Imagine a place where everyone is entitled to a free car, a free house, and free healthcare. The Communist utopia is as if put at work in the paradise of Huaxi Village, a township in Jiangsu around 80 miles away from China’s economic powerhouse, Shanghai. When China effectively embraced a semi-capitalist approach in the 1980s, Huaxi was an agrarian hovel, reachable only by dirt roads. Wu Renbao, the transformative village party secretary, seized on the new market freedoms to shift the Huaxi economy from primarily farming to manufacturing and trade. Yet, privatization was not selected: the residents would pour their money into a collective pot and share in the take from whatever new profit they gained. Originally a TVE, the Huaxi Group …show more content…
The newcomers receive less profits and bonuses than the original stakeholders, and the migrant workers are at the bottom, having no special financial support. Huaxi’s unique registration system safeguards the rights and living standard of the formal residents, yet if one of them leaves the village (the collective), s/he loses everything. Yet at the very top of the pyramid, the Wu clan holds resources in control. After the retirement and death of the old party secretary Wu Renbao, Wu Xie’en, Renbao’s fourth son, succeeded as the party secretary and the President of Huaxi Group. The dynastic succession and hereditary power are a rarity in Chinese villages, the places that adopt direct democracy. Huaxi is unique because of its seeming isolation to other villages, its persistence on collective ownership, its political succession, and its overwhelmingly impressive economic statistics.
This policy research attempts to investigate the following questions: to what extent does Huaxi follow the standard road of rural development in China since 1978, meaning its association and application of household responsibility system and the Sunan TVE structure? How does Huaxi finance its development and expansion? What’s special about Huaxi’s industrial structure and products manufactured and how do Huaxi’s choice of manufacturing and investing relate to the village’s geography, the nearby Metropolitan area, and the domestic and
This document shows how living conditions and independence did not improve for landowners. Landowners only lost their land and homes. It wasn’t fair how low classes were able to make more money when landowners couldn’t have better living conditions. Document 9 by an unknown person who was an economist made a line graph for people interested in China’s GDP to see how China’s GDP was at that time. This line graph shows how the quality of people’s life wasn’t improving because there wasn’t any jobs for them. The economy was very weak since there wasn’t enough jobs. Factories didn’t improve either they stayed the same because of the value of the materials. People couldn’t afford things because since there wasn’t jobs they didn’t have enough money to be able to buy things. The Communist China notes talks about the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap Forward began from 1958 and ended in 1960. During 1959 through 1961 about 50 million people died of starvation. Mao forced people to work and it
The wealthy land owners lost their status thanks to the communist party because the communist party wanted the chinease peasants to be able to rally together and fight the jaoanese, the communist helped the peasants in order to further their gain but they still allowed peasants to rise up and strive for equality. In document 9 there is an image of Chinease peasants in a struggle meeting which is put on by the chinease communist party. This is an example of the relashonship between peasants and communists b being good because it m9ght allow the peasants to show their
In 1949 china was under the expression of a communist state. The regime of china was set up in similarity to the regime of Vladimir Lenin in the Soviet Union. Mao Zedong was part of the communist party. He followed the vision of Karl Marx, by envisioning a society under his regime that all shared equal prosperity and communism. In order to bring this vision to reality, he wanted to eliminate all capitalism and its emphasis on property rights, profits, and free-market competition. In the 1950’s in the rural of china, Mao banned free markets, which involved peasants selling farm products. However the trade of capitalism still existed through the private enterprise of remnants. Mao was dissatisfied with the outcomes towards an economy of Marxism. So he strived for a stronger approach by coming up with the Great Leap Forward. However, after the intense economic development that china had suffered from the great leap forward, it left millions of individuals throughout china suffering from the masses and deaths from the collapse of the food system. Because of the major consequences that were suffered from this approach it was unable to be left unnoticed. So, in 1960 after Moa Zedong declined all responsibility towards the disaster from the Great Leap Forward, Lui Shao-chi and Deng Xiaoping were left to rectify and administer the crisis. However, their attempt to repair the economic damages towards china, only led to the reverse of Mao’s earlier policies. That were
