganda is the free supply system under which staple foods,
at least, are distributed to all commune members according to need.
Another feature said to be a seed of Communism consists of efforts to
reduce the differences between industry and agriculture and between
peasant and urban workers. The assignment of peasants to primitive
industrial undertakings such as the abortive native blast furnaces was
one means of carrying out this policy, which was stressed more heavily
in commune-1 than commune-2, although it still receives lip service.
A basic Marxist concept which the Chinese Communists share with
the USSR is the belief that almost any economic activity is more effec-
tive and more ideologically advanced if carried out on a large scale.
This belief applies to the scale of farming and to the scale of collec-
tive participation in ownership of means of production and in distribu-
tion and consumption of the product. The state farm is theoretically
the most advanced socialist organization in agriculture. It is owned
by all the people and transmits profits to the state rather than distri-
buting them among farmer members as the collective farm does. The state
farm pays predetermined wages, and laborers on a state farm are called
"workers" not "peasants." Lower on the ideological scale, but still a
permissible socialist form, is the collective farm, in which the resid-
ual product -- after deduction for taxes, for the common fund, and for
uses for seed and feed -- is distributed among collective members rather
than paid entirely to the state. It is an article of faith that large
collectives are better than small ones. Production by individuals has
no ideological standing at all and is regarded with great suspicion in
Communist China, where it was virtually eliminated under commune-1.
Individual enterprise has since revived slightly as individual peasants
were again permitted, during 1959, to raise small animals and cultivate
small household garden plots.
To doctrinaire Marxists the commune traditionally has been an
ideal organization in which property was commonly owned and income
evenly distributed according to need. Its greatest popularity 'was
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reached in the USSR during the period of War Communism immediately after
the revolution, when it seemed to appeal to many young Communist ideal-
ists both in cities and in rural areas and fitted in with the radical
psychology of the times. The form favored for the collectivization
drive that took place a decade later, however, was the collective, with
the commune then being relegated to the indefinite future. As recently
as 1955 the commune was still being referred to in Soviet literature as
the ideal form to which the collective would evolve when Soviet agricul-
ture had overtaken that of other countries in productivity, but the cur-
rent Soviet attitude is ambivalent, partly because the name commune has
been vulgarized by the Chinese Communists.
The Chinese Communist commune does not greatly resemble the
Soviet experiment, because communistic features in the Chinese commune,
especially commune-2, are present only in rudimentary form. It is an
ideological hybrid that even the Chinese Communists have difficulty de-
scribing. According to their stereotyped description, commune-2 is "big
and comprehensive," with features that contain seeds of Communism. With
respect to ownership and distribution, the commune is mainly a lower so-
cialist form of organization like the collective, but it does contain
elements of higher socialism in the "publicly owned" enterprises, such
as the workshops and specialized farms formerly operated by the township
government that was absorbed into the commune.
C. Commune-1
In forming commune-1, the Chinese Communist leadership was moti-
vated less by economic purpose than by Communist zeal and the desire to
extend political control over the life of the peasant. The one impor-
tant innovation adopted for purely economic reasons was the enlargement
of the farm management area -- but this enlargement could have been and,
in fact, was in the process of being accomplished through more orthodox
means than commune-1. Early in 1958, Communist China announced that
institutional changes were necessary to facilitate mobilizing peasant
labor for the huge shock campaigns of that period. In compliance with
this policy, there was extensive combining of cooperatives into amalga-
mated cooperatives, or state farms, during the precommune months of
1958. This reorganization attracted little international attention,
however, as it contained no doctrinally radical features, and it might
have been this deficiency that caused the Chinese leadership, in striv-
ing for ideological as well as economic advances, to decide in favor of
the commune form with its overlay of communistic features.
The radical features of commune-1, as described
by numerous refugees who have fled the
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commune system, are as follows: (1) commune-1 was huge, occupying
10,000 acres farmed by 5,000 households; (2) it exercised comprehensive
control over all political, economic, and social activity within its
boundaries; (3) it organized labor teams along semimilitary lines under
a philosophy that separated working members of a family and separated
the peasant and his work team from year-round responsibility for a defi-
nite plot of land; (4) it attempted to industrialize the countryside by
establishing many small industrial enterprises, such as native iron fur-
naces; (5) it confiscated privately owned means of production, including
chickens and pigs, private plots, and tools; (6) it collectivized con-
sumption through messhalls and other institutions; and (7) it partly ap-
plied the communistic principle of "to each according to his need" by
expanding welfare services, the most important of which was the distri-
bution of free food through the messhalls. The purpose of several of
these measures, especially the new policies for allocation of labor, was
to weaken the individual's attachment to his family, to transfer his
loyalties to the commune, and to make him an all-purpose worker, thereby
(it was hoped) increasing his receptivity toward Communism.
Because the organizational form of commune-1 involved such far-
reaching changes in the socio-economic structure of the countryside, it
was generally assumed outside Communist China that many communes at
first were only paper organizations. That a cautious approach would be
taken was also the impression given by the initial Party directive,
dated 29 August 1958, on the establishment of communes, which gave the
following advice, "The original production, organization, and adminis-
trative system may for the time being remain unchanged, and production
may continue as usual."
Subsequent information, however, indicates that the policy di-
rective was carried out with far more zeal and thoroughness than at
first required. Of hundreds of eyewitness accounts of commune-1, not
one states that work and life continued as usual after the peasant be-
came a member of a commune, an event that occurred for most Chinese
during the month of September 1958. Local Party leaders were often
ineffective or incompetent, and their actions might lead to chaos, but
the evidence is that they at least made vigorous attempts to create a
radical new organization wherever communes were established. (The com-
mune system was set up everywhere except in some minority areas of west-
ern China and in Tibet.)
Remarkably little regional variance has been reported in the
institutional features of commune-1. Refugees from Kuldja in Sinkiang
to Canton in Kwangtung agree that the commune, among its first acts,
confiscated peasants' animals, tools, and plots and organized the work
along semlmilitary lines at a greatly intensified pace. Messhalls were
universally established, but, surprisingly, they were not used initially
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as a device for limiting consumption. Most refugees have conceded that
for a few weeks at least food rations supplied through messhalls were
unlimited or very generous by previous standards.
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The assignment of peasants to labor projects off the farm was
greatly intensified and resulted in a shortage of farm hands. Nonfarm
tasks stressed in the Hsu-chou area included work on water conservancy
projects; production of native iron; and laying of a second track on the
Tientsin - P'u-k'ou Railroad, the main north-south railroad in East
China. Industrial assignments usually were away from the commune be-
cause the Hsu-chou suburban communes themselves made little attempt to
establish new industries. Besides turning over animals and tools to
the commune, farmers also "donated" pots and pans, door hinges, and
other iron articles from their houses to the drive to collect scrap for
native iron furnaces.
Messhalls were established in houses
requisitioned from commune members, and each messhall fed about 100 per-
sons. During September and October, farmers could eat as much as they
wanted, and even in November the ration was still generous. The menu
often included vegetables and fish or pork. Welfare facilities provided
by the commune included nurseries -- which were popular -- laundry and
sewing teams, one out-patient clinic, and homes for old people. The
communes had grandiose plans for building living quarters for members,
and the existence of these plans partly explains why such a cavalier
attitude was taken toward farmers' houses.
Food and most welfare services were provided free, constituting
the "free supply" part of the new wage system. Payment by piecework --
the workpoint system derived from Soviet practice -- was abolished.
Instead, members were graded by weight-carrying ability, efficiency,
age, and skill. The residual income, after deduction for seed, feed,
taxes, welfare, and reserve uses, was then distributed to each member
according to his grade. Under this system the commune incurred no obli-
gation to pay the peasant for overtime work. Although commune headquar-
ters controlled finances, distribution was determined by the income of
each production brigade, not of the entire commune.
D. Decline of Commune-1
Degeneration of the authority and concept of the commune in Com-
munist China began in December 1958 and continued through May 1959, at
which point the commune remained fairly stable until its further reor-
ganization in August 1959 into commune-2. Chinese Communist propaganda
has minimized the extent to which changes occurred by referring to early
1959 as a "tidying-up period" for communes.
Food stocks, which should
have been plentiful according to early estimates of the harvest, were
running out. Peasants were sullen, and local Party leaders were con-
fused. Mao Tse-tung presided over a series of major Party conferences
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held in December 1958 and February and April 1959 that sought to find
solutions to problems caused by communes. The latter two conferences,
which have been given little publicity, resulted in drastic action being
taken at lower levels.
In the Hsu-chou area during this period, direct control by the
commune over many economic activities within its boundary was curtailed
sharply. Responsibility for managing financial affairs and messhalls
was turned over to the production brigade. The authority of the commune
to conscript peasants, previously unlimited, was limited to 2 to 3 per-
cent of the labor force in the brigades (slightly higher percentages
have been reported from other areas of Communist China). Carts taken by
the commune to form transportation brigades were returned to the produc-
tion brigades. The bank branch and general store were removed from the
control of the commune, forcing the commune to obtain higher authority
before floating a loan and to pay cash for goods. In an attempt to pla-
cate farmers, the regime promised them compensation for articles confis-
cated the previous autumn and gave them small plots of land.
Lack of grain forced messhalls around Hsu-chou to suspend
briefly in March, but they reopened in April when relief supplies of
corn from Manchuria became available. No other welfare facilities
closed, but after April the clinic began charging for medical services.
In an effort to improve work incentives, the authorities in the
Hsu-chou area restored the old workpoint system of payment, whereby a
farmer earned a specific number of workpoints for each task performed.
The ordinary farmer could earn as many as 3,000 points in a year. A
large part called "basic workpoints" went to the messhall to pay for
food eaten by him and nonworking dependent members of his family. Other
working family members, such as his wife, also had basic workpoints de-
ducted from their earnings to help pay for the messhall system.
Changes in commune policy effected in the spring of 1959 were
said to be welcomed both by the peasants, who preferred to be paid for
their work, and by junior Party leaders who had more authority than
under commune-1. Nevertheless, complaints were
still heard everywhere, and farmers had little confidence in the Commu-
nist Party, believing that it should not have committed such errors as
confiscating private property in the first place.
The account of the decline of the commune
is fairly complete,
but one further change
is worth mentioning.
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in the countryside to procure produce directly from the production
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brigade rather than through the commune organization. Thus by June
1959, commune-2 was effectively in operation, and all that remained was
to make formal acknowledgment of this fact.*
E. Reevaluation of Commune-1
Chinese Communist communes
were a potent force either for better or poorer use
or resources.
of the commune
tive mechanism
whereas the initial effectiveness
was low, in the long run it appeared to be a very effec-
for implementing state policy.
In August 1959, however, top Chinese Communist planners appar-
ently estimated that they were incompetent to provide sound directives
to such a large unit as commune-1, proclaimed it "overcentralized," and
formally stripped the commune of important elements of authority. Their
criticism struck at the economic essence of the commune -- its tight
comprehensive control over thousands of peasant households.
