Red China’s Green Revolution: Technological Innovation, Institutional Change, and Economic Development Under the Commune

This chapter examines the fourth and most productive phase of the Chinese commune: the 1970s Green Revolution Commune. It clarifies the relationship between the economic challenges that China confronted and the policies communes implemented to alleviate them. Relying primarily on previously unexploited national- and provincial-level data, it demonstrates how 1970s China—a populous developing country with increasingly scarce land resources, a rapidly rising population, and quickly depreciating capital stocks—took advantage of high returns to capital to increase food production. The following chapter then uses economic growth models to elucidate the transitional dynamics of this rural development process.

During the 1970s, to increase food production and employ surplus labor, China altered its nationwide agricultural modernization strategy known as the Dazhai model.1 These reforms, which were adopted formally by 1,259 representatives from fourteen provinces at the Northern Districts Agricultural Conference (NDAC) from August to October 1970, were reaffirmed at the 1975 and 1976 National Conferences on Learning from Dazhai in Agriculture, and they remained national policy until decollectivization.² Communes implemented this rural development strategy at the local level, which kick-started a virtuous cycle of rural development that created the physical and human capital and technology that improved agricultural productivity both before and after decollectivization.³ Figures 1.1–1.3 in chapter 1 show that during the 1970s, China experienced continuous increases in grain, pig, and, to a lesser extent, edible oil production on aggregate, per unit land, and per unit labor.

This chapter begins by summarizing how elite-level political struggles over agricultural policy in the 1960s were resolved at the NDAC. Then it introduces China’s 1970s agricultural research and extension system, which implemented most of the policy responses described in the following sections.⁴ This integrated network linked national- and provincial-level agricultural universities and laboratories with research teams and testing stations nested into communes and their subunits.⁵ The sections that follow use national- and provincial-level data to identify the three economic challenges faced by Chinese communes in the 1970s—rising rates of population growth, falling arable land, and high capital depreciation rates—and describe the policies adopted to alleviate them.

This chapter has two primary conclusions. First, the agricultural investments and technological innovations that occurred in the 1970s were an essential driver of productivity increases both under the commune and during decollectivization. Second, the abandonment of the commune and its subunits crippled localities’ ability to invest in productive agricultural capital and technology. Without communes to extract resources and invest them in agricultural modernization, collective investment in agriculture as a percentage of total collective investment in fixed assets declined from almost 40 percent in 1982 to less than 10 percent in 1988.⁶ This trend can be observed in terms of agricultural investment (figure 3.1), student enrollment across all levels and vocational disciplines (figures 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8), irrigated land (figure 3.14), and machine-cultivated land (figure 3.15).

Before discussing the NDAC and its outcomes, it is important to briefly review how a political consensus on increased agricultural investment via the commune emerged during the 1950s and 1960s. As discussed in the previous chapter, between 1958 and 1966, the literature generally identifies two opposing political factions: a Maoist (leftist) and a Liuist or Dengist (rightist). Writings of top economic officials Chen Yun and Deng Liqun, however, identify three economic policy lines among the leadership: the leftists, supporters of “overall balance,” and advocates of “planned proportionate development.”⁸

In the late 1960s, leftists (including Chen Boda and other ideologues) supported the commune as a vehicle to spread Mao’s collectivist ideology, but they opposed the expansion of agricultural mechanization, which they believed would increase unemployment and could not improve production in mountainous or swampy areas. Modern capital and technology, they argued, would divert attention away from the heightening of socialist consciousness through class struggle, thereby opening the way for capitalistic impulses.⁹

Chinese economic planners generally agreed on the need to extract from rural households to fund capital investment—but not on how to best spend the money. Advocates of planned proportionate development, including top officials and cadres in the planning and heavy industrial bureaucracies, including Li Fuchun, Bo Yibo, Wang Heshou, and Huang Jing, called for extracting from agriculture to underwrite investments in heavy industry. By contrast, supporters of overall balance, including Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, Deng Zihui, and lesser officials in the Ministry of Finance, instead prescribed “a more productive and sustainable” pattern of resource allocation and argued that more resources should be directed into agriculture and light industry. As early as 1957, Chen had warned that excessive resource extraction from rural households without appropriate reinvestment in agriculture meant that “the pace of agricultural development would be slow.”¹⁰

With support from Mao and the leftists, overall balance prevailed. The result was a hybrid approach that initiated a capital investment and agricultural modernization agenda akin to what overall balance advocates had prescribed, but did so using the commune (a leftist institution) and Maoism as its central unifying collectivist ideology. This new consensus was proclaimed at the NDAC, which opened in Xiyang, Shanxi, the home of the celebrated Dazhai Brigade, on August 25, 1970. The NDAC was a watershed for the Chinese commune; it both reaffirmed broad political support for the institution and reformed it in ways that increased its productivity.

During a speech to more than a thousand NDAC delegates at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Premier Zhou Enlai “set a modernizing direction while hewing to the collective.”11 He endorsed the workpoint remuneration system and stressed the need to “increase local investment in modernizing and mechanizing agriculture.”¹² Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden summarize the crux of China’s post-1970 plan to fund agricultural modernization through increased household savings: “Villagers were to get rich by tightening their belts for a while, investing more, and working harder. The line evoked vague memories of the Leap. But this time, Zhou stressed the state would invest in such suitable technology as fertilizer and irrigation and would not tolerate the squandering of precious resources.”¹³

According to Harry Harding, China’s new agricultural modernization campaign aimed to reverse China’s undersavings problem and produce “super-optimal investment generated by appeals to ideology or sheer coercion.”¹⁴ Yet, the post-1970 approach was careful to avoid overextraction of household resources, as had occurred during the GLF. In 1970 alone, more than 150 separate official Chinese press stories and radio broadcasts appeared in almost every province, stressing increased investments in agricultural capital and technology.¹⁵ Writing in late 1970, Harding describes these articles: “The Chinese newspapers these days are full of appeals to avoid waste, to recycle industrial by-products, to work harder. But the appeals lack the sheer fanaticism of the Great Leap Forward. The demands being made on the Chinese people today are very high indeed, but they are not impossible to meet.”¹⁶

This new agricultural modernization campaign harkened back to the GLF rhetorically, but without the harmful red-over-expert policies pursued against agricultural specialists, engineers, and skilled peasants of “black” class backgrounds that had occurred at that time. Those policies had left skilled workers disgruntled (or worse) and produced large amounts of poor-quality capital. During the 1970s, by contrast, the status of those with agricultural and mechanical expertise was elevated; they became the backbone of China’s rural economy. These highly valued teachers and technicians educated a generation of literate Chinese farmers, and they designed, created, and maintained the machines, infrastructure, and technological advancements that increased food production year after year. Figure 3.1 illustrates the rapid expansion of agricultural investment during the 1970s.

