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Transcriber's note: Transcribed for MIM's Web site. The source of this document is located at: http://www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/classics/lifeundermao/chinafacts.pdf [21 MB]. Line breaks in the middle of words are omitted in this transcription. Page breaks in the middle of words are retained. None of grammar, punctuation, or spelling, were changed. Recognized original spelling errors are indicated by "[sic]." Illegible characters are indicated by "[illegible]." Images are omitted. Spellings of place names, people's names, etc., were not verified. If there is any question, please refer to the source.
[Peking, China : Guozi Shudian (China Publications Center)], 1974.
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NOTE THE PEOPLE'S COMMUNES CHIAOLI VILLAGE TAKES THE COLLECTIVE ROAD HOW CHIAOLI PRODUCTION TEAM DISTRIBUTES ITS INCOME OUR NEIGHBORHOOD SERVING THE PEOPLE STUDY BRINGS A BROADER VIEW HOW OUR CLINIC WORKS OUR LANE HAS CHANGED STREET FACTORIES THE GENERAL LINE FOR SOCIALIST CONSTRUCTION THE POLICY FOR NATIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT THE POLICY OF 'WALKING ON TWO LEGS' FLOOD CONTROL AND WATER CONSERVATION ABOUT NATIONAL MINORITIES WOMEN IN CHINA WOMEN'S LIBERATION THROUGH STRUGGLE PRIMARY EDUCATION MEDICAL CARE SYSTEM
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"How do the people's communes work? How did they come into being?"
"What position do national minorities have in Chinese society?"
"What do children study in primary schools? How long is their school day?"
"Are women really equal in China?"
. . . . . .
Many questions like this come to us from our readers. Since our January 1972 issue we have carried a series of articles in the form of questions and answers to try to answer them with facts and policies on China's politics, economy, society, women, culture, education, etc.
As a supplement to the January 1974 issue of China Reconstructs, here are answers to ten of the most frequently asked questions, together with several reports and articles.
—Editors
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Rural people's communes in China were set up widely in the autumn of 1958. They were the inevitable result of the political and economic developments in China.
Soon after liberation China's peasants carried out land reform, led by Chairman Mao and the Communist Party. Then, in line with the principle of voluntariness and benefit for all, they went on to build a new countryside following the Party's basic line for agricultural development: the first step, collectivization; the second step, mechanization and electrification.
Between the land reform and 1957, the organization of agricultural production in China developed from the mutual-aid team to the semi-socialist elementary producers' cooperative and the fully-socialist advanced cooperative. In 1958 came the further change to the people's commune.
The mutual-aid team had the rudiments of socialism. It consisted of a few to a dozen households. The means of production such as land, draft animals and farm tools were still privately owned. Members helped each other in production, exchanging work for work.
The elementary co-op was bigger than the mutual-aid team. Members pooled their land and other principal means of production, which were used and managed by the co-op. The owners received a certain amount of compensation according to how much they had pooled. Earnings from their collective work were distributed according to the socialist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work".
An advanced co-op generally had around 200 households. Land and other principal means of production were owned collectively, and used and managed under the co-op's unified leadership. Earnings were distributed according to the socialist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work". The co-op was bigger and the level of collectivization higher than before.
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By taking part in collective labor, the peasants gradually overcame the sense of private ownership which individual farming fosters and developed a growing desire to build the collective. Collectivization greatly promoted production. In 1957 harvests of grain, cotton and other industrial crops were the highest in history.
In 1957 the Party carried out a socialist education movement which deepened the peasants' socialist consciousness. In 1957, with the excellent domestic political and economic situation as a base, Chairman Mao formulated the General Line which called for "going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism". This increased the peasants' enthusiasm for building socialism which expressed itself in a burst of energy aimed at speedily changing the backwardness of the countryside.
From the winter of 1957 to the summer of 1958, extensive basic improvements were made on farm land, centered around building water conservation projects. Much was done to develop agriculture-oriented industry, transport and communications, commerce, culture, education, health and the local militia. The advanced cooperative, organized chiefly for farming, became increasingly inadequate for large-scale production. In many places the small cooperatives amalgamated themselves into big ones or formed federations of co-ops. Since such a co-op or federation of co-ops often embraced the households of an entire township—a total of several thousand—its managing group was combined with the township government so that the result was a unit of both political and economic organization. This was the prototype of the people's commune.
Chairman Mao promptly summed up the significance of this new creation by the masses and their experience and declared, "People's communes are fine." The Party Central Committee issued a resolution outlining steps and methods for the formation of communes. 'People's communes were organized by the tens of thousands.
(1) While the agricultural producers' cooperatives engaged chiefly in farming, the people's commune both organizes the economy and does the work of the local government. It is a basic unit of China's socialist society and of proletarian political power in the countryside. The commune members' representative assembly functions as the township people's congress.
The commune not only has agriculture, but industry and trade. It leads education, health and the militia. Its Party and administra-
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tive cadres lead and organize both political-ideological work and production. In short, the people's commune is a brand-new social organization unifying leadership of politics, economy, military affairs and culture.
(2) The people's commune is a large collective owned by all its members. With more land, more hands and more funds than a cooperative, it can do a better job of large-scale basic improvement of land, experimenting with scientific farming and fighting natural disasters. Its far greater economic strength makes possible faster progress in water conservation, mechanization, electrification and the use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides. It strengthens the rural collective economy, speeds up the building of socialism in the countryside and raises the peasants' standard of living more quickly.
(3) The people's commune can carry out the policy "take grain as the key link and ensure an all-round development" better; that is, develop a diversified economy of farming, forestry, stock raising, fishery and sidelines, and set up industry, repair shops and transport to serve agriculture.
(4) The agricultural producers' co-op had two levels of organization, the co-op and the production teams under it. There was ownership on the co-op level only. The people's commune has three levels of organization: the commune, a number of production brigades under it, and a number of production teams under each brigade. There is collective ownership on each of these three levels, with the production team as the basic accounting unit. The land, draft animals, small farm machinery owned by a production team are managed by it, and it organizes the labor power of its members. It handles its income and distribution independently, bears its losses itself and keeps most of the profit.
Economic undertakings run by the production brigades are those which the production teams are unable to manage by themselves or which can be managed better by the brigades. These include small reservoirs and other water conservation projects benefiting the teams under the brigade, shops processing farm and sideline products, orchards, schools and health stations. Some brigades own tractors and other farm machinery.
Economic undertakings run by the communes are those which the brigades are unable to manage or which can be managed better by the communes. Serving the entire commune, these include tractor stations, hydro-electric power installations, irrigation and drainage works, farm machinery manufacture and repair shops, forest farms, stud farms, experimental farms, middle schools and hospitals.
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At present, the assets of undertakings run by the production teams account for the biggest proportion of the total assets of the commune and its teams and brigades. While enterprises run by the communes and brigades are relatively fewer, they play a big role in consolidating and developing rural socialist collective economy.
This can be illustrated in the October production brigade of the Wangcheng commune in Hsishui county, Hupeh province. The brigade owns 20 tractors of various types, 34 electric motors and 60 machines for processing farm and sideline products. This equipment provides mechanization for all the irrigation, drainage, cultivation, transport and processing of grain, cotton and fodder done by the production teams under the brigade. In 1970 the brigade harvested an average of 12.75 tons of grain per hectare. It overfulfilled all state purchasing targets for grain, cotton and oil. It has 700,000 yuan in public funds and nearly 485 tons of reserve grain. Collective income has risen markedly.
As time goes on, the dictatorship of the proletariat will become more consolidated, commune members' socialist consciousness will continue to rise, the collective economy will become still stronger. The relatively poor production teams will also gradually reach the economic level of the better-off teams, and farming will become more and more mechanized. With these prerequisites, in time the production brigade, and eventually the commune, will become the basic accounting unit. The system of collective ownership will eventually be replaced by ownership by the entire people (represented by the state).
Distribution in the people's commune is done according to the policy set forth by Chairman Mao which pays attention to three things—the interests of the state, the collective and the individual.
The main distribution is done in the production team, at present the basic accounting unit.
After production and management costs have been deducted from the team's annual income, a small part is paid to the state as tax, a small sum is set aside in the public accumulation fund, and the greater part is distributed among the members. The state tax and the team's accumulation are kept low so that increased production gives the members increased income.
To achieve the above, the state policy in the rural areas is not to raise taxes even when production increases. The amount of agricultural tax for the production teams has remained the same, even though better harvests are produced. Thus for teams in which production goes up every year, the agricultural tax takes up an ever-diminishing
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proportion of the total income. At present it stands at 5, 6 or 7 percent. As production continues to increase, the actual rate of the agricultural tax will become still smaller.
Under China's socialist planning, farm production is carried out in a planned way according to the needs of the national economy. When there is a surplus above the state targets, the state purchases it at the same or even higher prices. Thus, in times of bumper harvest, the teams need not worry about finding a market for their surplus, or selling it at a loss. Instead, the production team adds to its income and public accumulation fund, and improves the standard of living of its members. This policy of the state keeps prices stable and facilitates adding to the national reserves, which are the basis of a constant supply.
The production team's accumulation fund consists of its reserve and welfare funds. The reserve fund is used to buy small or medium-size farm machinery, for basic construction and re-production. The welfare fund covers expenses for culture and education, and for aid to members who are ill, retired or unable to work. It subsidizes, for example, the rural cooperative medical system under which the members pay only about one yuan a year for full medical care. It also covers subsidies given to members who have financial difficulties, especially families of revolutionary martyrs, dependents of enlisted men, aged people with no families, orphans and disabled or sick members.
Distribution is based on the socialist principle "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work, more income for those who work more". At the end of the year members receive amounts based on the number of workpoints (units of payment for labor) they earn. After thorough discussions by the members, these are awarded according to the amount and type of job, the quality of labor and the members' attitude toward collective production.
Cadres at all levels of the people's communes must, according to a state regulation, take on active part in collective productive labor. This prevents cadres from becoming divorced from actual production and reality, ensures that they maintain constant and close ties with the masses and thus avoid becoming subjective and bureaucratic in their work. This is a fundamental measure in preventing the restoration of capitalism and consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Cadres at the commune level must join in production for not less than 60 days a year. Brigade and team cadres work and earn workpoints in the same way as ordinary commune members. For the time a cadre has to spend at public duties, he is given workpoints or a subsidy set through discussions by the members he leads.
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These methods of distribution provide funds for both the state and collective economy and for the gradual improvement of the life of commune members. The Hsichia brigade of the Tsungtsun commune in Chiangtu county, Kiangsu province illustrates this. Between 1962 and 1970 the average grain yield of the brigade rose from 2.25 to 7.5 tons per hectare. In 1970 it sold the state three times as much grain above the quota as in 1962 and its collective income was also close to three times the 1962 figure. While members' total income rose by 95 percent, the brigade's public accumulation fund reached the very substantial total of 240,000 yuan.
