THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES MICHIGAN PAPERS IN CHINESE STUDIES NO. 44 A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CHINESE-LANGUAGE MATERIALS ON THE PEOPLE'S COMMUNES by Wei-yi Ma Ann Arbor Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan 1982 Open access edition funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities/ Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program. Copyright © 1982 by Center for Chinese Studies The University of Michigan Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Ma, Wei-yi, 1928- A bibliography of Chinese-language materials on the people's communes. (Michigan papers in Chinese studies; no. 44) Includes index. 1. Communes (China)-Periodicals—Bibliography. I. Title. II. Series. Z3108.A5M3 1982 [DS777.55] 016.3077!74t0951 82-14617 ISBN 0-89264-044-8 Printed in the United States of America ISBN 978-0-89264-044-7 (paper) ISBN 978-0-472-12781-8 (ebook) ISBN 978-0-472-90177-7 (open access) The text of this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ To the memory of Professor Alexander Eckstein CONTENTS Acknowledgments IX Foreword xi Preface xiii User's Guide xix Journal Abbreviations xxi Policies, Nature, and Organization A. Policies 1 B. Nature 6 C. Organization 17 II. The People's Communization Movement A. The Movement's Development 23 B. Rectification Campaigns 34 C. Reactions to Communization 37 D. Model Communes 1. North China 44 2. Northeast China 47 3. Northwest China 47 4. East China 49 5. Central South China 52 6. Southwest China 56 III. Planning, Statistics Work, Accounting, and Financial Management A. Planning 59 B. Statistics Work 63 C. Accounting 67 D. Financial Management 72 IV. Labor A. Wages 79 B. Management 90 C. Model Workers 102 D. Advanced and Backward Brigades 104 V. Agriculture A. Agriculture 109 Vlll B» Technology and the Mechanization of Agriculture 121 C. Agricultural Disasters 129 VI. Forestry, Animal Husbandry, and Diversification of Production A. Forestry 135 B. Animal Husbandry 139 C. Diversification of Production 145 VIL Industry 153 VIIL Transportation, Electrification, and Communications 171 IX. Finance, Trade, and Commune Economy A. Finance, Taxation, and Monetary Affairs 177 B. Rural Trade and Commodity Exchange 185 C* Commodity Production 190 D. The Law of Value 195 E. Commune Economy 199 X. Education and Culture A. Education 209 B. Literature 215 C. Book Reviews and Bibliographies 221 D. Histories of Individual Communes 224 E. Libraries 226 XL Welfare and Collective Life A. Public Dining Halls 229 B. Rest Homes and Day-Care Centers 235 C. Health Care 238 D. Collective Life 242 E. The Functions of Civil Administration 247 XIL Women and the Family 251 XIIL The Militia and Political and Legal Work 257 XIV. Communist Ideology and the Cadres A. Ideology and Mass Movements 261 B. Cadres 272 XV. Urban People's Communes 279 Index 283 Pinyin/Wade-Giles Conversion Chart 299 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The publieation of this bibliography would not have been possible without the advice, support, and encouragement of many people. Professors Michel Oksenberg and Robert Dernberger must be given credit for inspiring me to undertake this project. And, needless to say, I am deeply indebted to Weiying Wan, head of the University of Michigan Asia Library, for his full support throughout the preparation of this bibliography. I thank the University of Michigan Center for Chinese Studies for publishing this volume. I owe special thanks to Barbara Congelosi and Diane Scherer for their special efforts on the painstaking editorial duties. I fully appreciate Ms. Congelosi's skill and patience, for it was through her efforts that this publication became presentable. Ms. Scherer must be credited for filling in all of the pinyin, compiling the index, and for typing the entire manuscript. I also extend my thanks to Professors Kenneth DeWoskin and James F. Dew for their helpful suggestions. I would also like to express my appreciation to Professor P. K. Yu, Naomi Fukuda, Professor C. Y. Cheng, Mei-ying Lin, Sai-Cheung Yeung, Professor Anthony J. Kane, and my wife, J. H. Ma, for their constant encouragement and concern. Wei-yi Ma J$j iji - Ann Arbor November 1982 IX FOREWORD Until the recent effort to revive the village and the township as the basic administrative units, the commune was the most important administrative and planning unit in post-1949 China. It was at the commune level that the people's congresses were elected, grain taxes collected, surplus grains purchased, and small industry and social services organized and supported. It was also at this level that projects for water control and irrigation were planned, and heavier machinery, such as tractors, harvesters, large pumps, and food processing equipment, was owned and its use coordinated. In addition, the commune had important responsibilities in such areas as elementary education, medical services, agricultural research, and the distribution of income and production. Since