countries because of intensive fertilization and the adaptation of agricultural techniques to suit local circumstances. In the North, on the other hand, yields are relatively low overall, although wheat yields are similar to those obtained by other LDC's.

China's agriculture has been characterized historically by intensive inputs of labor on a limited supply of land. Steady expansion of multiple cropping, exacting crop rotations, improved irrigation and heavier use of organic fertilizer have enabled the Chinese over centuries to extract even higher annual yields per unit of cultivated land. Steady technological progress has been part of the adaptation of the large and growing population to given resources. As population pressure has become particularly intense in the second half of this century the adoption of modern inputs such as agrochemicals and mechanization has become a necessity.

Yields per acre have increased over time in many areas to a very high level. But even so, population increases have eaten up virtually all of the gains in output (see fig. 2). Grain production per capita has been just at the subsistence level for centuries, and it remains there today. Chinese agriculture has been vulnerable to frequent natural disasters and fluctuations in output which in the past have often led to localized famine. Unequal distribution of production and agricultural income persist despite the efforts of the government to reduce these inequalities in the countryside.

B. Population

The Chinese have not taken a formal census since 1953, and they have not released precise population figures since the 1950's. Aird estimates that the population was just over one billion as of July 1, 1978, and that the rate of increase will decline rapidly over the next few years from about 2 percent to less than 1.5 percent per year. At currently projected rates of increase, by the year 2000 the population will be 1.4 billion.

China's large population is a problem because of limited land resources, but it also means a larger labor force. More than one crop per year has to be planted, but the labor is available to harvest one crop and plant another in a very short time, to cultivate the crops and to collect the huge amounts of organic fertilizer necessary to replace the nutrients taken from the soil.

The attitude of the Chinese toward their population seems ambiguous and has changed from time to time. It is because of their dense population that they have had to adopt such an intensive farming system and that they have been able to maintain only a narrow margin over subsistence despite their intensive use of the land. Because they recognize the problems it creates, the Chinese since the founding of the People's Republic have attempted with varying degrees of vigor and success to control their rate of population growth.

The Chinese have begun to achieve some success in controlling their population growth rate. Before contemporary times, the traditional Malthusian checks of famine and war had prevented the population from growing much more rapidly than agricultural production. Nevertheless, with the development of intensive agricultural methods, most of the country had become very densely populated by 1949 and the population continued to grow during the 1950's. After several false starts, the Chinese have become committed to population planning.

Population planning measures seem to have been effective, especially in the cities. They are carried out mainly through strong organization, peer pressure, late marriages, and a broad education program to control the number and timing of births. As a last resort, in some areas even stronger measures, such as denial of food ration cards for more than two children, are employed. Contraceptive supplies and abortions are provided by the state. As a result, the trend of the rate of population increases is declining.

The goal of the leadership is to reduce the population growth rate to less than one percent. Hua Kuo-feng announced at the Fifth National People's Congress that this goal is to be achieved by 1980.* In reality, it is likely to take longer, but the leadership clearly intends to make strenuous efforts to continue to lower the population growth

rate.

III. AGRICULTURAL POLICY

A. The Background of Policy

Chinese agricultural development policies have been strongly influenced by the pattern of development which had occurred before 1949. In modernizing the Chinese have looked to the experience of

See Aird, John S., "Population Growth in the People's Republic of China," tables 1 and 2, pp. 465 and 467 in this volume. See FBIS Mar. 7, 1978, p. D25.

their own past and to the experiences of other countries with similar problems and goals. Most notably, they have profited from the experiences of the Soviet Union and Japan.

Japan shares with China the characteristics of dense population and intensive traditional agriculture, as well as a similar cultural heritage. And the Japanese had succeeded in modernizing their agriculture and raising yields to extremely high levels while simultaneously achieving very high industrial growth rates. The Chinese press in discussion of agricultural policy during the early 1960's often made reference to Japan's intensive use of modern inputs. Development has taken place in a different economic setting, but the path to agricultural modernization chosen by the Chinese, and the major factors of production used in the process, are strikingly similar to those of Japan.

During most of the 1950's, however, Chinese agricultural policy seems to have taken its lessons from the Soviet model. Although the two countries' agricultural systems are physically very different, China shared with the Soviet Union, among other things, basically similar ideology and the specific goal of rapid industrialization supported by a collectivized agriculture.

Chinese policies toward agriculture in the 1950's have sometimes been compared to those undertaken by the Soviets under Stalin. While the Chinese deny that the policies they followed were like those of the Soviets, there were in fact some important similarities. Investment in agriculture, and the provision of modern inputs, were relatively small. Agriculture got only 7.6 percent of Chinese investment funds during the first 5-year plan (1953-57), or an average of 838 million yuan per year. And also, like the Soviets, the ultimate goal of the Chinese was collectivization and the use of agriculture to support industrialization.

On the other hand, collectivization in China proceeded in stages and (even considering the Great Leap Forward) was achieved with less turmoil than in the Soviet Union. The burden of taxation and compulsory procurement of grain was lighter in China than it had been in the Soviet Union. The amount of labor which moved from rural to urban areas was also smaller in China. The Chinese apparently learned some lessons from the example of the Soviet collectivization experience.

B. Policy in the 1950's

China's policies toward agriculture since 1949 have gone through several distinct phases. The earliest stage, lasting through 1952, was recovery from the years of war and civil war. This was followed during the first 5-year plan period by collectivization in several stages, leading to the formation of communes in most agricultural areas in 1958.