Economically, commune-1 was a poor performer partly because of
its newness and the "leap forward" policies of the period that required
it to divert its manpower to nonagricultural purposes. The basic and
innate defect of the commune, however, was its large and unwieldy size,
especially in view of the scarcity of managerial talent in Communist
China. It proved difficult for a central authority to provide rational
direction to thousands of farmers employing intensive farming techniques
and engaged in an enormous variety of operations. Commune-1 certainly
would be less easily managed than the Soviet collective, which hasone-
twentieth of the population, one-half of the acrea e and ne-th'rd
the average yield per acre of a typical commune-1.
the Soviet collective probably is too
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large for efficiency. the collective farms were 50X1
huge and "gained the impression that in striving for bigness, per se,
farm efficiency was actually neglected."
Although the Chinese Communist regime at first was enamored with
the ability of the commune to mobilize tens of millions of farmers for
mining and industrial tasks, disillusion set in when the regime discov-
ered that losses in agriculture and food attributable to the commune far
outweighed the value of the low-quality industrial products produced by
commune labor. From the point of view of any Communist state, the key
functions of a farming organization are (1) to increase agricultural
production, (2) while limiting consumption, (3) in order to maximize
deliveries to the state. Commune-1 performed badly on all three counts.
* This acknowledgment was made in August 1959 in an action that will
be described in II, p. 15, below.
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Commune-1 botched the two major agricultural tasks undertaken
before its activities were curtailed -- the fall harvest of 1958 and
planting crops for 1959. With many farmers diverted to industrial work,
heavy waste occurred in reaping and processing the fall harvest and in
delivering it to granaries. Misled by politically inspired statistics
reported by communes on crop yields, planners made the mistake of order-
ing that the acreage sown to crops in 1959 be reduced. Although more
intensive efforts were to be applied to the reduced acreage, the pre-
scribed measures for intensive farming (publicized as Mao Tse-tung's
eight-point charter) often were mechanically and irrationally put into
effect. Although it has not been unusual in Soviet or Chinese Communist
agricultural history for new techniques to be applied harmfully, it is
believed that the commune because of its size caused more damage than
the collective would have done.
Even though the communes gathered the harvest badly in 1958, a
record harvest of food grain and potatoes was garnered because of good
weather and the incredibly intense labor effort applied before communes
were formed. This hard-earned gain for the regime was promptly dissi-
pated, however, when the commune, deluded by grossly inflated harvest
figures, failed to limit consumption in the new messhalls. Peasants
made extra hungry by the driving work pace probably ate two to three
times their accustomed amount during this period of free food. Not
until late November did the regime seem to become fully aware of the ex-
tent to which the commune system and related policies had turned plenty
into shortage. At that time the regime clamped down on consumption.
The damage was done, however, and, from then until early summer harvests
brought relief, varying degrees of food shortage were reported from most
cities and large areas of the countryside. In the circumstances it was
not surprising that in 1958 the commune lagged in deliveries of farm
produce to the state, a failure in performance that led to the rein-
statement of state collection offices inside the commune early in 1959.*
II. Commune-2, the Present-Day Rural Commune
A. Party Line
Since early in 1959, a series of decisions by the Chinese Com-
munist Party has narrowed the authority and concept of the commune, ele-
vated the idea of the commune to the level of sacrosanct official dogma,
and reaffirmed that the commune, in one form or another, would be a per-
manent feature of the social scene in Communist China. The role of the
commune in developing the rural economy is now limited, but the regime
hopes to restore some measure of real importance to the commune by
* See I, D, p. 12, above.
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assigning to it the task of bringing mechanization to Chinese agricul-
ture, a program that is to receive increasing emphasis during the coming
decade.
Formal authorization for commune-2, the present-day rural com-
mune, is provided in a resolution adopted on 16 August 1959 by the
Eighth Central Committee of the CCP at its Eighth Plenary Session. 2/
This resolution acknowledged that, as a result of Party directives
issued subsequently to a meeting of the Political Bureau at Cheng-chou
in February and March 1959, the commune had decentralized "management
and business accounting" and implemented the principle of giving more
income to those who do more work.* The resolution adopted in August
then made the important declaration that "it has been decided that at
the present stage a three-level type of ownership of the means of pro-
duction should be instituted in the people's communes." The resolution
continued: "Ownership at the production brigade level constitutes the
basic one. Ownership at the commune level constitutes another part (in
addition to ownership of the public economic undertakings run by the
commune, the commune can draw each year a reasonable amount for its
capital accumulation fund from the income of the production brigades).
A small part of the ownership should also be vested in the production
team." This transfer of ownership was the coup de grace for commune-1,
for it meant taking the principal means of agricultural production --
land, animals, and tools -- formally out of commune control and giving
them to the nominally subordinate production brigade, a unit equivalent
to the precommune cooperative. In dialectical terms the system of own-
ership had reverted back from collective ownership on a large scale to
collective ownership on a small scale.
Although the regime has said that it plans to recover lost
ground and eventually to restore basic ownership to the commune, it also
has laid down stringent conditions that a commune must meet before it
can qualify for ownership. T'an Chen-lin, a Party spokesman on agricul-
tural matters who was prominent during the formative days of the com-
mune, in April 1960 set down the following four conditions: " (1) aver-
age annual income per capita in the commune must reach 150 to 200 yuan
(it was 85 yuan in 1959); (2) the sector owned by the commune must take
up the overwhelming proportion of the economy of the whole commune;
(3) poorer brigades must catch up with richer ones; and (4) mechaniza-
tion must reach "certain proportions." .6./ The first condition alone
would seem sufficient to disqualify most communes for the indefinite
future.
The Chinese Communists have been much more specific in their de-
lineation of ownership relationships and distribution of income than of
* The response in the countryside to these directives is described in
I, D, p. 12, above.
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other aspects of commune-2. The powers and functions of the commune
have been described only vaguely, partly because the regime is reluctant
to publicize the extent to which the powers and functions have dimin-
ished and partly because these powers and functions have not yet been
determined. The current formula for describing the powers of commune-2
presents them in these very general terms: "The rural people's communes
are not only comprehensive economic organizations, including agriculture,
forestry, animal husbandry, side occupations, and fishery, but are also
basic social organizations integrating industry, agriculture, trade,
education, and defense and merging government administration and commune
management into one." This formulation differs little from the official
description of the township, which used to be "the basic unit of state
power ... Zang played a leading role in industry, agriculture, trade,
education, and military affairs." 1/ The functions of commune-2 were
described in the resolution of August 1959 only in terms of the poten-
tial of the commune to do things: for example, "it can plan produc-
tion," and "it can facilitate the speedy integrated development" of di-
versified activities. Although they make the commune sound important,
these statements actually are so imprecise that it is possible for them
to denote a wide range of weak and strong communes. In practice the
commune and its Party committee often perform little more than the func-
tions of the former township government and Party committee. It could
be said of those organizations that they, too, planned and facilitated
production to some extent. Other communes in different economic situa-
tions and perhaps under stronger leadership have maintained firmer ad-
ministrative control over their production brigades.
The resolution of August 1959 also avoided spelling out policy
on how and to what extent consumption was to be collectivized. Subse-
quent reports indicate that there has been nationwide stress since
August 1959 on establishing messhalls and nurseries, although success in
their operation has not been universally achieved. Plans for communal
housing have been shelved in favor of capital construction for produc-
tive purposes, according to T'an Chen-lin in his report in April 1960 to
the National Peoples Congress (NPC). The wild talk indulged in during
1958 at the peak of the commune movement about breaking up the family is
no longer heard, and for most purposes the peasant household under com-
mune-2 is treated as a unit. It now is official policy to encourage
cultivation of private plots and individual raising of animals on a
small scale.
The reason that the Chinese Communists have not committed them-
selves to a more definite form for the rural commune seems to be simply
that policy has not yet jelled and that the commune is still in a state
of flux. Vice Premier Li Fu-chun told the NEC on 31 March 1960 that the
plan for this year is "further to bring out the advantages of the
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people's communes and to continue to consolidate and develop the com-
munes." ?_/ Other official statements since then have indicated dissat-
isfaction with the way messhalls are run. 2/ In view of this evidence
of uncertainty, it is not surprising that no charter of a model commune
has yet been published, such as existed for commune-1 in the form of the
draft regulations governing the Ch'a-ya-shan, or Sputnik, Commune. 12/
The Chinese Communist leadership may feel undecided about the
proper form that the rural commune should take, but it has pledged alle-
giance to the use of the name "commune," which has been elevated to the
level of mystic dogma. Typical of recent statements is a statement con-
tained in Li Fu,chun's speech in March 1960 that listed the general
line, the big leap, and the commune* as "three magic keys Tor the entire
period of our socialist construction. They are the products of
Mao Tse-tung's thinking." Although Peking has admitted that in 1959
there were "rightists" even inside the Party who criticized the commune,
it would take a brave Party member to speak up against the commune in
its present state of glorification. Li also indicated that it is still
official policy to regard the commune as the "best form of organization
for the transition of our countryside from collective ownership to
ownership by the whole people and from socialism to communism."
Even this forthright statement, however, cannot be accepted at
its face value, for elsewhere in his speech Li Fu-chun undercut the idea
that the commune was the ideal form of rural organization by calling on
localities to "bring into full play the advantages of the state farm,"
which would seem to be a competitor of the commune. His was the first
major statement of policy since August 1958 to stress the state fa/m,
which used to be regarded as the highest form of socialist agricultural
organization by the Chinese Communists and still is by the USSR. There
are two types of state farms in Communist China -- the large, mechanized
state farms set up in the border regions of the Northeast and Northwest
by the Ministry of State Farms and Land Reclamation and the small state
farms run by local governments. The first type had been untouched by
the commune movement, but farms under local administration dropped out
of the picture late in 1958 and early in 1959. Since then, however,
the revival and growth of
state farms run by local governments. The movement, reported so far
from Heilungkiang, Hupeh, Kiangsi, Yunnan, and Kwangtung Provinces, has
not advanced to the point of making serious inroads on established
* The general line, publicized under the slogan "walking on two legs,"
is a policy of comprehensive development of small and native enterprises
as well as large, modern ones. Leap forward policies stress deliberate
creation of imbalances and are characterized by politically inflated
statistics and recurrent drives to mobilize large masses of labor for
work projects.
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communes. Nevertheless, in Kiangsi Province, state farms reportedly
"have already become a major force" in agriculture, and in Kwangtung
Province, according to refugee farmers, some communes have been dismem-
bered, and selected production brigades have been converted into experi-
mental state farms run by the county. One Kwangtung farmer heard a
Communist spokesman explain at a meeting that if the experiment worked,
it would be extended to other brigades. It is doubtful that the Chinese
are thinking of replacing most communes with state farms, but such re-
ports are significant as evidence that the official view of the commune
as the ideal form of organization for the Chinese countryside has been
qualified.