their formation during the Great Leap Forward in 1958, the people's communes have undergone numerous changes in size and structure to accom- modate rural patterns of communication, transport, and marketing. By mid- 1975, the 75,000 communes estimated to have existed in 1963 had been consoli- dated into about 50,000. Communes have proved to be an important and lasting innovation of the Great Leap Forward and have played a major role in the transformation of China's rural, individual peasant economy into a collectivized agricultural system. One of the major emphases of the University of Michigan Asia Library's collection efforts is the social, political, and economic development of post- 1949 China. We have developed a strong collection of source materials capable of supporting a sophisticated level of research in these areas. In response to a growing and definite need to facilitate access to the contents of our collection and to facilitate the research work of faculty and students at Michigan and scholars elsewhere, we have at the same time initiated bibliographical efforts. Mr. Wei-yi Ma, Chinese Bibliographer in the Asia Library, has culled information on various aspects of the commune from some 137 Chinese journals. His painstaking work will save the researcher hundreds of hours that would otherwise have been spent sifting through the literature for materials on China's communal economy, certainly one of the most important aspects of post-1949 China. Weiying Wan Head Asia Library xi PREFACE In the heat of August 1958, Chairman Mao Zedong went on a tour of the Chinese countryside.•*• He wanted to see how the Great Leap Forward he had sponsored was faring and what the fall harvest promised. His itinerary took him across the North China plain, including Henan Province, where he inspected a new type of rural organization. With encouragement from Mao and others voiced during a Party meeting in Chengdu in March 1958, provincial and local officials in many parts of China had been experimenting with new forms of local government for several months. In some provinces, local officials merged the agricultural cooperatives into large, federated cooperatives embracing several thousand members. In other areas, they combined agricultural cooperatives, credit cooperatives, and supply and marketing cooperatives into a single, comprehensive economic cooperative. At the same time, the lowest rungs of the state apparatus were coping with a massive restructuring of the units below the county level: the districts (qu fi ) and townships (xiang fy ). The nation's 20,000 qu were being abolished and the 240,000 xiang were being merged into some 80,000 units, each approximately the size of a local marketing area. All this occurred in the frenzy of the Great Leap Forward, when local organizations were responsible for maximum mobilization of labor and re- sources to accelerate China!s growth. Both national and local leaders were searching for institutional forms that would facilitate control of the populace, or to use sociological jargon, that would enable maximum penetration of rural society by the state. Ideologically, given the tenor of the times, the ideal local institution would entail more extensive forms of collective life than the higher- stage agricultural producers' cooperatives of 1956-58. That would include * An extensive account of the political origins of the communes is in Parris H. Chang, Power and Policy in China (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978). * On the elimination of qu and merger of xiang, see Jane Lieberthal, "From Cooperative to Commune: An Analysis of Rural Administrative Policy in China, 1955-1958" (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1970). On the relationship between commune and marketing system, see G. William Skinner, "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China," Part II, Journal of Asian Studies 24, no- 3 (May 1965): 363-99. xm XIV peasant income based on a larger collective unit, reduction or elimination of private plots, and shared social responsibilities. Visiting the collective at Qiliying in the Xinxiang area of Henan during his tour, the Chairman discovered what he had been seeking; the peopled commune (renmin gongshe A^ i% '£- %*•). This organizational structure com- bined all the previously separate economic and governmental organizations (agricultural coops, credit coops, supply and marketing coops, the xiang and the qu) into one huge, integrated organization. The new organization merged collectively held property (i.e., in which the members of the collective shared in the ownership of property) with property owned by the state and restricted private property. In Marxist terms, it represented a new and "higher" form of social organization, offering the hope of an accelerated transition to genuine communism in China. Individual income of the commune members, which totaled up to 70,000 peasants in the earliest Henan experiments, was to be shared from the total income of the commune.