Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Collectivisation of agriculture
following Mao condemning
'Rash Advance' 1953.
- The ending of the push saw a growth in real rural capitalism with rich peasants hiring labour and buying land.
- This brought a condemnation of Rash Retreat.
- There was a fresh drive to push APCs (agricultural producers' cooperatives.
- Resistance increased. Some of features that had marked Russian collectivisation began to appear.
- Rich peasants began to slaughter their animals, rather than lose them to the APC. Severe flooding reduced harvest, there were food riots.
- In the southern provinces the opposition to the communists mounted considerably.
- Mao again called a halt in Jan 1955. By then 670,000 APCs embracing one in seven households.
- Liu Shaoqi actually announced the disbandment of a quarter of them.
- The key change came in April 1955,
orchestrated by the chairman himself.
- Perhaps sign of Mao's abandoning the practical approach to politics that had served him so well. Sign of things to come.
- In its place was to be the dogmatism he had denounced and a capacity for self-delusion.
- Mao visited Southern provinces, talked extensively to local party officials who played down their resistance. Their self interest in terms of power and status lay in pushing APCs
- Mao was convinced to go on with drive. Admitted to party boss, Deng Zihui 'The peasants want freedom, but we want socialism'
- These were ominous words - show incompatibility of two objectives.
- Mao called a Conference of Local Party Secretaries in July 1955.
- Pushed vision of socialist countryside to an audience who welcomed his instructions.
- Result was a frenetic drive for APCs
- By January 1956, 80% of households had been driven into cooperatives.
- Higher level APCs began to predominate. These comprised two to 300 households; there was no private ownership and no compensation for the pooling of assets.
- By the end of 1956, 88% of peasants were members of advanced APCs and only 3% still farmed as individuals.
- Land reform had also succeeded in achieving two other Party objectives; reducing the level of debts and installing Party cells at the grassroots of rural China.
- The new regime would in consequence exercise a degree of control far greater than that exercised by recent imperial dynasties.
- From an ideological point of view, it was a triumph and Mao was ecstatic, but it marked a breach with the millions of peasants whom the Communists had such success in gaining support from.
- In terms of economy, it was even more of a mistake, though economics was never one of Mao's strong points.