China Emerging_ 1978-2008 - Xiao-bo , Wu [4]
November 24, a group of twenty-one gaunt, sallow-skinned farmers crouched around the dim light of a kerosene lamp in a small thatch-roofed hut. They met secretly in a village called the Xiaogang Production Brigade of Fengyang County, Anhui Province. Their faces were haggard and they wore old rags, but they were solemn and dignified as they marked their thumb impressions as a signature on a document before them. Each man swore that he would rather go to jail or be killed than carry on under the existing system. They agreed to split up the fields according to households and cultivate the
November 24, 1978: A group of farmers in the Xiaogang Production Brigade in Fengyang County, Anhui Province, secretly marked their thumb impressions on a document committing them to a “cheng bao” or responsibility system as a way of farming their collective land. This system allowed individuals to farm plots of land separately and keep what remained after allocations to the state.
The bountiful harvest in 1982 after the “da-bao-gan” system was implemented.
plots on their own. This agreement was later to be placed in the Museum of Chinese Revolution (now part of the National Museum of China) for safekeeping. It is considered as the “first shot” in China’s agricultural reform.
Before 1978, the People’sCommuneSystemhad tied the farmers securely to the land for more than
twentyyears.Theshortcomingsofthissystemthatmandated“ one big potfor everyone” were quite evident. As a result, the agricultural productivity fell to alevelwherefarmersweresimplynolongerabletosurvive.XiaogangVillage was known as the “village of three dependencies”: It depended on government-subsidized grain for food, financial assistance for common necessities, and loans for inputs into the ongoing production. Almost every family in the village had to go out into the neighboring regions to beg for food after every fall harvest. Drought in the spring of 1978 greatly reduced that year’s grain harvests. With no alternative, the farmers of Xiaogang Village took matters into their own hands. They instituted a system, da-bao-gan, by which each family would be responsible for its own part of village production. Some payment came in crops and some in cash. In the following year, Xiaogang produced a bumper harvest and for the first time handed “public grain” to the government as well as paid off some of its debt. With the strong support of Wan Li, the First Secretary of Anhui Provincial Party Committee at the time, the example of Xiaogang Village was then promoted throughout Anhui as a role model. This system, named the “Household Contract Responsibility System,” is generally acknowledged as being the precipitating event for changes in villages throughout China.
Looking back over the course of China’s thirty years of reform, we discover that often, it was the people themselves who instigated the most G L O S S A RY 1 . 2
One big pot
Under the “one big pot” system, everyone received the same amount of payment, irrespective of the benefits offered by his or her work. Everyone ate from the same “big pot” of the state.
Chinese tourists in the summer of 1980. The foreigners are the main attraction—not the Summer Palace or the national treasures.
Pierre Cardin walking down Chang’an Street in Beijing, March 1978. Cardin was the first world-class fashion designer to visit China.
The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held in December 1978, raised the curtain on the era of reform and opening up.
important changes. Policy makers have found that their task was to understand how to “go with the flow” and enhance the end result. In addition to having the necessary courage and spirit, they simply had to determine how to channel people’s own creativity along the correct path.