Curtis Ullerich - Rural Employment manpower problems in China

Curtis Ullerich

A PUBLICATION OF THE INSTITUTE OF ASIAN AFFAIRS / HAMBURG

A publication of the Institute of Asian Affairs, Hamburg

The Institute of Asian Affairs pursues and promotes research on contemporary Asian affairs. It cooperates with other Institutes of regional studies in Hamburg which together form the Foundation German Overseas Institute.

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First published 1978 by M.E. Sharpe

Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-87332-128-0 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-17897-4 (ebk)

In memoriam

John Pizurki

who knew the old Ynnanfu in its squalor but never came to see the new Kunming.

The present study is an outgrowth of the author's puzzlement with an obvious paradox: Whereas the Chinese have always stressed the importance of their agricultural revolution in human, social and political terms, the community of Western observers has been increasingly fascinated by its more technological and quantitative achievements. While a great deal has been written about these latter aspects, Chinese invitations to take a closer look at the former ones have gone largely unheeded, particularly in the more economic-oriented quarters among China-watchers. The author himself confesses his guilt of omission and commission in this respect.

The present study, which is hardly more than a beginning, is his attempt to fill this lacuna to some extent. Having tried to study for long years what the Chinese produced, how great their GDP was, it is high time for him to pay more attention to their ways of dealing with their most precious factor, man and human labour.

As there is scant literature on this side of the Chinese experiment, only little secondary source material could be used. To a large extent the author relied on his own observations on the spot, gained during several visits, on subsequent discussions with Chinese economists and agriculturalists and on perusal of Chinese publications. It is hoped that the present study will thus contribute a few suggestions to the resuming debate on the future of the small-scale farmer, not only in the Chinese context, but in the Far East and the Third World in general, by shedding some light on approaches untried elsewhere.

During twenty-seven years of gradual but rapid independent and original evolution, the Chinese model of social and economic development has become ever more interesting. Whereas at first most outside observers doubted that China's endeavours to solve her problems of backwardness, poverty, social disorder and economic disruption could have relevance for the non-Chinese world, not only because of the magnitude of the task and the extent of the disorganization that war and civil war had left behind, but also because of the overall approach chosen - Marxist-Leninist socialism - today it is almost undisputed that China's approach deserves a good deal of attention. The reasons are threefold:

The Chinese model is based on the premise that, contrary to what most other development models predicate, agriculture and rural reconstruction are the keys to the global improvement of society. Proceeding from this premise the Chinese have come up with very interesting and original answers to such key problems as capital formation in underdeveloped societies, the generation of internal surplus for investment and the replacement of what is usually the scarcest production factor, capital, by the one that is usually the most abundant, labour. These answers are the product of a highly inventive and original process of thinking and re-thinking the needs and requirements of a backward society from the standpoint of the suffering masses, not of a privileged elite. It was born not out of the acceptance of a priori , theoretical assumptions borrowed from societies that have attained incomparably more developed patterns of productivity and prosperity, but rather from a sober, unbiased analysis of the Chinese material and political situation, applying the methodological tools of Marxism (as witnessed by one of their earliest writings on the subject, Mao's Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan ). The responses subsequently formulated were also based on the Marxist instrumentarium. One of the more interesting items in this arsenal is the role and use of labour in changing the material and social environment, in "making the Revolution".