From Land Reform to Collectivization

• During 1949-57, adopted Stalinist development model

  • i.e. focus on heavy industry, and the rural sector should provide the savings for industrial investment and raw materials for light industry

• The Chinese leadership invested only minimally in agriculture

• During First Five-Year Plan (1953-57)

  • Rural sector:

    • Produced > 50% of income

    • Employed > 80% of labour force

    • But received < 8% of the total state investment

  • Industry:

    • Received > 52% of the total state investment

• Land reform = The confiscation and redistribution of landlord-held land and other property

  • Destroyed the old elite

  • Built up credibility and support in the rest of rural society

  • Peasants were encouraged to form mutual aid teams, which pooled labour, but retained ownership of land and other productive assets

  • Peasants had the dream of “building up a family fortune” (fa jia zhi fu)

• Land reform of 1950-52 coincided with spurts of agricultural growth and significant improvement in standard of living of average peasant

  • Major agricultural indicators had reached or exceeded the best levels of the mid-1930’s

• By end of 1957, over 97% of all peasant households had been organized into agricultural producers’ cooperatives (APCs)

  • Peasants in the larger APCs received no dividend

    • Received only labour payment

Collectivization and Agricultural Performance

• Collectivization campaigns over the 1953-57 period failed to energize agricultural growth

• Growth rates slowed dramatically beginning in 1953, when collectivization began nationwide

  • Because of rapid population growth, per-capita grain output was even lower

    • Grew at 1.13% annually

Winter 1952-53: Small “Rash Advance”, Many Ripples

• Autumn 1952 – “Lavish official praise for Soviet collective agriculture”

• Localities view with each other to hastily organize more mutual aid groups and bigger APCs

• Peasants viewed collective property as ‘communization’

• In many places, farm work, as well as side-line businesses, was neglected, because peasants, especially idle ones had little incentive to work

• Mao wrote directives calling for “scaling down the targets of collectivization,

  • Emphasized the need for agricultural policy to suit the special characteristics of the peasant economy,

  • Made spring planting the top priority

  • “Any assignment or method of work that hinders the production of the peasants must be avoided”

• The directives led to a moderation of the pace of collectivization

• Output of both grain and cotton per mu (land productivity) declined in 1953

November 1953-January 1955: “Market Restriction and Collectivization”

• By fall 1953 there was a grain crisis

  • Result of unsatisfactory summer harvest and rapidly growing urban consumption

• Vice-Premier Chen Yun decided to implement a state system for the procurement (through compulsory deliveries at state-set prices)

  • Rationing of grain beginning in November

  • Did this even though they anticipated that the program would undermine production initiatives and probably cause local rebellions

• Collectivization was deemed a crucial measure in increasing agricultural output

  • Would facilitate the CCP’s control over rural production and thus extraction of resources from rural areas

• October and November 1953 – Mao Zedong – “it is at once imperative and possible to develop agricultural producers’ cooperatives” and urged people to “go for a medium-sized or big cooperative wherever possible”

  • Argued that “there must be a transition from individual ownership to collective ownership, to socialism”

• 1954 cooperative campaign (till Jan 1955):

  • Instead of focusing on development of mutual aid teams (as in the winter reform), focused on development of APCs

• Local cadres commonly used illegal methods to force peasants to surrender their grain at state-determined prices

  • Procurement increased by 42%

• The state used institutions to restrict the private economic opportunities of richer peasants

  • Credit cooperatives

  • Supply and marketing cooperatives

  • Incentives were beginning to turn against those who remained outside the collectives

• Newly created cooperatives were best with problems of poor planning and bad leadership

• Some peasants rushed to sell or kill their draught and domestic animals and decreased their investment in land

  • Complained that “the Communist Party has suddenly turned hostile”

• The disruption of collectivization, overzealous procurement and bad summer weather meant agricultural production in 1954 was almost an exact repeat of 1953

January-October 1955: A Year of Consolidation

• Central aim of the directives was to create incentives for peasants to produce

• Two-pronged approach:

  • Collectivization drive would pause and consolidate

    • Mao “pause,...

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