S15: Hungry Ghosts

Speaking of Fengyang, let me tell you about Fengyang, Fengyang is truly a good place.
Since the rise of Emperor Zhu, there have been famines for nine out of ten years.
Dong de long dong qiang, dong de long dong qiang, dong de long dong qiang, dong qiang dong qiang.
Wealthy families sell cattle and sheep, while poorer families sell their sons.
I have no sons to sell, so I carry a flower drum and wander far and wide.
Dong de long dong qiang, dong de long dong qiang, dong de long dong qiang, dong qiang dong qiang.

With a gong in my left hand and a drum in my right, I hold the gong and drum to sing.
I don’t know any other songs, I only know how to sing the Fengyang Song.
Here comes the Fengyang Song~ yeah.
De lang dang, floating around, de lang dang, floating around.
Floating, floating, floating, floating, floating, floating, floating.

• Wang Lung, a poor farmer in rural China, marries O-Lan, a slave who becomes his partner.
• Through hard work, he becomes prosperous and buys more land, but his sons are influenced by their wealth.
• A famine forces the family to leave their land for city work, and upon returning, Wang Lung struggles with changes in his family.
• His sons’ focus on luxury causes conflicts and disconnects them from their roots.
• In the end, Wang Lung realizes that wealth does not guarantee happiness and reflects on the importance of the land.

• Violent struggle: 800K landlords killed
• Decline of rural elites and the rise of new village governance
• Classifying peasants as rich, middle, or poor peasants
• Groundwork for later campaigns to collectivize agriculture

• Reversal of fruits of land reform: land gained now controlled by gov
• End of household farming: Land, tools, draft animals under collective ownership and control
• End of rural markets, replaced by state purchasing stations for staple and cash crops
• Collective farms as units of government and as economic enterprises
• Farmers as employees: work points for work, tied to land as bonded labor

• Market demand and financial markets no longer drivers of the economy
• Economic activity driven by “production demand”
• “Unproductive demand” – e.g. consumer goods – suppressed
• Key goal: capital formation at accelerated pace
• State ownership of all productive assets and financial sector
• Collective farms: Sell food quotas to the state at low prices
• Extracting surpluses out of the countryside to promote urban industry

• Personal possessions – cookware, tables, etc. – turned over to communal mess halls
• No longer able to store and prepare own food
• Suspension of work points and rations
• Rapid expansion of rural bureaucracy: millions of new full-time cadres running communes, production brigades and teams
• Centralized control of resources previously in hands of households and villages

• End of seasonal agriculture: Planting and harvest as busiest time; winter as slack time
• Constant and incessant demand on labor: Irrigation projects, road building, terracing of hillsides, small factories
• Diversion of labor away from agriculture led to poor production and harvest
• Militarization of rural life: All time and effort subject to campaign

Discuss:

• What I notice about the source
• Questions / concerns I might have
• The very next primary source I might want to find
• Broader subjects and/or genres of questions that might be related to my problem

Documents:

• Peng Dehuai: Letter of Opinion to Mao Zedong on the Great Leap Forward (1959)
• Mao Zedong: Chairman Mao’s words at the Shanghai Conference, March 25, 1959
• Document 110, “Our View of China’s Agriculture,” a letter by Niu Weixin and Cai Fumin of Nanjing, February 1962 and Document 111, “Survey of the Socialist Education Campaign in various ethnic regions in Xichang, Sichuan province, by the Xichang Region Party Committee, February 4, 1959”

• Political leaders opposed to “rash advance” as “right-wing opportunists”
• Balance, planning, economic laws as “superstition” and “dogmatism”
• “Politics in command”: Class conflict between bourgeoisie and proletariat as main contradiction
• Support for leap policies as primary mark of political loyalty
• Real problem: not coercive extraction, but sabotage by class enemies
• From Anti-rightist Campaign to Great Leap Forward: Purge prevented course correction

In the next three months we need to put our efforts into developing our industry. We must be forceful, relentless, and precise. Our leadership in charge of industry should act like the First Emperor of Qin.10 To distribute resources evenly will only ruin the Great Leap Forward. When there is not enough to eat, people starve to death. It is better to let half the people die so that the other half can eat their fill.

• What was the context of this speech?
• What did Mao say? What didn’t he say?
• What did Mao know when he made the speech? What didn’t he know?
• What strategies did Mao employ to ensure bureaucratic compliance?

Later on, he took note of many problems that emerged with the Great Leap Forward. He inspected many localities, and saw through some of the satellite launches and lies. On August 13, 1958, when Mao toured Tianjin’s Xinli Village, commune leaders claimed that a paddy field had yielded 50,000 kilos per mu.

Mao said, “You’re exaggerating. That’s not possible, and you’re just shooting off your mouth. I’ve worked in the fields and you haven’t. That’s unreliable—50,000 kilos, I don’t believe it. You can’t even pile up that much grain!” The commune leaders told a child to go stand on top of the rice plants, but Mao said, “Child, don’t do it. The higher you stand, the harder you fall!”

• Cycles of mutual deception and self-deception within bureaucracy
• Officials at all levels under pressure to agree and conform, especially in the wake of anti-rightist campaign
• Failure not an option: Hiding evidence, blocking negative reports, insisting on good news
• False claims about sabotage: Peasants hiding / hoarding grain, eating too much
• Country trapped by false reports of harvest