Abstract
This chapter uses national-level data to identify three evolving economic challenges faced by rural communes in China during the 1970s—rising rates of population growth, falling arable land, and high capital depreciation rates—and describes the policies the Chinese Communist Party adopted to alleviate them. The chapter has two primary conclusions: first, the agricultural investments undertaken during the 1970s were an essential driver of productivity increases both before and after decollectivization; second, beginning in 1979, the abandonment of the commune, the lowest level of governance in 1970s rural China, crippled the ability of localities to invest in productive agricultural capital and technology. In the early 1980s, without communes to extract resources and implement agricultural modernization plans, rural investment fell precipitously.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The famous Dazhai commune and brigade, located in Xiyang County, Shanxi Province, began its rise to national prominence in 1964–1965, but the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution in 1966 delayed implementation of the eponymous nationwide agricultural modernization program until 1970. On the evolution of Dazhai during the 1960s, see Richard Baum, Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), 117–122.
- 2.
The relevant official documents are: State Council Report on the 1970 Northern Regions Agricultural Conference, December 11, 1970; and Hua Guofeng, “Report on the 1975 Dazhai Conference (Central Document No. 21) Mobilize the Whole Party, Make Greater Efforts to Develop Agriculture and Strive to Build Dachai-type Counties,” Peking Review (October 31, 1975).
- 3.
For the Nobel Prize-winning economic theory behind this development approach, see W. Arthur Lewis, “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labour,” The Manchester School 22:2 (May 1954), 139–191.
- 4.
Louis Putterman, Continuity & Change in China’s Rural Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 13.
- 5.
While conducting fieldwork between 2011 and 2016, I met with historians and agronomists at Henan Agricultural University, Jilin Agricultural University, Huazhong Agricultural University, Jiangxi Agricultural University, and Nanjing Agricultural University.
- 6.
For an explanation of how decollectivization precipitated this fall in agricultural investment, see Jean Oi, Rural China Takes Off (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 19–23. Data taken from China Statistical Bureau, China Statistical Yearbook 1992 (Zhongguo tongji nianjian) (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 1992), 158.
- 7.
Lynn T. White III, Unstately Power: Vol. I, Local Causes of China’s Economic Reforms (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 85; Benedict Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” World Development 6:5 (May 1978), 631; and Sigrid Schmalzer, Red Revolution, Green Revolution: Scientific Farming in Socialist China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).
- 8.
Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 634.
- 9.
Shenggen Fan and Philip Pardey, “Research, Productivity, and Output Growth in Chinese Agriculture,” Journal of Development Economics 53:1 (June 1997), 126–127.
- 10.
Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 631–637.
- 11.
Ibid., 633–634.
- 12.
Plant Studies in the People’s Republic of China: A Trip Report by the American Plant Studies Delegation (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1975), 118, 120.
- 13.
Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 634.
- 14.
Justin Y. F. Lin, “The Household Responsibility System Reform and the Adoption of Hybrid Rice in China,” Journal of Developmental Economics 36:1 (July 1991), 369–371.
- 15.
Leo Orleans, China’s Experience in Population Control: The Elusive Model, prepared for the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the US House of Representatives by the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1974). Also included in Neville Maxwell, ed., China’s Road to Development, 2nd edn (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979), 101.
- 16.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983 (Nongyejingjiziliao) (Beijing: Agriculture and Fishing Planning Bureau, November 1983), 35.
- 17.
Ibid., 46.
- 18.
Plant Studies in the People’s Republic of China, xiii.
- 19.
Orleans, China’s Experience in Population Control, 106.
- 20.
Speech by Wang Renzhong to US delegation in China, quoted in Merle Esmay and Roy Harrington, Glimpses of Agricultural Mechanization in the PRC (St. Joseph, MI: American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1979), 7.
- 21.
On rural industrialization under the commune, see Chris Bramall, The Industrialization of Rural China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
- 22.
Suzanne Paine, “Balanced Development: Maoist Conception and Chinese Practice,” World Development 4:4 (April 1976), 290.
- 23.
Quoted in John Wong, “Some Aspects of China’s Agricultural Development Experience: Implications for Developing Countries in Asia,” World Development 4:6 (June 1976), 493.
- 24.
Quoted in Orleans, China’s Experience in Population Control, 102.
- 25.
On China’s family planning policies, see Tyrene White, China’s Longest Campaign: Birth Planning in the People’s Republic, 1949–2005 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006).
- 26.
Peking Review 49 (December 7, 1973).
- 27.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983, 35.
- 28.
Orleans, China’s Experience in Population Control, 106.
- 29.
Michelangelo Antonioni, dir. Chung Kuo, Cina, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1972 (film). At 1 hour 1 minute 16 second Antonioni films an illegal urban settlement, with voiceover stating: “There is also a new growing Beijing. Although the government does not favor urban expansion the natural growth cannot be stopped. New districts are built in a place formerly crossed by the city wall.”
- 30.
Thomas Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages: The Transfer of Youth from Urban to Rural China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977), 2.
- 31.
Ibid., 33.
- 32.
Quoted in ibid., 39–40.
- 33.
Ibid., 38.
- 34.
Ibid., 40.
- 35.
China Youth Daily (September 8, 1964), quoted in ibid., 60.
- 36.
Ibid., 222–224.
- 37.
Stavis, “Agricultural Extension and Research Services in China,” 634.
- 38.
Bernstein, Up to the Mountains and Down to the Villages, 68–69.
- 39.
