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p E. A. Konovalov (USSR)

p Population is one of society’s major material ingredients and determines the size of its social wealth and potential for economic development. The interconnections between social conditions and the size and structure of the population are complex and varied, but its reproduction pattern is always determined by the socio-economic system.

p Here are some special features in the reproduction of the PRC’s population under the influence of the concrete historical conditions of its social development: biologically and traditionally high birth-rate, high death-rate, low mobility and extreemely uneven distribution. Some of these factors have been changing under the impact of the new social conditions. Thus, a nationwide health network is being established, food is being distributed in a centralised manner between various parts of the country and urbanisation has been gathering momentum.

p The vast and rapidly growing population has a powerful and constant influence on the country’s economy and politics. Wherever social reform is largely token, shallow and inconsistent, the population is more likely to have a strong influence on social development rather than undergo the evolutionising effect of social factors. Where that is so, the reproduction pattern tends to respond very little to social reform, which embraces sector after sector in production, exchange, distribution, forms of consumption, and so on. A crucial change in the reproduction pattern can only be brought about by a sweeping range of revolutionary 68 measures involving numerous aspects of the life and work of whole classes and vast areas. That is why population laws for any social formation can only be formulated where a historic mode of production has already been fully established.^^1^^ Since China is now in its transition period and has a vast variety of social relationships and distinctions in the way of life of various nationalities in different parts of the country, it is impossible to formulate its demographic regularities “in pure form”.

p These objective conditions apart, population processes in the PRC are also greatly influenced by the official policy of “birth control”, which has a direct bearing on the country’s economy, so providing fresh proof of Marx’s “population law”, which brings out the connection between the size of population and the rational employment of its able-bodied section in socially useful labour for the purpose of raising the material and cultural living standards. Although bourgeois ideologists and some revisionist-minded scientists in the socialist countries have tried to give a “broader” reading to population laws, and place these outside the “narrow” framework of interconnection between population growth and employment, the socialist countries’ collective experience has provided many convincing examples of the fact that this interconnection is the gist of the population law. Thus, the PRC’s quarter century fully confirms the organic links between the reproduction pattern and the improvement and most rational use of manpower.

p At present, China’s most urgent and important population question is whether under the present structure its vast population tends to promote or to hinder its further economic development.

p A single concrete economic criterion cannot provide the whole answer to this question. Still, the closest thing is the indicator showing the correlation between national-income growth and additional expenditure on population growth (i.e., the percentage of national-income growth that goes to maintain one per cent of the additional population). A comparison between these indicators for a group of countries shows that “the cost of maintaining a population unit" varies widely. It differs even within a single country, from one stage of development to another, showing not only upward, but 69 also downward tendencies, as China’s past decade has shown.

p The general conditions are the growth rate of the livelihood resources fund and the dynamics of embodied labour input. In highly industrialised countries with high growth rates, the bulk of the input increase per statistical population unit goes to establish additional work places, whereas in countries with a low organic composition of capital and a low-intensive industrialisation programme—to maintain the existing living standard of the growing population. As a result, industrially advanced countries require a 4 to 6 per cent increase in the national income to maintain an additional 1 per cent of the population (out of a 6 per cent increase in the national income, for instance, 1 per cent goes to raise the consumer fund, 1 per cent—to expand the services sector, and 4 per cent—to increase the cost of embodied labour and establish new work places). The other group of countries can maintain an additional population unit with only a fraction of the means of production and articles of consumption required by the first group. In India and China, for instance, the cost of maintaining additional population over the past few years has been roughly equal to the increase in the national income. This tendency is a direct result of the limitation of consumer rations and the policy of industrialisation largely through “cheap” construction methods and the use of manual labour in production. This produces the illusion that additional population in these countries can be maintained very cheaply (as a matter of fact, these countries are much less concerned about population growth than those where such growth is burdensome for “industrial” reasons).

