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Rural Guangdong's “Second Economy,” 1962–74

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

John P. Burns
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While social scientists have examined in some detail the income earning activities of Chinese peasants in communes, the primary focus of these studies has been to describe the general pattern of peasant behaviour – the orthodox, legitimate, legally sanctioned methods for increasing collective (and household) income. What these studies ignore, however, is the existence of a “second economy” in rural China, characterized by a wide range of informal, extra– or illegal strategies also designed to enhance collective income. In Guangdong from 1962 to 1974 these included: altering the size of production units; speculation; fraudulent loan applications; corruption; theft; withholding goods or services; false reporting; and violence or demonstrations. While acknowledging that these activities did not represent the norm, nonetheless, a systematic discussion of informal and perhaps deviant behaviour, highlighting time and participant variations, is necessary to form a more accurate picture of Chinese peasant behaviour.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 88 , December 1981 , pp. 629 - 644
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1981

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References

1. See, for example, Parish, William and Whyte, Martin King, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 54–59:Google ScholarBenett, Gordon, Huadong: The Story of a Chinese People's Commune (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1978), pp. 82–88;Google Scholar and Pelzel, John, “Economic management of a production brigade in post–Leap China,” in Willmott, W. E. (ed.), Economic Organization in Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 387–414, all of which are based on data drawn exclusively or partly from rural Guangdong.Google Scholar Accounts based on documentary analysis include, Stavis, Benedict, People's Communes and Rural Development in China (Ithaca: Rural Development Committee, Cornell University, 1974), pp. 60–76;Google Scholar and Crook, Frederick, “The commune system in the People's Republic of China, 1963–1974,” in China: A Reasessment of the Economy, edited by the Joint Economic Committee, 94th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 396. These accounts of post–1962 local rural Chinese organization do not explicitly identify orthodox, legitimate strategies for increasing collective income. They do, however, identify them implicitly by listing collective income sources. See Bennett, Huadong, pp. 82–88, where these are identified as grain production, cash crops, small–scale industries and collective side–lines.Google Scholar

A recent important exception is Anita Chan and Jonathan Unger, “The second economy of rural China” (Washington, D.C.: Conference on “The Second Economy of the USSR,” 1980), which highlights deviant economic practices in one Guangdong village.

2. Informal strategies used by peasant households to increase their income were identified as speculation, fraudulent loan applications, taking over collective land for private use, corruption, withholding goods and services, and spreading rumours in Burns, John P., “Chinese peasant interest articulation, 1949–1974” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1979), pp. 323–40.Google Scholar

3. The data base for this article consists of the national and provincial press in Chinese and in English translation, as well as collections of official documents available in the west. The article also relies heavily on a series of in–depth interviews with 25 former residents of rural Guangdong, mainly peasants and rusticated youths, conducted in Hong Kong from May 1975 to October 1976, and supported by a grant from the American Social Science Research Council. Interview data is indicated by the following codes: CN (sent–down youth); NM (peasant); and KP (cadre).

4. Parish and Whyte, Village and Family, p. 19; see also Vogel, Ezra, Canton Under Communism: Programs and Politics in a Provincial Capital, 1949–1968 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1969) for an account of Guangdong's recent history.Google Scholar

5. See Parish and Whyte, Village and Family, pp. 96–115.

6. For a discussion of the work point system, see Ibid.. pp. 62–71.

7. These regulations can be found in Documents of Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, September 1956–April 1969, Volume 1 (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1971), pp. 695–725 (hereafter CCP Documents).Google Scholar In 1978 these regulations were replaced by the “Regulations on the Work in the Rural People's Communes (Draft for Trial Use) “or the “New Sixty Articles,” published in English translation in Issues and Studies (Taipei), August 1979, pp. 100–112, and September 1979, pp. 104–115. In general the liberal tone of the 1961 document is duplicated in the “New Sixty Articles.”Google Scholar

8. For evidence of the repudiation of the “Sixty Articles” from 1966 to 1976 see Interview File CN8A, 8–10; “The ten major crimes of the private plots,” in China News Service, No. 146 (17 November 1966), p. 2;Google Scholar Radio Yunnan, 21 December 1969 in Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) (Washington, D.C.: National Technical Information Service), No. 247 (23 December 1969), p. E–4;Google ScholarRenmin ribao (People's Daily). August 1972 in Survey of China Mainland Press (SCMP) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate General), No. 5199 (20 August 1972).Google Scholar For the period of the Campaign to Limit Bourgeois Rights (1975–76) see “On exercising all–round dictatorship over the bourgeoisie,” by Zhunqiao, Zhang, Peking Review, No. 14 (1975), pp. 5–11; and “Take class struggle as the key in studying Dazhai,” in Hongqi (Red Flag), March 1976, pp. 71–73.Google Scholar

