Industrialisation in the Non-Western World by Kemp Tom

Author:Kemp, Tom
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-90133-4
Publisher: Taylor and Francis

THE NEW REGIME

The initial tasks confronting the Chinese Communists on taking power were those of reconstruction and stabilization after years of war, civil war, economic dislocation and runaway inflation. Having acquired considerable mass support and a great fund of goodwill by their lead in the struggle against Japan, and the reforms carried out in the Liberated Areas, they were able to restore production and bring inflation under control within a comparatively short time. The party cadres introduced new standards of honesty and efficiency into everyday administration. Many Chinese from the urban middle classes and the intelligentsia threw in their lot with the new regime.

The mass of the people were peasants and it could be claimed that peasant support had been crucial for the success of the Communist Party and the armed forces which it controlled. Agrarian reform was a top priority and was extended in 1950 to all areas of China on the lines already adopted in the Liberated Areas. Reform consisted essentially of a redistribution of land at the expense of the gentry landowners and richer peasants, thereby creating, over the next two years, a more uniform pattern of working peasant proprietors in the country as a whole. In the course of carrying out the reform, a vigorous campaign was launched against the big landowners and village exploiters; large numbers were arrested, tried and punished, frequently with the death penalty, by revolutionary tribunals which had the character of mass meetings. This agrarian reform may have seemed in contradiction with the ultimate aims of the new regime in so far as its first result was to consolidate small-scale peasant landowning.

However, during the struggle for power against the Kuomintang a conciliatory policy had been adopted towards the ‘middle’ peasant, the one most likely to have surplus crops. In the same way, Mao had made a distinction between the ‘national’ bourgeoisie and the compradore bourgeoisie who were regarded as agents of imperialism. While this may have been a shrewd tactical move at one particular juncture, it left some serious problems. In agriculture, for instance, production based upon small holdings was likely to become a breeding ground for petty capitalism, as in rural Russia after the Revolution of 1917. It was also likely to mean that peasants would consume more of their own produce and be less willing to supply the needs of the towns for foodstuffs and raw materials. Yet rapid industrial development depended upon agricultural surpluses. In part the problem was overcome by the levying of a tax at the rate of 17–19 per cent on the peasant’s harvest. Even so, although an increase in production was claimed, it fell short of needs; the problem of how to extract a larger surplus from agriculture remained.

In the light of Soviet experience in the 1920s, the obvious solution to the procurement problem was collectivization. By pooling the land and farm equipment, and by mobilizing the vast labour reserve of the countryside, it would be possible to raise productivity and production and thus provide resources for accumulation as well as food for the population.

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