The people's commune is run on the principle of democratic centralism. The representative assembles of the production team, the production brigade and the commune are the organs of power at these levels. Representatives are elected after thorough discussions by the members. Every member has the right to vote and be elected. Between sessions of the representative assembles, work is carried out by a permanent body. (In the production team it is called a leading group and in the brigade and commune, a revolutionary committee.) These permanent leading bodies are also elected by the members.
Before the start of every production year, these leading groups at each level draw up production plans based on the targets set by the state, the actual conditions in each unit and the members' needs. Unified planning gives due consideration to each of these at each level. The drafts are given to the members for full discussion, then revised according to suggestions and finalized. The figures on expenditures and distribution are made public each year. The join in discussions, approve plans and other matters, and criticize and supervise the way they are carried out, are the rights of all commune members. These rights are protected by law.
In adition [sic] to these democratic rights in the political and economic spheres, every commune member has the right to work, reset and education and to share in social welfare.
Every member able to work has the right to take part in productive labor. Men and women get the same pay for the same work. When work is assigned, the special physical problems of women are given due consideration.
Time for work and rest are arranged according to local farming customs and vary with the seasons. Proper reset is guaranteed. Commune members give their first attention to fulfilling collective targets. In their spare time they can work at the small private plots allotted to them by the production team, raise a little poultry or a few head of
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stock, or do handicrafts. Members can do what they like with products from this labor.
An important democratic right for every person is the opportunity to study Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and receive education in socialism. A certain amount of time each week is set aside for political study. Party organizations at the different levels are responsible not only for carrying out the Party's principles and policies but for leading and organizing cadres and the masses in political study. They give help whenever necessary so that the members will deepen their understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought, constantly raise their socialist consciousness and develop the proletarian thinking of serving the people wholeheartedly.
It was the spiritual power of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Though translated into material energy that has enabled China's millions of commune members to self-reliantly fight natural disasters, conquer difficulties and reap bumper harvests for ten years in a row.
(From China Reconstructs January 1972)
If Chairman Mao hadn't shown us the collective road, where would we be today?"
This is what Tsai Ah-shui of Chiaoli Village says when she recalls the changes in her village in the last two decades.
Chiaoli Village outside the country town of Teching in Chekiang province is the home of 55 peasant families. This part of the country, with its good soil and abundant produce, has always been called the "land of fish and rice". But before liberation its peasants lived in deep misery under the oppression and exploitation of the landlords. The land yielded no more than 1.5 tons of rice per hectare and 60 percent of the crop had to go to the landlords as rent. Left with little to keep them alive, the peasants had to borrow grain from landlords or rich peasants at 100 percent interest—for one peck of grain they had to pay back two pecks the following year.
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Chiaoli was liberated in 1949 by the People's Liberation Army led by the Community Party. During the land reform in the following year, the poor peasants burned the land deeds and receipts for loans from the landlords and rich peasants, and received land. They elected a young man, Pan Ah-mao, as their village head. Like his father and grandfather before him. 25-year-old Pan Ah-mao was a hired hand. Though small and bony, the young man had a will of iron.
In the first two years after liberation peasants still farmed individually and life was hard. Get organized, Chairman Mao had said, and take the collective road to common prosperity. Pan Ah-mao was determined to do just that. On the day following the Spring Festival in 1952 he got 18 poor families together to organize a mutual-aid team to help each other with the farm work. They collected 15 kilograms of rice to serve as a fund for buying tools and some seed.
That was 20 years ago. Early this year we met Pan Ah-mao, now 47, in the county town, where he had come to attend a meeting. He took up the story from there and told us that in its first year their mutual-aid team reaped the best harvest the village had ever had. Heartened by their example, more peasants formed mutual-aid teams. Later the teams joined together in an elementary producers' cooperative which soon developed into a fully socialist one. In 1958 the advanced co-op amalgamated with other co-ops to become a people's commune.
Today Chiaoli Village is a production team under the Bright Star production brigade of the Chengkuan People's Commune. Pan Ah-mao, now secretary of the Communist Party branch of the brigade, lives in his old home at Chiaoli Village and works on the land alongside his neighbors.
The next day we followed Pan Ah-mao to Chiaoli. The river that runs through the village is a tributary of the Tiaohsi River. Before liberation, Pan told us, the Tiaohsi flooded every year and its tributaries spilled over and deluged the crops. In the past dozen years, as part of a unified plan to control the Tiaohsi, the people along its banks have built a reservoir on the upper reaches, reinforced the dykes on the lower reaches and dug canals to divert the water in nearby Taihu Lake.
Today the Chiaoli production team's 26.6 hectares of fields along the river give good harvests in spite of dry spells or rain. Now levelled fields are served by the brigade's electric irrigation and drainage station and plowed by tractors from the brigade's tractor station. The team built a house for rearing silkworks beside its mulberry grove
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and set up a pig farm near its fodder processing shop. Last year the team gathered bumper crops of grain and silkworm cocoons. The yield per hectare was 10.8 tons, over seven times that of the days of individual farming and more than twice that of the days just after the commune was formed.
The expansion of collective production brought improved living for the commune members. When farming individually, the poorer peasants did not get enough to guarantee their own food grain, to say nothing of any other income. Last year the average income in the Chiaoli production team was close to 400 kg. of food grain and 198 yuan in cash per capita. These figures do not include income from home sideline production. Each family raises an average of three pigs, and most also raise sheep and chickens. Two-story tiled-roof buildings of brick and wood have replaced the old thatched-roof huts, and electric lighting has replaced the dim oil lamps. Every household has a loudspeaker through which it can hear radio programs.
Pan Ah-mao asked us into his home. There we found a teacher standing at a blackboard on the wall of the front room, giving a lesson to a dozen peasants seated at a long table. Pan Ah-mao had offered the use of the room for classes of the team's nigh school. A large rice bin full to the brim occupied one corner of the room, and the loft was piled with firewood, which is allotted to each household by the production team.
The rooms on either side of the front room were bedrooms of Pan and his wife and their four children. In the kitchen in the back, a spotless stove told us that Pan's wife is a diligent housekeeper. When Ah-mao was a hired hand, their daily fare was thin gruel or rice husks and wild roots. Today even a thrifty budget includes fluffy rice at every meal.
In the old society no one in the Pan family had ever gone to school. Pan Ah-mao learned to read and write in night school only after liberation. But his 19-year-old eldest son has had a primary school education, his second son is in junior middle school, and the two daughters are in primary school—the first generation of educated peasants in the Pan family.
It was the time of preparation for spring plowing. The commune members were up before six to the first loudspeaker broadcast of the day, and off to the fields soon after breakfast. Some were busy bringing manure from the pigsties, mixing it with silt dredged up from the streams and carrying it to the fields. Others were looking after the seed beds to maintain the right temperature and water level. Still others were busy disinfecting the earthen floor and silkworm trays,
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and building an earth stove needed to keep the silkworm rooms warm.
At noon, when the commune members come back for lunch and two or three hours for rest or to look after household affairs, we visited the home of Tsai Ah-shui. Hers was one of the 18 families who formed the first mutual-aid team. We found her helping her mother-in-law feed the four pigs and give sheep in the barn at the back of the house, where there was also a flock of chicks following a big hen about.
Tsai Ah-shui's husband, Teng Fu-shan, who is in charge of the team's plant protection work, had gone out visiting. Our hostess asked us to sit down and told us about herself.
Thirty-seven-year-old Tsai Ah-shui is an open and straightforward person. Like many of her generation she had a bitter childhood. When she was s ix years old, her father, a hired hand, could not stand the inhuman treatment he was getting from the landlord and quarrelled with him. He was beaten by the landlord's flunkey and died from the injuries. Shocked and grieved, her mother died the same year. A neighbor, also a poor family, took the orphan girl in.
Tsai Ah-shui grew up in cold and hunger, going about barefoot even in winter. She married Teng Fu-shan when the village's first mutual-aid team was being formed. For her wedding she at last got on a pair of cloth shoes, but still had to borrow socks to hide her feet, swollen from years of frostbite. She also had to borrow a jacket to cover her own ragged padded one.
Now the family lives in a two-story house they built themselves. They have no worries for food or clothing. Among their proud possessions is a sewing machine. "Thirteen others of those first 18 families have brought sewing machines," she told us, and added that most of the team's 55 families have savings in the bank.
Tsai Ah-shui spoke especially enthusiastically on how the collective economy has liberated the women for productive labor. Without collectivization, she said, she would never have been able to leave the house but would be busy from morning to night hulling rise, cutting fodder for the pigs, or going into the hills to collect firewood. She would also have to sew and mend the clothes of the whole family. Now machines owned by the brigade process their grain, fodder and rapeseed. For a small fee the brigade sewing group takes care of mending clothes, socks and shoes. The primary school which her three children attend is close by and it's a five-minute walk to the brigade clinic. With such daily chores and other worries taken care of, she can devote herself to collective work.
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Lunch break over, the commune members go back to work and generally come back as the sun goes down. With the children also back from school, everyone sits down to supper together and listens to the broadcasts.
Chiaoli Village is very quiet in the evening, except for the home of Pan Ah-mao—still affectionately known as "Old Village Head"—where a stream of people come and go. At least three of four evenings a week the commune members gather to discuss problems of work or for night school classes, which include political study, reading and writing and technical knowledge for production.
We were in the village at the time of the Chingming Festival early in April. It is a big holiday that falls just before spring plowing. On that day the young people usually go visiting in other villages while the older people stay home and make sweet rice cakes and tsungtzu—three cornered dumplings of glutinous rice with date filling—to treat their guests. The team members have a day off every ten days. Once a month the county film projection team comes to show a feature film and the latest newsreels.
When we were there the production team's granary was a quiet place in the warm spring sun. But twice a year, after the summer and autumn harvests, the open ground before it is a bustling scene as commune members gather to receive their share of the collective crop. The event often brings forth reminiscences from the older people.
Every one of the 18 families that started Chiaoli on the collective road with the mutual-aid team has a story written in blood and tears. In Pan Ah-mao's grandfather's time there were seven in that family, farming half a hectare of poor land. The crop they got was never enough to food them, and warm clothing was unknown to them. To keep things going, the grandfather had borrowed thirty silver yuan from landlord Yao Shih-fu. In those days when a poor peasant incurred a debt it was like "wearing a coir fiber cape in the rain—the longer one wears it, the heavier it becomes". Hoping to pay back the debt as soon as possible, the grandfather hired himself out to the landlord. But at the time of his death he had not even paid back the interest in full.
Ah-mao's father inherited the debt which by then had snowballed to 170 silver yuan. At the end of his rope, he sold the half-hectare land to the landlord but it still did not cover the payment. He, too, became the landlord's hired hand. But he could not pay back the old debt, and even had to incur a new one by further borrowing.
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For Pan Ah-mao, with the debts of two generations on his back, there was nothing to do but become a hired hand too. If not for the liberation, he would have gone the same way of his father and grandfather.
