The purpose of the communes was to increase production to accumulate as rapidly as possible the capital needed for China’s industrialisation and, of course, to meet the cost of the huge bureaucratic apparatus. Living conditions for the majority of peasants deteriorated. Working hours and intensity of labour were increased; wages were continually in arrears; women released from family duties were put to work with the same intensity as men (a twelve to fourteen-hour day in the fields) while retaining responsibility for housework and child care; food supplied in the communal kitchens was neither sufficient nor of good quality; under such conditions the health of the peasants deteriorated and they were frequently ill while medicines were in extremely short supply. While as many as 75% of women participated in agricultural production, there were approved child care places for only 5% of children.[36]
Generally, commune managers simply transmitted instructions from above. People who had one kind of skill were often sent to jobs requiring an entirely different kind of skill – peasants who spent a lifetime in farming were assigned to smelt iron. Those who were familiar with the lay of the land and soil conditions in one area were sent to work in other areas where they were strangers both to the area and to the agricultural conditions. Peasant teams could be freely transferred to other duties, even to other communes, a practice which allowed for huge irrigation and construction projects but could detract from the harvests. Too often when a production brigade was sent to a different place to work – sometimes for up to six months – their payment and/or compensation for the time expended would be lost in some bureaucratic muddle. For many young women, however, these absences from the claustrophobic discipline of the home were welcomed and living side-by-side with young men, much preferred.
Peasants were further demotivated because too many orders were given which flew in the face of reality, such as the setting of wholly unrealistic production targets compelling peasants to do exhausting labour after which the grain would be seized and taken from them. Finally, there were the special privileges given to cadres who, for example, received extra food during the periods of severe shortage.[37]
The intensification and exploitation of the peasants to the utmost inevitably aroused resentment and resistance and contributed significantly to the magnitude of agricultural failures of 1959 and 1960. Constant supervision and tight control became absolute necessities, which was why the communes were from the start organised with a militia style discipline euphemistically called “living the collective way” or more exactly “working as if fighting a battle.”[38]
13.5.1 Famine in the Communes
Famine was a hallmark of the GLF, rural death rates leapt from 11 to more than 28 per 1,000 people/year in 1960.[39] Population growth rate in Henan, for example, went into reverse and dropped from +22.8% in 1958 to – 4.3% in 1961.[40] Only in 1980 did the CCP admit that at least 20 million people had starved to death during the great famine.[41]
The famine was due to the combination of severe natural disaster and, possibly more importantly, the bureaucratic system itself. The bureaucracy had reduced the area of land sown with grain and insisted that a vast amount of unnecessary work be carried out on the blast furnaces, but a third and important factor was the Anti-Rightist Campaign which scared lower level bureaucrats into exaggerating the harvest to please their superiors. In late August and September, Mao himself, uncritically accepted boastful provincial reports that state grain purchases had been fully met and accomplished in record time. Mao ordered the publication and distribution of these falsehoods with his accompanying observations containing a blistering attack on ‘rightists’, further increasing the pressure on lower rank cadres. Grain procurement by the state based on these false figures played a major causal role in the famine.[42]
The “Wind of Exaggeration” was a hallmark of the GLF and was due to the intense pressures exerted by the higher echelons on rural cadres. The Anti-Rightist Campaign vehemently criticised rightist, conservative, and ‘capitalist’ thinking, and pressurised cadres into competitive target-setting. Commune leaders vied with one another to promise incredible yields. The targets could escalate into the ridiculous – thousands and ten thousands of catties per mu (1000 catties/mu = 2500 kg/hectare).[43]
Bernstein quotes the following exchange from a post-Mao short story, The Black Flag which claimed to report actual events when a Commune Party secretary refused to go along with promises by neighbouring communes to attain impossible yields of between 30,000 and 60,000 kg/hectare:
Secretary Mi [the county party secretary] bellowed over the loudspeaker, ‘Well, Ding Jingzhong [the commune secretary], have you lost your tongue? You haven’t said anything’. Everybody turned to Ding who, flushed and tense, was fidgeting, tearing up bits of paper … Ding spoke calmly into the microphone: ‘Our commune has discussed our plan. We’ll try to produce 800 catties per mu (2000 kg/hectare) this year’. To achieve this would require a lot of hard work from everyone. But it seemed as if no one understood this. The loudspeaker went dead. After a long while, Secretary Mi said at last, ‘Attention. Have you all heard him?’ Angry voices screeched out from the loudspeaker, ‘Yes. We did’. Secretary Mi again. ‘What shall we do? Are they leaping forward or going backward? Are they sabotaging us on purpose?’ There was more clamour. ‘They are sabotaging us. We’ll have it out with them. We’ll give them hell!’ When one of Ding’s supporters backs him up, Sun, the commune secretary’s assistant, exclaims: ‘That man isn’t one of the masses. He is a big rightist, an extreme rightist!’. In the end, just as debased coins drive out the good, the stalwart hero was purged.