B. Size and Structure of Commune-2
1. Size
More than 90 percent of peasant households in Communist
China are in 24,000 rural communes, which average nearly 25,000 people,
5,000 households, 10,000 able-bodied laborers, and a little more than
10,000 acres of farmland. Altogether, about 120 million Chinese peasant
households are working about 280 million acres of farmland. The Chinese
commune approximates in its number of people the rural population of the
average county in the US (about 20,000) and the average Soviet rayon
(about 30,000). The communes were formed in 1958 out of 740,000 agri-
cultural producers' cooperatives, averaging nearly 200 households each,
or about the number of households in the average Soviet collective at
that time. The drastic reorganization early in 1959 caused little
change to the boundaries of most communes but greatly affected their
internal structure. The typical commune in 1958 combined its 30 cooper-
atives into 10 or fewer units called "production brigades," or "work
areas," in order to reduce immediately subordinate units to a more man-
ageable number. As management responsibilities of the commune declined,
these subunits became less necessary and were reorganized. The original
cooperative, slightly enlarged, reemerged as the basic farm organization
in China. The experience of the Ch'a-ya-shan Commune, also known as the
Sputnik Commune, is an example of this reorganization. Originally, this
commune had combined 27 agricultural producers cooperatives into 8 pro-
duction brigades, but in 1959 these were redivided into 26 production
brigades. 11/ Similarly, following a readjustment in Shantung Province,
the original 1,391 communes and their 11,775 subunits were reorganized
into 1,353 communes and 50,468 production brigades. 12/ There now are
about 500,000 basic accounting units, usually termed production bri-
gades,* and about 20 of these brigades are assigned to each commune,
* The term Kuan-li chill, variously translated as "administrative area"
or "management ch'u," is used instead of production brigade to desig-
nate the basic accounting unit in many provinces, including Heilung-
kiang, Kirin, Shansi, and Yunnan.
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each brigade farming an average of 500 acres of land and embracing an
average of about 250 households. Each brigade in turn is subdivided
into about 6 production teams of about 40 households each.
Like political units in any country, communes tend to have
fewer people in sparsely populated areas and more people in densely pop-
ulated areas. Thus, in mountainous regions, communes may have as few as
1,000 households, whereas in densely populated plains, communes with
several tens of thousands of households exist. Commune-2, however,
apparently varies in size less than commune-1 did. Since August 1959
there has been no mention in the Chinese Communist press or by travelers
of the giant countywide communes that had been formed in some provinces
in the fall of 1958 and were regarded as the ideal size for commune-1.
Because a major role of commune-2 is to serve as a political unit at the
subcounty level, the huge communes may have been split up.
The commune is'the lowest level of government in rural areas
of Communist China. Local governmental units of importance to agricul-
ture are, from top to bottom, the province, special district, county,
and commune, and late in 1958, the numbers of these were as follows:
22 provinces; 121 special districts, 5.5 per province; 1,626 counties,
13.4 per special district; and about 24,000 communes, about 15 per
county. 12/ No significant change in this structure has occurred since
1958.
2. Party Apparatus
Rural activities in Communist China, far more than urban and
'industrial activities, are directly and openly controlled by the appara-
tus of the Chinese Communist Party -- Party committees attached to the
various levels of government -- rather than by the machinery of govern-
ment itself. The commune is the lowest level at which Party committees
exist. Brigades and major enterprises under the commune usually have
branch cells.
After the decision early in 1959 to decentralize the author-
ity of the commune and to promote the Importance of the production bri-
gade, the Party discovered that its organization was weak at the bri-
gade level. Therefore, during the fall of 1959 a nationwide campaign
was conducted to recruit junior Party members for assignment to basic
level Party branches attached to production brigades. The recruitment
drive has even extended down to the production team, where it is prefer-
red that a Party member be in charge, and probably most officials in
brigades are now Party members. The Communist press has given the im-
pression that the drive was a huge success. No nationwide figures on
the results have been reported, but scattered regional data are avail-
able, such as the average brigade in Kiangsi Province now
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has 12 Party members 1./.1/ and that a brigade in Kwangtung has 29 mem-
bers. 12/ If the national average of Party members per brigade were as
high as ten, then 5 million men, or one-third of the Party's total mem-
bership strength, would now be assigned to production brigades. Proba-
bly the recruitment drive has built up rural branches of the Party far
beyond their precommune strength and has greatly improved the ability of
the Party to maintain discipline in the brigades and over the entire
peasantry.
3. Superstructure of the Commune
It is difficult to draw up a valid detailed chart of the
administrative structure of commune-2 because, as noted above, no model
charter has yet been published, and no reasonably comprehensive report
of an individual example of commune-2 is available
(For a simplified chart of the administrative structure of commune-2, see
Figure 2.) The few detailed descriptions of individual communes that
COMMUNE PARTY COMMITTEE
Party Secretaries
PARTY BRANCH
Secretary
COMMUNE
Director
Deputy Directors
COMMUNE MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE*
Chairman**
(Management authority of the commune
over the production brigade has been
limited to general overseership since 1958).
29122 7-60
PRODUCTION BRIGADE
Leader
PRODUCTION TEAM
Leader
Figure 2. COMMUNIST CHINA: Organization of a Rural Commune
have appeared in the Communist press since August 1959 are imprecise be-
cause, in their effort to glorify the commune, they blur the distinction
between activities carried on by the top commune level and those con-
ducted autonomously by production brigades.
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have been far more informative on the actual organization of commune-2
than has the Communist press, but even the best such reports have been
cursory because of the brief time, ordinarily 2 to 3 hours, allotted to
the usual tour of a commune, and, in any event, communes open to tour-
ists are apt to be showplaces.
Communes are headed by a director and one or more deputy
directors and, on the Party side, by one or more secretaries. All per-
sonnel are appointed by Party committees at higher levels, and few are
native to the commune. communes
where the director was a figurehead who deferred to a Party secretary.
In other cases the deputy director seemed to be in effective charge,
for he was the chairman of the important management committee.
In a rare official reference to the nature of top authority
in commune-2, the magazine Ching-chi Yen-chiu (Economic Research), pub-
lished in Peking, asserted in January 1960 that a certain commune in
Hopeh Province operated under the unified direction of the commune Party
committee and the "administration area work committee." This group su-
pervised the management committee, which executed the work of the com-
mune through two offices and some assistants. The offices were con-
cerned with "administration" and "agriculture, forestry, and water con-
servancy." There were assistants for the following four groups of func-
tions: culture and health; civil affairs; trade, finance, and industry;
and military affairs. In its simplicity this organization resembles
that of the former township rather than the more elaborate structure re-
quired for commune-1.
A finer division of functions is employed at the Great Wall
Commune, a showplace near Shanghai
in this commune the management
committee controlled the following departments: administration, agri-
culture, industry, finance, commerce, animal husbandry and aquatic pro-
ducts, education and health, and militia.
One organizational feature of commune-1 that seems to have
been dropped is the "elected" congress of commune members that used to
be the nominal authority. This formal tie between members and leader-
ship may no longer be considered necessary under commune-2.
At the headquarters of a typical commune there is a center
that houses the offices of the Party committee, the management commit-
tee, the finance department, grain collection unit, tax unit, the gen-
eral store selling consumer goods, and a branch of the Bank of China.
The last four in this list are responsible to higher levels of govern-
ment, receiving only administrative services, not direction, from
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commune headquarters. Economic enterprises operated by the commune in-
clude small industrial enterprises -- the average commune has 9 or
10, such as brickyards, blacksmith shops, and flour mills -- an animal
breeding farm, an agricultural experimental station, and in a few com-
munes, a machine-tractor station. Most communes also directly run a
clinic and a part-time agricultural junior middle school (grades 7 to 9).
Militia offices are still reported at the commune level, but it is be-
lieved that in most communes the militia is more highly organized at the
brigade than at the commune level.
4. Production Brigade
There is extensive information suggesting that responsi-
bility for directing the work and the life of the peasantry since August
1959 has resided basically in the production brigade rather than in the
next higher level (the commune) or the next lower level (the production
team). In spite of its importance, however, little information is
available on the organization of the brigade, for it has not been de-
scribed in the Communist press, and few visitors shown to communes pene-
trate below the commune level. For example, after a 50X1
recent visit to a commune near Lo-yang, expressed surprise to find at
the headquarters of a commune only 30 officials administering 48,000 in-
habitants. LEY Apparently,
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these officials were just a superstructure and that basic administration
was carried out by officials at the brigade level. Most brigades are
run by a branch office of the Party and an administrative committee. At
present there does not seem to be any field in which the commune still
exercises genuinely overriding control.
The economic activities of brigades may be more specialized
than that of the larger commune. For example, 50X1
the Wuk'an commune on the south China coast has 14 farm brigades,
7 fishing brigades, and 5 salt brigades. 12/ Elsewhere brigades spe-
cializing in forestry or raising hogs have been reported. In most areas
of Communist China, however, the scope for diversified occupations is
limited, and the primary occupation of most brigades is to till the soil.
As already noted, the brigade now owns most means of produc-
tion in the commune. It operates small factories or repair shops.
Other institutions in the typical brigade are a small branch general
store and a primary school. Because the brigade is responsible for man-
aging the collective income of the peasants, it manages the messhalls
and welfare activities financed out of this fund, such as nurseries,
homes for old people, and primary schools.
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5. Production Team
The production team, being the lowest echelon in the commune,
is the unit that actually does the work. Known as the "basic contract-
ing unit" in the commune, it performs specific farm tasks under a con-
tract signed with the production brigade to meet specified quotas. ?2/
In turn, the brigade guarantees to supply the necessary means of produc-
tion, such as seed, insecticides, and implements, and promises not to
conscript more than a predetermined percentage of the labor force of the
teams during the course of the crop season. The team owns a few simple
implements and is said to have certain ownership rights in the harvest,
for it is permitted to keep and to divide among team members a propor-
tion of any amount produced above the quota. Team leaders also work in
the field and either are appointed by the brigade from among team mem-
bers or are elected with the approval of the brigade. The typical team
is composed of about 40 families but varies in size according to local
conditions of agriculture. A team may be assigned the task of cultivat-
ing a particular area or of caring for a certain number of farm animals.
The production brigade -- not the production team -- hands down orders
on the kind of crops to be grown and the farming techniques to be em-
ployed. Some farming may be done on an individual basis by peasants,
who are now encouraged to work their own small private plots and to
raise chickens and pigs on the side.*
C. Planning and Decision Making
Peasants in Communist China live and work under policies, rules,
plans, and institutions decreed for them by various levels of the Party
and the government. Commune-2 is one of these levels and performs an
active although generally not predominant role in making decisions for
agriculture. At first, in 1958, the regime envisioned concentrating ex-
tensive powers at the commune level by centralizing management authority
previously held by cooperatives and by decentralizing planning and
decision-making powers from higher levels to the commune level.
The commune certainly was given powerful authority for manage-
ment then but probably never had delegated to it important responsibili-
ties for planning. At any rate, today, as in precommune times, few re-
sponsibilities for economic planning appear to be delegated below the
county level of administration, although efforts to strengthen the plan-
ning role of the commune continue. Among some communes such as the
large, advanced suburban communes shown to foreign visitors, the plan-
ning function of the commune may be well developed.
* For a further discussion of private farming, see II, F, 3, p. 34,
below.
