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China’s System of Cadre Participation in Collective Productive Labour

      THE movement to criticize Lin Piao and Confucius is continuously deepening and the movement to study the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat is surging ahead. This has aroused the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses of cadres. Inspired by the examples set by a great many leading cadres in the central organs as well as in provincial, municipal and autonomous regional organs, the cadres in cities and rural areas are paying more attention to participating in collective productive labour. Recently they are going to industrial enterprises, transport units, construction sites, state farms and people’s communes to take part in physical labour together with the workers and peasants. They are doing this to narrow the differences between manual and mental labour, overcome bureaucracy, prevent revisionism and better implement the principle of grasping revolution and promoting production.

      In socialist China, the Chinese Communist Party has long maintained a system of regular participation in collective productive labour by leading cadres. This applies to all levels of the Party, government organizations, army units, enterprises, cultural and educational institutions and rural people’s communes.

      Cadres of the Communist Party of China have always upheld the fine tradition of keeping close ties with the labouring people. As early as in the late 1920s, when Chairman Mao led the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in setting up the first revolutionary base area in the Chingkang Mountains in east China, cadres of the Party and Red Army already joined the people in productive labour as a matter of principle.

      Chairman Mao issued the great call for “Ample food and clothing by working with our own hands” during the period of the War of Resistance Against Japan (1937-45) in order to smash the blockade of the Liberated Areas imposed by the Japanese aggressors and the Kuomintang reactionaries. Armymen and civilians were mobilized to launch a great production campaign. Chairman Mao and other Party leaders then in Yenan often took part in productive labour, setting a brilliant example for all the cadres.

      After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the system of cadre participation in physical labour was defined more specifically. In 1958 during the building of the Ming Tombs Reservoir on the outskirts of Peking, Chairman Mao, Premier Chou and other leading comrades of the Central Committee of the Party went to the construction site and joined the masses in their work. This greatly encouraged on-the-site cadres and reservoir-builders.

      During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao issued the important directive: “Going down to do manual labour gives vast numbers of cadres an excellent opportunity to study once again; this should be done by all cadres except those who are old, weak, ill or disabled. Cadres at their posts should also go down in turn to do manual labour.” This great call met with enthusiastic response from all departments and organizations and led to the setting up of large numbers of “May 7” cadre schools in the rural areas. Cadres, veteran and young, go to these schools in turn to take part in productive labour while studying works by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin and by Chairman Mao. These schools are very good institutions for training proletarian cadres. Participation in farm work and the many different contacts with poor and lower-middle peasants strengthen the proletarian thinking and feelings of the cadres and keep alive their revolutionary vigour.

      In addition to “May 7” cadre schools, government organizations, factories, mines and other departments have avenues of their own for cadre participation in productive labour. Leading cadres at factory level generally spend one day a week in production together with workers, while workshop directors often engage in production alongside the rank and file. Cadres in government organizations and schools go to do a certain amount of physical labour every year.

      Rural cadres work most of their time in the fields with the peasants. For example, in Hsiyang County, Shansi Province, where the country’s agricultural pace-setter, the Tachai Brigade, is located, cadres there at the county level average 100 days a year of farm work; at the commune, level, 200; at the brigade level, 300 days. Production team leaders throughout the rural areas work with commune members the year round.

Huihsien County in Honan Province

      HUIHSIEN County in at the foot of the Taihang Mountains in the northern part of Honan Province in central-south China. To its north lies Linhsien, a county known for its Red Flag Canal which was built on cliffs. The central plain region in which Huihsien is situated was the cradle of Chinese civilization. Not far from the county to the northeast is Anyang which was the capital of the Yin Dynasty (16th century-llth century B.C.) and the site of the famous Yin ruins.

      Since most of its land is mountainous, Huihsien was plagued by drought in varying degrees almost every year in its recorded history of farming for more than 3,500 years; sometimes floods rushing down the mountains brought catastrophe to the local inhabitants. In the years of natural calamities large numbers of peasants fled to other places and many died of hunger. Even in a normal year before liberation grain yields never surpassed 750 kilogrammes per hectare.

      Led by Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China, the people of Huihsien have since liberation, and especially since the start of the Great Cultural Revolution, relied on the superior socialist system and the strength of the collective economy of the people’s communes to conquer nature and develop farm production by their own labour and wisdom. Compared with 1949, the year of liberation, total grain output in the county increased sixfold in 1973 while its population growth was less than double. The 550,000 people in the county not only have sufficient food grain but ample collective and household grain reserves. Many communes have built up enough reserves to feed all their members for a whole year.

      These successes were achieved through hard work by the masses led by the cadres of the county under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line. To solve water shortages, the people of Huihsien used rocks, of which the county has an abundant supply, to build dams across the ravines to hold the water from mountain springs and streams as well as rain water and divert it to reservoirs or water-storage ponds. The water then flows into the fields through aqueducts or stone-lined channels which wind around the mountain sides or lie underground. To accomplish all this, the county moved a total of 175 million cubic metres of earth or stone in the eight years since the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution in 1966.

      When the first medium-sized reservoir was being built, there were not enough stonemasons. Secretary of the county Party committee Cheng Yung-ho personally led county and commune cadres to learn the required skill. Together with the commune members at the work-site, they quarried over 500,000 cubic metres of stone in the mountains and built the reservoir on time. In those eight years the county built 33 medium-sized and small reservoirs, 850 water-storage ponds and 140 pumping stations, sank more than 20,000 wells and paved 2,800 kilometres of channels. This has brought 70 per cent of the county’s farmland under irrigation.

      The people of Huihsien also launched a mass campaign to improve soil and build up land. In the last few years 80 per cent of the county’s farmland have been deep-ploughed and levelled. They also terraced 18,000 hectares of fields according to the prototype of the Tachai Brigade in Shansi Province, China’s advanced farming unit, and built 2,200 hectares of new farmland. There are some rivers in the county which are flooded in summer and autumn but are dry and littered with rocks at other times of the year. The commune members living along these rivers have built channels to divert the floodwaters to designated places and built fertile land on the banks by removing rocks, erecting necessary dykes or dams and bringing in rich soil.

      The people’s communes in Huihsien have increased their income by extending their activities to forestry, livestock breeding, side-line production and fish breeding. The collective economy provided about three-fourths of the investment in building farmland water conservancy works in the last eight years. Making use of local resources, the people have set up a small coal mine and more than 60 factories making dynamite, cement, chemical fertilizer, farm machines and other products. These supply inexpensive material and equipment for farmland capital construction and the development of farm production.

      The people’s standards of living have improved noticeably with the growth of production. Total sales of consumer goods in the county last year were 138 times those of 1949. Products never seen, by most of the peasants before liberation such as wrist-watches, sewing machines and radios now are quickly snapped up in stores. Peasants’ savings deposits show a tenfold increase over the last 15 years. Housing conditions have improved steadily. In the Szulimiao Brigade alone, the 200 households have built a total of 1,157 new rooms since liberation.