Despite initial evidence of famine in parts of the country the government persisted through 1960 in trying to maintain industrial growth. But agricultural output in 1960 was considerably less than that for 1959, and industry’s efforts collapsed due to the shortage of raw materials and lack of foodstuffs. In the middle of the year the sudden withdrawal of Soviet assistance greatly exacerbated the problems.[44] The government was forced to curb the expansion of heavy industry and increase its assistance to light industry, handicrafts, family commercial activities, and agriculture. Mao called for the bureaucracy to moderate its pressures on the peasants but despite the scale of the disasters resulting from the GLF, he never accepted the underlying problems as systemic, and never renounced the voluntarist, anti-Marxist ideas that underlay the GLF.[45]
13.5.2 Women in the Communes
Prior to the GLF, the CCP had allowed traditional, patriarchal relations to continue in the villages and even developed institutions that reinforced them. The land reforms undertaken by the PRC had given the poor and middle peasants redistributed land, and reduced rents and taxes so that with the continuation of a patriarchal family structure they became, de facto, the patriarchs of their own family small-holdings. When these farms were combined into mutual aid teams, Lower and Higher Stage APCs, in the mid-1950s, the process was on the basis of existing structures and pre-existing male kinship groups (women married out of their natal villages and so tended to be isolated individuals), which enabled the traditional family and patriarchal structures to persist. Women’s participation in agricultural labour may have expanded considerably, but they were brought into the production process under conditions that increased their value as chattels but did not give them greater control over their own lives or even over the fruits of their labour.[46]
We find in the propaganda supporting the Communes, statements to the effect that: “The communes have ploughed up and pulverized the crust of outworn social and family relations” and the communes “have accelerated the liberation of women from domestic slavery (and) opened up new avenues of cultural development.” These claims refer to the liberation of women from the bonds of the feudal or patriarchal family. The question is “Did the communes actually achieve either kind of liberation for women”?
We must not forget the hugely positive and progressive moves introduced by the CCP which benefitted Chinese women. From 1927 in the Soviets and liberated areas, and after 1949 in the entire country, women were recognised as: having equal status in law with men, the right of inheritance, equal rights in education, freedom to participate in social and political spheres, equal pay for equal work, and freedom in marriage and divorce (except for the wives of soldiers). There is no doubt that the PRC made an important contribution towards the liberation of Chinese women even though this legal equality was far from being realised in the rural areas. Did the communes add anything of significance?
A great many women participated in political activities both through the CCP and in women’s organisations such as the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), and in all kinds of social movements such as land reform and agricultural co-operatives. All this was accomplished a few years before the establishment of the Communes and was not the result of them.
