Problems of the State-operated Farm in China
Studies in the Communitist System
1963 Volume 1963 Issue 21 Pages 40-58,L4
Details
1963 Volume 1963 Issue 21 Pages 40-58,L4
Communist China has experienced social revolution which has developed through land reforms, collectivization and People's Commune movement, but formation and development of state-operated farms were simultaneously accomplished. The former was nation-wide but the latter was local. Therefore the percentage of the state-operated farm in the total cultivated land of the nation, or the percentage of its production in the national output, is quite small compared with that of the People's Commune. However, the state-operated farm which belongs to the socialist economy of all people's ownership, is regarded as a higher level agricultural organization than the People's Commune which belongs to the socialist economy of collective ownership.
The subject of this article is to analyze the factors which limited the state-operated farm in its process of formation and development. Management of the farm of this type seems to be making steady headway in recent days, but when we look back to its developing process we will find it was a continuation of failures and difficult experiences. First of all, agriculture, which is to be largely under the control of nature, differes from industry. Moreover local agricultural conditions are all very different. And agriculture in China has quite a lot of particular problems on management to be solved. As a result, if they carelessly try to apply theories or experiences of management large scale factory to management of the state-operated farm, they can not avoid failure. In the early stage of development of these farms, so many failures were caused by such a simple reason. In this article, this history of failures will be presented in three parts: times of economic recovery, times of the first 5 years plan, and the times of the second 5 years plan. The problems on management of the state-operated farms in each of these periods will be analyzed from as many original materials published in Communist China as possible.