The political alarm in my mind went off. It is always hard to imagine inhumanity such as this happening today, as my frame of experience draws upon working at Best Buy Geek Squad and the only mistreatment I have ever dealt with is a vertically-challenged manager who nicknamed me “Brokeback” because I wore cowboy boots. The compilation of stories from China presented by Rivoli especially hit home for me because during my time trying to start a clothing company, my team never discussed any “sweatshop” issues. I view myself as an ethical entrepreneur and it was hard to stomach the fact that during my time starting Austerity Clothing last year, we talked to death about “green” products, but not once had the thought even crossed my mind that our products could have possibly been manufactured in Chinese “sweatshops”. After I took the red pill of responsibility, I found it fascinating the policies I had never heard of in communist China, such as the hukou. In the book, Rivoli translates that the "hukou is a place of household registration." (87) The way it is described seemed similar to the Indian caste system of classifying its citizens. The idea that people can be classified as simply “farm people” or “city people” and that title defines who they are as a person is so
In 1919, Mao Zedong helped to establish the city of Changsha by attracting a variety of organizations. One organization was to bring the students, the merchants and the workers together in demonstrations aimed at making the government to oppose Japan. Mao Zedong’s five Year Plan was an attempt by him to boost China’s industry and become more powerful. When Zedong came to power, China was way behind the industrial nations of the planet. “He set ambitious goals for the production of iron and steel, coal, cement, and electrical power. Thousands of factories were to be built and an army of workers was mobilized to staff them.” (80). His plan worked in most cases, but also killed millions of peasants in the process. Chairman Mao also had another plan. This one was said to transform the way hundreds of millions of peasants lived and worked. Mr. Zedong urged all the peasants to give up farming and join cooperatives. Cooperatives were large farms that Zedong believed produce crops more efficiently than private farms. His slogan for this was “More, Better, Faster,” . This plan was one of his many plans that actually worked, at least for a
Despite extensive criticism, proponents of the measure feel that it has improved life in China. The policy, implemented in 1979, “was created by the Chinese government to alleviate social, economic and environmental problems in China” (Cabrera). Supporters of the policy claim that is has been successful. One measurement of a country’s success is its financial growth and China has seen an improvement in that respect. “With that rapid GDP growth, has come better nutrition, rising levels of education, longer life expectancies, and higher living standards for the vast majority of Chinese people.” (Azubel 2). Unfortunately, that financial growth has had little impact on the isolated farms and villages.
As many other countries around the world China has its long history of a struggle for equality and prosperity against tyrants and dictatorships. The establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949 seemed to have put an end to that struggle for a better life. “The Chinese people have stood up!” declared Mao Tse-tung, the chairman of China’s Communist Party (CPP) – a leading political force in the country for the time. The people were defined as a coalition of four social classes: the workers, the peasants, the petite bourgeoisie and the national-capitalists. The four classes were to be led buy the CPP, as the leader of the working class.
Brief Introduction: Document 8.2 is the first four sections of “Mao Zedong’s Report on an Investigation of Peasant Movement in Hunan”, which was written by Mao Zedong when he visited Hunan province in 1927. In this document, from personal perspective, Mao argued the importance of the peasant issues, then described how the peasant associations became organized, how the peasants fought with the local tyrants and gentry, and how they became powerful in rural areas. Finally, Mao gave his own definition of “It’s terrible!” and “It’s fine!”.
“The Party: The Secret World Of China’s Communist Rulers,” by Richard McGregor is a book which provides detailed insight into the Communist Party of China, revealing many of the secret underpinnings of how the party is run, and explores the question of how they have continued to stay in power for so long. While other strong socialist powers, such as the Soviet Union and Eastern Germany, fell at the end of the 20th century, the CPC was able to stay in control and ultimately come out of that period even stronger. In McGregor’s own words “the party picked itself up off the ground, reconstituted its armor and reinforced its flank. Somehow, it has outlasted, outsmarted, outperformed, or simply outlawed its critics, flummoxing the pundits who have predicted its demise at numerous junctures.” Instead of letting its own ideologies weaken its power, the CPC has continually adapted and transformed its policies and goals in order to maintain their stronghold over the nation. Through his impressive list of Chinese scholars and political contacts, McGregor is able to lay out the fundamental workings inside the Chinese government and the impressive actions they’ve taken to remain such a powerful organization.