Pan Ah-mao and his wife often tell this bitter story to their children to make them realize that the warm quilts they sleep under and the new nets that keep out the mosquitoes were not easily come by. For three generations the family used on mosquito net, patched so often, first with cloth, then with paper as the family got poorer, that by the time Ah-mao was using it, it weighed five kilograms!
"If we don't tell the children about these things," Pan Ah-mao said to us, "they won't know that our family used a mosquito net for more than 60 years. We older people feel that it's very important to educate our young with these stories of class struggle.
"The good society we have today was not easily won," he went on, "and our path in the 20 years since liberation has not been smooth either. The enemies of the working people hate to see us stand on our own two feet. They are always trying to drag us back down the old road."
Class struggle has never ceased in the 20 years on the collective road, he said. When the mutual-aid teams first came into being, the handful of people headed by Liu Shao-chi who were trying to restore capitalism in China complained that it was too early, and that "such rashness must be stopped".
Then when the peasants organized themselves into cooperatives, this handful again declared that co-ops must be "resolutely contracted". They used their power to dissolve cooperatives in great numbers. In Chekiang province along, 15,000 out of 53,000 were dissolved at one swoop. A small number of unreformed landlords and rich peasants seized their chance to sow dissatisfaction. Duped by them, some co-op members came to Pan Ah-mao, who was then leader of the co-op, and said they were pulling out. Some even declared that the co-op's collective fund ought to be distributed among the members to be used as each wanted.
Pan Ah-mao stood out against this like a rock. All those peasants who had known poverty in the old society were firm in staying in. Instead of collapsing, their co-op expanded. Pan Ah-mao named his newborn son Ying-sheh, meaning "welcome the co-op" in tribute to the collective organization.
When the peasants amalgamated the co-ops into people's communes in 1958, Liu Shao-chi and his group were both resentful and afraid. In the three years that followed, when the countryside suffered
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from serious natural disasters, they urged the commune members to go back to individual farming, hoping this would break up the communes. The Chiaoli production team was among those that kept on with collective production and distribution, thus preserving itself as a basic unit of the collective economy. The perverse trend, however, did influence some of the commune members, who cooled toward the collective and spent most of their time working at their own sidelines and selling the products at high prices on the free market. This distressed Pan Ah-mao.
Chairman Mao understood what was in the hearts of the working people. His warning in 1962, "Never forget class struggle", pointed up the nature of what was going on. Soon a mass movement for education in socialism checked this trend towards capitalism.
In 1966 Chairman Mao started the proletarian cultural revolution and led the people in it. In this nationwide movement, Liu Shao-chi's schemes to restore capitalism in China were thoroughly exposed, criticized and repudiated. At the Chiaoli production team, people met again and again to denounce Liu Shao-chi for trying to wreck the people's communes.
"We had thought that once we poor people were liberated and became our own masters, our life would naturally become better and better and there would be no more trouble ahead," says Chu Ah-chang, daughter of a poor peasant. "But now we know that sharp class struggle will continue all through the building of socialism."
Growing more class-conscious in the storm of the cultural revolution, the Chiaoli people went on building socialism more energetically than ever. They take the Tachai production brigade of Shansi province as their example in continuing the revolution. When Chairman Mao called on the peasants to learn from Tachai in 1964, the Chiaoli people responded, but then they had though of Tachai as just an example of getting high yields from hard work. heir experience in the cultural revolution, however, helped them realize that the first thing was to learn how the Tachai people educated themselves with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought so that they were able to keep on the socialist road and not lose their direction.
For the past three or four years, the commune members at Chiaoli Village have been studying Chairman Mao's writings in earnest. They do this during work breaks in the fields or in the evenings at Pan Ah-mao's home. Pan Hsing-mao, who leads the production
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team's political study, explains Chairman Mao's writings on class struggle and philosophy. Since Chairman Mao's revolutionary theories have been created through the summing up of practical experience, the peasants find them easy to understand once they apply them to the realities of class struggle in the countryside.
Some commune members, for example, had though that since they are all for socialism, there was no need to remold their thinking. After studying Chairman Mao's philosophical explanation of how "one divides into two", they saw that they should have a dialectical view of their own thinking in the course of class struggle: Having suffered oppression in the past, they naturally have great love for socialism and are eager to make revolution and this is the principal inside of their thinking. ON the other hand, peasants are still deeply influenced by the idea of private ownership, the heritage of thousands of years of the small-proprietor economy. This deep-seated influence can only be eliminated in the course of collectivization and long-term remolding of thinking. If they do not get rid of this private ownership ideology, the class enemy can easily make use of them.
This was just what Liu Shao-chi tried to do, and drag the peasants back to the old road. They now understand better what Chairman Mao meant when he said at the time of liberation, "The serious problem is the education of the peasantry." They discuss how the road taken by the hundreds of millions of peasants is related to the direction taken by China as a whole. The more they discuss, the more they feel that their destiny is linked with the destiny of the whole country.
The year before last the team members studied Chairman Mao's May 20, 1970 Statement and saw that they ought to link the Chinese revolution with the revolutionary struggle of the people of the world. Their vision broadening, they understood better why the people of Tachai have been able to make such outstanding achievements: "Though they live and work in a mountain village, they have the whole world in their hearts and therefore look up on their work as an important part of the revolution."
"This understanding also helped some commune members realize how wrong it is to think that because their own life is improving they don't need to work for more progress in revolution and production. They now see that there is a lot more they can contribute to socialism. "If the people of Tachai can get 7.5 tons per hectare in the cold mountains of the north through self-reliance and hard work," they say, "surely we ought to get still higher yields from our rich soil here in the south and grow more grain for socialism."
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When the Chiaoli peasants were farming individually they raised one crop of rice a year. As the collective economy expanded they began getting in two crops a year. Inspired by the Tachai spirit, in the past few years they have been growing three crops—barley, early rice and late rice. The work is heavier, especially in May when there is the threefold task of harvesting barley, transplanting early rice and putting up bushes for the spring silkworms to spin cocoons on, but the members tackle it with greater drive too.
In May last year, the young men of Chiaoli formed a shock group under Pan Hsing-mao to work through the night to get the barley harvested and the rice transplanted. Not to be outdone, the women took over the job of transporting the cut crop and threshing it. The older people, too, set examples. Though plagued by gastric trouble, Pan Ah-mao joined the young men in cutting and transplanting. Sixty-one-year-old Pan Fa-chun, who has been in charge of silkworm rearing ever since the first mutual-aid team, often visited the silkworm rooms during the night to see that everything was all right. Although his duties lay only with the silkworm rooms of his own production team, he made the rounds of the rooms of the other nearby production teams before going home.
Then came summer, the season for harvesting the early rice and transplanting the late rice. When the women responsible for threshing heard that the neighboring Red Star brigade did not have enough threshers, they worked nights to finish their own threshing and then carried the heavy thresher over to the Red Star brigade. When the rush was over, Pan Ah-mao insisted t hat everybody take a day off. But Tsai Ah-shui and five other women went on the sly to the rice paddies to fill in the blank spots with seedlings.
Last year the Chiaoli production team reaped its biggest harvest in history. The members selected the best rice to pay their agricultural tax and sold 110 tons of commodity grain to the state—2 tons per family. They also supplied their own province and neighboring Kiang-su with 50 tons of fine seed rice and 1 ton of soybean seed.
At Chiaoli we heard many stories revealing the commune members' devotion to the state and the collective.
"But life always has its contradictions," said Pan Ah-mao. He told us about his eldest son. The young man, eager to do more for the collective, had learned to drive a tractor and treat animal diseases. Naturally he was much in demand and he began to grumble that he hardly had any time to himself. His father reminded him how the poor peasants had to toil in the old society, pulling the plows themselves because they had no oxen and certainly no tractor. "If a liberated peasant does not serve his own class brothers, who should he
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serve?" the father asked him. "It's a joy and a privilege to do more for the collective." The young man's spirits rose again.
"There are always contradictions in our thinking," Pan Ah-Mao observed to us, "but now when self-interest gets the upper hand, we know we should weigh it against the interests of the revolution, and usually we can find the right answer."
When we left Chiaoli, the hills were carpeted with red azaleas, the peach and pear trees were in full bloom and the mulberry trees were putting out new leaves. Fields of golden rape in flower stretched away to the foothills and the barley heads were heavy. Young men were driving their tractors into the paddings, plowing green manure into the soil. When the rapeseed and barley were harvested, spring plowing would be in full swing.
(From China Reconstructs August 1972)
The Chiaoli production team has 55 member-families with a total of 253 people, and farms 26.6 hectares of land. At present, the production team is the lowest level of organization in the people's commune and the place where the basic accounting is done.
The Chiaoli production team's income has grown continually through ten years of excellent harvests, meaning that there has been an every broader base for distribution. In 1975 it harvested 288.5 tons of grain and 6 tons of silkworm cocoons. With income from other farms and sideline products added, total value of production came close to 88,000 yuan.
How does a team like Chiaoli divide up its income?
There are three kinds of interests we must take into account, explains vice-team leader Pan Hsing-mao, the interests of the state, the collective and the individual. "By maintaining the correct relationship
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between them in distributing our income, we can consolidate the collective (in this case our team's) economy, make our contribution to socialist construction on a countrywide scale and also increase the commune members' enthusiasm for production." He showed us the 1971 plan for distribution of grain and total income.
Distribution of Grain Total Production 288,530 kg. Agricultural tax and quota sold to state 126,595 kg. Reserve for use of team 60,836 kg. Distributed to members 101,100 kg.Distribution of Income (including that from grain) Total income 87,978 yuan Agricultural tax 3,386 yuan Production and management costs 21,427 yuan Public accumulation fund 13,068 yuan Distributed as members' income 50,097 yuan
Pan Hsing-mao explained how his team arrived at these figures. First its management committee and representatives of the poor and lower-middle peasants* studied the matter. Guided by the principle of three-way attention to the interests of the state, the collective and the individual, they drafted a plan. Then all team members discussed it and offered opinions. Last year some were selling more grain to the state. "Every family already has surplus in its bins," they pointed out. Others suggested a bigger increase for the team's public accumulation fund and buying more farm machinery. Still others said that it was important to improve the commune members' standard of living faster and that a larger portion of cash and grain should be distributed among then. The management committee listened carefully to all the reasonable opinions and revised the plan accordingly. Finally a more detailed plan was worked out by the accountant.
Part of each production team's income goes to the state as agricultural tax. This was set by the people's government at 5 to 7 percent of each team's gross income. But they policy is not to change the amount of tax when production rises. Thus, though the actual sum paid has stayed the same, the ratio has dropped. Since
* The term poor and lower-middle peasants refers to original class status, not present economic position.
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Chiaoli has been getting one good harvest after another for the past ten years, tax payments have been taking an even-smaller proportion of its income. The 1971 tax was actually only 3.85 percent of its total income.
Teams with plenty of grain pay their taxes in grain. In addition, the government buys a quota of grain from them, fixed according to the area a team has sown to grain, its yield per unit of area and the amount it needs for its own use and reserves. In a bad year the government reduces the tax and the commodity grain quota, and sometimes exempts a team from both. Last year Chiaoli had no problem paying its tax and fulfilling its grain quota.