Throughout the 1970s, agricultural technicians worked directly with commune-based “small teams” (xiaozu) to develop, test, produce, and disseminate agricultural capital, technology, seeds, and techniques on an unprecedented scale. Vertical integration improved communication and empowered local teams using a combination of experiments and demonstrations. Testing units were semiautonomous, not merely extension units that blindly implemented instructions from above as had occurred during the GLF. County units generally were smaller, and they primarily coordinated meetings and distributed information and seeds. Commune experimental stations, by contrast, were the critical link in the unified research and extension system.¹⁸

Beginning in the mid-1960s, China’s agricultural research and extension system was expanded and decentralized in an effort to improve its responsiveness to local needs and better match crops and inputs with local conditions. In May 1964, the People’s Daily first reported the creation of mass scientific small groups, and in February 1965, just as the movement to study Dazhai was getting under way, the National Conference on Agricultural Experiment kicked off a new “agricultural scientific experiment movement.”¹⁹ The People’s Daily report on the conference linked this new movement with Maoist politics and proclaimed it the third of the “three revolutionary movements.” “Under the party’s leadership,” it called for the creation of “a revolutionary movement with demonstration fields as the center, specialized science and technology teams as the backbone, and mass scientific experiment activities as the foundation.”²⁰ A decade later, a report by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Plant Science Delegation praised China’s “remarkable success in farm application of the accumulated knowledge of generations of peasants’ experience as well as past scientific research.”²¹

During the 1970s, official propaganda was published and circulated to communes across the country glorifying Huarong County, Hunan, for its model “four-level agricultural scientific experiment network.” One propaganda poster from a set of six posters published in 1975. Titled “Self-Reliance; Practice Scientific Research with Diligence and Frugality,” the poster extolled Huarong’s ability to increase productivity using only local materials in their agricultural experiments. The poster’s caption praised Jinggang Commune for establishing a “model” greenhouse in 1971, celebrated its “self-reliance and arduous struggle,” and applauded “each level of the agricultural science organization [for] persistently drawing on local resources, using local methods, and improvising equipment, such that they met the needs of agricultural research and drove forward mass-based scientific farming activities.”22 The objective, as Sigrid Schmalzer explains, was to “present rural scientific experiment as humble, earthy and self-reliant—something that ordinary peasants could and should be doing.”²³ Figure 3.2 is another example of propaganda created during the 1970s to promote grassroots agricultural research. Agricultural research is portrayed as something that everyone, from children to the elderly, should be contributing to.

Agrotechnical stations at the county, commune, and brigade levels constituted a locally integrated network for testing and propagating agricultural capital and technologies. Communes and brigades used the profits from their test fields or enterprises to subsidize “experiment[al] small groups” based on a “three-in-one” configuration of cadres, technicians, and experienced farmers. Group members, who received workpoints for their efforts, employed a “three-field” method for demonstration, experimentation, and seed propagation to determine which types of agricultural capital and technology worked best under local conditions.²⁴ They collected local productivity data and observations, disseminated techniques and inputs, sent representatives to commune meetings, tested seed varieties, and allocated land and other resources for experiments.²⁵ Communes and brigades controlled test plots and planting schedules and sometimes developed their own seed varieties and fertilizers.

In Jimo County, Shandong, for instance, 244 of 1,016 brigades had experimental teams to test new seeds and farming techniques in 1966. By 1972, the number of brigades with experimental teams had increased to 695, and they employed 4,043 people; by 1974, there were 851 experimental teams. By 1976, 80 percent of the communes in Jiangxi had agricultural research stations, about 60 percent of the brigades had research teams, and about 60 percent of teams had research groups.26

Han Dongping’s recollections and research in Jimo County, Shandong, provide an example of the type of work performed by agricultural research and extension teams. He recalls that educated youth left South River Brigade to study how to cultivate and graft fruit trees. After returning to their teams, the youths formed a forestry team (linye dui) and planted a variety of apple, pear, and peach trees. The team planted watermelons between the fruit trees in the spring and planted peanuts in the fall. They also planted poplars, elms, pepper trees, Chinese parasols, and Chinese scholar trees to break the wind in the spring and protect against flooding in the summer. In the winter, they used twigs and tree branches to make baskets and sold them at the local free market (ganji) to finance their work.²⁷

To improve vegetable cultivation, South River Brigade established a vegetable team led by the unit’s two best vegetable farmers, and devoted 20 mu (about 1.3 hectares [ha]) to test new varieties. Previously, residents had only cabbage, turnips, and pickled mustard, and only households with irrigated sideline plots could enjoy fresh vegetables; others had to buy what they could at the rural market. The vegetable team taught members how to grow a larger variety of produce for local consumption. Meanwhile, the commune and brigade supported animal husbandry by creating sties that supplied piglets for households to raise on their private plots and sell at market.28 Specialized ad hoc research and extension programs also increased output. Irrigation Management Committees responsible for water allocation within a commune, county, prefecture, or province, for instance, conducted their own research on irrigation and field tests to determine the proportions of water and chemical fertilizer that would most improve productivity.²⁹

High-level officials were encouraged to participate in agricultural extension work. One prefecture-level party secretary in Guangxi, Yan Qingsheng, was admired for his close attention to agricultural production. Yan accompanied technicians to the Ministry of Agriculture to learn new techniques and helped them inspect seedlings in the greenhouse. When a farmer in Pubei County bred a new rice variety, Yan gave him a job in the Agricultural Science Institute.³⁰ Indeed, the connection between cultivating crops and cultivating people was well established in China since antiquity.³¹ A 1971 article from Xin County, Shanxi, made the connection clear: “To cultivate sprouts you must first cultivate seeds, and to cultivate seeds you must first cultivate people.”³²

High-level agricultural research centers remained active throughout the 1970s. Top research units and agricultural universities received publications from around the world and communicated regularly with foreign agricultural institutes. Between 1973 and 1978, China received and sent about eighty delegations to these institutes to exchange information on agricultural technology. After the Sino-American rapprochement began in 1972, scientists from the United States and other nations visited at least twenty-five agricultural research institutions in China and reported that they were large and maintained substantial equipment. The Peking Institute of Genetics, for instance, conducted advanced genetic research (including pollen culture) and boasted 5 laboratories, 13 ha of experimental fields, and 375 staff and researchers, as well as numerous local trial centers. High-level institutes in other regions were comparably equipped and staffed.³³

The 1970s system prioritized direct communications and deemphasized formal, bureaucratic channels. It rewarded applied, results-driven science over theoretical work. Agronomists were required to go beyond simply making laboratory discoveries to test, observe, modify, and propagate their innovations. Researchers spent one year in the laboratory, a second in a commune, and a third traveling around rural areas to teach and learn various techniques as well as to compare results under various local conditions. In the field, information passed directly between scientists and farmers without bureaucratic barriers. It was also shared among higher administrative levels at regular conferences organized at the county, prefectural, and provincial levels. The goal was to identify marginal improvements in capital and inputs made by farmers and technicians so they could be tested and quickly popularized.34

After 1970, the reformed agricultural research and extension system expanded communes’ capacity to invest in productive capital and technologies. It prioritized applied science over academic research and methodology, thus deemphasizing scientific theory and placing a premium on research with practical payoffs. Although this strategy did succeed in increasing food output, the decision to take scientists out of the lab was not costless. Spending only one-third of their time in the lab and two-thirds “learning from the peasants” proved insufficient to train and motivate the next generation of agricultural scientists on cutting-edge research. Furthermore, the highly localized agricultural network created during this era suffered from a lack of uniform, systematic, and replicable experimentation processes. Experiments generally involved demonstrating techniques or testing several different methods or varieties to see which performed best under local conditions, and were not controlled tests that would have yielded more precise estimates. This lack of consistency extended to test plots, recordkeeping, and data analysis.³⁵

Between 1976 and 1979, rural investments averaged 3.2 billion yuan annually, but by 1982, such investments had had fallen precipitously to 1.8 billion yuan. As Justin Yifu Lin observes, “The county-township-brigade-team research-extension system network in the collective system was very effective in promoting new technology.” Nevertheless, he laments, “in the face of extraordinary success the government’s investment in agricultural infrastructure, research, extension, and other activities fell from 11 percent of the government’s budget to only 5 percent in 1984.”36 By 1986, the level of state investment in agriculture had reached its lowest point since 1949 and, according to Nicolas Lardy, “can clearly be ruled out as a source of growth acceleration in agriculture since 1978.”³⁷

After a century of civil war and foreign invasion, the peace, unity, and optimism under the newly established People’s Republic of China brought population growth. During its first five years in power (1949–1954), the Communist Party of China (CPC) encouraged procreation to strengthen the nation. Faced with the difficulties of feeding and employing tens of millions more people, however, Beijing soon reversed course.³⁸ To reduce population growth and disperse its negative externalities throughout the vast countryside, the CPC implemented policies designed to reduce family size and reverse the urbanization process. By forcing the growing population and workforce to remain diffused in communes and by decentralizing power and responsibility to rural cadres, Chinese leaders sought to soften the acute negative effects of population growth and prevent them from materializing in urban areas. Strict limits on labor mobility coupled with policies that relocated skilled human capital and youth from urban to rural areas were intended to transfer the skills necessary to support rural industrialization.