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As in any Communist country, all planning and policy for Chinese
agriculture is determined in broad terms at the top. Translation into
specific activities is accomplished at various lower levels in a manner
depending on the subject matter. Usually, one level is given primary
responsibility for action. For example, detailed directives on how to
operate messhalls and communal welfare activities are prepared at the
provincial level on the basis of a broad policy decision by the Central
Committee and passed down for implementation by the production brigade.
The role of the commune in this instance is to transmit the directive
and to supervise its implementation.
Among the most important planning decisions that rural adminis-
trative levels must make in Communist China are those determining the
various specific uses to which land will be put and a related type of
decision, the determination of production quotas for the production
team. The core of this type of planning is the annual production plan
for agriculture that takes, as its basis, targets issued by the central
government and province for staple grains and a few key subsidiary prod-
ucts such as pigs. These targets are then incorporated into detailed,
specific plans by lower levels. There is good evidence suggesting that
the focus both of responsibility for planning land use and final deter-
mination of production quotas usually lies with the county or special
district, with the commune participating in a subordinate role. Offi-
cial propaganda, however, sometimes has tried to give the impression
that the commune does most of its own planning. A newspaper article on
the importance of the commune reported in August 1959 that within the
framework of state plans the commune "is itself free to determine the
per unit area yield for different kinds of crops, the acreage to be sown
with nonstaple crops, the number of animals of all kinds and the quan-
tity of their products, and all kinds of agricultural techniques and
technical measures concerning the feeding of animals." 21/ The article
did not actually say that the commune did these things, and an editorial
in Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily) on 17 March 1960, urging that "com-
munes should formulate land utilization plans," seemed to be an admis-
sion that they do not yet generally do so. 22/ Moreover, this editorial
seemed to be confused in its text concerning the question as to whether
the commune or county should have primary planning responsibility, for
the editorial approvingly noted the experience of Tsao-yang county in
Hupeh Province, where a major rearrangement of patterns of cultivation
was carried out last winter under the direction of the county Party com-
mittee* and where there was no indication that the commune played a sig-
nificant role. The point of the editorial seemed to be that it did not
matter who did the planning so long as it was done.
* The work program undertaken in Tsao-yang county illustrates the type
of construction underway in many rural areas last winter. Out of
358,000 acres of cultivable land in the Lfootnote continued on p. 2?7
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In Kiangsu Province the special district rather than the commune
or the county seems to be the primary planning authority for agriculture.
The Party cadre from Hsu-chou, Kiangsu,* reported that production plans
for agriculture in his area were prepared at the special district head-
quarters, where full data were maintained on arable land, type of soil,
and manpower. 211/ These plans were passed through channels to the bri-
gade, which, after May 1959, was permitted a degree of independence in
making final revisions.
Because the district usually encompasses a large market town or
small city and its surrounding counties, it is in a good position to
carry out a policy, recently stressed, of strengthening economic rela-
tions between cities and their rural environs. These relations have be-
come increasingly complex as cities expand their need for food and raw
materials and as the regime attempts to stimulate a reverse flow of
industrial products to help modernize the countryside.
Further strengthening of the special supervisory role of the
district over agriculture in Kiangsu occurred during a reorganization
last year, when cities such as Hsu-chou that had been operating under
direct provincial control were put under the special district for the
express purpose of insuring that urban industries improve their support
to agriculture. 22/
Perhaps the most important annual decision affecting peasants is
the production quota assigned to production teams. The commune probably
participates in the work of setting quotas, but there is little evidence
that it serves a prominent role. When the problem of setting quotas was
reviewed on 10 March 1960 in an editorial in the People's Daily, no ex-
plicit mention was made of responsibilities for setting quotas at the
county, peasants last winter transformed 198,000 acres of rough fields
into level land and combined more than 130,000 scattered fields into
7,000 large tracts. In addition, peasants filled unnecessary ditches,
leveled unnecessary land boundaries, and reclaimed 17,000 acres of
wasteland. It also was reported that under their new plan for land use
the peasants built more than 3,000 irrigation projects as well as many
highways and farm trails.
* For a description of the commune
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commune level of administration. Instead, the editorial called on
"local CCP committees" to direct the task of assigning quotas and cited
examples of a special district in Kiangsu and a county in Kiangsi where
this task had been done well. 2Y
D. Role of the Commune in Modernizing Agriculture
The recently accelerated program for modernizing agriculture in
Communist China may turn out to be the economic salvation of the commune,
which has been assigned a key role in carrying out the program. Mecha-
nization of Chinese agriculture received renewed stress in 1959, when an
ambitious 10-year plan was unfolded for mechanizing farm operations and
rural transportation, expanding rural electrification, and irrigating by
machinery.* The plan was first publicly outlined by Vice Premier
Po I-po in October 1959. Subsequent statements attributing the idea for
the plan to Mao Tse-tung himself indicate that it has become firmly
established as basic policy for the long run. 2// Emphasizing the
higher priority assigned to the new plan, Party spokesman Tian Chen-lin
said in April 1960 that the tempo for mechanizing agriculture was now
much faster than originally envisioned. 2Y
Chinese Communist planners have exaggerated the economic bene-
fits to be gained from mechanizing agriculture in a country where a huge
peasant labor force is already engaged in intensive methods of cultiva-
tion. Nevertheless, the program seems basically sound for Communist
China. It will not, as the Chinese apparently hope, significantly in-
crease yields per unit of area, but it should increase peasant produc-
tivity, thus releasing peasant labor for urban industrial work while
permitting the regime to continue its recently adopted techniques for
all-out mobilization of peasant labor for rural construction work.
Moreover, the costs of the program will not present a major problem, for
it is anticipated that the rapidly growing industrial establishment will
be able readily to supply machinery needed for the program, which is
geared to relatively modest Soviet standards of farm mechanization, not
to current US standards. ?2,/
The Chinese Communists hope to have made a start on mechanizing
agriculture by the end of 1960, when it is planned that rural areas will
have the following inventory of equipment: 450,000 kilowatts (kw) of
small powerplants; 81,000 tractors, measured in 15 horsepower (hp)
standard units (the actual number is much less); 6,900 combine har-
vesters; and 5.88 million hp of irrigation and drainage equipment. The
plan for 1960 envisions this equipment being used to plow 18.5 million
acres of farmland, or about 10 percent of the area suitable for cultiva-
tion by tractor, and to irrigate and drain 44 million acres, or 38.per-
cent of the farmland said to require mechanized irrigation and drainage.
* See the photograph, Figure 3, following p. 28. For other photographs
relating to activities in the peoples communes, see Figures 4 through 11,
Appendix B.
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A propaganda claim has been made that machinery to be supplied to rural
areas in 1960 will be equivalent to 30 million labor units, or 14 per-
cent of the labor power in rural areas. 32/
The regime is pushing mechanization at first in prosperous areas
that can best afford to buy machinery. .These areas include suburban
farms and farms producing large quantities of marketable grain and in-
dustrial crops. Dry farming in the flat plains of north China and Man-
churia also is slated for early mechanization because there are few
technical problems in adapting Western methods to these areas.
In most of China, however, according to the timetable of the
10-year plan, the next 3 years will constitute only a "preliminary
stage." 3.1/ The main effort during this stage will be experimental
(devising machinery and improved methods for cultivating hilly land,
paddy fields, and other special types of Chinese farmland), political
(persuading farmers to discard old methods for new ones), and organiza-
tional (strengthening the commune as a medium for carrying out mechani-
zation).
During 1959 the regime seems to have decided that the role of
the commune in agricultural production should be to modernize it, not to
direct it. To carry out its new role, the commune has been designated
the primary agency for owning large and modern machinery, operating ex-
perimental agricultural stations, and running agricultural schools.
The ownership function of the commune was clarified in October
1959 by Chen Cheng-jen, Deputy Director of the Rural Work Department of
the CCP, who said that "modern agricultural equipment ... will be mainly
controlled at the commune level." ..3.2/ Foreign tourists who have visited
communes in a fairly advanced stage of mechanization have confirmed that
this rule is carried out in practice. Tractors are usually maintained
by a commune-owned tractor station and hired out to production brigades.
T'an Chen-lin in his report on agricultural development in April
1960 declared that the commune is the basis for a nationwide "agro-
science experimental and research network" that is taking shape. _3_V
The usual agrarian research institute in a commune combines propaganda
with the normal functions of an agricultural extension service. These
research institutes cultivate demonstration plots on which they lavishly
expend fertilizer and labor to enhance the propaganda effect. They also
are supposed to conduct useful experimental work, issue weather reports,
disseminate information, and train peasants in the application of new
techniques. 1V
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Figure 3. Communist China: Tractor Station of an Advanced Commune in Kwang-
tung Province (Characters on the tractors read Hua-shan Kung-she, or "Hua-shan
Commune").
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Nearly every commune operates one qr more agricultural middle
schools. In the same report, Titan Chen-lin said that there were
30,000 such schools with a total enrollment of 2,960,000 students -- an
average of 1.2 middle schools and 120 students for every commune.
Although they are only part-time schools in which students devote half
the day to agricultural work, these schools nevertheless represent for
most peasant youth the only educational opportunity above the elementary
school. The major purpose of these schools is to produce semiskilled
agricultural technicians and to train peasants to maintain and operate
agricultural machinery.
E. Commune Industry
One of the most striking reversals in policy ever made by the
Chinese Communists was their virtual abandonment during 1959 of the
policy of rapidly industrializing the countryside through the medium of
the commune. Although this change in policy has not been loudly pro-
claimed in propaganda, official data and tourist descriptions confirm
that rural industry has been relegated to its traditional level of com-
parative unimportance, subordinate to agricultural production.
By late 1958, according to Chinese Communist propaganda, 6 mil-
lion new industrial enterprises had been established by rural com-
munes, E/ and as much as one-third of the rural labor force was engaged
in such industrial efforts as the ill-fated drive to produce iron in
native blast furnaces.
The results were so disappointing to the regime, however, that
early in 1959 it decreed that communes should concentrate their finan-
cial resources and labor power on developing agriculture. As a result,
many enterprises were abandoned, and some were turned over to production
brigades to run as part-time activities. By October 1959 the number of
industrial enterprises run by communes had declined to 700,000, about
30 per commune. 313/ During a further reorganization in the last quarter
of 1959, the total number of commune industries dropped to 200,000.
These industries are said to employ 5 million full-time workers, or
2 percent of the rural labor force. 19/ Scattered data on industrial
work performed at lower levels of the commune suggest that perhaps
another 1 to 2 percent of the labor force are engaged in part-time sub-
sidiary industries of a traditional nature. It is claimed that the
gross value of output of industries operated by rural communes was
10 billion yuan in 1959, and the plan for 1960 calls for 15 billion
yuan.112/ Such figures on employment and value of output are of the
same order of magnitude as those previously reported for the predeces-
sors of commune industry, the rural handicraft workshops and rural sub-
sidiary occupations. Under present policies, commune industry is ex-
panding gradually, not as a result of forced growth, but as a normal
accompaniment to rural economic development in Communist China.