The peasants of new China view satisfying these demands of the government as an honorable task. "The commune members understand clearly that the aim of their work is to increase the wealth of our socialist motherland," Pan Ah-mao, who is secretary of the Communist Party branch, told us. "We always choose the best of our crop for sale to the state. Sometimes individual families also sells the state a portion of the grain distributed to them for their own use."
Such devotion to the interests of the state is commendable, but the Communist Party leadership constantly reminds the local cadres that it is important to leave sufficient grain with the team (the collective) and the commune members (the individual). The state should not in any way overbuy grain from the teams. After delivering 126 tons to the state in tax and commodity grain last year, Chiaoli still had nearly 162 tons for apportionment to the collective and individual.
"our contribution to the state is still very small," said Pan Yu-shan, a commune member. "The state has given us tremendous help, for instance, loans when we needed them, and aid on the project to bring the Tiaohsi River under permanent control. Farm machinery, chemical fertilizer and insecticides are sold to commune production teams at reduced prices. Last year we were able to save 700 yuan on the fertilizer and insecticides we bought.
"Under the Bright Star brigade are a health station and four grade schools, one of which has been extended to take in middle school classes. Last y ear the government gave us a subsidy to help maintain them and 1,200 yuan towards wages for the teachers. By thus lightening our burden, the state actually increases the income we have for distribution.
"We get a lot of help in scientific farming, too. The agricultural departments send out technical groups which advice us on prevention
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and treatment of rice and wheat posts, show us how to rear silk more scientifically and train technicians for us."
Still other government measures encourage production and, of course, also result in increased income for the commune members. For example, last year after the team sold 5.5 tons of silkworm cocoons to the state, it received priority for buying 5 tons of chemical fertilizer much needed for promoting growth of its mulberry trees. The sale of 166 pigs gave it priority for buying close to 3.5 tons of fodder-grain for the expansion of pig-raising.
The countryside, on the other hand, is making greater contributions to the state economy, both because of such help and as a result of the teams' own efforts as they move ahead in the spirit of self-reliance and hard work as exemplified by Tachai, a model production brigade in Shansi province. Chiaoli is a good example. In 1955 it was still buying its food grain from the state, but by 1965, the year before the cultural revolution, it was able to sell 60 tons of grain to the state. The figure rose to 75 tons in 1970 and 110 tons in 1971.
That the collective economy of the entire Chengkuan commune is thriving can be seen in other aspects of its economy. The commune operates more than a dozen enterprises, including a plant for manufacturing and repairing farm machinery, a brickyard, a lime kiln, a nursery for mulberry saplings and a veterinary station. The brigades under the commune also have their own small and medium-sized enterprises. The Bright Star brigade to which Chiaoli belongs operates four electric irrigation and drainage stations, a shop for processing farm and sideline produce, a cultivation station equipped with three tractors and eight c able-operated plows, and a forest farm.
Each of the three levels—commune, brigade and team—manages and distributes its own income and enjoys the profit or bears the losses itself. While economic undertakings run by the commune and brigades are relatively few at present, these contribute much to developing the economy of the teams and improving the life of the commune members. Like the other production teams, Chiaoli manages its own land, livestock and the use of its small and medium farm tools in a unified way for collective production. The members' main source of income is from the team.
The team has its own public accumulation fund which is used to cover expenditures that benefit its members collectively. They have, therefore, a direct interest in the proportion set aside for this fund.
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The importance of the public accumulation fund was demonstrated to the people of Chiaoli in 1954, 61-year-old Pan Fa-chun told us. That year a hundred-day downpour caused the Tiaohsi River to spill over into the fields. Chiaoli, which was then an elementary cooperative, had a small fund and could spare only enough to install 21 foot-powered waterwheels for draining its fields, so the crop was a poor one.
In the past decade Chiaoli's steadily-rising accumulation fund has put it in a much better position to fight the effects of natural disasters. From 20,000 yuan in 1965 the fund rose to 70,000 yuan in 1971, including 12,037 yuan added to it that year earmarked for expenditures related to production and 1,031 yuan for welfare. Out of the accumulation fund, over the years the team has been able to build new storehouses and silkworm rooms, buy threshers and pumps, and undertake more water conservation projects. All its fields, levelled to facilitate irrigation, drainage and mechanized cultivation, now yield good crops and do not suffer from either drought or waterlogging.
"While the team's public accumulation fund must be built up," Party secretary Pan Ah-mao explained, "it can't be done all at one time. Increasing it must not be allowed to cut into a rise in personal income for the team members in every normal year. There is a government regulation to this effect." The Chiaoli team's accumulation fund has been rising year by year and its average per capita income has also risen. This now stands at 198 yuan. The same principle is followed in the distribution of grain. Last year at Chiaoli, the grain set aside for seed and fodder and for the collective reserve supply added up to 60 tons. Though this was a substantial amount it was still only 21.1 percent of the year's total production.
"Money earmarked for production must be spent strictly for such purposes, like buying tools and machinery, and not for non-productive expenses," Pan Ah-mao said. "Every member has the right to look into the team's accounts and see that they are in order."
The welfare fund is used for education, medical care and other sorts of public welfare. Last year the team allocated 1,031 yuan for schools, medicine and recreation. This paid for free treatment of common illnesses, and for installation of a radio-relay service available through a loudspeaker in every home.
"The welfare funds also cover the subsidies to large families with few able-bodied workers, dependents of enlisted men and elderly people who can no longer work and have no family to support them," Pan went on. "There are three such elderly women in our team.
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We provide their grain, cooking oil, firewood and medical care and give each three yuan of pocket money per month."
For 1971, after deducting from its total income the taxes, production and management costs and additions to the public accumulation fund, the Chiaoli team had 50,097 yuan—56.93 percent of its total—to be distributed among its members.
How is this handled? Under the principle for distribution under socialism, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his work", members receive amounts based on the number of workpoints (units of payment for labor) they earn. These are awarded according to the type of job and the amount and quality of labor each does. Payment is made in cash, grain and cooking oil. Those who work more naturally get more. But if everyone works to expand production there is more income to be divided up.
Distribution is made three times a year. The two preliminary ones come in May after the wheat and spring-cocoon harvest and in August after the harvest of early rice and summer cocoons. The final distribution is made after the autumn harvest. Both grain and cash as well as other forms of income are paid directly to the recipient.
Looking through the distribution files over the years, we noted that the members' income showed a gradual rise. The average per capita distribution of grain was 314.5 kg. for 1960 and 399.7 kg. for 1971. For cash it was 71 yuan in 1958, the year the commune was formed, 132 yuan in 1965, the year before the cultural revolution, and 198 yuan in 1971. These figures do not include income from family sidelines.
Today about 70 percent of Chiaoli's families have savings in the bank and the majority have surplus grain at home. Seventeen of the poorest families in the old society now own sewing machines. Quite a few peasants are wearing wrist watches. "when there's water in the big river, the small streams will be full too," the members say. "When the state and the production team become better off, our life also improves."
Before leaving we visited 54-year-old Pan Yun-chu at his home. As he poured tea for us, he said, "You know how fast bamboo shoots push up after a rain, that's the way our life is improving these days. In my family of six, my son, my daughter-in-law and I are working in the team. My wife takes care of the house and my two grandsons go to school. Last year we got an income of 1,100 yuan—650 yuan in cash, 2,600 kg. of grain, and also oil, silk batting for our padded
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clothes and other produce. From our family sidelines, we get more than 200 yuan for selling three fat pigs to the state. We had new clothes made for everyone and bought some furniture. My son purchased a 17-jewel Shanghai brand wrist watch. We have our own sewing machine, radio and quilts of silk batting." He sipped his tea and said thoughtfully, "Before liberation I farmed one-third of a hectare of land and had to borrow at exorbitant rates of interest to tide the family over the winters. We owe everything to the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao."
(From China Reconstructs September 1972)
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There are thousands of streets and lanes in Peking. How are they administered? What role do the people play in local government? How do they live? Below are the answers from an interview with Hsu Chung-chi, head of the Fengsheng Neighborhood Revolutionary Committee, followed by five articles.—Editor
It is the basic-level organ of people's political power, the lowest level of government administration in the city. Peking is divided into nine districts, five city and four rural. Fengsheng is one of the nine neighborhoods in the West City District, its administration is called the Fengsheng Neighborhood Revolutionary Committee.
Our neighborhood covers 1.5 square kilometers. IT contains two main streets and 132 lanes. There are 14,136 households with 52,978 people. Of these, 22808 are workers in industry, commerce and service trades or government cadres, teachers, doctors and theater people. We have 16,262 primary, middle school and college students, 6,146 pre-school children and 7,762 of what we call "neighborhood people"—retired people, old people and housewives who stay at home because they have many children to look after.
It was formed in March 1968 during the cultural revolution. Its 27 members were elected after many meetings and consultations by the "neighborhood people" and those who work in neighborhood-run factories and units. Ten are government workers who were assigned to the locality and later elected to the committee. The rest are work-
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ers in neighborhood-run factories, teachers in the local schools, workers in the clinics and "neighborhood people". They participate in government as representatives of the local people. Those who have jobs in neighborhood-run factories or other units continue in them, so they are in a good position to know the opinions and demands of the people and pass them on to the committee. In this way they help the people exercise their revolutionary supervision over this basic-level organ of government.
Among the committee members are some who have been doing community work for years as well as young people who became activists during the cultural revolution. Thus it has elderly, middle-aged and young people. More than half of the members (16) are women.
Our neighborhood is divided into 25 residential areas. Each takes in from one to eight lanes with 400 to 800 households, about 2,000 people. Every such area has a residents' committee which works under the neighborhood revolutionary committee. The residents' committee is a self-governing people's organization, not a unit of government. It does the actual day-to-day work of serving the people in the locality, as assigned by the neighborhood revolutionary committee. This residents' committee serves all the people who live in its area, but those most active in it are those who work in neighborhood-run enterprises and the "neighborhood people". For the latter, the residents' committee serves as the center for collective life in the same way that the place of work does for people employed in non-neighborhood enterprises. The "neighborhood people" elect from among themselves the 15 to 25-member residents' committee which serves without pay. Most of the members were once workers or cadres and are now retired, or members of their families who have been active in service to the people.
Every residents' committee has three to six subdivisions of about 120 households each which serve as a basis for groups of 40 to 50 "neighborhood people" for study and other matters.
These are the main tasks of the neighborhood revolutionary committees: They organize workers, teachers, students and cadres in neighborhood-run units as well as the "neighborhood people" to study works by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and by Chairman Mao, to discuss national and international affairs and to carry out the policies of the Communist Party and the people's government. They set up such small factories and other production units as fit into the state plan.
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They operate nurseries and kindergartens to supplement those run by the city and large places of work, as well as dining rooms and household-service shops. They administer the cultural, educational and health affairs of the neighborhood and safeguard the people's lives and property.