In 1956 the National Program for Agricultural Development (NPAD) was adopted. The NPAD was to run from 1956 through 1967, and included many ambitious goals for the rural sector. Among

State Statistical Bureau. Ten Great Years, p. 57. Peking: 1960. Most of this was in water conservancy. Policy during the 1950's is described in Schran, Peter, The Development of Chinese Agriculture 1950-69. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969. Some aspects of Chinese policy since that time are discussed in Stavis, Benedict, Making Green Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Rural Development Committee, 1974. An overview of agriclutural policy and its relationship to other policies and problems is provided in Eckstein, Alexander, China's Economic Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 1977.

the most important were the goals for grain output. The main agricultural areas north of the Yellow River were to attain by 1967 annual grain yields of 3 tons per hectare; between the Yellow River and the Huai River 3.75 tons per hectare; and south of the Huai River 6 tons per hectare.

During all of the 1950's the government's agricultural development programs were designed basically to continue the intensification of traditional agriculture. Provision of modern inputs was kept at low levels in the expectation that more effective use of traditional means alone would be enough to raise yields. Agriculture received relatively little investment, as emphasis was put on building industry. Nevertheless, agricultural production grew quite steadily, and per capita grain production by 1957 and 1958 was high by the standards of Chinese history.

Encouraged by their apparent success, the Chinese embarked in 1958 upon the Great Leap Forward. In agriculture, this program sidelined the NPAD and set even more ambitious-but virtually unreachable-production targets. It called for complete collectivization of nearly all production and consumption in the communes. High pressure for the attainment of the goals of the leap and the rapid changes in organization led to a near breakdown of the system of control, including the statistical network. The turmoil of the Great Leap Forward, combined with bad weather, resulted in 3 successive years of disastrous harvests in 1959-61. Livestock were slaughtered, agricultural output fell drastically, and the level of nutrition approached starvation in some areas. After having been net exporters of grain throughout the 1950's, the Chinese became net importers of grain due to large purchases. The overall level of economic activity in the country declined sharply.

C. Agriculture First

Given this grave situation, at the beginning of the 1960s the Chinese had little choice but to reorient their priorities toward agriculture. The alternative was continuing agricultural crisis, with serious repercussions for the rest of the economy and for the nation's stability. The Chinese urgently needed to promote agricultural recovery and then to assure continued growth in output to keep pace with population growth and to prevent repetition of the 1959-61 disasters. With minor changes, the NPAD goals were again adopted.

Beginning in 1962, and continuing to the present day, the Chinese have followed a policy of "putting agriculture first," meaning essentially recognition of the primary importance of agriculture in the economy. The practical result of this has been increased investment in agriculture and steady expansion of the supply of modern inputs to agricultural producers.

Policy toward the supply of modern inputs has alternated between emphasis on importing foreign plants and products and providing them indigenously. At the same time emphasis has fluctuated between large plant production and rural, small-plant production. A good example is the fertilizer industry.

During the midsixties large foreign fertilizer plants were imported to serve as models for the domestic heavy machinery manufacturing industry. Some success was achieved in producing a serialized mediumsize urea plant. However, during the Cultural Revolution develop

ment policy favored small chemical fertilizer plants, and hundreds were built throughout the country while the large plant program was sharply cut back. After the poor harvest of 1972 the Chinese leadership decided that the domestic programs were still not supplying enough fertilizer and in a more moderate political climate purchased 13 of the world's largest, most technically advanced ammonia-urea complexes. The present aim is to achieve self-reliance but to continue to "let foreign things serve China."

The agriculture first policy was implemented through several specific programs, including most importantly the policy of building up areas of high and stable yield and favoring them with the greatest supplies of modern inputs. As, the name implies, these high and stable yielding areas are basically areas where unit yields were comparatively high and where irrigation and drainage were adequate to reduce fluctuations in yields due to weather conditions. Since irrigation is an important complement to the use of new seeds and fertilizer, these areas were best able to make use of the new food production technology; and since yields, procurement, and incomes were higher in these areas, they could also better afford to purchase fertilizer and other inputs and to bear whatever risks were associated with their use. These high and stable yielding areas were to be a major source of state procurement of grain and other crops. Areas to be selected were those which could give the highest and quickest payoff for the least capital. Areas which were not high and stable yielding and were not therefore given preferential treatment in investment were encouraged to build themselves up self-reliantly.

During most of the 1960's, emphasis on these areas meant that the rice region in the South received preferential treatment. Both to promote recovery from the 1959-61 agricultural disasters, and because the rice region had the greatest expanse of land which was already high and stable yielding, it received a disproportionate share of the new modern inputs. The largest proportion of the greatly increased amounts of chemical fertilizer supplied during the decade went to the South, and new rice seeds were planted over a wide area. By the end of the decade, however, most of the readily achievable gains in the region had been obtained. Grain output had grown rapidly south of the Yangtze during the 1960's, while in the North yields remained low. Since the late 1960's, irrigation has been steadily expanded and the area of high and stable yields which can make good use of new inputs has grown in the northern wheat region. This has promoted the achievement of self-sufficiency in grain production by several provinces in the wheat region.

Tachai, originally a poor production brigade in remote Hsi-yang County, Shensi Province, in 1964 was designated the national model for Chinese agricultural development. It had by then already made remarkable progress on its own in developing its agricultural base. Although located north of the Huai River, Tachai had surpassed the NPAD grain yield target for areas south of the Huai River. Tachai has become a wealthy brigade by Chinese standards mainly by improving its land and soil, and through using more fertilizer and improved seeds. Thousands of people visit Tachai each year to see the accomplishments of this brigade.

See Yang-po, "Construction of High-Yield Farmland," in Ta kung pao, Peking, May 1, 1964; translated in JPRS, No. 25060, June 12, 1964, pp. 5-10. (JEC 72, p. 132)

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