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The scope of commune industry is severely limited by fiat. Vice
Premier Li Fu-chun in his report to the NTC in March 1960 reiterated
previously stated injunctions that commune industry "must continue to
observe the principles of producing those products best suited to their
localities, of using local materials, of depending on their own efforts
in production, and of being thrifty in everything."111/ The range of
products that commune industry is encouraged to make also is limited.
Li Fu-chun said in the same report that commune industry should con-
centrate on making and repairing small farm tools, processing farm and
subsidiary products, and producing building materials.
An article in the 16 March 1960 issue of Hung-chii (Red Flag),
journal of the Central Committee of the CCP, was even more explicit than
Li in subordinating commune industry to agriculture. This article
stated that county and commune industry "must first of all serve agri-
cultural development and the realization of technical transformation of
agriculture. This is a key factor determining whether or not county and
commune-run industry can be developed." LY
Chinese Communist propaganda makes a strong point of the claim
that commune industry produces more than 10 percent of the gross value
of industrial and agricultural output of communes and that this percent-
age is rapidly growing. This presentation of data is essentially erro-
neous, however, because measurements of gross value greatly overstate
the importance of rural industry relative to agricultural activity. In
terms of value added to the product, commune industry probably contrib-
utes less than 5 percent to the total economic output of rural areas.
According to official statistics, the average commune operates
10 workshops or factories, each employing 25 workers. An idea of the
nature of these workshops may be obtained from reports of individual
communes. Four typical ones from the files are described below.
Because they were selected by the regime either for display to foreign
visitors or as examples in the press, it may be presumed that they are
above average in prosperity and development.
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1. The Great Wall Commune, described as the most modern in
the Shanghai area, operated 12 factories at the commune level and 55 at
the brigade level Their products were 50X1
almost exclusively for agriculture -- Implements, fertilizers and insec-
ticides, bricks, cement, and lime. The commune also operated plants for
processing fodder and preserving vegetables. LO.il
2. The Kuotai Commune in Shansi Province, described in the
12 November 1959 issue of T'ai-yuan Jih-pao (Tai-yuan Daily), is one
of the few in the country still running an iron and steel establishment.
This commune had five industrial establishments, the other four pro-
ducing foodstuffs, chemical fertilizer, sundries, and milk powder.
These plants employed 8 percent of the commune labor force, and another
6 percent worked in 95 mall workshops at the production brigade level,
many on a seasonal basis only.)15/
3- industry 50X1
in the Cheng-kuan Commune near Shih-chia-chuang, Hopeh Province, was
observed to consist only of a newly established factory to make gunny
sacks from cotton stalk fiber. LLY
F. Sources and Uses of Commune Income
1. At the Top Level
Since early 1959 in Communist China, accounting for income
and expenditures at the top level of the commune has been carefully sep-
arated from accounting done by production brigades. Income at the com-
mune level is derived from the following three sources: state grants
and loans, proceeds from commune enterprises, and contributions from
production brigades. This income is used to defray costs of administra-
tion; to buy machinery, construction materials, and animals for develop-
ing enterprises at the commune level; and to finance the building of
projects of communewide value, such as reservoirs.
State grants to communes are planned to increase from 1 bil-
lion yuan in 1959 to 1.5 billion yuan in 1960./ Not all of this
grant is available for strengthening the economy at the commune level,
for a large but unspecified amount is earmarked for poor production
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brigades. In 1960, the Peoples Bank of China plans to expand circulat-
ing agricultural loans, which totaled 4.19 billion yuan in 1959, by
500 million yuan.)i2/ Most of this sum will be used for seasonal loans
to production brigades, but the amount directed to the commune level
probably will be an important source of funds for development at that
level. Such loans are usually granted to finance specific activities,
such as a tractor station, which the state wants the commune to under-
take or expand.
The second category of commune income, proceeds-from commune
industry, is growing as a source of developmental revenue. Because of
high costs, however, net income from these enterprises is only a small
fraction of the gross value of their product.
Although' the Chinese Communists point to the amount contrib-
uted by the production brigade to the commune as a unique source of eco-
nomic strength of the commune distinguishing the commune from the coop-
erative, this contribution closely resembles the local surtax that the
township government formerly collected from cooperatives.
The brigade contribution to the capital investment fund of
commune-2 has been kept to a small amount in keeping with the policy
enunciated by Titan Chen-lin in his report on agriculture in April 1960,
to "make energetic efforts to develop the economy at the production bri-
gade level" as well as at the commune level. 22/ Poor brigades receiv-
ing state subsidies are exempted; prosperous ones after the fall har-
vests in 1959 were noted contributing from 0.3 to 2.5 percent of their
gross income. The average for all brigades probably is about 1 percent.
Under commune-2 the Chinese Communists have been forced to demarcate
more clearly types of investment that the top level of the commune
should undertake and those that more properly are the responsibility of
the production brigades. In Hopeh Province the CCP Provincial Commit-
tee declared in November 1959 that the investment funds of the commune
"should be used principally for the purchase of large-size agricultural
machinery, for water conservancy construction, and for the establishment
of industries ... . The communal reserve funds retained by the produc-
tion brigade should ... be used for the construction of large and medium
capital construction projects for farming, for the purchase of livestock
and agricultural implements, and for the building of medium and large
farm implement repair and assembly stations." 21/ Current policy in all
but the most advanced areas of China probably is to restrict the level
of investment in the commune to an amount less than that spent by bri-
gades.
2. At the Production Brigade Level
The average production brigade relies primarily on its own
farm produce for income, although poor brigades receive state subsidies
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and relief grain. Cash is earned by selling marketable produce to state
commercial organs. A measure of the backwardness of Chinese agriculture
is the fact that the average brigade engaged in farming consumes more
than 60 percent of its own produce for seed, animal feed, and human con-
sumption.
Data on how the brigade distributes its gross income are
scant, but there is nothing to indicate that its pattern is different
from that of the old cooperative, which in a typical case distributed
its product as shown in the following tabulation. 22/
Category
Percent
Personal consumption
60
Production costs
25
Taxes, including local surtax
7
Investment and welfare funds
8
Gross value of the product
of a typical agricultural
producers cooperative in
1957
100
Chinese Communist economic planners have evinced major con-
cern over how to distribute properly the produce of the brigades. Ac-
cording to the Rural Work Office of the Hopeh CCP Provincial Committee
in an article published in November 1959, the problem centers on the
correct determination of the following three proportions: (a) the ratio
of personal consumption to "accumulation" (a Chinese Communist term re-
ferring to all nonconsumption uses), (b) the proportion of the accumula-
tion fund to be handed over to the commune, and (c) the proportion of
the amount consumed by members to be distributed as "free supply" rather
than wages. L/
The first is a perennial problem facing the Chinese Communist
regime -- how to reduce the proportion allocated to consumption without
unduly weakening the peasant's ability and will to work. Because pro-
ductivity under the commune has not increased significantly, the regime
has not found it practical to try to reduce this proportion. In fact,
Chen Cheng-jen, Deputy Director of the Rural Work Committee of the CCP,
admitted in October 1959 that the average brigade distributes 60 percent
of its income to members for consumption. 2V This percentage is the
same as that which prevailed in most cooperatives. Prospering brigades,
however, after allowing for a slight increase in consumption, are sup-
posed to maximize accumulation, and wealthy communes that distribute as
little as 47 percent of income to members have been reported.
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The second problem -- determining the amount of the brigade
contribution to the commune -- already has been discussed.* No official
guidance has been published recommending a correct proportion, but scat-
tered reports indicate that most brigades, unless exempt by reasons of
poverty, contribute from 10 to 20 percent of their own investment fund
to the commune, that is, 1 to 2 percent of their gross income.
Regarding the third problem of how far to extend the free
supply system, Chen Cheng-jen in October 1959 noted that it had been CCP
policy since the summer of 1959 "appropriately to restrict the portion
of free supplies and gradually to increase the portion of wages." In
compliance with this policy, the Sputnik Commune in Honan Province, for
example, reduced the proportion distributed under free supply from
70 percent in 1958 to 38 percent in 1959. 22/ Chen laid down the rule
to be followed in all of Communist China that most brigades should dis-
tribute about 30 percent as free supply and that in no event should this
proportion exceed 40 percent. _56/ Under this percentage restriction,
few brigades have been rich enough to extend the free supply system to
cover more than staple food grains. Some communes, unable to go even
this far, cannot operate messhalls.
Chen Cheng-jen argued persuasively that the free supply sys-
tem in its present limited form was simply a slight extension of the
system of social insurance operated by the former cooperative, which
also provided for old people and orphans who had no relatives. Chen
said that in the usual brigade the income of 60 to 70 percent of fami-
lies remains unchanged) for the ratio of labor power to dependents in
these families approximates the average for the brigade as a whole. He
claimed that when free supply is 30 percent of distributable income, the
system benefits about 20 percent of the families in a brigade -- those
with an unusually high number of dependents -- by an amount equal to
only 2 percent of the brigade's income. In spite of this moderation of
the free supply system, even Mao Tse-tung is said to have admitted that
the able-bodied single worker who contributes the most while receiving
no more return than the others is a type who continues to give trouble.
3. Sources of Peasant Income, Incentives, and Private
Production
The sources of peasant income in commune-2 are, in order of
importance, wages paid for work performed in the collective organiza-
tion, welfare services including "free supply," and earnings from spare-
time work.
* See II, F, 1, p. 31, above.
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The part of a peasant's income supplied in the form of pub-
lic welfare, although greater now than before 1958, is still minor.
Essentially a system of strong material incentives is employed to get
the peasant to work hard. The system in use is the precommune system,
copied from the USSR, under which the peasant's income is derived from
a complex combination of factors dependent on production of his brigade,
his team, and his own efforts. Although the Chinese Communist regime
often adjures Party members to work without thought of,remuneration in
the true Communist spirit, the regime with typical ambivalence also
tries to make sure that in practice Party members who run communes and
brigades are adequately stimulated by material rewards. Commune offi-
cials generally earn from 40 to 100 yuan per month, many times the in-
come of the average peasant, and at least one province (Kirin) decreed
after the late harvests in 1959 that the pay of principal leaders at
lower levels in the commune be equal to or exceed the level of income of
the highest paid farmers under their supervision. 21/
For each specific job done for the collective, the peasant
is credited with the number of workpoints assigned to the job according
to a pre-set schedule of values. The principle usually followed is that
one hour of heavy, unskilled labor is worth one point. A strong farmer
thus can earn 10 points in a 10-hour workday. Easier tasks, such as
tending water buffaloes, are worth less, and supervisory positions and
mining and industrial tasks requiring some skill are valued more highly
than ordinary farm work. Workpoints are converted to cash at the end of
the year or after each harvest. At that time the brigade calculates the
residual income to be divided among members, divides this residual by
the total workpoints earned by all members, and, after the value of a
workpoint has been established, credits each member's account with the
amount due him. In 1959 the value of a workpoint in some prosperous
brigades was reported by the Chinese Communist press to have been as
high as 0.20 yuan. Refugees in Hong Kong late in 1959 and early in 1960
reported values of workpoints varying from 0.03 to 0.08 yuan. A farmer
who earned 3,900 workpoints during the year would have earned 240 yuan
if the workpoint had been valued at 0.08 yuan. A large part, but usu-
ally less than half, of an individual's earnings from workpoints is de-
ducted for the messhall fee (the "free supply" item) as are any debts
incurred by the individual or his dependents for such items as unpaid
school and medical fees. Much of the remainder is held by the brigade
on deposit. This deposit is releasable only by the brigade leader, who
may issue a small monthly dole for pocket money and authorize withdraw-
als for such purposes as weddings and funerals.