For women, the first year of the GLF was full of promise. In the spring there was a literacy drive amongst both women and men and, it is claimed, practically all women between the ages of 16-25 had learned to read and write. Importantly, they were also talking to people outside their immediate family and outside the home. It was claimed that immense opportunities had opened for women in steel making (true) and driving tractors (highly unlikely), but at the cost of a dramatically increased daily workload for most women.[47] The ACWF and Party leadership did instruct rural cadres to provide special care to women who were pregnant by, for example, allocating them lighter work. Communes were also warned to restrict the kinds of work performed and the number of days worked by pregnant, postnatal, and menstruating women, but these tended to be more honoured in the breach than the observance.[48] In some particularly active communes, lower rank women cadres organised sewing and washing circles, and organised women to staff homes for the elderly and the newly-established reproductive health centres.
At the launch of the communes, it was announced that a major goal was to free women for productive labour and so housework would, supposedly, be socialised through mess halls, nurseries, and communal laundries. In 1959, People’s Daily claimed that nearly 100% of rural women were engaged in agriculture or other productive labour in the communes. At the same time, women’s participation in public and political affairs was to be encouraged: women’s federations were to assist in training women so that a woman director or deputy could be appointed in every co-operative, and a woman chief or deputy chief found in every production squad. Women members, women deputy chiefs, women technicians, and women book-keepers were to be increased and promoted every year in the management committees and control committees of the co-operatives.[49]
An important innovation was that the commune paid wages directly to people who had earned them (regardless of age or sex). This broke with the tradition of giving the money to the head of the family, or a woman’s husband, and struck a blow at the patriarchal system even if the woman immediately handed her wages to the head of the household. The number of women gainfully employed increased but when the women joined the labour force they found that they were allocated labour intensive, less-skilled jobs, and that pay rates were higher for the jobs done by men on the basis of: ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his work’. It is now claimed that Party cadres deliberately set pay rates for ‘women’s work’ (no matter what its character, how demanding intellectually or physically) at lower levels than ‘men’s work’.
Cadre abuse of villagers was well-known in the Maoist era and collectivisation of land, labour, and tools in the mid-1950s had substantially increased the power of the local cadres. The Anti-Rightist Campaign following the 1957 Hundred Flowers Movement, enabled some over-zealous cadres to act as local tyrants during the initial phase of the GLF. To maximise participation of women in the workforce, dining halls and nurseries were built and villagers were pressurised into giving up cooking at home and placing their children in the nursery. But the cafeterias and child care were often inadequate with the result that women had to work long hours in the fields and then again at home just to keep up with their allotted tasks.[50]
The CCP forcibly replaced family life with collective life under unfavourable material and cultural conditions in a way that brought misery to many peasant women. The commune movement became a compulsory forced march and this was reflected in the commune kitchens. Cadres compelled everybody to eat in the canteens and, in extreme cases the peasants were forced to dismantle the stoves in their homes so there was no hot water or warmth for the children, the aged and the sick. No rations were issued to individuals, but the canteens were of poor quality and the food was inadequate. In many cases there were no covered canteens and the peasants ate in the open or took meals home on rainy and cold days. But quite shamelessly the cadres ate in their own small, separate mess halls![51]
The situation in the nurseries was, if anything, worse. Little thought had been given to the cost of establishing and running the nurseries. Soon after the Sandinistas took power in Nicaragua they attempted to introduce nurseries but found “the cost of construction, equipment and maintenance very high” which had seriously limited the number of nurseries they could provide.[52] In China it meant many children were crowded into makeshift small rooms with no nursery equipment under the charge of old people, invariably illiterate or women whose feet had been bound. How could such children be well cared for? Mothers labouring in fields some distance from their homes were unable to breastfeed their babies and came home to a distraught, dirty and famished child. We can only imagine the mental anguish of these women; the common saying was: “mothers may be in the field, but their minds are back home.”[53]
What was the situation of the women liberated from domestic slavery to participate in social production? In many communes ‘equality with men’ meant 12 and 14 hour shifts on farms, dams, highways, mines and factories. Many pregnant women suffered from sleep deprivation, miscarriages and illnesses, certainly in late 1957 and 1958. Children also were injured and even died during the busiest periods of the year because adequate supervision was unavailable.[54] The main aim of the communes was not the thoroughgoing liberation of women but the mobilisation of maximum labour power for agriculture, and it was this that pushed women in the rural areas out of their homes to supply needed labour. From domestic slavery, women were thrown into social slavery, often driven by women cadres.
