Reival: China's Finance and Trade: A Policy Reader (1978) by Gordon A. Bennett

Author:Gordon A. Bennett [Bennett, Gordon A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Ethnic Studies, General
ISBN: 9781351697002
Google: Wcw3DwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Contradictions Calling for an Urgent Solution

Ha-erh-t'ao Commune is situated near the border between Liaoning and Kirin provinces. It has poor soil and an arid climate. In the past, grain output was very low. In the winter of 1974, spurred by the movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius, this commune whipped up a new upsurge in "learning from Tachai in agriculture." The broad masses of cadres and people broke the habit of "allowing land to lie fallow in winter" and energetically participated in farmland capital construction. However, after a period of time, attendance gradually diminished. When the Spring Festival drew near, there were still fewer people at work on farmland capital construction. Where did the people go? After an investigation, the commune Party committee discovered that the force of old habit had attracted the people to the trade fair.

The trade fair in Ha-erh-t'ao had a history of many years. On the fifth, tenth, fifteenth, twentieth, twenty-fifth, and thirtieth days of the month, people from the neighboring areas and even from as far as several tens of li away converged on the trade fair, numbering from 4,000 or 5,000 at the most to 2,000 or 3,000 at the least. A few profiteers made use of the fair to corner the market, play tricks, and carry out capitalist activities. Such a fair held a great attraction for some rich peasants who had not rid themselves of their private-ownership mentality. Under the influence of this kind of fair, the collective economy of this commune was weakened, the movement to learn from Tachai failed to get off the ground, and agricultural production long remained in a backward stage.

The Party committee of Ha-erh-t'ao Commune investigated the conditions of the rural fair and made clear the relations between the two-road struggle and trade fair in the countryside. It felt that if such a fair was not subjected to restrictions and transformation, capitalism would make a breach through this fair and run wild, and more and more people would deviate from the socialist orbit. How should the rural trade fair be transformed? There were two ways: One was to follow the previous practice of closing it down by way of an administrative order or to exercise general control over it. As a result, it could neither be closed nor controlled properly. Another way was to establish the "socialist big fair" in light of the situation where a small number of private plots and family side-occupations were still retained at the present in the countryside. Efforts should be made to take class struggle as the key link, deepen education in the Party's basic line, arouse the masses to sell to the state the agricultural produce and by-products instead of bringing them to the trade fair. At the same time, the supply and sales departments should be organized to break with the usual practice and expand their scopes of buying and selling, and the exchange of commodities should be actively organized among the masses, so as to occupy the rural commercial position in a planned manner.

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