As shown in figure 3.3, China’s population (more than 80 percent of which lived in a commune) was 830 million in 1970 and had reached 975 million by 1979.³⁹ In the 1970s, China’s postliberation baby boom generation reached working and marrying age, pushing the number of commune workers, which was 198 million in 1960, to more than 281 million in 1970, and to 310 million in 1979.⁴⁰ Figure 3.4 shows this population surge in eight large provinces. Growing demand for food and employment remained the two primary challenges facing Chinese policymakers throughout the commune era.

Sources: Thirty Years Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China: Agricultural Statistics of Henan Province, 1949–1979 [Jianguo sanshinian: henansheng nongye tongji ziliao, 1949–1979] (Zhengzhou: Statistical Bureau of Henan Province, 1981); Agricultural Statistics of Hubei Province, 1949–1978 (Wuhan: Agricultural Bureau of Hubei Province, n.d.); Statistics and Materials of Agricultural Mechanization in Hunan Province, 1967–1978 (Changsha: Hunan Revolutionary Committee, Administration Bureau of Agricultural Mechanics, n.d.); Agricultural Statistics of Jiangsu Province, 1949–1975 (Nanjing: Agricultural Bureau of Jiangsu Revolutionary Committee, 1976); Agricultural Statistics of Jiangxi Province, 1949–1979. Nanchang: Agricultural Department of Jiangxi Province, n.d.); Agricultural Economic Statistics of Jilin Province, 1949–1985 (Changchun: Agricultural Department of Jilin Province, n.d.); Population Statistics of Liaoning Province, 1949–1984 (Shenyang: Statistical Bureau of Liaoning Province, 1985); Statistical Bureau of Zhejiang Province, ed., Collection of Materials on Fifty Years of Zhejiang (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 2000).

China’s leaders recognized that increased agricultural production and a reduction in birth rates were essential. According to a delegation of U.S. agricultural scientists who visited China in 1974, the Chinese were “making an all-out effort to reduce the population growth rate.” The group noted: “A population increase of no more than 2 percent per year mandates an increase in food output equivalent to 5 million tons of grain per annum just to maintain present standards of living.” Without rapid reductions in population growth rates, China could anticipate “very serious food problems within a few years.”41

Beginning in 1962, in the wake of the GLF famine, China’s leaders sought to manage the negative externalities associated with excessive population growth. In a 1964 interview, Premier Zhou explained China’s approach: “Our present target is to reduce population growth to below 2 percent; for the future we aim at an even lower rate.”⁴² Across most of China, the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, did not inhibit the availability of birth control paraphernalia.⁴³

During the 1970s, family planning (jihuashengyu) was instituted in rural areas. Large numbers of urban medical personnel were detailed to communes where birth control became the responsibility of every rural clinic and cadre. At the seventeenth session of the United Nations Population Commission in 1973, China’s official position reflected ongoing discontinuities between Marxist ideology and existing policy: “Of all things in the world, people are the most precious. It is wrong and far from the truth to say that overpopulation is the main cause of the poverty and backwardness of developing countries.”44 The same statement, however, also pointed out that “planned population growth” policies were a natural component of China’s planned economy and included various aspects of population control beyond family planning.

Labor mobility, another component of population control, was strongly disincentivized in 1970s China. Carrot-and-stick policies, including formal regulations, regular mandatory team meetings, and incentive structures, made it nearly impossible for commune members to change their residency registration (hukou) from “rural” to “nonrural” (i.e., urban) or even to move from one commune to another. Commune members worked locally, earned nontransferable workpoints in their teams, and were remunerated locally. These incentives appear to have been broadly successful in discouraging urban migration; between 1959 and 1976, China’s official rural population fluctuated only in a narrow range (between 83.2 percent and 81.6 percent).45

After most barriers to labor mobility were removed in the 1980s and 1990s, the rapid pace and massive scale of China’s urbanization suggest that during the 1970s tens of millions of residents had been successfully dissuaded, or coerced, to forgo urbanization. Still, footage of illegal settlements on the outskirts of Beijing can be seen in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1972 documentary Chung Kuo.46 Official data on urbanization hint that some unofficial movement—referred to by Chinese officials as “blind infiltration”—did occur.⁴⁷ Figure 3.5 indicates growth in the number of large urban areas (those encompassing 1–2 million and more than 2 million residents) between 1965 and 1982. How much this increased number of urban areas was driven by rural migration versus local population growth, expansion of a city’s administrative jurisdiction, or other causal factors remains unclear.

In the 1970s, labor immobility and rural population growth amid a reduction in arable land left hundreds of millions of farmers underemployed.⁴⁸ To absorb this excess manpower, Leo Orleans observes that China emphasized agriculture “and established a network of small supportive industries based essentially on local resources … Thus, the proportion of China’s rural population that is involved in non-agricultural activities is constantly increasing.”⁴⁹ In 1979, Vice-Premier Wang Renzhong, who supervised agricultural affairs, explained that the goal was to prevent an exodus of surplus rural agricultural labor to urban centers, where “the factories could not employ so many people” and instead “utilize the excess laborers of the 80 percent of the population that live in rural areas in medium and small size industry.”⁵⁰ By capitalizing the countryside, commune and brigade enterprises aimed to minimize the type of mass urbanization that produced slums and excessive inequality in many Asian countries at the time.⁵¹

But commune and brigade enterprises were more than just employers. As the rural population grew in 1970s so too did demand, which, in turn, brought inflation in terms of both consumer and capital goods. For instance, the average worker at the duck farm at Taiping Qiao Brigade in Luguo Qiao Commune in Hebei had an income of 600 yuan per year, which was high for that time, yet a sewing machine cost 180 yuan, a bicycle cost 150 yuan, and a watch cost 80–120 yuan.⁵² Most concerning for agricultural planners, high barriers to intercommune factor mobility, particularly for scarce construction materials like cement, coal, and bricks, increased prices.⁵³ To lessen demand and reduce costs, commune and brigade enterprises were encouraged to produce small-scale light industrial products, particularly in the “five small industries” (i.e., energy, cement, chemical fertilizers, iron and steel, and farm machines) and were encouraged to support any industry (e.g., irrigation piping and basic farm tools) that contributed directly to agricultural production.

“Decentralized local industries provided machinery and tools for farming and made them available to a broader segment of China’s peasantry than ever before,” Harding observes.54 Orleans agrees, “Small industries produce an ever-increasing share of China’s chemical fertilizers and cement, farm machinery and implements, generators and transformers, and, perhaps most important, spare parts, the supply of which has always presented a major obstacle to even limited mechanization of the countryside.”⁵⁵

Commune and brigade enterprises operated at different scales. Communes invested in industries that required a larger initial investment or benefited from economies of scale, whereas brigades invested in intermediate-size enterprises that required more local knowledge. Both communes and brigades increased collective income and local skill development, which, in turn, paved the way for the adoption and implementation of increasingly sophisticated technology and capital.⁵⁶ Profitable enterprises could reinvest in facilities, expand existing enterprises or create new ones, subsidize agricultural investments (e.g., irrigation systems), make loans to teams, or distribute revenues to brigade employees.