Under our Fengsheng revolutionary committee there are seven factories, a household-service shop with eight branches, four nursery-kindergartens and a neighborhood hospital. All of these were set up by the local people in 1958 and are collectively owned by the revolutionary committee. We also administer 10 primary schools set up by the government in our area before 1958.
We try to carry out the principle of simple administration with as few people as possible. A chairman and three vice-chairmen divide the work and lead collectively. Important questions are decided in general meetings of the committee. Leaders and staff members must not sit in offices. They join the local study group, go into the streets and lanes and talk with the residents to find out about local conditions.
One of the tasks of the members of the neighborhood revolutionary committee is to pass the opinions and demands of the masses on to the committee and to convey to the people the decisions of the committee and directions from higher organs. Those who work full time for the committee spend one day a week working in some neighborhood factory or other unit to keep in close touch with the people.
The residents' committees are an important link between the neighborhood revolutionary committee and the people. The residents' committees take on the job of making known to every household the policies of the Party and government and tasks assigned by higher organizations. They hold discussions among the people on how to carry these out locally. Their aim is to see that every man, woman and child understands the reasons for the policies and tasks in relation to both the country and the individual. This understanding leads to everyone thinking up ideas and methods, and to conscious individual and collective effort for reaching the objective.
Most of the affairs of the neighborhood which we handle concern the interests of the people themselves. Since they participate in and control the management of their own neighborhood, the revolutionary committee has almost total support in whatever tasks need to be carried out.
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Our Neighborhood—1I am an ordinary housewife with five children. My husband drives a three-wheeled motorcab. In 1949 the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao liberated the working people and of course my family. My husband began to have a steady wage and the family did not have to worry about food and clothing anymore. From then on, after I finished my housework I began to go out to do community service.
When our neighborhood set up its revolutionary committee in 1968, the people elected me to represent them on it. Thus I began to take part in the management of our neighborhood. I thought: I am what I am today because the political understanding the Party has given me. Because the people trust me so much, I will work all the harder to serve them wholeheartedly.
Each of us in the revolutionary committee is responsible for certain areas. I am in charge of contacting three residents' committees in Mengtuan, Wuting and Shuncheng lanes which have 1,433 households—5,417 people. Right after every meeting of the revolutionary committee I go to the leaders of these three residents' committees, tell them the decisions and discuss with them how to accomplish the tasks assigned.
The people elect the neighborhood revolutionary committee, trust it and have a great interest in its work. They constantly give us suggestions for improving our work. I take criticisms and demands raised by the people to the neighborhood revolutionary committee which studies them and tries to solve the problems as quickly as possible.
Let me give some examples. Residents in old-style houses in Shuncheng Lane had to go down the lane to fetch water for cooking, washing clothes and baths, and there were no nearby drains to empty dirty water. The problem was quite serious in the summer when they used more water. We told the public utilities bureau about it and they installed more taps and dug more drains in the lane.
The grocery store in the lane was too small and there was no public telephone. People had to walk some distance to another store
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for even such small items as needles, thread and buttons. We wrote to the municipal trade bureau and asked that the local store be expanded to include other items and that a public telephone be installed. Very soon we saw men setting up telephone poles, and a telephone appeared. Now the local grocery store handles more items, more varieties of vegetables and other nonstaple foods, and they are fresher.
The cultural revolution brought new ideological awareness to the "neighborhood people". They show a high degree of initiative in doing their part in building socialism. At the request of the local people, production groups and health stations were organized in all 25 residents' areas in the Fengsheng neighborhood. All the women in the neighborhood who can work are employed.
My children are no longer small and there is not so much housework now. I want to do more for the people, but it is hard for someone without much education to do this work well. Last spring the neighborhood revolutionary committee set up a night school where housewives who are leaders of the residents' committees can study politics and improve their general education.
I joined the classes at once and never missed if I could help it. We never dared to dream of such a thing in the old society. My memory is not what it should be—I am 50 already—so it's pretty hard to learn and my hand doesn't want to obey me when I try to write. But I'm stubborn—because I want to do more for our neighborhood.
Our Neighborhood—2On the mornings when our study groups get together, the members start coming after breakfast carrying their little stools. There are white-haired retired people, mothers carrying babies and grandmothers pushing lots in carriages. They sit in a circle, laughing and chatting, until the group leader declares the class in session.
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The "neighborhood people" are divided into four groups according to where they live along our lane. Each group chooses its own leader and guide, usually people who have retired. We meet for study 2 hours 3 times a week, usually from 8 to 10 in the morning. Since families are especially busy over the holidays such as the Spring Festival or National Day, the study stops for a week or so.
Our studies are along the lines of the general program followed throughout the country by groups like ours. We read and discuss articles from the newspapers or Red Flag magazine, or works by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and by Chairman Mao. The guide explains difficult points. Sometimes the period is used for transmitting Party and government policies and directives or to organize activities in our lane.
In the current movement to criticize revisionism and rectify the style of work, every group has held at least two or three meetings to criticize and repudiate the revisionist line of the Lin Piao anti-Party clique. Scathing denunciations are illustrated with facts from the members' own experience.
In the past, when we housewives in the lane ran into one another at the market or on the street, we usually talked only about everyday matters such as food, fuel and kids. But now we often discuss questions that come out of our studies or national and international problems. When we can't come to a session because of sickness or other business, we feel we've missed something.
We try to relate our studies to our lives and put what we learn into practice. Grandmothers now say, "It's not enough just to see to it that our children eat properly and dress neatly. They've got to be taught to love their studies, love labor, have concern for the collective and fight against bad people and bad actions. Otherwise there's going to be revisionism and we working people will suffer again."
Such study broadens the vision of the members. More and more people are showing concern for others and the collective. One day after study, Chi Yen-yun of group 4 though, "Chairman Mao urges unity but the two families in our yard aren't getting along just because of a quarrel between their children. They have no conflict of basic interests, why can't their differences be solved?" When she brought the question up with the other members of her study group, they urged her to help unite the two families. With much patient effort she finally brought the families together to talk it over. Each said that they bore part of the responsibility and the misunderstanding was cleared up.
Sun Fa-lun living at No. 27 in a courtyard of six families, doesn't go out to work because she has a number of children to take care of.
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All the husbands and wives in the other five families go out to work, and when their children come home from school there is usually no one home. So Sun Fu-lun keeps boiled water on hand for the children to drink and helps them to do things like prepare meals and buy groceries. Her grateful neighbors do all they can after work to help her with her household chores, and knit sweaters for her children in spare moments. Coming from different places and working at different jobs, the six families did not know each other before, but now they feel very close to each other. Since Sun Fu-lun is always at home, the other families leave their keys with her and she has become the yard's "housekeeper".
Our Neighborhood—3Our clinic was set up by our Brick Tower Lane Residents' Committee in 1969, along with similar ones in other areas in Fengsheng. This was in accordance with the principles of putting prevention first and integrating public health with mass movements. We got a lot of help from the area's residents and the big People's Hospital nearby. Three months of preliminary training at the People's Hospital gave us housewives an initial knowledge of acupuncture, injections, and the prevention and treatment of common illnesses.
We are located in a sunny room in the same courtyard as the office of the Brick Tower Lane Residents' Committee. We have two beds which serve as examination and treatment tables. Our big glass cabinet is filled with medicines and medical equipment. The two of us in charge are doctor, nurse and pharmacist at the same time.
One day a couple with a year-old baby were passing through our lane when the child suddenly went into convulsions. His eyes rolled up and he stopped breathing. We rushed out, examined the child and gave him acupuncture treatment. When he finally began to cry, we knew he would be all right again.
Since our clinic started, people no longer have to go out of the area to get treatment for such common illnesses as headaches, colds and coughs. Residents who get their free medical care through their
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place of work and are resting at home due to illness can get prescriptions filled, injections, dressings changed, blood pressure tested, etc. at our clinic for five fen (cents).
In the citywide health care network, we belong to the section covered by the People's Hospital, and its doctors often visit the area to give treatment and to guide us and help solve our technical problems.
If someone is seriously ill and we cannot diagnose it or handle it ourselves, we immediately arrange for him to be sent to a hospital. To help invalids, old people, babies and others who are being treated at the People's Hospital or the Children's Hospital but cannot get there easily, we make home calls or deliver medicine. In advance of the seasons when common and epidemic diseases occur we publicize preventive measures among the residents and in street factories, nurseries and primary schools. We help the People's Hospital with their preventive work by giving vaccinations and inoculations and also do education on birth control.
Through several years of practice our ability in prevention and treatment has improved. The people constantly encourage us and this spurs us on to do all we can to serve them better.
Our Neighborhood—4I'm seventy years old this year and have been living in Nanyutai Lane for 33 years. What great changes I've seen!
Before liberation, our lane had three "manys"—many poor people, many slum houses and many children. People made their living by selling their labor—pedalling pedicabs, doing odd jobs, running small stalls. None of them had a fixed job. Many families did not know where their next meal would come from. The houses they lived in were in a terrible state, with the wind whistling through the cracks in the winter and the rain leaking through the roof in the summer. But in those days who cared about us?
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With liberation in 1949, we working people stood up and became masters of the new society. As soon as the People's Liberation Army men entered the city, they provided us with food, money and clothes. They got us together and explained the revolution to us. The people's government began solving the problem of unemployment and we all got steady jobs. Some went into factories and others joined producers' co-ops. With stable monthly wages our live improved steadily.
Take my old neighbor Sun Meng-hsueh, for example. He was a pedicab man, trying to feet his mother, a wife and four children. The seven of them huddled in a room about to fall down. Every day the family had to wait for him to come back with money before they could buy the day's food. If he had no luck, they would go hungry. To try and help, the three daughters picked over the cinders in rubbish heaps for unburned pieces of coal.
But now Sun is the dispatcher at a three-wheeled motorcab station and earns 60 yuan a month. They live in two nice rooms facing the south. His four older children are married and the two younger are in junior middle school. His wife, who suffered from asthma for many years, is now receiving good treatment at the People's Hospital. The whole family leads a happy life.
Our people's government thinks of everything for us. More than 100 families in our lane have moved into new apartments or houses. The homes of the others have been well repaired. The street's housing management office always asks for the opinions of the neighborhood representatives before they distribute or renovate housing. If anything goes wrong with the electricity, water or drains, we just tell the office and it sends repairmen right away.
Before liberation the rent collectors hounded us like baying dogs. They yelled and shouted whenever they stepped through the door. You had to pay the rent first, even if your stomach was empty. But today the rent we pay doesn't even cover the cost of maintenance and repairs! What a striking contrast with the old society!
Children of the poor in our lane used to run about naked or half naked. But now they are all well-clothed and healthy. When it is time for inoculations, the People's Hospital and the neighborhood clinic arrange everything. When children reach school age, the teachers go from house to house to enroll them. Before the liberation the husband of Chang Chun-ching, vice-head at the lane residents' committee, a worker, was so poor he couldn't afford to send his children to school. But in the new society three of his children have graduated from university and the fourth from a secondary technical school.