By 1960 it was clear that the commune was not going to be the road to equality for women. During the GLF, the Anti-Rightist Campaign had meant expertise had been down-graded, often in favour of brute strength and the latter was rewarded by higher pay grades. The social labour most often performed by women – such as in the commune kitchens – was further degraded by being used as a punishment for ‘bad elements’ who had broken some rule or other. Party theoreticians explained this by saying gender equality was postponed until women could perform the same labour as men, i.e., when physical labour was replaced by machinery. The struggle for gender equality was seen as enabling women to do men’s work, rather than questioning the supposed superiority of men’s work and gender stereotyping.[55]
The commune was presented as a massive attack on the feudal family, as offering women new roles of greater status and income (but still lower than those of men), with socialisation of certain aspects of housework. However, by 1960 the Chinese press was filled with articles aimed not at promoting socialised housework but at allaying fears that family life was being destroyed. A torrent of theoretical works on the necessity of the family even in a communist society was produced to allay popular (male) apprehension and resentment of women’s progress.[56]
The retreat from the GLF, and increasing unemployment levels, meant a new and extremely conservative line concerning women. Once again women were exhorted to return to keep home for their menfolk and children. The model woman was no longer a Stakhanovite worker but the housewife who patched clothes to make them last a decade, and Party journals contained articles such as “How to Choose a Husband”. The result was a massive resurgence in arranged marriages, bride prices, and wedding feasts.
With the failure of the Hundred Flowers Movement and the growth of anti-intellectualism, the focus of women’s policy shifted from achieving equality and liberation from patriarchal oppression to an acceptance that women’s emancipation would be achieved only through loyalty to the regime’s scheme for building a socialist China. Accordingly, it was claimed that the groundwork for liberation already existed in law and so women were told to turn their energies to work to build a socialist China. The Chinese leadership now encouraged women to balance housework and productive labour, with the emphasis on the former.
The communes did give rise to great hopes for the liberation of women, and initially there were important, progressive moves such as the literacy campaign, such as the shift to more individual rights within the communes (e.g. wage payments to individuals). And these did raise the status of women in rural China. But the bureaucratic and adventurist nature of the project meant it was bound to fail and in the end took women backwards. The subsequent shift to the contract system returned power to the household and enhanced the authority of fathers and husbands over daughters and wives. The canteens and nurseries may have been hated but their disappearance was a symbol of the increase in women’s domestic duties. The contract system has remained in place up to today though there have been a number of modifications and adjustments, most of which have further reduced the authority of women as landowners. For example, the Chinese government since 2009 has been re-interpreting the Marriage and Divorce Laws so that a woman who cannot produce a land deed in her own name, loses everything on divorce. The problem for the woman is that the deed was likely handed to her husband and remained in the possession of his family, to disappear when she needed it most. Because China has no central land registry the deeds to a property are crucially important. In many cases the women found themselves robbed of the land that should have been theirs.
Subsequently, this practice crept into the cities, and due to family and social pressures it is now customary, even when the woman makes the major contribution, for a dwelling to be registered in the man’s name alone. The 1950 Marriage Law gave the woman equal rights but in 2011 the Supreme Court ruled that the property belonged to the person named on the deeds. Even in those 25% of (urban) cases where the couple share the cost and both names appear on the deeds, the man’s name comes first, he being considered the “primary loan recipient” with the greater stake in the property.[57]
13.5.3 Democracy in the Communes
The CCP’s view of Party democracy was derived from Russia of the 1930s so that outside of the Politburo and CC, Mao was projected as the undisputed leader. In 1962, possibly reflecting the situation within the Politburo, Mao defined democratic centralism as the Party carrying out his instructions whether correct or incorrect except in the exceptional circumstances where “everyone disagrees with me.”[58]
Outside the leadership, the best that Party members could hope for was that when an issue arose, the leaders consulted the cadres and listened to their views before reaching a decision. The same applied to the relationship between Party members and non-members. The latter were to be encouraged to attend commune meetings and give their views, but only to ensure that oppositionists were exposed and to fine-tune ‘the line’ so that it was carried through more effectively. At no level were the officials of the Party or state freely elected, subject to recall, or paid an average wage. The bureaucracy of the Chinese state was appointed, worked in secret, and was privileged by income and status.
