THE COMMUNE SYSTEM IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC

OF CHINA, 1963-74

By FREDERICK W. CROOK*

I. INTRODUCTION

A. Summary

China's commune system consists of four parts: Commune; brigade; team; and household. This system, born in the optimistic fervor of the Great Leap Forward in 1958, was reduced to a skeleton during the lean years from 1959-62, but has developed greatly in the past 12 years.

Currently, China has 50,000 communes, about 25,000 less than the number in existence in 1963. Essentially the commune level functions as the basic unit of local government. This level is charged with the responsibility of procuring grain, collecting taxes, providing public security, and reporting statistics and information to higher levels. In addition, it formulates specific production plans for its subordinate units after adapting policies received from higher levels to local conditions. The commune also provides leadership for the management of water resources, construction, afforestation, and transportation projects which require the direction and control of a large organizational unit. Moreover, it manages local industries which produce consumer and producer goods for local consumption.

Brigades currently are estimated to number about 750,000. The brigade is the final link in the long chain of Government and Party control systems. It is the institution charged with overseeing the work of production teams. The bridgade has coercive power through its ability to nominate officials which lead teams. The Chinese Communist Party Branch in the brigade is responsible for inculcating socialist ideals in team officials and members. Moreover, brigades can influence team behavior because of the inputs, such as electricity, water, and farm machinery they control, and the social services, such as health and education, they deliver to or withhold from teams.

Production teams are estimated to number about 5 million. The team continues to be the most important formally organized unit in the commune system. This semiautonomous unit makes the final decisions regarding the production of goods and the distribution of income. It is the unit which bears the burden of calculating profits or losses. Most of the grain and foodstuffs grown in teams is consumed by member households with only a portion marketed. Aside from the household, no other institution in China so deeply affects every major aspect of the lives of China's rural population.

This paper was prepared for the U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee Publication, China: A Reassessment of the Economy. This paper should not be cited or reproduced without the permission of the author.

Finally, households are estimated to number about 167 million. The household takes the responsibility for disciplining and motivating its labor force, and for distributing income to its individual members. Households continue to cultivate private plots from which come most of China's vegetables, poultry, and hogs.

Regarding similarities and differences in the commune system in various regions of China, two different patterns are evident. On the one hand, communes in various parts of the country have basically similar organizational structures, ownership patterns, and methods of distributing income. On the other hand, communes in different parts of the country vary greatly regarding numbers of brigades, teams, households, population, arable land, level of mechanization, and income.

The persistence of the team as the basic unit and similarities in organization and ownership patterns of contemporary communes with those in 1962 tend to mask important changes which have taken place in the past 12 years at commune and brigade levels. These levels provide more services, control more inputs, have better trained cadres and stronger Party organizations than they did in 1962. Indeed, there has been ideological pressure in the Party to abolish the team and amalgamate households directly into brigades bringing agriculture one step closer to ultimate socialization. This pressure, understandably, has been supported by poorer teams desiring to increase their share of collective income. However, pressure to change the status of teams has been arrested by the newly passed 1975 Constitution which specifically sustains the continued functioning of these units. Moreover, the requirements of China's labor intensive agriculture necessitates a unit similar to the team in size and organization, which can effectively manage and motivate the farmers of China to produce the foodstuffs needed for this country's huge and growing population.

B. Organization of Paper

The purpose of this paper is to describe communes as they exist and function at the present time, and to briefly analyze economic coordination and decisionmaking processes in the commune system. The scope of the paper is limited to the four levels of commune system in China's economy: i.e. the rural people's commune (RPC); the production brigade (PB); the production team (PT); and the household. Its major focus concerns the economic affairs, especially relating to agricultural production, of the units in the commune system, but of necessity some attention must be paid to education, politics, and health care as well. The study is limited to the 12-year period from January 1963 to December 1974.

In the early 1960's, within 6 to 7 years after the establishment of the communes, there were a series of excellent studies on these institutions by Professors Barnett, Donnithorne, Myrdal, Pelzel, and others. Several of these, including those by Barnett, Myrdal, and Pelzel, involved an indepth study of one agricultural unit, either a commune, brigade, team, or village.

This paper attempts to give a more nationwide perspective on the commune system in rural China. Primary and secondary source materials were used to collect information on commune organizations and

related topics such as education, health, and marketing. The study rests primarily, however, on information gathered from approximately 1,400 individual reports on communes scattered over the broad expanse of China.1

Thus, while updating information gathered in the 1960's, this study should also allow for some analysis of regional variations and compilation of more aggregate data on the institutional structure of rural China.