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My husband died when I was 31 and we had no children. Though I'm getting on in years, I enjoy a happy life. The people's government always shows concern for me, members of the neighborhood revolutionary committee come to see me often and my neighbors take good care of me. The world has changed and so has our lane.
Our Neighborhood—5We want to build socialism!" These were the words of Cheng Hsiu-lan, 15 years ago a housewife who could neither read nor write. Today she is vice-chairwoman of the revolutionary committee of the Fengsheng Spring Factory. Her words reflect the feelings of the neighborhood's housewives.
Under the Fengsheng Neighborhood Revolutionary Committee are six other factories for insulating materials, rubbery products, adult and children's clothing, powder metallurgy and cardboard boxes. They all have some common features: a mixture of unimpressive buildings old and new; both modern machinery and equipment they made themselves; and over 80 (in some, 90) percent of the workers and staff made up of women, most of whom live less than a 15-minute walk away.
Each year these women produce millions of yuan worth of products for the domestic and foreign markets, complementing large plants. They have become an indispensable part of the national economy.
It is hard to believe that in 1958 these plants were just groups of women who had organized to make simple products such as loudspeaker cones, sheet mica, children's toys and cardboard boxes. "Capital investment" came from three or four-yuan donations by the members, and only the simplest tools.
In 1958 housewives in the neighborhood were inspired by the Communist Party's general line for building socialism. "The whole country is taking a big leap forward," one of them said in a discussion
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about it, "we can't do anything but bend over our stoves all day? We want to do our part to build socialism too!"
When they heard there was an urgent demand for springs, Cheng Hsiu-lan and 20 other women organized a production group and started making small ones for mouse traps and eyeglass cases. They made their first batch by turning them on hand winders and beating them in a kitchen stove.
They have not forgotten their second year. The Great Hall of the People was being built in Peking for China's tenth National Day. They were given the job of making 250,000 sofa springs for its furniture. Now 68 women, they sent representatives to learn the technique from large plants and studied hard. In spite of their primitive conditions, they delivered high-quality springs 14 days ahead of schedule.
When the hall was finished, the women were invited to tour it. Entering the splendid main hall and sitting on the sofas, these mothers were as happy as children. "Our work went into these!"
"For the first time," Cheng Hsiu-lan said, "we really realized that money can't buy the happiness that comes from taking part in helping our country."
"Build socialism!" is the slogan that keeps them advancing. After 15 years of hard struggle, they have automated or semi-automated most of the production process. They have built new shops and they now number 270 workers. Using wire from 0.2 mm to 8 mm, in diameter, they produce over 1,100 specifications of springs for dozens of models of automobiles.
Now 39, Cheng Hsiu-lan is a member of the Communist Party. She learned how to read and write in a night class shortly after the factory was started. Though she had never touched a machine in her life, she is now an experienced manager responsible for the factory's production. She reads blueprints and makes innovations.
When the Fengsheng Neighborhood Revolutionary Committee was set up during the cultural revolution, Cheng Hsiu-lan was elected to its standing committee.
The other factories in the Fengsheng neighborhood developed in much the same way. Like Cheng Hsiu-lan, other housewives found their horizons broadening after they came out of their homes to join in building socialism.
Everyone praises Liu Ying-pin, who is in charge of the insulating materials factory. She is the daughter of a poor peasant. Before
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liberation she got tuberculosis of the bone and because she could not afford treatment her left leg had to be amputated below the knee. Today she wears an artificial limb. In 1958 she and other housewives set up a small shop to make insulating material. Then around 1960, China ran into temporary economic difficulties. A handful of revisionists headed by Liu Shao-chi thought that street factories with their "slim resources and inferior technique" were not of much use to the national economy. They said that "factories with orders should work and those without orders should close".
Liu Ying-pin did not agree. "Chairman Mao liberated us housewives and gave us a role in building up the country," she went around telling everyone. "We can't retreat to our homes and live off others."
Their small factory was not operating at capacity, so she and the others went to a construction site to wash clothing for the workers, even taking their sewing machines along for the mending. "We'll do anything," they said, "as long as it supports socialist construction. But we refuse to disband."
Resisting the revisionists' demand that they quit, they kept their factory going with their own hard work. Slowly they enlarged their factory until today it produces over 36 types of low-cost, high-quality insulating material in a variety of specifications. In 1965, before the cultural revolution, they turned out 556,000 yuan worth of material. In 1972 it was 4,300,000 yuan.
Last year Liu Ying-pin attended a national meeting in Shanghai at which orders were placed. The products of this small factory are sold throughout the country and have their place in the state's production plan.
These factories are collectively owned. The neighborhood revolutionary committee gives them unified leadership in political and ideological work and the realization of their production plans and provides a unified accounting system. Their profits are used to cover the cost of benefits for the workers and are invested in new buildings and equipment for the expansion of local production.
The development of production has improved the workers' situation. An adjustment of the wages of neighborhood factory workers last year brought them basically in line with those in state enterprises. Women who started to work at the same time as Cheng Hsiu-lan earn about 40 yuan a month.
They receive free medical treatment. A woman can send her child to a neighborhood nursery from the time her 56-day maternity leave ends until her child begins primary school. Her factory pays half the
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costs of care. Neighborhood household-service shops do washing, mending and other repairs. This helps liberate the women from time-consuming chores.
About 30 percent of the local women work in the neighborhood's factories. Fengsheng neighborhood has an embroidery workshop and has also organized older women who have difficulty in going out to work to do embroidery in their homes.
In its spacious rooms in Tacheng Lane one can see its beautifully embroidered bedspreads, tablecloths and aprons made for export. Group leader Chang Kuei-chen learned to do embroidery as a child in the countryside. The group, she told us, gets jobs from an embroidery plant and distributes the work to some 300 women in their homes.
Visiting the women regularly to see how the work is going, Chang Kuei-chen frequently comes upon the energetic bespectacled grandmothers busy over their embroidery while their grandchildren do their homework. She mentioned Tuan Hsiang-yun, in her sixties, her children all working and her family's income a very adequate 400 yuan a month. Afraid she would overtire herself, her children advised her to drop the embroidery work. "My eyes are still good," she retorted, "I can still do my bit for our country."
Fengsheng's neighborhood factories complement state-run plants and there are various residents' committee production groups which process things for these factories. Some production is concentrated, some dispersed. Through these channels all the housewives in the neighborhood who can work have a chance to make their contribution to building socialism. Through political study in the factories, learning techniques as they work, increasing their general knowledge in night school classes, the women of the Fengsheng neighborhood have developed into an energetic corps for building socialism.
(From China Reconstructs August 1973)
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The General Line for Socialist Construction is expressed in the words, "go all out, aim high and achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism".
The call "Go all out and aim high" is to arouse the revolutionary spirit of China's hundreds of millions of people and bring their enthusiasm and resourcefulness into full play. These are the wellsprings of the power by which any greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism will achieved, because it is the masses who are the real heroes. The Party's fundamental starting point in any undertaking is its firm faith in the majority of the people—primarily in the majority of the workers and peasants, who constitute the basic masses. At the same time its policy is to give cadres and revolutionary intellectuals full opportunity to play an important role. It is through truly relying on the masses, maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands, persisting in self-reliance and hard struggle and doing everything diligently and thriftily that China's socialist construction will be moved forward at a faster pace.
The words "greater, faster, better and more economical results" expressed in the General Line define a many-sided requirement for socialist construction. In any endeavor in this field, all of these must be considered. Stress only on quality and lower cost would make inroads on quantity and speed. And in the long run better quality and lower cost could not really be achieved. On the other hand, if emphasis were laid only on quantity and speed, quality and cost would be effected and even the aims of achieving quantity and speed could not be met.
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The four aspects are interrelated, they promote and supplement one another, they are inseparable parts of a whole. This reflects the objective laws governing the building socialism.
The new China came into existence in 1949 with a backward economy and a poor material basis for development. The enemies of the working people were not reconciled to their defeat: the imperialists enforced a blockade on China; inside the country the landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries and other bad elements hoped for a restoration of capitalism. In such circumstances, it was imperative to end China's poverty and backwardness by developing a socialist economy at high speed.
In the first few years after liberation the Communist Party led the people to carry out land reform and rehabilitate the national economy. From the year 1953 on, under the guidance of the Party, the socialist transformation of all sectors of the economy took place step by step. (Peasants and handicraft producers organized themselves into farm and handicraft cooperatives. Industrial and commercial concerns owned by national capitalists became jointly owned by both the state and private capital.) It was fundamentally completed in 1956 and socialist public ownership became the economic basis of our country.
The socialist consciousness of the people all over the land rose to a new high. They were eager for the rapid development of the national economy in order to build the country as quickly as possible into a strong socialist one with modern industry, modern agriculture and modern science and culture. It was in these circumstances that in 1958 Chairman Mao summed up China's experience in building socialism and formulated the General Line for Socialist Construction. It expressed the desires of the Party and people and was drawn up to benefit them in the broadest possible way.
The promulgation of the General Line for Socialist Construction has stimulated a vigorous development in all fields of construction.
(From China Reconstructs April 1973)
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China takes agriculture as the foundation and industry as the leading factor in developing her national economy. This general policy was laid down in order to carry out the General Line for Socialist Construction—"go all out, aim high and achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism".
Taking agriculture as the foundation means putting the development of agriculture in first place. It is the main branch of the economy for feeding and clothing China's several hundred million people. Without first solving this problem she can neither develop the economy as a whole nor carry forward with socialist construction. But how? Being a socialist country, China cannot depend on grain and textiles imported from abroad, but must produce them herself. Therefore, all her economic development must rest on this foundation—agriculture.
Before liberation, under imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism China's economy was poor and very backward. In addition to the problem of feeding and clothing her people, the new China was faced with the need to change a backward agricultural country into an advanced industrial one as quickly as possible. But where were the raw materials, funds, market and labor power needed to develop industry to come from?
As a socialist state, China must rely on funds accumulated by her socialist economy and on the creativity of the people. With the initiative in her own hands she must take her own road independently.
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[A photograph]
Commune members of the Tachai brigade in Shansi province transform their scattered, tiny fields into levelled stretches of land for mechanized farming and irrigation.
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[A photograph]
Transplanting rice in Luchuan county, Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region.
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[A photograph]
The Shihliho hydro-power station in Lingehuan county, Shansi province, uses the force of a spring brought through a 3.5-kilometer ditch and over a 23[?]-meter-high [illegible] hill.
[A photograph]
Terracing hills with fields, like these in northern Shensi province, is part of the vast effort of people along the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River to control water loss and soil erosion.
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[A photograph]
Rsianghungstien Reservoir, one of the five large ones built in the Tapieh Mountains of Anhwei province, irrigates 531,000 hectares of land.
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[A photograph]
Li Shao-kuei, seasoned steel worker in China's "Iron City" of Anshan, passes on his experience to young workers.
[A photograph]
Cadres, veteran peasants and technicians select seeds together in a newly harvested wheat field of the Nanchungchia brigade in Shaniung province.