9. CCP Documents, p. 696.

10. Chen, C. S. and Ridley, C. P., Rural People's Communes in Lien–chiang (Stanford: Hoover Institute, 1969), pp. 102–103 (hereafter Lianjiang Documents);Google Scholar for Guangdong see Guangzhou, Radio, 3 March 1967, in News From Chinese Provincial Radio Stations (NFCPRS) (Hong Kong: British Information Service), No. 199 (23 March 1967), p. M21.Google Scholar

11. Radio Zhejiang, 26 July 1972 in FBIS, No. 150(2 August 1972), p. C5.

12. NM4E–3.

13. NM11C–9.

14. Other informants report pressures from higher levels as being a much more important factor accounting for changes in production unit size. One Guangdong production team, for example, which split up in 1962, was forced to amalgamate in 1965 under pressure from commune officials seeking to reduce team income differentials. See Interview File NM9B–5, 6. Ethnic conflicts also played a role in some production team size changes as well.

15. See Lianjiang Documents, pp. 196–98.

16. CN5L–17.

17. NM4E–6.

18. See Nanfang Ribao (Southern Daily), 11 October 1963, p. 4. More recently, Guangdong production teams and brigades have been accused of speculating in land, an activity that is clearly illegal. Guangdong authorities have reiterated the ban on the sale of collective land. Radio Guangzhou, 10 March 1981, reported in an Agence France Presse dispatch from Beijing, 10 March 1981.

19. “Hurry up and repay state agricultural loans,” Radio Hunan, 8 December 1963 in NFCPRS, No. 36 (12 December 1963); Radio Guangdong, 30 August 1964 in NFCPRS, No. 72 (3 September 1964), p. 26; and Radio Qinghai, 3 March 1973 in FBIS, No. 45, (7 March 1973), p. H–10.

20. See, for example, Radio Shanghai, 3 September 1971 in FBIS, 10 September 1971, p. C5, for a policy statement which actively discourages teams from applying for loans.

21. See Radio Henan, 13 March 1964 in NFCPRS, No. 49 (19 March 1964), p. 6; Radio Henan,27 June 1963 in NFCPRS, No. 13 (4 July 1963), p. 3; Radio Anhui, 27 August 1963 in NFCPRS, No. 22 (5 September 1963), p. 2; Radio Qinghai, 3 March 1973 in FBIS, No. 45 (7 March 1973), p. H10; Radio Anhui, 17 July 1963 in NFCPRS, No. 16 (25 July 1963), p. 10; and Radio Hunan, 28 June 1963 in NFCPRS, No. 13 (4 July 1963), p. 18.

22. CN5J–1.

23. CN5C–13.

24. In China News Summary (Hong Kong: British Information Service), No. 622 (14 July 1976).Google Scholar

25. “A factual account of an investigation conducted at Taoyuan,” in the Red Guard publication, Zhengfa Gongshe (Commune of the College of Political Science and Law), No. 17 (7 April 1967) in SCMP, No. 3958, p. 11.

26. Lianjiang Documents, pp. 173, 179, 181, 184, and 187–92.

27. NM4C–15.

28. CCP Documents, p. 705.

29. Radio Jiangxi, 1 January 1967 in NFCPRS, No. 193 (2 February 1967); Radio Jiangxi, 25 January 1964 in NFCPRS, No. 43 (30 January 1964).

30. NM4D–8.

31. Radio Beijing, 24 August 1972 in FBIS, No. 168 (28 August 1972), p. B5.

32. Guangming Ribao (Bright Daily), 22 August 1971 in SCMP, No. 4969 (7 September 1971), p. 1.

33. NM4D–8.

34. Richard Madsen Interview File, WW14/6.

35. CN5G–12–18.

36. NM4C–15, 16.

37. CN5L–19.

38. NM4C–16.

39. “A factual account of an investigation,” p. 11.

40. CN5F–18.

41. Nanfang Ribao, 25 December 1964; See New China News Agency (Beijing), 7 July 1980, where the national model Dazhai brigade is accused of over–reporting output.Google Scholar

42. Parish and Whyte, Village and Family, pp. 308–311.

43. Radio Guangzhou, 6 May 1968 in NFCPRS, No. 80, p. 2.

44. CN5K 12–14.

45. Nanfang Ribao, 15 December 1962 in SCMP, No. 2924 (21 February 1963), p. 11.

46. See, for example, Baum, Richard, Prelude to Revolution: Mao, the Party, and the Peasant Question, 1962–1966 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), pp. 12–21.Google Scholar

47. See Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) 31 July 1980, in FBIS, 18 August 1980, p. L14.