Section II of the paper provides background information on the commune system as it was first organized in 1958 and as it was restructured from 1959 through the end of 1962. Section III outlines the main features of the commune system as its exists today and briefly describes the major changes which have occurred in the system since 1962. Section IV completes the discussion by presenting tentative ideas regarding (a) the coordination of economic activities of the separate parts of the commune system; (b) the constraints within which the production team, the most important unit in Chinese agriculture, makes economic decisions; and (c) prospects for change in the commune system in the next 5 years.

II. ORGANIZATION AND RESTRUCTURING OF COMMUNE SYSTEM, 1958–62

Rural People's Communes were first organized in 1958 during the Great Leap Forward to resolve a number of problems in China's countryside. Tensions developed between collective farms (Advanced or Higher Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives) organized in 1956 and local hsiang governments regarding responsibilities and functions.2 Chinese leaders found it difficult to improve both collective farm and hsiang administration at the same time because of the very limited numbers of well-trained persons in rural areas. Small-sized collective farms which were not directly controlled by the Party were felt by some Party leaders to be incapable of maximizing economic growth and initiating social and technological changes at the local level. Moreover, these small-sized production units were thought incapable of generating additional income to bridge the widening gap between rural and urban areas. Party leaders wanted to improve their control in rural areas and curb capitalist tendencies among the peasants. They wanted to create an environment in which a new kind of socialist person could be nurtured without contamination of strong material incentives, private plots, and feudal customs and practices.

The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party issued the "Resolution on the Establishment of Communes in Rural Areas" on August 29, 1958, which led to the establishment of 26,000 communes by the end of the year. The resolution stated that the basis for establishing communes was the development of an "overall and continuous leap forward in agricultural production in the whole country and the growing elevation of the political consciousness of the 500 million peasants." The resolution declared that the small-sized collective

1 See Appendix I for a detailed discussion of the sources used in writing this report. Prior to the formation of communes, China's rural administrative structure consisted of two levels, the hsien or county, and several subordinate units called hsiang.

"Resolution of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on the Establishment of People's Communes in the Rural Areas," NCNA, Peking, Sept. 9, 1958; translated In SCMP, No. 1853, Sept. 15, 1958, p. 1.

farm “*** with a few score or a few hundred households is no longer suited to the demand of the developing situation." *

Communes were designed to integrate all aspects of rural life including agricultural, subsidiary, and light industrial production; politics and administration; social services such as education, health, and welfare; transportation and communication; finance and commerce; water conservation and basic construction; and military affairs. The commune, roughly comparable in size to the hsiang in terms of households, replaced the hsiang as the basic administrative unit in rural China. With their larger size, communes were expected to mobilize underutilized factors of production, especially the labor force, to contract capital projects and to increase production and income.

Communes also were expected to accelerate the building of socialism and the gradual transition to communism."

The production brigade and production team, which corresponded in size to the former collective farm and its production brigades, formed the middle and lower administrative levels of the commune. An organization chart of the commune system is presented on page 370. Attempts were made to reorganize households, the traditional basic unit in rural China, by providing communal living and eating quarters and distributing income directly to individuals rather than to household heads. Nonmaterial rather than material work incentives were stressed. Income was distributed partly on the basis of need through the supply system which guaranteed such things as food, clothing, shelter, and health care; and partly on the basis of labor through the payment of monthly money wages based on each farmer's wage rate per day and the number of days worked.

Communes organized as described above encountered numerous difficulties by December 1958. In fact, very few communes actually operated communal mess halls and nurseries, and for many communes the wage-supply system lasted only a few months. These difficulties have been well documented in works already published and it should be sufficient at this point to briefly outline the main problems and indicate the major organizational changes which took place."

• Ibid. P. 2.

Ibid. For more detailed discussions regarding the establishment of communes see, A. Doak Barnett, Cadres, Bureaucracy, and Political Power in Communist China, New York, Columbia University Press, 1967, pp. 313-338; and Audrey Donnithorne, China's Economic System, New York, Praeger Publishers, 1967, pp. 43-64.

See Kenneth R. Walker, "Organization of Agricultural Production," in Alexander Eckstein, Walter Galenson, and Ta-Chung Liu (ed.) Economic Trends in Communist China, Chicago, Aldine Publishing Co., 1968, pp. 440-452; and T. A. Hsia, The Commune in Retreat as Evidenced in Terminology and Semantics, Berkeley Center for Chinese Studies, Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1964.

Party

6. Propaganda (party cell).