The Decollectivization of the Chinese Countryside: A Survey of Twenty-eight Villages

Abstract

CHINA'S RECENT MOVE away from collective agriculture has affected very dramatically the lives of three-quarters of a billion people. It may well constitute the single most important policy shift in China since the introduction of collectives in the mid-1950s. The restoration of family farming has been so recent, however, that a whole range of simple questions remain as yet unanswered. Did the peasantry play any role in deciding whether their village should decollectivize? Did they help decide what new type of agricultural system should be implemented locally? Were any sizeable numbers of peasants opposed to the breakup of collective production and, if so, on what grounds? What were the immediate effects on the different types of peasant households? To what degree have different types of villages been differently affected by the changeover to family smallholdings? In an attempt to answer such questions, a series of interviews was conducted in mid-1983 with twenty-eight emigrants from the Chinese countryside who were working in Hong Kong and who regularly returned to their home villages to visit their parents, spouses and children. Eighteen of them were from villages in Guangdong province; the remaining ten came from villages distributed in eight other provinces and regions.' All the twenty-eight had returned home on at least one extended visit, ranging from a week to several months in duration, during the year prior to the interviews. Such interviewing from afar cannot guarantee a scientifically random sample of villages, nor can interviewees always be counted on to provide precise and accurate information about every aspect of their native communities. But if conducted with all due caution, such interviews can provide a considerable amount of information unobtainable through other means.2 Though recent on-the-spot studies of decollectivization at