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Message from the cradle of reform

By Fu Jing (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-10-09 07:38

The result surprised even Xiaogang villagers. Deng Xiaoping asked villages across the country to follow Xiaogang's example, citing it as China's first successful attempt to break away from the old, ineffective pattern of agricultural development.

Farmer Yan Hongchang, 60, looks at photos taken with State leaders at his home in Xiaogang village, Fengyang county, Anhui province. [China Daily]

What followed after that is well known to the world, and is seen as the beginning of reforms in China.

Yan is all of 60 years old now. But he is still busy on his family plot (where he grows rice and corn) and remains a staunch believer in the path he chose: "Tell me about another system in the world that can motivate farmers to get up at midnight to water their paddy fields," he says proudly.

"Collective responsibility may sound good, but if it's not tied to individual behavior, it means no responsibility," he says, recalling his days 30 years ago. He maintains his habit of checking the water level and pest control at midnight in his family's 1.5-hectare plot. Yan lives comfortably in a three-story house with his five sons and daughters. Some of these had once followed their mother to seek alms 30 years ago.

The system that Xiaogang village started for China is officially called the household-responsibility farming system. "It is indeed about responsibility," he says. "The entire process of reform in China is about that. Only with a growing sense of responsibility can a farmer grow more food."

Three of the 18 farmers who signed individual household responsibility contracts as part of land reforms in 1978. [File photo]

The stress on individual responsibility and its rewards raised China's grain output from 300 million tons in 1978 to 400 million tons in 1984, and then to 500 million tons last year. It is expected to cross the last figure this year. Even in the "beggars' village" of Xiaogang, the total grain yield has risen from 15 tons in 1978 to 900 tons in 2007, a 60-fold increase. Its per capita cash income has soared, too, from 22 yuan to about 4,000 yuan.

Every family in the village has enough food today and good enough shelter. Most of the families own motorcycles and farm equipment. Some of them have even leased out part of their land (converted into a vineyard) to a Shanghai-based company and small local enterprises. All working age villagers not engaged in farming have jobs in other sectors.

To reward the local farmers for their 1978 initiative, and to prepare for the celebration of China's economic reform, the Fengyang county government recently gave 10,000 yuan each to Xiaogang households to rebuild their homes. That came as a big relief to the families, most of which had been under some debt after borrowing money to build new homes that cost about 100,000 yuan each.

Yan is still an "amateur thinker", wracking his brains on how to improve China's rural development policies. For him, land is still the basic guarantee of life for farmers. That is why he is still against returning to collective farming or administratively structured cooperative farming. Nor does he favor what he calls "image-building projects", started by some officials, because they expose farmers to greater risks.

Instead, he says farmers should be encouraged to lease their farmland to industrial houses. Twenty-three Xiaogang farmers are earning above-average income by leasing their plots, he says. "Leasing is a risk-reducing mechanism."

What about Zhu? Can't he be a role model for today's farmers? Yan says "no", because a person can "either be a farmer or a worker". Zhu's lifestyle is not the logical result of rural reforms, Yan says.

Zhu cannot become a fulltime farmer and pay for all his expenses, especially the medical cost for his parents and the tuition fees for his two children. He is not a complete urban dweller either because not having a permanent job prevents him from moving his family to a city.

This is where government help is important. It has to help farmers like Zhu to lead a better life, Yan says. And hopefully it will, he added.

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