Xiaogang, Anhui
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Xiaogang Village () is a small village in Xiaoxihe (),
Fengyang County Fengyang County () is a county in north-central Anhui Province, China. It is under the administration of Chuzhou, a prefecture-level city. The county was home to 765,600 people as of 2013. Administrative divisions Fengyang County is divided into ...
,
Chuzhou Chuzhou () is a prefecture-level city in eastern Anhui Provinces of China, Province, China. It borders the provincial capital of Hefei to the south and southwest, Huainan to the west, Bengbu to the northwest, and the province of Jiangsu to the ...
,
Anhui Anhui is an inland Provinces of China, province located in East China. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze and Huai rivers, bordering Jiangsu and Zhejiang to the east, Jiang ...
province in China, not far from Nanjing. China's move toward reform has been traced to an agreement among farmers in Xiaogang to secretly subdivide their common farmland in December 1978, after which the production of grain increased dramatically. The village was held up as a model for agricultural reform by China's new leadership after
Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping also Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Teng Hsiao-p'ing; born Xiansheng (). (22 August 190419 February 1997) was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and political theorist who served as the paramount leader of the People's R ...
came to power.


History

During the
Great Leap Forward The Great Leap Forward was an industrialization campaign within China from 1958 to 1962, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Party Chairman Mao Zedong launched the campaign to transform the country from an agrarian society into an indu ...
, the Chinese Communist Party made a series of economic reforms, where the most disastrous of them was the collectivization of the administration of private property, especially, the rural lands. Fengyang County, along with much of the rest of the country, experienced a period of famine, due to the inefficiency of the model. A quarter of the local county's population died from starvation. In Xiaogang village alone, 67 villagers died of starvation out of a population of 120 between 1958 and 1960. In December 1978, eighteen of the local farmers, led by Yen Jingchang, met in the largest house in the village. They agreed to break the law at the time by signing a secret agreement to divide the land, a local
People's Commune The people's commune ( zh, c=, p=rénmín gōngshè) was the highest of three administrative levels in rural areas of the People's Republic of China during the period from 1958 to 1983, until they were replaced by Townships of the People's Rep ...
, into family plots. Each plot was to be worked by an individual family who would turn over some of what they grew to the government and the collective whilst at the same time agreeing that they could keep the surplus for themselves. The villagers also agreed that should one of them be caught and sentenced to death that the other villagers would raise their children until they were eighteen years old. At the time, the villagers were worried that another famine might strike the village after a particularly bad harvest and more people might die of hunger. After this secret reform, Xiaogang village produced a harvest that was larger than the previous five years combined.
Per capita income Per capita income (PCI) or average income measures the average income earned per person in a given area (city, region, country, etc.) in a specified year. In many countries, per capita income is determined using regular population surveys, such ...
in the village increased from 22 yuan to 400 yuan with grain output increasing to 90,000 kg in 1979. This attracted significant attention from surrounding villages and before long the government in Beijing had found out. The villagers were fortunate in that at the time China had just changed leadership after the death of
Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; traditionally Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Mao Tse-tung. (26December 18939September 1976) was a Chinese politician, revolutionary, and political theorist who founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in ...
. The new leadership under Deng Xiaoping was looking for ways to reform China's economy and the discovery of Xiaogang's innovation was held up as a model to other villages across the country. This led to the abandonment of collectivised farming across China by 1983 and a large increase in agricultural production. The secret signing of the contract in Xiaogang is widely regarded by historians and media as the beginning of the period of rapid economic growth and industrialisation that mainland China has experienced ever since.


References


Further reading

*{{citation, author-first= Madsen , author-last= Pirie , author-link=Madsen Pirie , title= "''The document that changed the world''" , url= https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-document-that-changed-the-world , date= June 15, 2018 , publisher=
Adam Smith Institute The Adam Smith Institute (ASI) is a UK-based neoliberal think tank and lobbying group, named after Adam Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher and classical economist. The Institute advocates free market and classical liberal ideas, primarily ...
Chuzhou Villages in China Fengyang County