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[A photograph]
Blast furnaces of a small iron and steel complex in the Yentai area in Shantung province built in accordance with the policy of "walking on two legs".
[A photograph]
The Taching Oil Refinery, a large enterprise.
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[A photograph]
"Anything men can do, women can do too." Girl workers of the Huiung Shipyard, Shanghai, on the job atop a high mast.
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[A photograph]
People of Fengsheng neighborhood, Peking, in one of the groups they have organized to study current affairs.
[A photograph]
A neighborhood mending and embroidery group.
[A photograph]
Morning in a small lane.
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[A photograph]
Little Red Guards write a blackboard newspaper at Peking's Wenhsing Street Primary School.
[A photograph]
A third-grader learns writing with a brush.
[A photograph]
Pupils often work in the pharmaceutical plant.
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[A photograph]
Old folk singer of the Kazakh nationality in the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region.
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[Page unavailable in source]
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[Page unavailable in source]
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In developing her national economy, China balances the relations between industry and agriculture, heavy industry and light industry, large enterprises and medium-to-small enterprises, modern production methods and indigenous methods, enterprises run by the central government and those run by local authorities, and other pairs of relations. She does not emphasize one to the neglect of the other but develops both simultaneously in such a way that they coordinate with and promote each other.
The relations between these pairs are like that between the two legs of a person. When both legs coordinate well, the person is able to walk steadier and faster. Therefore, the policies for handling these pairs of relations in developing the national economy have been named simply the policy of "walking on two legs".
The basic content is as follows:
1. Industry and agriculture develop simultaneously. China is still a large agricultural country and most of her population is in the countryside. Only a rapidly developing agriculture can meet the people's food and clothing needs and provide industry with ample raw materials for development and a wide market for its products. At the same time, the development of agriculture depends on the support of industry. Only a modern industry can provide the large amounts of farm machinery, electricity, chemical fertilizers and insecticides necessary for a modern agriculture. Thus, industry and agriculture in China are developed simultaneously and the two complement each other.
2. Heavy industry and light industry develop simultaneously. Building a modern industry, modern agriculture and strong national
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defense requires advanced equipment and materials from heavy industry. To develop heavy industry, however, requires a great amount of funds. In China today, one of the main sources of these funds is the accumulation, from light industry. Light industry needs comparatively less funds, goes into production faster and the period of capital turnover is shorter. Therefore, while giving priority to developing heavy industry, China is also actively developing light industry. As light industry progresses, more and more consumer goods are produced to satisfy the increasing needs of the people and a growing amount of funds is thus provided for heavy industry to expand reproduction. Developing light industry also promotes the development of heavy industry because light industry demands more and more machinery and industrial raw materials such as plastics and materials for the chemical and synthetic fiber industries.
3. Large enterprises and medium-to-small enterprises develop simultaneously. To build a modern industry, it is necessary to building some large core enterprises with a high level of technology and productivity. But large enterprises require large investment, a rather long time to build and the technological requirements are complicated. Therefore, at the same time that large-scale enterprises are being built, many medium-to-small enterprises are also rising up through-out the country. Medium-to-small enterprises require comparatively less investment, a shorter time to build and simpler technology. They not only provide the people with urgently needed industrial products but also train technicians and accumulate more experience and funds for building the large enterprises, thus promoting the development of the big enterprises.
4. Modern production methods and indigenous methods develop together. This means that in the main China adopts the newest modern technology and at the same time actively adopts the simple and practical technical experience of the local people. New China’s industrial base was very weak, so it is impossible in a short time to have the newest equipment and technology for all factories and mines. Wherever it has not yet been possible to adopt the newest technology, simple and practical indigenous methods are being used. These methods are then continually improved upon. This saves time and speeds up China’s industrialization.
5. National and local enterprises develop simultaneously. China is a big country with a huge population. It’s provinces and autonomous regions range from 100,000 to several hundred thousand square kilometers in area. Their populations range from several million to several dozen million people. In such a large economically under-
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developed country it is not possible for the central government to run everything in economic construction.
China is carrying out a planned socialist economy in which the industries throughout the country are parts of the whole, like chessmen in a game of chess. On the one hand, important mines and factories which act as the core in the country’s industrial development have been built and are directly managed by the central government. On the other hand, the central government encourages every province, autonomous region, municipality, region and county to build local industries according to their particular conditions. These industries use the raw materials of their locality and manufacture for that locality. Their production plans are part of the unified national production plan.
By developing national and local enterprises at the same time, the initiative of both can be given full play, and the natural resources, funds, equipment and technology of every part of the country can be fully utilized. This speeds up China’s economic construction.
The policy of “walking on two legs" suits China’s concrete situation and conforms to the objective laws of China’s economic development. It enables China to mobilize all positive factors for the building of socialism, thus accelerating the country’s economic development and guaranteeing that the General Line of Socialist Construction—“go all out, aim high and achieve greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism"—is put into effect.
Precisely because the initiative of the national and local authorities and the people has been brought into full play, China's agriculture has had good harvests every year for the past decade, her main core enterprises have developed rather quickly—thus laying the preliminary basis for socialist industrialization, and local industries have shot up everywhere.
Every province (not including Taiwan), municipality and autonomous region has thousands of factories and mines in production. Ninety-six percent of the counties have built their own farm-tool manufacturing and repair plants and 70 percent have built cement factories. As the masses set up factories, not only are engineers and experienced veteran workers able to display their initiative to the full, but the peasants' enthusiasm for building industries is also aroused.
China's large core enterprises utilize rich natural resources where they are concentrated, whereas the thousands of medium-to-small
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enterprises utilize natural resources that are scattered. This brings the people's initiative into full play and makes full use of materials and land.
There is also a long-range significance of the "walking on two legs" policy. Because it has brought about the increasing numbers of modern industries in China's vast countryside which train many workers and engineers from among the peasants, the policy leads to reducing the differences between workers and peasants, city and countryside, mental and manual labor. The policy, therefore, will help China make the transformation from a socialist system to a communist society in which these differences will be eliminated.
(From China Reconstructs August 1973)
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China reconstructs interviewed a spokesman for the Ministry of Water Conservation and Electric Power on progress in China's water control work. Below are his answers to our questions.
It was an awful mess. Under the reactionary rule of past feudal dynasties and the Chiang Kai-shek government, China's watercourses had not been dredged or renovated; many dykes had long been in disrepair; floods were frequent and there was no protection against drought; corrosion and alkalinization of the country's soil were very serious.
Historical records show that during the thousand years up to liberation, the Yellow River valley suffered over 1,500 floods and 1,070 droughts. In the 580 years before 1949 the Haiho River valley had 387 floods and 407 droughts. The Huai River valley and the land along the middle Yangtze had also frequently suffered from flood and drought. Each big flood or drought always led to great loss of life, sometimes bringing death to hundreds of thousands or even millions and causing tens of millions to lose their homes and face famine.
For more than 20 years the reactionary Chiang Kai-shek government boasted time and again of alleged plans for conducting away the overflow of the Huai River, developing the Yangtze and controlling the Yungting River, a main tributary of the Haiho River in north China. On the pretext of carrying out these schemes, great
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quantities of government bonds were issued to extort money from the people. The money went into the pockets of high-ranking officials and the plans for water construction remained nothing but empty talk.
No important project was ever built. On the contrary, to preserve itself, the reactionary government even damaged existing water conservation facilities. In 1938 during the war against Japanese aggression, instead of going out to fight the Japanese forces, the Chiang Kai-shek troops blew up the dyke along the Yellow River at Hua-yuankou near the city of Chengchow in Honan province to cover their treat. This resulted in flooding 54,000 square kilometers of land in three provinces, bringing disaster to 12,500,000 people, 890,000 of whom died in the flood.
Early after liberation we were faced with huge problems when we began dealing with water conservation work. They had to be tackled one by one according to their importance and urgency.
In the year 1949-1952, while China's economy was being rehabilitated, many dykes broke or gave way and many regions were struck by serious floods. We made the struggle against flood the key point of our work. In less than two years 4,690,000 peasant laborers and 320,000 men from the People's Liberation Army were mobilized for shock work on building or strengthening dykes.
Also in this period we began our study of the problems of China's main rivers, and through practical experience on the worksites, began to train a corps of cadres for further water conservation work. A few large projects were begun, and some of them completed. Among them were the Ching River flood diversion project on the middle Yangtze, which can divert and store 5,500 million cubic meters of water, the Paisha Reservoir, the Futzeling Reservoir and the Nanwan Reservoir in the Huai River valley and the Kuanting Reservoir in the Haiho River valley.
China's First Five-Year Plan for building socialism begun in 1953 pointed out the direction for water conservation work; both permanent and temporary control measures combining control of floods and waterlogging with relief from drought. This plan provided specifically for continuing projects for permanent control of the Huai and strengthening the dykes along the Yangtze. During this period a comprehensive plan was worked out for bringing the Yellow River under control and putting it to use. Research was begun in preparation for work on the Haiho River system.
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The collectivization of agriculture—the agriculture producers' cooperatives set up throughout the country in this period—led to a mass movement for construction of irrigation projects. By 1958, the first year of the Second Five-Year Plan, the agricultural cooperatives had developed into people's communes, bigger collectives with a more solid base for providing manpower and materials. The establishment of the people's communes spurred the development of water conservation for farming and enabled projects to be undertaken on a larger scale and in a better organized way.
Collective agriculture has opened up tremendous potentialities for water conservation work, and the Chinese Communist Party and People's Government are making full use of them. Chairman Mao has laid down a whole set of policies for "walking on two legs" in economic construction, one of which is to depend not only on the central government but to bring out the initiative of the localities too. The National Program for Agriculture Development provided full scope for the latter, as well as for the initiative of the broad masses of the peasants, by defining construction of medium and small-size irrigation works as the main task, but stating that necessary and feasible large-size backbone projects should also be built. It urged that as many as possible of the small projects be constructed by the localities and agricultural cooperatives (later people's communes) in a planned way. By linking these with projects of large and medium size built by the state, after several five-year plans we hope to basically eliminate the possibility of ordinary floods and the consequences of ordinary droughts.
Through following the above principle in the second and third five-year plans and the present Fourth Five-Year Plan we have been able to make water conservation work not only the task of the central government and localities, but the undertaking of both the cities and rural areas, of the several hundred millions of peasants as well as the workers and technicians, and to fully bring out the initiative of all. In short, since liberation we have always carried out the mass line and the principle of self-reliance as Chairman Mao advocates. Our experience has shown that in a developing country like China, the mass line is the key to achieving the greatest results in construction in the shortest time. I'll say more on this later.
First I want to say something about the work of controlling China's four major rivers—the Yangtze River, the Yellow River, the Huai River and the Haiho River. Let's start with the Huai, the first river for which Chairman Mao issued a directive.
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Huai River: This river originates in Honan province in central China and passes through four provinces, Honan, Anhwei, Shantung and Kiangsu. The river valley, with a population of 100 million and 13,400,00 hectares of farmland, covers 260,000 square kilometers. The peasants in this area describe the situation before liberation with the saying, "A big rain meant a big disaster, a small rain meant a small disaster, and no rain meant drought."
