State-Market Interactions in China's Reform Era: Local State Competition and Global Market Building in the Tobacco Industry by Junmin Wang

Author:Junmin Wang [Wang, Junmin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, Social Science, Political Science, Regional Studies, General
ISBN: 9781136238963
Google: O9zgAwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 22640197
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

Controlling the supply of raw materials

Once the “3 in 1” combined system was put in place, Chu efficiently accelerated the policy of establishing tobacco-growing fields as “the first workshop” of the Yuxi cigarette factory. In the newly created “3 in 1” combined system, the previous state monopoly bureau worked as one sub-unit in this system around the manufacturer with a primary focus on production goals. One of its crucial functions was integrating the tobacco-planting households in a region into one group and developing advanced planting methods on a large scale. With extensive professional knowledge about tobacco planting and cigarette manufacturing on the one hand, and more importantly exclusive administrative power on the other, Chu and his leadership quickly put funds from the factory, technology from experts, and tobacco-growing lands themselves together. Within three years, the tobacco-growing fields in the Yuxi district were controlled by the factory, and Yuxi’s tobacco-growing peasants became the “outside employees” (bianwai zhigong) of the Yuxi cigarette factory (Chinese STMA Yuxi Bureau 2006).

To begin with the “3 in 1” system provided professors at Yunnan University of Agriculture and Technology with about 200,000 yuan (about USD 25,000) to conduct a study of how to improve current tobacco-growing methods. These researchers were funded to visit the tobacco fields in Europe and North America. After almost a year’s research, those experts selected 1,768 mu (about 330 acres) of tobacco-growing fields in Tonghai county for experimentation, under local government support and arrangements. The Tonghai county government signed contracts with 1,347 tobacco-growing households, according to which each household would be required to try out new tobacco seeds and strictly follow the experts’ guidance to grow tobacco. Each household could keep all the profits from extra products, and the Yuxi cigarette factory would cover all their losses if the new methods did not work out. This experiment turned out to be an exciting success. In the harvest season of that year, the yield per mu of tobacco leaves in Tonghai county was 54 per cent higher than the average level in Yunnan province. For tobacco leaves of high and moderate quality, the rate was 92.3 per cent higher than the average. This success encouraged tobacco-growing peasants in the entire Yuxi region to sign continuous contracts with local governments.

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