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Some Problems of China's Rural Communes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Gargi Dutt
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Extract

The rural people's communes, launched in the summer and autumn of 1958, purported to be a grand new social, political and economic organisation. They were supposed to be like “a fine horse, which having shaken off its bridle, is galloping courageously directly towards the highway of Communism.” An organisation had been created where collective living was actively promoted and the “Five-togethers” practised, where women were “freed from the drudgery of home life” and Idrawn into full time participation in the commune production, where labour could be shifted from area to area or even occupation to occupation according to needs and requirements, where the rural areas were not only the scene of agricultural production, but were also new centres of workshops producing steel and machine tools, and where the previous village, township and even county administration was now merged into the new commune administration, which thus undertook multifarious activities.

Information

Type
The Rural Communes
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 16 , December 1963, pp. 112 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1963

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References

1 Kiangsi Daily, Nan Ch'ang, 11 26, 1959, p. 3.Google Scholar

2 The “five-togethers” were working together, eating together, living together, studying together and drilling together.

3 For a background to the formation of the communes, the changes that were introduced, the adverse effects they had on the peasantry, and the details of the 1958 resolution, see the author's article, “The Rural People's Communes of China,” International Studies, New Delhi, Vol. III, No. 1, 07 1961, pp. 45–64.Google Scholar

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34 How serious the crisis has been can be seen from the fact that the authorities have yet to release production figures for the last three years.

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58 ibid.

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60 According to an instance quoted in People's Daily in one production brigade the income from sideline occupations constituted 14·7 per cent, of the total per capita income of the brigades, People's Daily, 02 2, 1961.Google Scholar

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77 Ibid.

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