From my beginnings in rural China to my upbringings inside a Chinese sweatshop, labor reform and economic development was destined to not only be a scholastic interest, but also my personal passion and life-long devotion. Walking over the hill of rice paddies tended by the drenching sweat of young children and elderly, I could see the injustice of a city that was rising before me. High rise construction sites were now housed on sacred burial land; local officials now forsook their Maoist ideals of rectitude in exchange for some ill-gotten pocket money; the sunken eyes of exploited migrant workers now widened with unspeakable injustice and inequity; the hands of eager foreign businessmen were now riddled with unimaginable profits at the expense of the innocent blood and tears of my countrymen.
Most importantly, the reestablishment of the hukou system in the early sixties, preceding the failure of Mao’s Great Leap Forward plan, affected factories in China heavily. By law, every worker in the city needed a hukou, an urban residence permit, in order to be allowed to work. This created a huge conflict between China’s urban and rural citizens as it was made extremely difficult for people from rural areas to get hukous, which of course everyone wanted (Naughton, pg. 118). Because of this, the urban and rural areas started to develop in very different ways since city folk had primary access to food, even during the nationwide famine. However, even with the societal uproar, the Chinese government did not make
Dr. Hao Jingfang works for the China Development Research Foundation which helps advance and promote economic development and social progress. She conducts research with an emphasis on rural poverty and presents recommendations to the government. Dr. Hao has witnessed and learned about China’s development over the last century, such as the Cultural Revolution-the birth of communist ideals- and capitalism. China transformed their system and has been ascending economically for the last several decades. Dr. Hao Jingfang had also witnessed its side effects: the excellent ever increasing gross domestic product(GDP) and the not so good effects of increased poverty. Another one of the of the not so spectacular side effects are how the wealth,
In accordance to this, China went on a construction binge. Whole factories were purchased from abroad while others were built with local resources. By 1978, the frenzy for new projects reached a level that reminded some people of the Great Leap Forward. In an effort to promote agricultural production, the government released many of the restrictions on the 'spontaneous capitalist tendencies' of the peasantry. (173) In the late 1980's, the government decided to expand the scope of private marketing. The next step was to increase the amount land assigned to the peasants. The peasants were now not responsible to the government for the use they made to the private plots. They simply could grow what they wished, for the sale to the government or to private markets. This led to furious rebuilding and inflow of foreign investments. All this enabled China to remake itself into Asian's hub of finance, trade and culture.
The unique guanxi culture in Chinese society sets its societal framework distinctively apart from the West. Although guanxi is often portrayed as one’s social network, it is much different from the so-called “connections” in Western society. Guanxi is a special social phenomenon in the Chinese societal context. It has survived throughout history and continues to be a prevalent trend because it has its Chinese characteristics and attributes that are not found in other societies. The existence of guanxi in Chinese society originated from the core Chinese value of collectivism. Since centuries ago, Chinese society’s group life and social organization has been based on collective interests. “Familial sentiments and obligations, [which were regarded as ethical relations], extended from the family into society [later on]”. The unofficial, informal networks of familial and kinship obligations provided the social support mechanisms through which peasant families survived in the economy of transition and hardships” (Bian, 2001, p.276). The twin themes of guanxi and the sense of hierarchy mutually enhance each other because private networks thrive through the existence of the principle of giving and reciprocating, which highlights that there is a dependent on a more resourceful party in the relationship. The future of the twin themes in China will continue to be built upon mutual reliance and the looked upon generous favour giver in bridging the connections between multiple parties.
In 1949 a powerful communist leader by the name of Mao Zedong came to power based on his idea for a, “Great Leap Forward.” This idea was meant to bring China’s economy into the twentieth century. He had assembled a revolutionary government using traditional Chinese ideals of filial piety, harmony, and order. Mao's cult of personality, party purges, and political policies reflect Mao's esteem of these traditional Chinese ideals and history. However, the product of this revolution created a massive national shortage in vital materials and initiated a wide scale famine to China’s people (Gabriel).