The peasant's basic income derived from his workpoints may
be supplemented by a bonus earned by his team and divided among team
members. The bonus consists of a part, which the team is allowed to re-
tain, of production achieved in excess of the assigned production quota.
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In the spring of both 1959 and 1960, when production quotas were being
levied throughout the country, the Chinese Communists issued instruc-
tions to set them at an amount generally less than the state target in
order to encourage the exceeding of goals by teams. 2Y Unless these
instructions were merely a device for compensating for excessive and
unrealistic targets, they suggest that the regime has been anxious to
strengthen the bonus system.
Chinese Communist official policy on the question of private'
plots and private raising of animals has come full circle around to the
traditional Soviet view that the practice of permitting peasants to en-
gage in private sideline activities should be encouraged up to a point
but should be closely controlled because of its potential threat to col-
lectivist principles. A comprehensive statement of the current Chinese
view was set down by Chen Cheng-jen in an article in October 1959 ex-
plaining principles of ownership in the commune. 91 He said that the
Central Committee has encouraged commune members to use to the full
scattered unused land around their houses and in the villages and beside
streams and roads. The crops produced on such land ... are to be left
entirely at the disposal of individual commune members." According to
Chen, private ownership of houses, clothing, bedding, furniture, bank
deposits, odd trees, small farm tools, hogs, chickens, and small plots
and the right of individuals to engage in sideline activities in their
spare time are known as "small private ownership" and the "small free-
doms" within the large collective. Although their existence is permit-
ted, he warned that their function is only to supplement the collective
economy and that any undue growth in private activity at the expense of
the collective economy must be guarded against.
The situation in mid-1960 is that private income may be
earned by raising chickens and hogs, cultivating small garden plots, and
engaging in a limited variety of sideline occupations. Such private ac-
tivity, which was discouraged to the point of extinction in 1958, is now
officially encouraged as spare-time occupation. It is a small but sig-
nificant supplementary source of income for the peasant family and is
important for the rural economy as a whole. The proportion of private
income to the collective total reportedly amounted to 4.5 percent in
Honan Province in 1959, ..62/ and since the commune movement is more ad-
vanced in Honan than in most parts of China the percentage may have been
higher for the country as a whole.
According to official reports, which refugees in Hong Kong
tend to confirm, households in many areas of China in the spring of 1959
were allotted about 0.01 acre per person for cultivating vegetables,
sweet potatoes, fodder crops, and oilseeds. This allocation would give
the average household of five persons a plot of 2,000 square feet, a not
insignificant amount in China where there is less than one-half acre of
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farmland per capita. Early in 1960 there were conflicting reports from
different areas that the regime had reaffirmed its policy on private
plots and that it had ordered a reduction in their size. In Kwangtung
Province, for example, it was decided early in 1960 to have peasants
turn over 30 to 50 percent of their private plots to messhalls, L1/ but
officials in Kansu Province were instrutted in February 1960 to encour-
age peasants to expand their private plots.
Recent emphasis on collective raising of hogs has reduced
private participation in this field, but the raising of chickens by in-
dividuals seems to be a required activity. Several ex-commune members
who fled to Hong Kong in the spring of 1960 reported that peasants in
their areas had been given quotas of chickens to be raised for sale to
the commune and that if a household was unfortunate enough to lose one
of its required chickens through disease or theft, it had to make up
the loss by buying one from a neighbor's surplus. ?2/
Raising livestock, fishing, off-season mining, transport,
mat weaving, collecting herbs, and a variety of other sideline occupa-
tions traditionally have kept members of peasant households busy when
they were not working in the fields raising staple crops. These useful
activities declined during 1958, and the regime early in 1959 began to
encourage peasants to revive some of these activities in their spare
time. In one commune in Kwangtung, for example, approved individual
sideline activities included collecting grass, collecting night soil,
and plaiting straw mats, in addition to raising pigs and chickens.
G. Communal Living and the Family
The stress on collective living, although weaker than in 1958,
is a principal feature distinguishing the commune from Soviet or former
Chinese Communist agricultural organizations. Although such collective
institutions as the messhall are an integral feature of the Chinese com-
mune system, they are no longer a responsibility of the commune level of
administration but are financed and managed by the production brigade.
It was the goal of commune-1 to collectivize homelife thoroughly
by building communal housing and establishing community facilities for
cooking, eating, taking care of children and old people, laundering, and
tailoring. Many early plans for communalization had to be dropped early
in 1959, however, when the CCP decreed that communes slash their budgets
for welfare activities. The only services that remain in most communes
are the messhalls, nurseries, and homes for old people. The last are
now reserved only for old people without families to support them. Be-
cause nurseries and homes for old people are a conventional feature of
Soviet collective organizations, it really is only the messhall that
stands out as a unique feature of the Chinese commune.
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The messhall system has a strong ideological attraction for Chi-
nese Communist leaders who have been willing to compromise almost every
aspect of the original commune concept except this one. It has been an
uphill fight, however. Messhalls have proved unpopular, extremely dif-
ficult to operate smoothly, and lacking in marked economic advantages.
Therefore, the messhall is far from being an established institution,
even now in its second year of existence. In spite of periodic nation-
wide drives to strengthen messhalls, the number of people eating in them
has declined. Whereas attendhnce at messhalls was nearly universal at
the end of 1958, it dropped to 73 percent at the end of 1959, when
3.9 million rural messhalls reportedly were feeding 400 million peo-
ple. .6V In many areas of China, messhalls were forced to disband early
in 1959, when they ran out of food. With food stocks replenished by
summer harvest, Party leaders initiated a drive to reopen messhalls
under a new set of rules intended to make them more acceptable to the
populace and to improve their effectiveness in managing food supplies.
The new approach toward messhalls, as affirmed in the Party resolution
adopted in August 1959 at Lu-shan, directed that attendance be voluntary
(although political pressure to join probably has amounted to coercion
in some cases) and that the food ration be distributed directly to
households, which would turn it over to the messhall in exchange for
food tickets. The household could turn in unused tickets for grain. L/
Such measures, however, were not generally successful, and the Party in
the spring of 1960 again felt it necessary to undertake a campaign to
try to reinvigorate the system. T'an Chen-lin, in his report to the NPC
in April 1960, revealed the concern felt by the CCP when he noted that
messhalls "are now a central question in arranging the life of the
masses ... . Not enough community dining rooms have been set up in some
places, and some of them are not well run." L/ Some provincial reports
have filled in details of this dark picture. At a conference on the
messhall question held in Kwangtung Province at the end of March 1960,
it was admitted that messhalls successfully served only 35 percent of
the rural population. Ten percent of Kwangtung farm families were not
served by messhalls at all, and of the messhalls that did exist, 15 to
20 percent were seasonal "rice-processing" halls that existed in name
only, and another 40 to 45 percent, while permanent, had such major
shortcomings as corrupt and unsound management and monotonous menus.
The complaint was made that team and brigade officials refuse to eat in
such messhalls.
To strengthen the messhall system, Kwangtung Province decided at
the March conference to require peasants to turn over from 30 to 50 per-
cent of their private plots to messhalls, which were to cultivate plots
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at the rate of 0.05 to 0.1 mou* per messhall member. The average mess-
hall in Kwangtung, with 150 members, thus is supposed to have a garden
of 7.5 to 15 mou (1.25 to 2.5 acres), acquired at the expense of private
plots and also is supposed to try to raise 15 to 30 pigs and 300 chickens.
Whether or not these measures will be more effective than previ-
ous efforts to strengthen messhalls remains to be seen. The testimony
of refugees in Hong Kong indicates that the Chinese Communists may have
created a dilemma for themselves -- considerations of prestige make them
unwilling to drop the messhall system, yet they seem unable to make it
work well on a continuing basis.
dissatisfaction with the commune centered on the messhall and that
the abolition of messhalls in many parts of southern China from March to
May 1959 was the most popular single feature of the process of tidying
up communes. Lq/ the revival of the messhall
late in 1959 and early in 1960 was done in the face of considerable oppo-
sition from the peasants, a factor that could hinder the consolidation
and smooth operation of messhalls which the Chinese are trying to achieve.
Although the process of collectivization has weakened family
ties, the family in the present-day commune still appears to be a fairly
strong social unit. Family unity has been weakened as a result of the
increase in community welfare services and payment of wages to individ-
uals, which have reduced the financial dependence of working members of
the family on the head of the household. Moreover, several traditional
family activities such as cooking, eating, and child rearing now are
frequently done on a community basis. Nevertheless, it is possible to
exaggerate the degree of social change that is taking place. The typi-
cal peasant family still lives together in a small hut, has a small gar-
den plot, and owns small animals and fowl. The brigade is supposed to
disburse the grain ration to the household, not to individuals. The
household is responsible as a unit for financing the care and education
of dependents and paying for weddings and funerals.
The official CCP position on the question of family life in the
commune is contained in a resolution issued at Wu-han in December 1958.
It stated that "we stand for the abolition of the irrational patriarchal
system inherited from the past and for the development of family life in
which there is democracy and unity." .2./ In concentrating its attack on
the old large family system -- the type romanticized in the novels of
Pearl S. Buck -- the CCP took a safe, nondisruptive stand, for the large
family system had always tended to be the way of life of the gentry
rather than of the ordinary peasant and had been in decline for several
decades anyway. By 1958, after 9 years of Communist suppression, the
system must have been nearly extinct.
One mou is equivalent to 0.1666 acre.
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Little remains of the demographically significant features of
the original commune. The attempts to separate members of the family
and to transfer loyalty of individuals from the family to the collective
body, if sustained over a prolonged period of time might have consti-
tuted an effective weapon for enforcing birth control. Although anti-
natalist influences in the present-day commune may still exist, a coun-
terforce might be the free supply system that, by guaranteeing communal
feeding of children, would tend to reduce parental worries about the
cost of supporting children. On balance, there is little reason to ex-
pect a significant drop in the present annual birth rate in Communist
China, estimated at about 4o per thousand. This birth rate is nearly
the maximum number of babies that can be had by women of childbearing
age in China, considering the present age structure of its population.
III. Economic Role and Effectiveness of the Rural Commune
A close scrutiny of the commune in Communist China as it operates
today discloses no important economic function not possessed by the for-
mer township government. Like the township the commune is the lowest of
several levels of local government concerned with rural affairs. It is
financed partly by small levies, equivalent to local taxes, supplied by
subordinate units; it may conscript a limited percentage of the rural
labor force for community projects; and it operates a variety of small
economic enterprises, primarily to provide services to its agricultural
community. The Party committee attached to the commune, like its prede-
cessor, guides and supervises implementation of state policy by the
basic agricultural production unit -- formerly the cooperative and now
the production brigade. In brief, the commune may be defined as a
government-Party superstructure placed over collectives equipped with
messhalls.
