Food Sector in Chinese Industrialisation Under Mao

Jane Du

Chapter Chapter 1 in Farmland, Farming and Food in the National Economy of China, 1947 – 2020, 2024, pp 1-31 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter examines the significant transformations within China’s food sector since 1947. Initial policies, such as land reforms and the restructuring of rural production into communes, brigades and production teams, fundamentally altered China’s rural production form. Some scholars believe that the rise in food output during this period can be attributed to the adoption of these new production forms and the “Dazhai” model of labour mobilisation. Additionally, from 1953, the state’s stringent control over food procurement and retailing enabled the Maoist government to redistribute agricultural welfare and reallocate surplus from the food sector to urban industries. However, the effectiveness of these measures diminished as food output failed to keep pace with population growth, leading to a severe recession in agriculture under Mao’s strict regime, which jeopardised China’s food self-sufficiency. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping introduced reforms, beginning with the de-collectivisation of agriculture. This marked a stark departure from Maoist collective farming. Yet, the essential role of China’s agriculture in supporting urban industry remained fundamentally unchanged.

Keywords: Collectivisation; The state grain monopoly; Dazhai model; Rural collectives; Grain requisitioning and procurement; Great Leap Famine; De-collectivisation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-031-70027-9_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783031700279

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-70027-9_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().