Since liberation the people of the four provinces, working together, have built 30 large reservoirs and 2,000 medium and small-sized ones in the mountains and hilly areas along the upper and middle reaches. To create outlets for the floodwaters on the plains along the middle and lower reaches, they have dug 13 big water-courses connecting with the Yangtze and the sea. Making use of lakes and low-lying land, they have completed a number of flood storage and flood detention projects. They have also built the giant Pi-Shih-Hang project involving those three rivers, which can irrigate over 533,000 hectares of farmland, the Chiangtu irrigation and drainage station and several other huge projects. Today the ability to prevent flood, drain areas prone to waterlogging and withstand drought has been greatly strengthened. The flood-draining capacity has increased from the original 8,000 cubic meters per second to 21,000 cubic meters per second. Five times as much land is irrigated in 1949.
Yellow River: Now let's take the Yellow River. The harm it used to do is known throughout the world, I don't even have to describe it. Originating in Chinghai province, the Yellow River, 4,800 kilometers long, flows through seven provinces and two autonomous regions before it empties into the sea on the coast of Shantung province. The Yellow River valley covers 745,000 square kilometers. Severe erosion of soil in the loess highlands on the upper and middle reaches used to result in the deposit of over 1,000 million tons of silt a year in the lower reaches. This continually raised the riverbed; on this section of the Yellow River the riverbed was actually higher than the surrounding land. The river frequently breached the dykes holding it in.
Since liberation all of the 1,800 kilometers of dykes along the lower reaches of the Yellow River have been reinforced and heightened. There has been no breach during the high water season in more than twenty years. Many large and small projects for irrigation and sedimentation are utilizing the water and silt of the river, once the bane of the people, to wash alkali out of the soil and create fields. The people of the loess highlands on the river's upper and middle reaches are now undertaking a sweeping mass movement for water and soil conservation.
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In the past no reservoir existed along the river's main waterway or its tributaries. Now there are a number of large key projects for flood storage, irrigation and electric power along the main artery and some 1,000 large, medium and small-size reservoirs and power stations on the tributaries. These projects have brought more than 3,200,000 hectares of farmland under irrigation and supply the cities and rural areas with great quantities of electricity.
Haiho River: The Haiho River is the largest water system in north China. It was also known as a harmful river. The river itself is only 70 kilometers long, but because of its several hundred tributaries the entire river system covers 265,000 square kilometers. The greater part is in Hopei province.
In this area heavy rain is concentrated in summer and autumn. During these seasons all the floodwaters from the tributaries rush down into the short and narrow Haiho seeking a way out to the sea. The river could not take them, and the waters would burst out over the plain. Yet, in the spring when there is little rain in Hopei province, the Haiho valley used to suffer from serious droughts.
The work of curbing the Haiho River on a large scale did not begin until 1963. In the past decade 29 main watercourses have been dug or dredged, and several new months for floodwaters to empty into the sea have been opened. The capacity for carrying floodwater into the sea has been increased by over five times and that for draining waterlogged areas by more than seven times. In the mountain areas on its upper reaches 85 large and medium-size reservoirs and 1,500 small ones (including those completed between 1950 and 1963) were built.
Thus, the Haiho River valley is now basically free from the menace of floods and waterlogging. This utilization of ground surface water plus mechanically pumped wells using underground water has enabled Hopei to increase its irrigated area to more than four times that before liberation. This province, which historically was always short of food grains, has now become self-sufficient.
Yangtze: The Yangtze, 5,800 kilometers long, is China's biggest river. It originates in Chinghai province and, flowing through eight provinces and an autonomous region in northwest, southwest, central-south and east China, empties into the East China Sea at Wusungkou outside Shanghai. It drains a basin of 1,800,000 square kilometers. The greater part of the basis has a warm climate, rich water resources and fertile land. But the middle section of the Yangtze, known as the Ching River, used to cause serious floods. This was because the swift current from the upper reaches slows down as it enters the
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narrow winding course across the plain and deposits its silt. This has raised the water level a dozen meters above the surrounding land so that the water was a serious menace to the Chianghan Plain.
The completion of the Ching River flood diversion area in 1952 and the strengthening of the dykes along the Ching brought the flood waters endangering the Chianghan Plain basically under control. In the two decades since, all the dykes in the Yangtze valley have been reinforced, lakes and waterways brought under control and navigation channels dredged and deepened. Completed water conservation projects include more than 500 reservoirs of all sizes and tens of thousands of small projects for irrigation and the prevention of flood and waterlogging. Construction of water conservation projects in some areas plagued by snail fever (schistosomiasis) was linked with the destruction of the snails. The irrigated area in the middle and lower reaches has expanded from 4 million hectares soon after liberation to 10 million hectares today.
In the course of control work on the big rivers, agricultural collectivization enabled hundreds of thousands of small water conservation projects to be built. In this task, self-reliance, relying on the masses and taking the construction of small projects as the main task were the principles followed. In 1971 commune members of the Yangtze valley completed 5,000 million cubic meters of stone and earth work to make 2 million hectares of farmland secure against drought and waterlogging.
The projects undertaken by people's communes are planned according to local conditions and serve many purposes. In mountainous areas and on the loess plateau these include planting trees on the hills, growing fodder grass and terracing slopes. Silting is cut down and fields are created by erecting dams across ravines and letting the silt accumulate behind them. The people also build small reservoirs and ponds for storing water and dig ditches to bring water from other sources. These multi-purpose projects, in addition to conserving water and soil, aid the development of farming, forestry, livestock breeding, sideline production and fishery.
In the plains, river control work is accompanied by the building of irrigation and drainage systems. Where the soil is heavily saline or alkaline, ways are found to run water through the fields to gradually wash out the alkali. Platform and strip fields are used. Where long dry spells often occur, work centers around digging wells and installing pumps to make use of underground water.
Today there are 1,700 reservoirs of large and medium size located in China's mountainous and hilly areas, and small ones by the tens of thousands. In the major river basins there are 130,000 kilometers of
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dykes, newly-built or strengthened, and close to 100 big canals for draining away floodwater. Throughout the country equipment with a total of 20 million horsepower is in use in electric irrigation and drainage stations. Wells with pumps have exceeded 900,000 in number. About half of the land in saline and alkaline areas has been improved.
All this work has increased our ability to overcome foods, waterlogging and drought, and consequently expanded our agricultural production.
The most important factor is the nature of China's political power and social system. Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao, our political power represents the interests of the working people. The People's Government regards water conservation as important for developing the economy, raising industrial and agricultural production and improving the life of the people.
Since liberation Chairman Mao has made several inspection tours on the Yangtze, Yellow and other major rivers and personally indicated the tasks for water control. When the Huai River rose in flood in 1950 Chairman Mao gave the instructions that "the Huai River must be harnessed". Later he issued the directives: "Strive for the successful completion of the Ching River flood diversion project in the interests of the people", "Work on the Yellow River must be done well" and "The Haiho River must be brought under permanent control." These have inspired the people to surmount every difficulty in their fight to conquer nature.
Special organizations have been set up to draw up plans and lead the work for control of the Yangtze, Yellow, Huai and Haiho rivers. The government appropriates a large amount of money for water conservation every year. Already 8,000 million yuan has been spent on the Yellow and Huai rivers.
China is a socialist country and the state controls the economy. The land in the countryside is owned collectively by people's communes. This makes it possible to plan and make arrangements in a unified way. The Huai River project, for example, gives unified leadership to work in all four provinces that the river passes through. It coordinates the socialist cooperative efforts of the provinces, counties and communes in supplying manpower and materials.
Under a unified plan for developing the socialist economy, rolled steel, cement, machinery and equipment for water conservation work can be produced according to plan. Although China's industrial foun-
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dation is still not highly developed, it provides water conservation with great quantities of rolled steel cement, electric motors and transmission lines.
The mass line advocated by Chairman Mao has played a decisive role in water conservation achievements. A fundamental line for the work of the Chinese Communist Party, it brings the people's initiative and spirit of self-reliance and hard work into full play for building socialism.
The control of the Haiho River is a good example of the mass line in action. Two-thirds of Hopei province lies in the Haiho River basis. Every winter and spring for the past nine years 300,000 to 400,000 people in this province have come out to work on various projects. Commune members make up the main force; others include workers, cadres and technicians. Several million others have worked on reservoirs, canals, pump wells and the improvement of saline and alkaline soil.
China's industry is not yet able to supply all the machinery needed for this countrywide effort to control the rivers. In the work going on at the Haiho, physical labor—digging with spades and transporting earth with hand carts—is still the main method of work. Then, too, a major part of the work is done in winter and early spring when the ground is frozen so hard that it has to be cracked with sledge hammers. Blizzards, tidal waves and earthquakes have more than once held up or set back the progress of work. Yet, the people's dedication to building socialism has moved them to give their best. The earthwork involved in dredging waterways, building dykes and other channels, came to 1,900 million cubic meters, equivalent to digging five Suez canals. In addition, commune members, with the help of workers and technicians, have put up 50,000 supplementary structures—bridges, waterlocks, dams and culverts.
Scenes like those on the Haiho worksite can be found all over the country during the winter and spring. We estimate that several tens of millions of people take part every year.
Like everything else, the achievements of water conservation did not come easily. First of all there is the struggle over what line to follow in water conservation. This is inseparable from the struggle over the ideological and political line during the entire period of building socialism. At the same time that the masses of the people were following Chairman Mao in building socialism, a small number of class enemies who had wormed their way into the Party and usurped
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a portion of the power tried to destroy our socialist achievements. In economic construction they were against Chairman Mao's line of relying on the masses and his policies of self-reliance and "walking on two legs". They did not want to build small projects. They looked down on the initiative and creativity of the masses of the people. They were for each locality undertaking its water conservation projects individually and opposed unified effort and socialist cooperation. As a result of their influence, for a time some of our water projects went off on the wrong track. But their counterrevolutionary nature was exposed during the cultural revolution.
The battle to make China permanently free from flood and drought and put her water resources to full use is a long, hard struggle. Due to lack of experience, there have been some mistakes in our work. China is very big and her terrain is complicated. There is a great difference in water resources in the north and in the south. Water work does not proceed at the same rate all over. WE must set our targets higher. And, there are many specific problems to be solved. One is to make use of underground water in the north, probably the permanent solution to the problem of insufficient water resources above ground. Another is the conservation of water and soil on the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River in order to end silting. As for putting our abundant water resources to use, we have only just begun.
We have a long way to go in our fight to conquer nature and turn water from a menace into a benefit for the people. But what we have done in the past 23 years has shown us the power of the socialist collective. For a long time the Chinese people were dominated by the feudal and idealist idea that man can only abide by the will of heaven. This, no more. Today our motto is "Man's will, not heaven, decides", our ambition is to make socialism a full reality in China.
(From China Reconstructs January 1973)
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