Han Dongping, The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Life and Change in a Chinese Village (Boston, MA: Monthly Review Press, 2008), 127.
- 40.
Robert J. Lifton, “Thought Reform of Chinese Intellectuals: A Psychiatric Evaluation,” Journal of Asian Studies 16:1 (November 1956), 75–88; see also Theodore Hsi-en Chen, “The New Socialist Man,” Comparative Education Review 13:1 (February 1969), 88–95.
- 41.
Edward Friedman, Paul Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, Revolution, Resistance, and Reform in Village China (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 132.
- 42.
Arthur Galston and Jean Savage, Daily Life in People’s China (New York: Washington Square Press, 1973), 188.
- 43.
Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 634.
- 44.
Galston and Savage, Daily Life in People’s China, 189.
- 45.
Ibid., 191.
- 46.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983, 120.
- 47.
Bruce Stone, “Developments in Agricultural Technology,” China Quarterly 116 (December 1988), 767.
- 48.
Yuan Li Wu and Robert Sheeks, The Organization and Development of Scientific Research and Development in Mainland China (New York: Praeger, 1970), 355-357.
- 49.
Galston and Savage, Daily Life in People’s China, 51, 77.
- 50.
Plant Studies in the People’s Republic of China, 118, 120.
- 51.
Wong, “Some Aspects of China’s Agricultural Development Experience,” 493.
- 52.
Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution, 133. See also description of “5406” at “Prospects for the Technical Development of Bio-fertilizer,” State Intellectual Property Office of the PRC website.
- 53.
Bruce Stone, Evolution and Diffusion of Agricultural Technology in China (Washington, DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 1990), 51–52.
- 54.
Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 639.
- 55.
Wu and Sheeks, The Organization and Development of Scientific Research and Development in China, 355.
- 56.
Per Brinck, Insect Pest Management in China: A Delegation Report (Stockholm: Ingenjorsvetenskapsakademien, 1979), 10–11.
- 57.
Wu and Sheeks, The Organization and Development of Scientific Research and Development in China, 359–360.
- 58.
Ibid., 355; see also Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 639.
- 59.
Scott Rozelle, “Annex I: China’s Corn Economy, A Brief Introduction,” n.d., posted on University of California, Davis website.
- 60.
Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 638–640.
- 61.
Wu and Sheeks, The Organization and Development of Scientific Research and Development in China, 352.
- 62.
Stone, Evolution and Diffusion of Agricultural Technology in China, 44.
- 63.
Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 638–640.
- 64.
Schmalzer, Red Revolution, Green Revolution, 73–100.
- 65.
See Lin, “The Household Responsibility System Reform,” 355; also Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 633, 638; and Wu and Sheeks, The Organization and Development of Scientific Research and Development in China, 353.
- 66.
Lin, “The Household Responsibility System Reform,” 354–356.
- 67.
Mobo Gao, The Battle for China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2008), 147; and “Li Zhensheng breeds wheat to help feed the nation,” People’s Daily (February 28, 2007).
- 68.
Valerie Karplus and Xing Wang Deng, Agricultural Biotechnology in China: Origins and Prospects (New York: Springer, 2008), 40; also Stavis, “Agricultural Research and Extension Services in China,” 638.
- 69.
Karplus and Deng, Agricultural Biotechnology in China, 40.
- 70.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983, 296–297.
- 71.
Chu Li and Tien Chieh-yun, Inside a People’s Commune: Report from Chiliying (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1974), 135.
- 72.
Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution, 130–131. See also Marc Blecher and Vivian Shue, Tethered Deer: Government and Economy in a Chinese County (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996).
- 73.
Dwight Perkins, ed., Small-scale Industry in the People’s Republic of China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 121.
- 74.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983, 296–299.
- 75.
Anthony M. Tang and Bruce Stone, Food Production in the People’s Republic of China (International Food Policy Research Institute, Research Report, May 15, 1980), 6, 123. See also Harry Harding, “Modernization and Mao: The Logic of the Cultural Revolution and the 1970s,” Conference Paper presented to the Institute of World Affairs, San Diego State University, August 11, 1970, 19.
- 76.
Han, The Unknown Cultural Revolution, 129.
- 77.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983, 288.
- 78.
Ibid., 291; and Bruce Stone, “The Basis for Chinese Agricultural Growth in the 1980s and 1990s: A Comment on Document No. 1, 1984,” China Quarterly 101 (March 1985), 114. See also Barry Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007), 253.
- 79.
Harding, “Modernization and Mao,” 16.
- 80.
Orleans, China’s Experience in Population Control, 106.
- 81.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983, 290.
- 82.
Ibid., 294–295.
- 83.
Ibid., 295.
- 84.
Nicholas R. Lardy, “Prospects and Some Policy Problems of Agricultural Development in China,” Journal of Agricultural Economics 68:2 (May 1986), 453.
- 85.
Agricultural Economic Statistics, 1949–1983, 286–289.
- 86.
Lardy, “Prospects and Some Policy Problems of Agricultural Development in China,” 452–453.
- 87.
Lin, “The Household Responsibility System Reform,” 359.
- 88.
Lardy, “Prospects and Some Policy Problems of Agricultural Development in China,” 452–453.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Eisenman, J. (2017). Building China’s 1970s Green Revolution: Responding to Population Growth, Decreasing Arable Land, and Capital Depreciation. In: Roberts, P., Westad, O. (eds) China, Hong Kong, and the Long 1970s: Global Perspectives. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51250-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51250-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-51249-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-51250-1
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)