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.