Agrarian Radicalism in China, 1968–1981

287 Pages·1989·7.765 MB·English

by  David Zweig

AGRARIAN RADICALISM IN CHINA, 1968-1981
HARVARD EAST ASIAN SERIES 102
The Council on East Asian Studies at Harvard University,
through the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and
the Japan Institute, administers research projects designed to further
scholarly understanding of China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam,
Inner Asia, and adjacent areas.
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AGRARIAN RADICALISM
IN CHINA, 1968-1981
David Zweig
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
1989
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Copyright © 1989 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials
have been chosen for strength and durability.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zweig, David.
Agrarian radicalism in China, 1968-1981 / David Zweig.
p. cm.—(Harvard East Asian series; 102)
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-674-01175-9 (alk. paper)
1. Rural development—China. 2. Radicalism—China. 3. Commu-
nism and agriculture—China. 4. China—Social conditions—1949-
1976.
I. Title. II. Series.
HN 740.Z9C695 1989 88-21261
306'.0951—dcl9 CIP
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To Dan, Bernie, Belma, and Bobby
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CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction: Dilemmas of the
Postrevolutionary Struggle 1
1. Agrarian Radicalism Defined: Theoretical
Perspectives and Developmental Strategies 16
2. Policy Winds and Agrarian Radicalism 32
3. Periodization of Agrarian Radicalism 50
4. The Local Response 74
5. Brigades and Higher Stages of Socialism 98
6. Restricting Private Plots 122
7. Resource Expropriation and Equalization 145
8. The Making of a New Rural Order 169
Conclusion: The Failure of Agrarian Radicalism 190
Abbreviations 205
Appendix: Types of Private Plots 207
Notes 209
Selected Bibliography 255
Index 259
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TABLES
Table 1. Institutional structure in rural China, 1975. 5
Table 2. Financial distribution of accounting units in People's
Communes, 1958-1981. 30
Table 3. Major events in rural policy, 1966-1978. 51
Table 4. Nanjing rural capital construction data, 1968-1979. 70
Table 5. Rural payment system of People's Communes, 1975. 100
Table 6. Percentage of brigades utilizing brigade accounting, 1979. 102
Table 7. Systemic variables to explain brigade accounting. 102
Table 8. Brigade power structure in Shaoxing County,
Zhejiang Province. 118
Table 9. Pattern of private plot restrictions. 124
Table 10. References to equalization and transfer in the
People's Daily, 1978. 149
FIGURES
Figure 1. Articles in the People's Daily advocating specific
radical policies, 1968-1978. 53
Figure 2. Articles in the People's Daily, criticizing the radical
line, 1968-1978. 54
Figure 3. Land planted in rice, 1966-1983. 55
Figure 4. Number of teams in the Chinese countryside, 1959-1981. 59
Figure 5. Articles in the People's Daily, criticizing specific
radical policies, 1968-1978. 60
Figure 6. Three levels of economic ownership: changes
in Zijingshan Commune, 1965-1980. 105
Figure 7. Local funds used to supplement brigade salaries in
four brigades, 1962-1980. 115
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TABLES
Table 1. Institutional structure in rural China, 1975. 5
Table 2. Financial distribution of accounting units in People's
Communes, 1958-1981. 30
Table 3. Major events in rural policy, 1966-1978. 51
Table 4. Nanjing rural capital construction data, 1968-1979. 70
Table 5. Rural payment system of People's Communes, 1975. 100
Table 6. Percentage of brigades utilizing brigade accounting, 1979. 102
Table 7. Systemic variables to explain brigade accounting. 102
Table 8. Brigade power structure in Shaoxing County,
Zhejiang Province. 118
Table 9. Pattern of private plot restrictions. 124
Table 10. References to equalization and transfer in the
People's Daily, 1978. 149
FIGURES
Figure 1. Articles in the People's Daily advocating specific
radical policies, 1968-1978. 53
Figure 2. Articles in the People's Daily, criticizing the radical
line, 1968-1978. 54
Figure 3. Land planted in rice, 1966-1983. 55
Figure 4. Number of teams in the Chinese countryside, 1959-1981. 59
Figure 5. Articles in the People's Daily, criticizing specific
radical policies, 1968-1978. 60
Figure 6. Three levels of economic ownership: changes
in Zijingshan Commune, 1965-1980. 105
Figure 7. Local funds used to supplement brigade salaries in
four brigades, 1962-1980. 115
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PREFACE
THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION'S promise to create a revolutionary
society free of inequalities and bureaucratic oppression caught the
imagination of young people world-wide in the sixties. I was among
those who hoped that China had found a way to create a different
kind of socialism. As a student in Beijing from 1974 to 1976, I learned
how Mao's theory to prevent bureaucratism was supposed to work,
but at the same time saw the tension it bred in the lives of most
Chinese. I was skeptical then; however, it was Mao's death and the
fall of the Gang of Four in 1976 that changed my perception of China
along with China's perception of itself. What had once appeared
radical now looked retrogressive; what had seemed spontaneous was
now seen to be oppressive; noble purposes had been driven by
ignoble acts. I knew all this before, but somehow I had hoped that
China would succeed where other revolutions had failed.
In response to a comment by Michel Oksenberg during a 1978
seminar at The University of Michigan about rural inequality, I began
my decade-long investigations of peasant China. China's vast coun-
tryside provided a complex arena for examining how Mao's support-
ers used his theories during the Cultural Revolution decade (1966-
1976) to try and create a new socialist countryside, and how peasants
and local cadres reacted to that drive toward rural communism. This
book, an outgrowth of that study, also addresses the broader issue of
popular resistance to state-directed social change and efforts of
postrevolutionary regimes to reassert control over society in order to
continue socioeconomic and political transformations.
Like the previous generation of analysts of contemporary China,
I began my research by spending three months in Hong Kong in fall
1980, where I interviewed eighteen refugees and émigrés at the
Universities Service Center. In Hong Kong it was difficult to find a
large population of informants who had lived in the countryside for
an extended period of time. The experiences of urban youths who
ix
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