During the 1970s, the policy of “self-reliance” put commune leaders on notice that their enterprises would not receive much, if any, financial support from higher levels.⁵⁷ To underwrite their enterprises, communes developed local resources, such as coal mines and hydropower, and built or purchased vehicles to transport their products to customers. To support an initial investment, a brigade could gain financing from its commune or teams. Schemes for drawing investment from teams varied depending on local resources, cadres’ priorities, and market conditions. Sometimes, the brigade combined loans or direct investments from its teams with its own funds and a loan or small grant from the commune, county, or state. Brigade enterprises might receive technical expertise, training, or loans from higher levels or neighboring brigades. Not surprisingly, the eagerness of teams to contribute depended on the benefit they envisioned they might receive. Enterprises such as brickmaking and collective pigpens, for instance, offered welcome opportunities to increase team and household income.⁵⁸

Communes and brigades could invest in almost any light-manufacturing sector for which they had sufficient local demand and resources, from building materials to shoes.59 Unlike agriculture modernization-related investments, however, these rural enterprises were expected to be profitable. After all input and labor costs were paid, communes and brigades kept the profits generated by their enterprises, which they could distribute or reinvest as they liked.⁶⁰ One brigade, for example, distributed 40–50 percent of the profits from its enterprises among its teams based on the number of workers that each provided. The monthly salaries of brigade enterprise workers were generally higher than those of average field laborers but were lower than those of average urban factory workers.⁶¹ The earnings from profitable enterprises could underwrite the costs of new equipment or cover the start-up costs for another, but if an enterprise perennially depleted resources, it would be closed and its land, labor, and capital would be reallocated.⁶²

State-run companies and high-level marketing units could purchase commune-made products and distribute them beyond the institution’s immediate locality. Such intercommune sales and purchases generally required coordination, or at least tacit approval, from county-level authorities. A brigade orchard might supply the state and its teams and could sell any remainder at the local market, whereas a brigade machine station could charge teams for rentals and repairs. The irrigation pipe factory of Shangguan Xiantang Brigade in Yuhui County, Jiangxi Province, had a procurement officer who sold to other brigades within the commune and to at least one commune in neighboring Hunan Province, which paid via the postal service.⁶³

Brigade enterprises might include animal husbandry, a dairy, a flourmill, a noodle factory, a brick or tile mill, a machine repair shop, or a small-scale fertilizer or insecticide production facility. On one end of the spectrum, Xin Tang Brigade in Tang Tang Commune had only one small brickmaking facility and a repair workshop. At the other end of the spectrum, Cheng Dong Commune, near Shanghai, supported brigade enterprises that employed 3,840 of its roughly 16,000 workers in a range of activities, including the manufacture of lemon extract, bicycle spokes, and light bulbs.⁶⁴ Sui Kang Brigade, Guang Li Commune’s most prosperous subunit, operated a bamboo factory, a rice mill, a peanut oil–processing facility, and a wooden tools factory. Sui Kang’s one-room bamboo products factory included two bamboo-slicing machines bought from the commune’s agricultural machine supply station. Two workers managed the machines, surrounded by a dozen or so others who sat on the floor, weaving and binding baskets, hats, fertilizer scoops, and baskets. The remaining bamboo leaves were then used or sold as fertilizer or fuel.⁶⁵

Taiping Qiao Brigade opened a duck farm in 1971, which after a year had about 1,000 ducks with each female laying 190 eggs per year. The enterprise supplied ducks to teams and households at 5 yuan apiece, as well as eggs and feathers for fertilizer or down, and also produced 3–3.5 metric tons of duck manure per year. Duck experts from a neighboring commune trained seven brigade workers to run the operation in two twelve-hour shifts, which included force-feeding the birds every six hours. After the ducks were sold and the brigade took its share, workers received a portion of the profits based on their accumulated workpoints. Note, however, that the state provided 60 metric tons of duck feed per month to Taiping Qiao Brigade—a precious subsidy that few other brigades enjoyed.66

In 1978, notes Steven Butler, “Without question, brigade and commune industries [were] becoming a more important part of the rural economy.”⁶⁷ By decade’s end, each brigade had about two enterprises, and more than 80 percent of them had established at least one enterprise. Between 1971 and 1978, industrial output from commune- and brigade-level enterprises grew at an average annual rate of 30.1 percent and 17.4 percent, compared with 15.8 percent and 2.8 percent during the 1962–1971 period, respectively.⁶⁸ In Hunan, the income from commune and brigade enterprises increased at least 30 percent per year after 1970, compared with a less than 1 percent average annual increase in team income from 1974 to 1976.⁶⁹

On average, the income derived from these enterprises accounted for about one-third of the total income of the three-level commune. These national averages, however, disguised sizable regional differences.⁷⁰ In 1976, 20 percent of total income in Hunan province’s communes was earned at the commune and brigade levels; in Yantai, Shandong, in 1975, it was 35 percent; and in the Shanghai suburbs, in 1974, it was 47.7 percent (30.5 percent for the commune and 17.2 percent for the brigade).⁷¹ The number, type, and profitability of enterprises varied widely depending on a brigade’s wealth and proximity to an urban or industrial center. In 1979, commune and brigade enterprises in Jiangxi, Hunan, Shanghai, and Beijing, accounted for 24 percent, 43 percent, 65 percent, and 57 percent of total collective income, respectively.⁷²

Throughout the 1970s, rural enterprises yielded an increasingly large percentage of collective income, but they generally were employing fewer workers. In Wu Gong Brigade, in Raoyang County, Hebei, enterprises employed only 105 of 1,197 workers who made rope and string, rubber, and plastics and worked in the machine repair shop.73 In another brigade outside Shanghai, 13 percent of members produced 43 percent of commune income; in another, brigade enterprises accounted for one-sixth of total collective income.⁷⁴

The “Up to the Mountain, Down to the Village” (shangshan, xiaxiang) Campaign (also known as the Sent-Down Campaign) was a program to incentivize, coerce, cajole, and reassign millions of urban residents to labor in the countryside under the slogan “Learn from the peasants.” Although practiced on a limited scale before the GLF, the numbers of youths and cadres who later were forced to relocate from cities to the communes increased substantially. According to official statistics, 1.2 million urban youth were sent to the countryside between 1956 and 1966, and 12 million were sent between 1968 and 1975.⁷⁵ The Sent-Down Campaign was suspended between 1966 and 1968, but it resumed thereafter. This analysis focuses on only the latter period of the urban-rural transfer program and its implications for population mobility and labor growth.

The Sent-Down Campaign ran contrary to two widely held traditional Chinese assumptions. First, it defied the preference for urban over rural life, rooted in the realistic expectation that rural-urban inequality and income disparities would continue. Second, it countered the proposition that the purpose of education was upward mobility from manual labor to a white-collar job.

The resumption and expansion of Sent-Down transfers in 1968 and 1969 was not, as some have hypothesized, undertaken primarily to rid the cities of meddlesome Red Guard youths, although in some instances, that may have been a contributing factor. The program’s principal objectives were to alleviate a glut of urban workers and deploy them to the countryside to increase rural development.76 In 1964, before the Sent-Down Campaign was suspended, Vice-Premier Tan Zhenlin estimated that China would soon have 6 million new urban job seekers without positions—a figure that was close to the 5.4 million Chinese who were later “sent down” to rural areas between 1968 and 1970.⁷⁷ Thomas Bernstein estimates that throughout the 1970s, more than 2.2 million urban workers entered the job market each year.⁷⁸ Transfers of urban youth to the countryside fluctuated during the first half of the 1970s: approximately 700,000 were sent down in 1971, 650,000 in 1972, around 1.3 million in 1973, and about 2 million in 1974 and again in 1975. These rapid increases appear to have been primarily a response to misestimates of the number of available urban jobs, for which Vice-Premier Li Fuchun offered a self-criticism.⁷⁹