The election of the Commune Councils followed the same general pattern. The village head or Commune Party Secretary (often these would be the same person who would have been selected by the Party hierarchy and, at best, approved by the branch) would propose a list of candidates, invariably dominated by Party cadres. The peasants, having gone through the procedure many times were familiar with this kind of election and knew full well that their only right was to approve, not oppose, the list of candidates.[59] The administration of the communes was a violation of democracy, everything being decided by bureaucratic edict with the consequence that the peasants became ever more alienated and politically passive. Manning, in her visit to Chinese villages, appears to confirm that posts of, e.g., team leaders were preferentially allocated to relatives of local Party leaders[60] and that many of these people recalled the GLF as a “happy” time! Manning also reveals that ordinary peasants were still bitter forty years later, charging these leaders with stealing rice from the village store during the famine, for abusing and beating peasants to maintain a discipline that ensured privileges for the local Party tops (which included interest free loans from the Commune which were never paid back).
The cadres had to faithfully implement Party directives (whether popular or not, feasible or otherwise) and take the blame if Party policies failed. The dilemma for cadres and a genuine test of their innovative skills, was their ability to follow the instructions given in the People’s Daily that cadres could “neither alter the resolutions of the Party committee without asking for instructions” nor “observe the rules to the letter without regard to the actual situation”. Creative, flexible, resourceful bureaucrats were required; rigid, inflexible bureaucrats could be ejected from the Party.
Assigned to their posts rather than elected by commune members, secure on the state payroll rather than receiving wages agreed with the peasants, cadres had little personal or material interest in peasant attitudes and concerns or in optimising the use of local resources. As state employees, their rewards came from faithfully executing central policy. In such circumstances the ethic of serving the people and genuine popular supervision of Commune personnel could not be sustained and serious distortions in Commune performance resulted.[61]
-
Duncan, J and Li, P. Women and Land Tenure in China, 2001, Rural Development Institute.
-
Dutt, Op. cit.
-
Bernstein, Mao Zedong … Op. cit.
-
Ibid.
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Manning, K. The Gendered Politics of Woman-Work: Rethinking Radicalism in the Great Leap Forward Modern China, 2006, 32(3)349-384.
-
Pantsov and Levine, Op, cit, p475.
-
Bernstein, Mao Zedong … Op. cit.
-
Bernstein, Stalinism, … Op. cit.
-
Harris, Op. cit.
-
Bernstein, Mao Zedong … Op. cit.
-
Johnson, K. Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983.
-
Crook, I. First Years of Yangyi Commune, International Library of Sociology, 1966, p244.
-
Manning, The Gendered … Op. cit.
-
Kyung Ae Park, Women and Revolution in China, Korea and World Affairs, 1990 14(4)747-774.
-
Manning, The Gendered … Op. cit.
-
Peng Shuzi, A Criticism of the Various Views Supporting the Chinese Rural People’s Communes, Aug 1959, w.m.org.
-
Borge, T. Women in the Nicaraguan Revolution, Pathfinder, 1982.
-
Peng Shuzi, A Criticism … Op. cit.
-
Manning, The Gendered … Op. cit.
-
Leader, S.G. The Emancipation of Chinese Women, World Politics, 1973 26(1)55-79.
-
Ibid.
-
Fincher, L, Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, Zed Books, 2014.
-
Twitchett and Fairbank, Op. cit. p61.
-
Peng Shuzi, A Criticism … Op. cit.
-
Manning, K. Marxist maternalism, memory, and the mobilization of women in the Great Leap Forward, The China Review, 2005 5(1)81-108)
-
Shue, Op. cit.