Mao Zedong. Should Knowledge be Based on Authority of the Evidence of the Senses?

        Chinese agriculture ran on the basis of private land ownership and one-family farm basis for more than 2,000 years. After the People’s Republic of China was established, the CCP claimed that they would improve, rather than eliminate the system of private family farms. The land reforms that they had done during the 1940s and 1950s won them great support of the Chinese peasants because it allowed the Chinese peasants to own land and create their own family farms. But CCP leaders, especially Mao, believed that eliminating private ownership was the only way for peasants to escape poverty, which was the CCP’s long range goal. China’s agricultural collectivization was carried out in three stages. The first stage of collectivization was to promote mutual aid teams. 5-6 households joined together to work cooperatively during the sowing and harvesting seasons. Each family still had ownership of their own land, and the crops grown on that land belonged to that family. By 1952, 40% of China’s rural households joined a mutual aid team. At the same time, a number of peasants were moving to the second stage of collectivization; the APC (Agricultural Producers’ Cooperative). An APC included a village or a section of a village. The members pooled together their land, agricultural tools, and animals and worked the land together. A management committee kept the records, and measured the amount of work done by each family in the form of ‘work points.’ At the end of the year, the crop and other income-after taxes and reserve funds had been taken care of- would be divided among the families according the ‘work points’ that they had earned. 15,000 APCs were established when the CCP encouraged peasants to replace MATs with ACPs at the end of 1953. The third stage was the fully socialist collectives, or ‘higher’ APCs. Most higher APCs contained 150 to 200 households. Unlike the semi-socialist APC, where each family still retained ownership of its land and derived part of its income from their lands, the APC now owned the land. The APC would distribute the crops based mainly on the basis of each family’s work contributions. But all this was planned cautiously because the CCP knew that this transformation could lead bloodshed that had happened during the rapid collectivization under Stalin’s regime in the Soviet Union. The CCP leaders predicted that the transition would take 15 years starting from 1953. But Mao believed that China would suffer economically and socially unless collectivization was speeded up. The CCP launched a drive to organize more higher APCs in 1955. Collectivization had a huge impact on China. It allowed the CCP to exert more power over the peasants and gave them income to fund China’s industrialization. On the other hand, collectivization was pushed too soon and too hard, which resulted in inefficiencies in agricultural productivity and dissatisfaction among the peasants. They lost the motivation to work harder because they were deprived of their land. After 1982, family farms became the basis of Chinese agriculture; more than 97 percent of peasants ran their own farms under the household responsibility system.

        The Great Leap Forward took place in 1958. It was Mao’s attempt to modernize China’s economy so that by 1988, China’s economy would rival America’s economy. He felt that the Chinese people were capable of anything, and the two important tasks were to target agriculture and industry. He announced a second 5 Year Plan to last from 1958-1963. This plan was called the Great Leap Forward. To allow industry and agriculture to grow, China was reformed into a series of communes. Most communes contained 5000 families. People gave up the ownership of their tools, animals, and land, and worked for the commune instead of for themselves. By the end of 1958, 700 million people had been placed into 26,578 communes. All this was achieved with astounding speed. Workers were encouraged to meet the targets and to even beat them. The figures for steel, coal, chemicals, timber, and cement showed huge rises. Even grain and cotton production showed huge increases in production. However, by 1959, things started going downhill. Commune leaders were faced with the task of achieving things that they were incapable of. Quickly produced farm machinery fell to pieces when they were used. Many workers were injured after working long hard hours and falling asleep at work. Steel produced by the backyard furnaces were often too weak to be used in construction. Also, in 1959 and 1960 weather conditions were horrible, so many people starved. While there were droughts in some ares of China, other parts were hit with flooding. The harvest for 1959 was 170 million tons of grain – well below what China needed at the most basic level.By 1959, Mao even admitted that the Great Leap Forward was a failure. Mao had to resign from his position as Head of State, although he was still popular with the people of China.

        In summation, collectivization, the first 5-Year Plan and the Great Leap forward did benefit China. Output in agriculture and other important industries increased tremendously. But along with these profits, came disadvantages. The Communists pushed too hard which in the end slowed down the progress of China.