The urban-rural transfer program was publicly promoted to send skilled labor to support agricultural modernization and rural industrialization. As early as 1964, a China Youth Daily editorial proclaimed: “Cultured youths with socialist consciousness are urgently needed in building a new socialist countryside.”⁸⁰ The official press published numerous reports in which Sent-Down youth and cadres helped modernize agriculture, including contributions to fish farming, fertilizer and pesticide production, seed breeding and cross-fertilization, hydroelectric expansion, irrigation systems, veterinary work, tractor and agricultural machine repair, land reclamation, and the expansion of electricity.⁸¹

Newly arrived urbanites were charged with facilitating the dissemination of productivity-increasing vocational skills. To maximize their impact and reduce their burden on rural residents, Sent-Down urban youth were often given state subsidies and resettled on marginal land in poor and remote communes. In Jiangxi, 1,400 such youth teams were established and received 6 million yuan in 1974 and 1975 to purchase chemical fertilizer, oxen, seeds, and farm tools to improve the land.⁸² By 1978, they accounted for 2–3 million of the 13 million members of the nationwide agricultural research and extension network.⁸³

The Sent-Down Campaign expanded the stock of skilled and semiskilled labor and enhanced information flows into communes in three interconnected ways. First, the campaign helped spread the practical and basic math and reading skills necessary to modernize agricultural production and standardize bookkeeping. Second, it created and expanded personal networks and communication channels among rural and urban residents. Third, it acquainted urbanites, particularly agricultural specialists, with local production methods and with the hardships faced by hundreds of millions of rural residents. Although they often came at great personal cost to millions of urban youth and their families, the Sent-Down Campaign policies implemented during the 1970s helped to both disperse excess skilled urban labor and disseminate basic educational and vocational skills to a wider swath of rural population than ever before. They created countless social, economic, and political linkages among rural and urban Chinese that had never previously existed.⁸⁴

During the 1970s, basic education was expanded and, for the first time, universities were opened to millions of rural Chinese. According to official census data, the literacy rate rose from 66 percent in 1964 to 77 percent in 1982.85 The nationwide manufacture and dissemination of agricultural capital and technology required rural residents to possess basic reading and math skills as well as some vocational training. As Han observes, widespread agricultural modernization required the commensurate expansion of relevant skills among rural residents:

There was a direct link between educational expansion and rural economic development. The large number of rural youth with the special training from joint village middle schools and commune high schools helped farmers improve the economic situation in the village. Unlike their illiterate predecessors the newly educated young farmers had the conceptual tools to modernize production.⁸⁶

The official policy during the 1970s deemphasized elite education and prioritized disseminating basic and vocational education to the masses. During the 1970s, growing numbers of rural youths received practical education designed to help improve agricultural output. The commune served as an institutional conduit whereby basic skills and agricultural techniques were disseminated and personal networks were expanded. The stated goal was to develop the “new socialist man”: a versatile, selfless, and loyal “red expert” knowledgeable about the best agricultural techniques and able to increase his or her unit’s production.⁸⁷ Figure 3.6 shows that the number of teacher and secondary training schools and their student bodies expanded rapidly during the 1970s, but then stagnated during decollectivization. Figures 3.7 and 3.8 reveal similar trends existed in enrollment at the elementary, middle, and high school levels as well as among students in vocational educational programs.

Local self-reliance was stressed under the commune, especially after the Soviet invasion scare of 1969–1971.⁸⁸ Each commune was ordered to become a self-sufficient unit that could sustain itself if cut off from the center during a conflict. To achieve this goal, investment in practical education was expanded and an emphasis was placed on basic literacy, accounting, and occupational skills (e.g., tractor and machine repair). Although Chinese boys usually received more education than girls, commune education was broadly egalitarian, allowing both sexes to attend primary and often middle school regardless of their household income level. The commune coordinated teacher transfers and rotations among its subunits, so if a brigade lacked a teacher, one could be transferred from another brigade.⁸⁹

Before 1966, universities gave priority to local urban students and were virtually impenetrable by rural residents. As part of Cultural Revolution antielitism, however, China’s educational system experienced a period of political “struggle, criticism, [and] transformation” that substantially altered the lines of responsibility for research institutes, curriculum development, and student selection. Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the “worker, peasant, soldier” (gong, nong, bing) campaign gave preference and stipends to tens of thousands of rural students. This interaction helped break down barriers to higher education that had hindered agricultural investment and the dissemination of techniques for centuries. Figure 3.8 reveals that the number of students in agriculture-related fields increased consistently throughout the 1970s.

Under the “worker, peasant, soldier” program, Peking University welcomed 2,500 new students in the fall 1970, and Zhongshan University in Guangdong admitted 540 such students.90 After receiving practical training, most commune members returned home to implement and disseminate new techniques. Publication of theoretical scientific periodicals was curtailed, courses were shortened and made more practical, and agricultural colleges moved from urban to rural areas.⁹¹ In 1971, the U.S. botanist Arthur Galston observed how practical scientific training took place in a “ramshackle factory” at the Department of Biology at Peking University:

Molds are grown on agricultural wastes from nearby communes and used in turn to produce antibiotics. We saw tetracycline drugs that had been produced by fermentation and were being extracted, purified, tested, and sealed in glass ampoules for sale to the Chinese government for domestic use. In the course of these operations, students receive some instruction in biology, chemistry, engineering, and economics, and, on emerging from such a program, can put their training immediately to work—at least in the specific procedures they have learned.⁹²

As the 1970s progressed, however, Chinese universities gradually increased student enrollment and returned to more traditional curricula and teaching styles. Visiting again in 1972, Galston observed the reestablishment of courses in theoretical physics and a new “geology-geography-geomechanics program.” He noted: “The teaching of biology, which had been devoted only to new applications for medical and agricultural techniques, is being expanded to include more traditional botany, zoology, and physiology.”⁹³

Despite extensive investments in land reclamation, between 1970 and 1976, arable land dropped from 101.1 million ha to 99.4 million ha.94 Flooding, blight, and salt-related damage were partially to blame for this trend, although the expansion of commune and brigade enterprises undoubtedly also contributed. Combined with the increase in rural labor described previously, this brought a reduction in the amount of land per agricultural worker. Between 1952 and 1960, China had an average of 0.62 ha of arable land per rural worker. During the 1960s, this figure gradually declined, to an average of only 0.36 ha per farmer in 1970, falling further to slightly over 0.33 ha per rural worker by 1976—just over half of 1950s levels (see figure 3.9).

Falling arable land per unit labor was a uniform phenomenon across several large agricultural provinces during the commune era. The average commune in Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Henan, and Hubei had increasingly less land to farm and increasingly more labor to farm it. Figure 3.10 shows that this trend continued throughout the 1960s but slowed in the 1970s. In each province for which I have data average land per worker, like the national average, experienced a continuous decline, with Zhejiang and Jiangsu facing the most desperate situation. Only Jilin bucked the national trend and enjoyed an expansion of arable land per unit labor from 1.16 ha per unit labor in 1972 to 1.27 in 1976. Generally speaking, the northeastern provinces of Jilin and Liaoning had far more land per worker than did the central and southern Chinese provinces for which I have data.

Sources: Thirty Years: Agricultural Statistics of Henan Province; Agricultural Statistics of Hubei Province; Statistics and Materials of Agricultural Mechanization in Hunan Province; Agricultural Statistics of Jiangsu Province; Agricultural Statistics of Jiangxi Province; Agricultural Economic Statistics of Jilin Province; Population Statistics of Liaoning Province; Statistical Bureau of Zhejiang Province, ed., Collection of Materials on Fifty Years of Zhejiang.

In response, China attempted both to increase the output of existing arable land and to reclaim as much land as possible. To achieve the former goal, the research and extension system worked to develop and disseminate agricultural technologies, including the production and application of agricultural chemicals (e.g., fertilizer and pesticide) and hybrid seed varieties. To achieve the latter goal, land reclamation investments were made to recover flooded lands, fight soil erosion, and combat blight and saltwater damage.