Understandably, in view of the glorified state of the commune con-
cept, Chinese Communist propaganda does not take such a prosaic view of
the commune's role. For example, Peking Radio in December 1959 declared
that "the people's commune formed the foundation of the water conservancy
campaign." In March the English-language Peking Review attributed all
success allegedly attained in combating drought in 1959 to the commune
form of organization. The Review added that the "intrinsic strength and
vitality" of the commune also had been demonstrated in many other fields.
Peking Radio on 3 June 1960 claimed that spring planting had been done
well this year, mainly because of the "high efficiency displayed by the
rural people's communes and the mass scale technical revolution in farm-
ing implements."
Such publicity essentially misleads by attributing to the commune
results achieved primarily by subordinate units or superior levels of
government. The commune level actually played only a small role last
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winter in the construction campaign for water conservancy, being only
one of several levels of government engaged in such activity. Moreover,
although the commune seems to be fairly efficient in organizing peasant
labor, its effectiveness is due more to good organization at the level
of the production brigade than at the level of the commune.
(Improved discipline at the brigade level would be
a natural outcome of the nationwide drive in the fall of 1959 to recruit
Party members at this level.)
Although the Chinese Communist regime has indicated that further
improvements are possible in the organization of the rural commune, the
regime has seemed fairly satisfied with the over-all economic efficiency
of the commune. The strong points of the commune system, like those of
the Soviet collective, are its ability to organize labor for principal
farm tasks and to deliver grain to the state. The commune should be an
adequate organization for operating machine-tractor stations and trans-
mitting modern agricultural technology to production units. The commune
does less well in encouraging peasants to carry out sideline occupation,
an important subsidiary source of farm income in Communist China. Con-
sumption of food in most areas has been adequately controlled by the
messhall system, which, however, does not run smoothly.
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Commune performance in delivering grain to the state improved mark-
edly after commune authority was curtailed. The reestablishment of tax
and purchasing stations in 1959 at the production brigade level resulted
in a speedup and increase in state procurement. In spite of a drop in
the size of the harvest in 1959, official data indicate that grain de-
liveries in the food year 1959/60 may have slightly exceeded the amount
in 1958/59.
Although rural food supplies in 1959/60 were almost certainly less
than in the previous year, fewer messhalls reportedly closed down for
lack of food in the spring of 1960 than in the previous spring. This
improvement indicates that most messhalls are now capable of managing
food supplies adequately and making at least minimum rations continuously
available. On the debit side the messhall system is unpopular, difficult
to run, and probably no more economical than the previous system in which
peasants cooked and ate at home. Moreover, there is little evidence
supporting the contention, often made in the propaganda, that messhalls
release for work in the commune large numbers of women, who would other-
wise be tied down with housework. This contention tends to be disproved
by the fact that in the USSR and many parts of Communist China, espe-
cially in the South, women have traditionally performed heavy farm labor
as well as kept house. Although the future of the messhall seems to be
far from assured, the regime is still trying hard to make it work. The
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regime has been willing to drop other once-cherished goals of the com-
mune, such as the special role for developing industry, but it has been
stubbornly reluctant to give up the messhall, which it regards as a
vital feature distinguishing the commune system and to which it has a
strong ideological attachment.
IV. Urban Commune
The Chinese Communist leadership ran into difficulties late in 1958
when the commune movement was pushed into urban areas. Subsequently,
urban communes were suspended in December 1958, after it became apparent
that a tremendous effort would be needed to make them take root. In
March 1960, however, the regime announced that it had decided to revive
the program for the urban commune, and in June it was announced that, by
20 May 1960, 42 million people, nearly one-half of the urban population
of the country, were in newly formed communes. 11/
The urban commune, in its rather mild 1960 model, is less disruptive
than the original rural commune. As currently organized, the urban com-
mune has little discernible effect on the economy but is primarily im-
portant for its efforts to promote collective living. Perhaps because
of the persistence of shortcomings in the rural commune movement, the
regime has moved cautiously in the cities. Initial reports indicate
that the urban commune has not taken over control of municipal utilities,
state-owned factories, banks, and wholesale commercial organizations --
the fundamental economic institutions of a city. Instead, the urban
commune is an organization of residents, usually based on the street
committee or on the ch'u, which is similar to a :ward, and it may take
over the functions of those organizations. The urban commune seems to
be a label used to dramatize the well-publicized movement during the
first quarter of 1960 to promote collective life and to organize house-
wives into neighborhood workshops.
Although communes that appear to replace existing levels of adminis-
tration in the city (either the street committee or the ch'u) are the
most prevalent type, two other types have emerged -- communes formed
around large factories and large government organizations (not to oper-
ate them, but to organize living arrangements of their workers and de-
pendents). The urban commune has not yet attempted to adopt communistic
features, such as the free supply system, which mark the rural commune.
Urban messhalls, for example, are really public restaurants in which the
diner pays for what he eats.
According to official statistics, as of 20 May 1960, 1,000 urban
communes had been set up, each with an average membership of 42,000 peo-
ple. These 1,000 communes were said to operate 60,000 factories,
180,000 messhalls, 120,000 nurseries and kindergartens, and 100,000 serv-
ice centers. 12/ No employment figures for commune factories and service
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centers have been reported. Many housewives now working for the commune
are employed in the varied service and welfare organizations that have
mushroomed in recent months to replace the domestic care of children,
family cooking, and other household activities.
The claim of Chinese Communist propaganda that communes release an
enormous reservoir of womanpower previously tied down by household tasks
is misleading because the proportion of city women who work in Communist
China probably could have been expanded greatly without resort to whole-
sale collectivization of household tasks. There are about 25 million
adult women in Chinese cities. At the end of 1959, 8 million women were
employed by state-owned enterprises, and neighborhood industry (now
called commune industry) employed additionally only 1 million women. I3./
A small number may still be engaged in personal service and self-employed
activities. Thus, at the beginning of 1960, probably only about 40 per-
cent of the women in Chinese cities were employed outside the home, com-
pared with a proportion of 60 percent in the USSR and about one-third in
the US. If the Soviet housewife, with the help of nurseries, is able
both to work and to take care of the home, the Chinese housewife should
be able to do the same.
Under the economic plan for 1960, urban commune industry is to pro-
duce 4 billion yuan in terms of the gross value of the product, or
double its output in 1959 (when it was called neighborhood industry).
Commune industry contributes about 2 percent to total Chinese Communist
industrial output. Descriptions of urban commune industry indicate that
its main functions are to process raw materials for state factories and
to produce tile, brick, clothing, shoes, noodles, and other mall items
for local use -- traditional activities of handicraft producers coopera-
tives, petty household industry, and peddlers. Such activities were
curtailed in 1958, when millions of people engaged in them were drafted
for construction, mining, and industrial work in state enterprises. In
reviving small-scale production of goods and services, first under
street and later under commune sponsorship, the Chinese Communist regime
has tacitly admitted that this activity is needed to support the growing
population and industry of the cities.
The messhall is the principal social innovation introduced by the
urban commune. Initial reports indicate that the Communists are having
as much difficulty running urban messhalls as they have had with rural
messhalls. In Canton, where the situation may be unusually bad, it has
been reported that messhall food is poorly cooked and that lines have
been so long that people with regular jobs cannot afford to take the
time to eat in messhalls, which are patronized primarily by dependents
and unemployed people. IL/ Under such conditions, it is not surprising
that the number of people served by Cantonese messhalls declined during
March and April. Official data indicate that during that period the
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number. dropped by one-fourth to 277,000, which is only 15 percent of the
population of the city. /2/
In April 1960, Peking reaffirmed the long-range goals set forth by
the Central Committee of the CCP in a communique, dated 10 December
1958, which said, "In the future urban people's communes ... will ...
become instruments for the transformation of old cities and the con-
struction of new socialist cities; they will become the unified organ-
izers of production, exchange, and distribution and of the livelihood
and well-being of the people; they will become social organizations
which combine industry, agriculture, trade, education, and military af-
fairs, organizations in which government administration and commune man-
agement are integrated." /Y It is too early to evaluate the full eco-
nomic significance of the urban commune and the direction it is taking.
Nevertheless, in spite of the unpopularity and economic ineffectiveness
of some features of the urban commune, the regime apparently intends to
increase the importance of the role of the urban commune when conditions
permit.
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APPENDIX A
CHRONOLOGY OF MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS IN THE HISTORY
OF THE COMMUNE MOVEMENT IN COMMUNIST CHINA
April 1958 -- A campaign began to merge agricultural producers' co-
operatives into "large cooperatives" the forerunner of the com-
mune.
1 June 1958 -- The groundwork for the commune concept was laid by
Mao Tse-tung in an article entitled "Introducing a Cooperative,"
published in the first issue of Red Fla, new theoretical fort-
nightly of the Chinese Communist Party CCP). Although he did
not mention the word commune, Mao equated the "poor and white"
Chinese people to a clean sheet of paper on Which could be
painted "the newest and most beautiful picture," thus suggesting
that radical social innovations were impending.
1 and 16 July 1958 -- The concept of the commune for rural China was
unveiled in articles in Red Flag. An article in the 1 July issue
stated that a cooperative in Hupeh Province had taken on the char-
acter of a "people's commune," the first official mention of a
Chinese commune. The 16 July issue of Red Flag quoted Mao as say-
ing that the general direction of Chinese society should be grad-
ually to "organize industry, agriculture, commerce and trade, cul-
ture and education, and the militia ... into a large commune which
should form the basic unit of our society." 77/
11 August 1958 -- Peking issued the first widely circulated publicity
on communes. The People's Daily and Radio Peking both reported the
commune concept and Mao's praise of communes that he inspected during
his tour of Honan. 1.Y
29 August 1958 -- A nationwide movement to organize rural communes
was formally launched with a resolution adopted by the Central
Committee (CC) of the CCP "On the Establishment of People's Com-
munes in the Rural Areas" 22/ (not publicly released until 9 Sep-
tember 1958). The resolution called for formation of communes by
merging cooperatives, organizing the labor force along military
lines, and collectivizing daily living. It predicted transition
from the present system of collective ownership to a system of
ownership by all the people (state ownership) quickly in some
areas "say 3 or 4 years, and more slowly in other places, say in
5 or 6 years or even longer." The resolution asserted that the
commune would be the best organizational form for the building of
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socialism and the gradual transition to Communism and would de-
velop into the basic social unit of the future Communist society.
It concluded, " ... it appears now that the realization of Com-
munism in our country is no longer a thing of the distant future."
In some ways, however, this resolution was comparatively cautious.
It affirmed that "our task at the present stage is the building of
socialism," insisted that the socialist principle of distribution
(according to work done) be adhered to, did not mention the com-
munistic principle of "free supply" soon to be adopted by most
communes, and did not put forth the claim made subsequently that
the commune contained seeds of Communism.