Efforts to expand agricultural production through improved fertilizer application began in the mid-1950s, when 40 percent of China’s cultivated land used no fertilizer at all and between 20 and 60 percent of backyard fertilizer was lost because of improper techniques. The agricultural research and extension system promoted natural fertilizers and promulgated simple, standardized, and low-cost techniques to increase fertilizer output.⁹⁶ Households, for instance, were encouraged to raise pigs to increase the availability of natural fertilizers. During a 1971 visit to the Malu People’s Commune outside Shanghai, Galston observed two techniques: one that used traditional materials and methods to transform human waste into fertilizer, and another that combined composted garbage with nitrogen-fixing microorganisms.⁹⁷ The aforementioned 1975 NAS report corroborated this account and noted that natural fertilizer production reflected “China’s farmers’ skill and dedication” and showed “little variation” among localities.⁹⁸

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, small-scale county- or commune-owned facilities rapidly expanded production of chemical fertilizers. Figure 3.11 shows that throughout the 1970s, fertilizer production increased rapidly. In 1973, 63 percent of total chemical fertilizer output came from small industries scattered across rural China.⁹⁹ Communes in Jimo County, Shandong, for instance, produced two types of phosphate bacteria fertilizers: one (called 5406) improved wheat yields by an average of 20 percent, and the other improved yields by 13 percent. In 1971, Jimo built a phosphate fertilizer factory, which by 1974 produced 2,576 metric tons of fertilizer, and by 1978, produced 15,543 metric tons.¹⁰⁰ To increase supplies, beginning in the early 1970s, China invested heavily in large-scale plants. By the early 1980s, the country had increased chemical fertilizer production faster than any other country and had become the world’s largest consumer.¹⁰¹

China’s agricultural scientists developed various chemical agents and biological processes to combat pestilence. As show in figure 3.12, throughout the 1970s, pesticide production increased considerably. According to Ma Shichun, who headed the Insect Ecology at Peking University’s Institute of Zoology in 1979, innovations in pest management achieved through investments in research and development combined with widespread local testing had four objectives: “high quality,” “no environmental contamination,” “low production costs,” and “increased yields.”¹⁰²

One such biological technique was using insect hormones to regulate growth and sex attractants; another introduced the natural predators of destructive insects, such as red eye wasps, magpies, or ladybugs.¹⁰³ By 1970, China produced about fifty different types of pesticides, most on a small scale, with the most popular being dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), benzene hexachloride (BHC), and domestic products known as “666” and “Sheng.”¹⁰⁴ After visiting in 1979, Swedish agricultural expert Per Brinck observed, “Integrated pest control plays a great role in China…. The new techniques made integrated pest control possible.”¹⁰⁵

China also conducted experiments on growth-regulating hormones. Ethrel (2-chloroethyl phosphoric acid) sprayed on rice made it ripen more quickly. Hydrolytic nucleic acids produced from molds improved root development and photosynthesis in rice. Microbiological processes were developed to control plant diseases, including rice blast and wheat scab. One organic stimulator, liquid gibberellin, increased the yield of oranges, pineapples, grapes, spinach, and other green leafy vegetables by 12 percent. Gibberellin also could break the dormancy of ginseng and potatoes and could keep vegetables fresh longer.¹⁰⁶ As of 1978, application of these techniques remained limited to a few test regions, but their application area was gradually expanded and laid the groundwork for future yield-increasing innovations.¹⁰⁷ In a 1970 study on China’s research and development (R&D) for the U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Yuan-li Wu and Robert Sheeks note that with respect to “the distribution of new crop varieties and control of pests, a long time lag seems technically unavoidable.”¹⁰⁸ Indeed, the lag time between testing and widespread application meant that R&D done during the 1970s often laid the foundation for productive discoveries throughout the 1980s.¹⁰⁹

Throughout the 1970s, China continued to improve its food grain varieties to increase yields and make them more rapidly maturing, more disease resistant, and better adapted to local conditions. Wu and Sheeks conclude that exaggerated reports of the success of China’s seed development programs during the GLF “would tax the credulity of even the most naive person.” During the 1960s, however, initial failures prompted policy adjustments that prioritized the development of improved grain seed, making them “the major effort of Chinese R&D in agriculture” by 1970.¹¹²

As suggested in figure 3.13, during the 1970s, China’s high-yield seed varieties (HYV) program had shown some impressive results. According to Stone, “The breeding of new varieties with superior traits was very strong, and the speed with which new varieties were tested and adapted to local environments was especially rapid.”¹¹³ Decentralization allowed China to cut the development time needed for new pure strain crops from two to three years, as opposed to ten to thirty years. By 1976, two hundred units around China were studying tissue culture, and by 1978, China was a world leader in such research.¹¹⁴

Rice, southern China’s most important crop, received special attention from researchers.¹¹⁵ By 1977, the rapidly maturing, high-yield dwarf varieties developed in the early 1960s were grown on 80 percent of China’s rice paddies (see figure 3.13). F1 hybrid rice, developed between 1964 and 1973, yielded about 15 percent more than conventional varieties, and was released and rapidly distributed in 1975 and 1976. China’s creation of semi-dwarf rice occurred two years before the release of IR-8, the variety that launched the green revolution in other parts of Asia.¹¹⁶ By 1986, the area planted with F1 hybrid rice had reached 8.94 million ha, about 28 percent of China’s total rice-growing area. As of 1990, China remained the only country that commercially produced and distributed hybrid rice.¹¹⁷

Seed-breeding programs also focused on wheat and corn, two staple crops in northern China. By 2007, based largely on work pioneered during the 1970s, China had created seventy-nine varieties of wheat, including new fungal-resistant strains, grown on 20 million ha.118 HYV corn developed more slowly than rice, but over time, these varieties proved equally important. During the 1970s, Chinese researchers worked to create high-yield crossbred corn and double-crossbred corn. Like wheat, by 1978, these corn varieties were not yet in widespread use; by the late 1980s, however, hybrid corn covered 90 percent of China’s corn planting area.¹¹⁹ HYV sweet potatoes and sorghum also showed impressive gains in the 1970s and were “yielding as much as the best elite varieties anywhere in the world.” In China’s most productive areas cassava and white potato output rivaled the world’s top producers.¹²⁰

China sought to reduce the rate of arable land loss through various land reclamation techniques.¹²¹ Official statistics and expert accounts reveal the extensive efforts and variety of techniques employed during the 1970s to increase productivity per unit of land. Throughout the decade, communes made extensive efforts to expand their arable land by reclaiming land affected by blight, waterlogging, erosion, and saltwater damage. Land reclamation was sometimes undertaken in conjunction with an irrigation system or a hydroelectric project. In 1972–1973, China began reporting national statistics on four types of land reclamation activities: plant disease and insects (i.e., blight), flood drainage, saltwater damage, and soil erosion.

Of these methods, blight treatments were used most often and were most effective. Despite these treatments, however, the problem of blight continued to grow faster than any other. In 1972, China had 71.3 million ha of blighted lands and was able to treat 50.4 million ha, or 70.6 percent. By 1976, however, the amount of blighted land had nearly doubled (to 139.4 million ha), and the amount of treated land had increased almost two and a half times to 125 million ha or about 90 percent of the total. The percentage of treated lands was lower in 1977 (80 percent), 1978 (73 percent), and 1979 (80 percent), but with the expanded application of chemical-based treatments, it increased again in the early 1980s.122 In 1982, China experienced 175.3 million ha of blighted lands, but it was able to treat 88 percent or 154.7 million ha. In sum, despite extensive efforts to fight blight, the problem continued to spread throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.¹²³

The use of chemicals to combat blight was only partially successful, and in many cases, losses were sustained despite their application. Over time, however, the treatment does appear to have become increasingly effective. In 1972, 13.7 million metric tons of grain were produced on land reclaimed from blight, although losses after failed treatment equaled 11.1 million metric tons. By 1976, however, 15.9 million metric tons of grain could be grown on land treated for blight and losses had fallen to 8.5 million metric tons. With the exception of one year (i.e., 1978), this trend continued throughout the decade and into the early 1980s. Despite a large increase in blighted land in 1982, 21.9 million metric tons of grain were produced on land treated for blight, and losses equaled 9.2 million metric tons. In sum, although blight continued to spread, China gradually improved its ability to put blighted lands back to use.¹²⁴

Drainage was a somewhat successful, albeit arduous, technique used to open new lands for cultivation and improve soil quality. In 1974, Qiliying Commune in Xinxiang County, Henan, drained a wetland to expand its farmland and create a fishpond. Residents made ditches on either side to drain the water, removed the top layer of soil and reed roots, and planted crops on the reclaimed fields.¹²⁵ Throughout the 1970s, flood prone lands increased slightly along with the ability of localities to reclaim these lands. In 1973, of the 22 million ha that had been flood prone or water logged, 15.6 million ha (or about 70 percent) had been reclaimed. This percentage continued to increase, and by 1976 16.7 million ha, or 75 percent, of such land had been salvaged. Between 1979 and 1982, flooded land accounted for about 23.7 million ha per year, but China managed to save about 18 million ha per year—an annual average rate of about 76 percent.¹²⁶

Land was reclaimed from saline and alkali damage as well. In Jimo County, Shandong, and Shulu County, Hebei, for instance, a technique called “land washing” doubled grain production per unit land.127 In 1963, about 6.7 million ha were affected—predominantly in north China, where between 10 and 20 percent of arable land was alkaline. In Hebei alone, 1.3 million ha were classified as alkaline in 1964. That year, soil specialists from China’s Academy of Sciences gathered in Nanjing, Jiangsu, to discuss the problem and commission studies for the Yellow River, Huai River, and Hai River basins. Meetings continued throughout 1965, “suggesting an inability to resolve the problem within a short time,” according to Wu and Sheeks.¹²⁸ Official data suggest techniques to reclaim salt-affected land proved only partially successful throughout the 1970s. In 1973, 6.8 million ha were destroyed by salt, and 3.2 million ha (or 47.8 percent) were reclaimed. This percentage steadily increased, and by 1976, 7.1 million ha of land was destroyed by salt and 4.2 million ha (or 59 percent) was reclaimed. Unlike with blight, however, the success of salt-related treatments and techniques did not continue into the early 1980s; by 1982, 7.2 million ha were destroyed by saltwater and 4.3 million ha (or 59 percent) were reclaimed.¹²⁹

In 1973, China had 117.7 million ha of land suffering from soil erosion and had successfully treated 35.1 million ha (or 30 percent); in 1976, of the 119.2 million ha of land suffering from erosion, 42 million ha (or 35 percent) had been reclaimed. That percentage peaked in 1977 at 37 percent before dipping slightly throughout the remainder of the decade and the early 1980s. By 1982, the percentage of land successfully treated for erosion was 34 percent, with 41 million ha of 120 million ha successfully brought under the plow.¹³⁰

By 1977, Hui County, Shanxi, and Lin County, Henan, had undertaken land reclamation by terracing the mountainsides and by filling gullies and sandy and marshy riverbeds to transform them into productive agricultural land. Dwight Perkins describes the scene: “We saw ample evidence of increasing arable land through reclamation and improvement projects in every area that we visited. In Shanxi Province, we saw badly eroded mountainous areas, with yellowish wind-deposited loess soils, being reclaimed for good arable land.”¹³¹

As the amount of arable land fell during the 1970s, a variety of techniques were used to increase land productivity. Communes gradually improved their capacity to reclaim land affected by blight, waterlogging, erosion, and saltwater damage. Despite numerous accounts of the success of land reclamation in the Chinese press and the anecdotal accounts of Western observers, the data reveal that China continued to lose land faster than it could reclaim it. Overall, these techniques slowed—but could not stop—the decline of arable land, which continued into the 1980s (see figures 3.9 and 3.10).¹³²

Since China was short on both investment capital and advanced technology, but long on raw, unskilled human labor, idle male laborers were conscripted from the villages to do the heavy work of building water conservation projects using whatever simple tools they had at hand—shovels, picks, and hoes. In some cases, as many as ten thousand peasants were transported to a single dam or canal-site from more than a dozen nearby villages. Since the commuting distances involved often exceeded twenty miles, and were too great to complete on foot in a single day, temporary barracks were erected for the laborers at the work sites, where they would remain for weeks, or even months at a time, returning home only infrequently.¹³⁴

Despite a shortage of skilled workers, during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the GLF, many educated people were marked by “black” class backgrounds (e.g., landlords, capitalists, bourgeois intellectuals) and faced discrimination or worse. Policies that placed those with “red” class backgrounds (i.e., workers, peasants, soldiers) in charge of those with “expert” know-how lowered the effective amount of human capital in the rural economy at a time when it was already scarce.¹³⁵ Skilled workers were dispirited or worse, and vast quantities of poor-quality physical capital and infrastructure were constructed, which in turn began depreciating at an accelerated rate. “The Communist political leadership,” Wu and Sheeks observe, “courted failure through their indiscriminate and technically incompetent application of otherwise sound principles to improve and stabilize output.” The CPC’s “centralist organization and command structure” not only placed political slogans above science and technology but also discouraged all dissent from below.¹³⁶

During the GLF, red-over-expert policies led to the widespread misallocation of investment and denuded both physical and human capital stocks at a time when both were already scarce. Baum cogently summarizes the sometimes-tragic consequences of rapid capital depreciation and the collapse of many GLF-era investments in the years that followed:

The rapid depreciation of capital during the GLF exacerbated the preexisting scarcity of agricultural capital that had characterized rural China before collectivization. The immediate response to the famine was to reduce the extractive capability of the communes, which saw their size, mandate, and coercive controls shrink in the early 1960s as some political leaders (among them Deng Xiaoping) adopted policies to boost household consumption. After the crisis abated, however, China returned to similar macroeconomic conditions that had precipitated the communes’ creation in the first place: low savings rates, rising population growth rates, falling arable land, and severe undercapitalization. Facing another looming crisis, beginning in the mid-1960s, China introduced the Dazhai model, which promised to increase household savings rates using the workpoint remuneration system. It was only after the reforms to agricultural research and extension system were completed in 1970, however, that the commune was able to successfully channel household savings into investments in productive physical and human capital.¹³⁸

In the 1970s, large wells with electric pumps became critical to irrigation and thereafter had a major effect on agricultural productivity and drought reduction in northern China.¹³⁹ In 1965, China had about half a million mechanized irrigation and drainage systems, and by 1970, it had nearly 1.5 million systems. That number increased four times during the 1970s—to 4.3 million in 1976 and 5 million in 1978—before leveling off in the early 1980s. Moreover, the power of these systems also grew exponentially during this period—increasing from 9 million horsepower (hp) in 1965 to 18.2 million hp in 1970, 54.2 million hp in 1976, and 65.6 million hp in 1978—before leveling off in the early 1980s.¹⁴⁰

Under the commune, the amount of land irrigated with mechanized water distribution systems rose as a percentage of total irrigated land. In 1965, China had 33 million ha of “well-irrigated lands” consisting of 31.9 percent of total cultivated land. Of those well-irrigated lands, 8 million ha (or 24.5 percent of China’s total arable land) used mechanized irrigation systems. In 1970, 36 million ha of well-irrigated lands accounted for 35.6 percent of total cultivated land. Of this total, 15 million ha (41.6 percent) were irrigated using mechanized systems. By 1976, 45 million ha (45.3 percent of China’s total cultivated land) were effectively irrigated, and 44.9 million ha (53.9 percent) were irrigated using mechanized systems. This peak in both nominal and percentage levels remained constant through the end of the decade and into the next.¹⁴¹ When combined with new technologies, such as hybrid seeds and chemical fertilizers, investments in irrigation helped propel crop yields per land unit to unprecedented levels.¹⁴²