September 1958 -- In a Whirlwind movement that went beyond the recom-
mendations of the CCP resolution of 29 August 1958, peasants were
herded into communes, private property including houses was con-
fiscated, messhalls were established, welfare services were ek-
panded, and the wage system was changed from one based on earned
workpoints to a combination of "free supply" and fixed wages ac-
cording to grade. By the end of September, 98.2 percent of peasant
households were in communes. .ci.,52,/ Some enormous county-size communes
were formed. Initial, confused steps were taken to introduce com-
munes to cities.
10 December 1958 -- A halt to the expansion of the commune movement
was called for in "A Resolution on Some Questions Concerning
People's Communes," adopted at Wu-han by the Sixth Plenary Session
of the Eighth CC, CCP. .6L/ This resolution suspended urban com-
munes, toned down claims for the speed at Which China was said to
be making the transition to Communism, and reaffirmed the socialist
nature of the present Chinese commune. The resolution promised
that peasants would not be worked more than 12 hours a day and
declared that they could cook at home, take their children home
from nurseries, and would have to take care of their old relatives
because the "homes of respect for the aged" (earlier in the com-
mune movement termed "happy homes") would no longer be open to old
people who had working relatives. The resolution called for a
5-month period of "tidying up."
February 1959 -- Further moderation of radical features of the commune
was ordered at an Enlarged Meeting of the Politburo of the CC, CCP,
held at Cheng-chou, as disclosed in August 1959. 82/ Refugees have
reported that this was an important meeting at which major deci-
sions were made to return management authority from the commune to
the old cooperative level, to replace the new fixed wage system
with the old workpoint system of calculating wages, to return con-
fiscated property to peasants or compensate them and further to
curtail welfare activities.
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2 to 4 April 1959 -- At the Seventh Plenary Session of the Eighth CC,
CCP, held in Shanghai, the further "tidying up of communes" for
" a period of time" was proposed. This proposal extended
the consolidation period recommended at the Sixth Plenary Session
in December 1958.
16 August 1959 -- A resolution adopted by the Eighth Plenary Session
of the Eighth CC, CCP at Lu-shan Lti/ disclosed that the tidying
up of the previous 8 months had consisted of narrowing commune
responsibilities to approximately those held by the former town-
ship, replaced by the commune in 1958. Specifically the resolu-
tion called for institution of a system of a three-level type of
ownership of the means of production. It gave the principal means
of production to the production brigade (approximately the pre-
commune cooperative), reserved for the top level of the commune
the right to own certain enterprises, and permitted the produc-
tion team to own small tools. It encouraged revival of dining
halls under strict rules to control consumption and authorized
continued distribution of a part of commune income in the form
of free supply, that is, according to the communistic principle
of distribution according to need.
26 August 1959 -- Chou En-lai, in his famous speech retracting claims
for production in 1958, admitted that communes had been over-
centralized, too egalitarian, and extravagant. 2;2/ He claimed
that such errors were isolated and temporary -- equivalent to
"one finger among ten" -- and were corrected immediately on being
discovered. He denied that the rise of communes was "premature"
or that they were in "an awful mess" as charged by some rightists.
28 August 1959 -- Radio Peking announced that China had about
500,000 production brigades belonging to more than 24,000 com-
munes. Production teams, each made up of about 40 households,
numbered 3 million. 1116/
29 August 1959 -- The People's Daily undertook an ideological defense
of communes against the attacks of "some people, apart from the
reactionaries, at home and abroad Lmeaning the USSIg who are
still dissatisfied with and opposed to the people's communes ... .
(These include) certain right opportunists in the Communist
Party." L-(/ The newspaper defended the Chinese commune against
two common arguments: (1) a country not yet in the stage of
building Communism cannot have communes, and (2) the commune is
so similar to the former cooperative that it is therefore un-
necessary. The editorial affirmed that the commune in China
today is socialist in character but has seeds of Communism. It
asserted that ownership at the commune level will grow rapidly
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through expansion of its enterprises and investment fund and that
herein lies a great, bright future for the Chinese rural areas.
22 September 1959 -- An editorial in the People's Daily asserted that
community messhalls have a "boundless" future and that "these buds
of Communism are bound to grow healthfully." Although admitting
that some early defects caused the dissolution of a few messhalls,
the editorial claimed that great improvement had been made. g_dEl/
1 and 2 October 1959 -- The Chinese carried their defense of communes
to the Soviet-controlled press. Liu Shao-ch'i, Chairman of the
FRC and number two Chinese Communist, devoted several paragraphs
of the article "The Victory of Marxism-Leninism in Mina," written
for the Cominform journal, Problems of Peace and Socialism, in de-
fense of the commune. L32/ So did Teng Hsiao-p'ing, Secretary
General of the Central Committee of the CCP, in an article published
by Pravda on 2 October 1959. 22/
October 1959 -- A new edition of the Soviet textbook and economic bible
Political Economy contained a brief description of the Chinese com-
mune, endorsed it as suitable to China in its present stage of
building socialism, but did not mention Chinese claims that it con-
tains seeds of Communism or will be the best form of organization
for the transition to Communism. Meanwhile, Khrushchev and other
top Russians visiting Peking in October in connection with the 10th
anniversary celebrations failed to mention communes.
18 October .1959 -- Systems of ownership and distribution in the commune
were definitively outlined by Chen Cheng-jen, Deputy Head of the
Rural Work Department of the CC, CCP. 2.2.1 In an article published
by the People's Daily, he spelled out ownership rights of each of
the three levels of the commune. The top level is to own large,
modern machinery, when it becomes available, but meanwhile most
means of production is to be owned by the production brigade. He
stated that 60 percent of the gross income of communes is consumed
by members and prescribed that no more than 40 percent of disposable
income be distributed under the free supply system.
16 December 1959 -- The strengthening of the role of the Party in com-
munes was urged by An Tzu-wen, head of the Organization Department
of the CC, CCP. In an article in Red Flag, he said that it was
especially important to strengthen the role of the Party branch at
the brigade or team level because Party branches are "bastions in
the rural areas and the basic transmission belts between the Party
and commune members." 22/
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1 January 1960 -- The commune concept was further entrenched as
Chinese Communist dogma when an editorial in the People's Daily
listed the general line, the leap forward, and the commune as
three precious (or magic) things devised by Mao and the Party
for adapting the building of socialism to special conditions
prevailing in China. 212/
1 January 1960 -- The first issue of Red Flag for 1960 reported the
rapid development of neighborhood organizations to organize urban
residents for production and livelihood. These organizations were
said to combine production, exchange, distribution, and the daily
welfare of the residents. In 11 cities, more than 500,000 persons,
76 percent of them housewives, were reported to be in neighborhood
workshops and service centers. 95/
10 March 1960 -- The CCP Shanghsin street committee, Chungking, ac-
cording to Radio Peking, has successfully organized the economic
and social life of the people through an "economic life committee."
Twenty messhalls have been set up to serve 90 percent of the resi-
dents. Nurseries take care of 80 percent of preschool children.
Three service stations employing 1,100 persons sell merchandise,
postage stamps, and newspapers; handle bank deposits; collect gar-
bage; install utilities; provide care for the sick and aged; and
provide housecleaning service. The experience of this street was
given widespread publicity as a model for nationwide emulation. 2../
30 March 1960 -- The 1960 model of the urban commune was unveiled. In
a major speech on the economic plan for 1960, Li Fu-dhun told the
National People's Congress (NFC) that urban communes were spreading
in a big way. He said that the gross value of output of urban com-
mune industry was expected to expand from 2 billion yuan in 1959 to
4 billion yuan in 1960 (gross value for all industry was 210 billion
yuan in the 1960 plan). Turning to the commune movement as a whole, Li
repeated the standard formula that the commune is big, comprehen-
sive, and the best form of basic social organization for the build-
ing of socialism and the transition from socialism to Communism.
He admitted, however, that further development and consolidation of
the communes were still necessary and seemed to undercut the claim
of the commune to superiority by urging localities to "bring into
full play the advantages of the state farms." LT/
6 April 1960 -- T'an Chen-lin, Party spokesman on rural affairs, told
the NFC that the rural commune would be around in its present form
for a long time. Before Before it evolved to the next stage (return
to collective ownership by the top level of the commune), four
conditions would have to be met: (1) per capita annual disposable
income would have to reach 150 to 200 yuan (it was 85 yuan in 1959);
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(2) the sector owned by the top level would have to take up the
overwhelming proportion of the economy of the whole commune;
(3) poorer brigades would have to catch up with prosperous bri-
gades; and (4) mechanization must reach certain proportions.
"Meanwhile," said T'an, "because ownership by the production bri-
gade is basic, we should make energetic efforts to develop the
economy at the production brigade level." T'an disclosed that
running messhalls well was a difficult problem and that by the
end of 1959 only 400 million people, 73 percent of the rural pop-
ulation, ate in messhalls (the practice had been nearly universal
at the end of 1958).
6 April 1960 -- Li Hsieh-po, Vice Chairman of the All-China Federa-
tion of Trade Unions, told the NPC that urban communes were being
organized in three forms, as follows: those formed around big
state-operated factories; those formed around government organi-
zations and schools; and those mainly made up of local street
residents. He reported that membership totaled 20 million and
that some 2 million workers were employed in 56,000 industrial
units operated by urban communes and street governments. More
than 50,000 community messhalls had been established in cities
and catered to more than 5.2 million people. There were more
than 66,000 neighborhood service stations. Li reaffirmed that
the goal of the movement was to carry out a resolution adopted
in December 1958 by the Sixth Plenary Session, Eighth CC, CCP,
that urban people's communes must "serve as a tool for the reform
of old cities and the establishment of socialist new cities; as
an over-all organizer for production, exchange, and distribution
and for the welfare of the people; and as a social organization
where workers, peasants, merchants, students, and soldiers are
coordinated with one another and where government and commune
authorities are combined into one." 9
4 June 1960 -- Vice Premier Li Hsien-nien, in a speech at a confer-
ence of cultural workers, said that as of 20 May a total of more
than 1,000 urban people's communes had been set up, with a member-
ship of 42 million people. According to Li, communes had set up
more than 6o,000 factories, 180,000 community dining rooms,
120,000 nurseries, and 100,000 service and trade centers. 100/
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APPENDDC B
PHOTOGRAPBB
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Figure 4. Commune Members Terracing a Graveyard on a Hillside in South China.
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Figure 5. Irrigating and Applying Fertilizer in the Winter While Snow Was
Still on the Ground in the "August 1" Commune near Nan-chiang in Central China.
Figure 6. Communist China: Field Workers Team in
Hsin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton.
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Figure 7. Communist China: Blacksmith Shop in
Hsin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton.
Figure 8. Communist China: Workers in a Village
in Hsin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton.
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Figure 9. Communist China: Health Clinic in a
Building in Hhin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton.
Figure 10. Communist China: Messhall in
Hhin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton.
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Figure 11. Communist China: Entrance to a "Leap Forward" Messhall of
the Taku Camp in Hsin-chiao Peoples Commune near Canton.
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