AGRICULTURAL MACHINERY During the 1970s, China invested heavily in the production and distribution of agricultural capital equipment, including large and handheld tractors and all types of engines and vehicles. Local industrial enterprises under the commune and brigade provided machinery and tools to more Chinese farmers than ever before.¹⁴³

Agricultural machinery and vehicles, transportation infrastructure, technology, and power generation became widely available for the first time in the 1970s. According to figure 3.15, in 1965, 15 percent (15.6 million ha) of all cultivated land was under machine cultivation, rising to 18 percent (18.2 million ha) by 1970. By 1976, this figure had more than doubled to 35 percent (34.9 million ha). The percentage of agricultural land under mechanized production peaked in 1979 at 41.3 percent (42.2 million ha), but by 1983, it had fallen below 1976 levels.¹⁴⁴ Total agricultural horsepower, which in 1957 was only 1.65 million, increased to 15 million in 1965, 29.4 million in 1970, 117.3 million in 1976, and 159.8 million in 1978. The amount of tractor tailing furrow-makers (for digging furrows for planting) increased from 258,000 in 1965 to 346,000 in 1970. By 1976, production had nearly tripled to 985,000, and by 1978, there were 1.2 million furrow-makers.¹⁴⁵ This massive infusion of farm capital improved agricultural productivity (a conclusion demonstrated by the results of the statistical analysis presented in chapter 6) and freed up millions of farmers from backbreaking labor.

After the water pump, the tractor was probably the most important agricultural machine in 1970s China. According to commune-era statistics, tractors were divided into two categories: large and midsize tractors (dazhong tuolaji) and small handheld tractors (shoufu tuolaji). During the 1970s, tractors gradually replaced animal power in many areas, but the effect of tractor use was uneven. In the large fields of Heilongjiang and Henan, large and midsize tractors were invaluable, whereas in mountainous and swampy regions, the small handheld tractors proved more useful.

Figure 3.16 illustrates the precipitous rise in the number of tractors that began around 1970.¹⁴⁶ In 1952, China had only 1,307 large and midsize tractors. This number ballooned to 72,599 by 1965, more than doubled to 150,179 in 1971, and rose steeply to 397,000 in 1976 and to 557,385 by 1978. Meanwhile, the number of small handheld tractors rose even faster. National-level statistics report no small handheld tractors until 1962, when the country had only 919 of these tractors. By 1965, China had just 3,956 small handheld tractors, but by 1971, the number jumped to 133,550. Between 1971 and 1976, the number of small tractors rose to 825,000, and by 1978 China had 1.37 million of them.

Other farm machines that aided in planting, harvesting, and other fieldwork included planters, sprayers, harvesters, mills, and furrow-makers. Many machines were labor saving, like the electric grain grinder. After being introduced in Weihai, Shandong, in 1976, this grinder liberated women and children from countless hours of slow and tiresome work.¹⁴⁷

Threshers separate grain from stalks and husks. As shown in figure 3.17, these machines were first introduced in 1962, and by 1965, the country had only 114,000. By 1970, however, the number of threshers reached 455,000; by 1976, there were 1.8 million; and, in 1978, there were 2.1 million. Reaper machines, which cut and gather crops, became available after threshers. In 1972, just 3,517 threshers were available nationwide; by 1976, however, 41,518 were available, and in 1978, there were 63,002 of them. The number of machines that combined threshing and reaping also proliferated, but these machines remained less common. In 1965, there were just 6,704 such machines; in 1970, there were 8,002; by 1976, there were 14,233; and by 1978. there were 18,987.¹⁴⁸ Farm equipment that helped expand animal husbandry increased quickly during the 1970s. National-level data for feed-mixing machines begin in 1973 and indicate that 676,000 were available nationwide; by 1976, 1.1 million were available; and in 1978, 1.3 million were available. Similarly, official records for sheep-shearing and cow-milking machines also began in 1973, when there were 980 and 399; by 1976, there were 1,178 and 868; and by 1979, there were 2,069 and 1,304, respectively.¹⁴⁹

Figures 3.18 and 3.19 reveal the extensive investments made in rural electricity generation throughout the 1970s. By 1976, the amount of kilowatt-hours used in rural areas had nearly doubled to 20.5 billion (or 10.09 percent of total Chinese electricity production), an average of 205.5 kWh/ha. In 1978, Chinese agriculture received 25.3 billion kWh, or an average of 255 kWh/ha, and by 1983, that number had risen to 43.5 billion kWh and 442.5 kWh/ha—more than 10 times the amount 18 years earlier. The distribution of electricity to power agricultural machines and to provide light for additional work at night helped boost rural productivity throughout the 1970s.¹⁵⁰

Communes and subordinate brigades were encouraged to develop hydropower resources within their jurisdiction, and the number of hydropower stations and dams, which often powered irrigation systems, increased substantially. As shown in figure 3.19, pre-1970 statistics on hydropower stations are not available, but that year, China’s 7,297 commune-controlled power stations produced 374,000 kW, and its 21,905 brigade-administered stations produced 335,000 kW. In 1976, communes operated 9,348 hydropower stations, producing 706,000 kW, and brigades oversaw 64,777 stations, producing 904,000 kW. By 1978, communes directed 11,256 stations, producing more than 1 million kW. The number of commune stations rose slightly until 1981 and fell thereafter (although the number of kilowatts produced continued to rise steadily). By contrast, the number of hydropower stations under brigade control peaked in 1979 at 71,384 and subsequently dropped consistently. In 1979, as decollectivization began, brigade-controlled power stations produced more than 1.2 million kW.¹⁵¹ Thereafter, however, reduced investment in rural electricity provision inhibited the expansion of agricultural mechanization, particularly electric water pumps critical to expanding irrigation networks. In the 1980s, power generation for urban centers became a policy priority.¹⁵²

TRANSPORTATION CAPITAL Rural transportation capital saw sizable increases during the 1970s and early 1980s. Figure 3.20 shows that the number of trucks, motor-powered fishing boats, motor vehicles, and bicycles grew rapidly over the course of the decade. In 1965, China had about 11,000 trucks in the agricultural sector; by 1970, it had about 15,000; and in 1979, it had more than 97,000—an average of about two trucks per commune. Exponential growth continued throughout the decade into the early 1980s, and by 1983, China had nearly 275,000 trucks in the agricultural sector. The number of boats likewise rose rapidly from about 7,800 in 1965 to 14,200 in 1970, to 52,000 in 1976, and to 120,000 in 1983. The increased carrying capacity of these boats also can be measured in horsepower, which expanded from 992,000 hp in 1970 to 3.129 million hp in 1979 and rose continuously throughout the decade.¹⁵³ These increases enhanced the mobility of productive factors and finished products in the countryside in ways that improved agricultural productivity throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

During the 1970s, China reformed the commune and adopted a set of agricultural policies that enhanced population control, reinvested profits locally, improved the quality of agricultural capital and inputs, and expanded application of these inputs. China’s increased agricultural output came from the nationwide application of these improved agricultural inputs, which—when used together—substantially increased food production. Year after year throughout the 1970s, the commune increased agricultural production by extracting resources from households and investing them in agricultural capital and technology via the agricultural research and extension system. This effort was supported by thousands of commune- and brigade-owned enterprises that employed and trained the growing workforce, increased rural production, and diversified and capitalized the rural economy. According to Louis Putterman, these enterprises “lay the foundation for one of the most dynamic sectors of Chinese industry in the reform era, the township and village enterprises which would grow to account for nearly 20 percent of national industrial output in 1989.”¹⁵⁴