p In the short term, the policy of economising on the people’s livelihood fund may seem to be some sort of remedy for a backward economy, but when viewed in the long term, from the standpoint of reproduction of the whole social product and the population, it turns out to be a policy of the most ruinous kind. The country’s specific features, like its vast population, can never serve to justify the lowering of maintenance standards for the bulk of the population. The Maoists prefer to forget Marx’s important proposition that even under socialism the necessary product should be 70 expanded “to that volume of consumption which is permitted, on the one hand, by the existing productivity of society ... and which, on the other hand, the full development of the individuality requires".^^2^^ In this matter, Maoist policy is not even pragmatic, but seeks, by moulding a new social ideal—that of a puritan with rudimentary spiritual requirements—to make up for the huge economic losses inflicted on the PRC by adventurist economic experiments.

p Less than full compensation for the manpower input into the national economy is now the only source of savings for implementing economic programmes. The all-round cut-back in the resources going into manpower reproduction so as to build up accumulations to maintain production levels and carry out ruinous military programmes tends to reproduce extensive methods and ways of development, that is, allows for an increase in production only insofar as more living and embodied labour is being used up. Thus, production does not increase because of any labour economies, but, in the final count, because of a higher overall input of living labour per product unit.

p Let us consider some aspects of the influence of China’s population on its socio-economic problems.

p China has always had high birth- and death-rates and low population mobility. At the early stages of social development, the population factor played a paramount role in economics, politics and culture. It had a definitive influence on the development of Chinese society throughout the feudal and semi-colonial period.

p The PRC (Taiwan included) now has a population of about 780 million, which is more than one-fifth of the world total and two-thirds of that of the world socialist system.

p In the PRC’s first 20 years, its population increased by 200 million, going up by 130 million, or 25 per cent, in the first decade, and 70 million, or 9 per cent, in the second. At the PRC’s first stage, the annual growth rate of its population was one of the world’s highest, whereas now it has dropped to one of the world’s lowest. In some years the population increased by no more than 0.5 per cent, whereas in some provinces it has even dropped in absolute terms, partly owing to mechanical outflows.

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p The drastic change in the reproduction pattern over the past two decades is due to more than socio-economic evolution alone, although the latter has had a marked effect on the birth-rate zigzags and death-rate undulations.

p In the PRC’s first decade, the birth-rate was very high, with 40 births per 1,000 persons in the late 1950s. This was largely due to favourable conditions for the formation of new families: the ending of wars, transition to peaceful construction, the agrarian reform and the sharp changes in employment among the rural and part of the urban population. That was when there was a drop in the average marryin age, first in the towns and then in the countryside, something that led to an absolute increase in the number of births to women aged from 15 to 19 and especially from 20 to 24, which had a decisive effect on the birth-rate as a whole.

p Large sections of the poorer population came to look on marriage in a different light: in old China marriages tended for the most part to be put off because people had no regular sources of livelihood for lack or shortage of land, or because of difficulties in finding permanent employment. There were also other reasons. Plotting two simplified graphs, one for the number of women of crucial child-bearing age and the other for the number of women actually married, we find that in the 1950-59 period the gap between the two ascending lines tends sharply to narrow down. In 1950, there were roughly 120 million women in the 15-45 age group, with no more than 60 million of these being actually married (undissolved feudal marriages apart). By 1955, the number of women in this age group was up to 140 million, and by 1960—to 158 million, whereas the number of married women increased over the decade to 110-115 million (by 50-55 million), so that the number of births went up sharply. Most children were born to women in the 20-24 and 25-29 age groups, whose number in 1960 was already up to 62 million, or about half the number of all married women, but they accounted for as much as 65-70 per cent of the total number of births. Thus, the high birthrate in the PRC’s early years was chiefly due to the cumulative effect both of social changes (lower marrying age and higher marriage rate)^^3^^ and population changes (more women in the age groups that are “strategic” from the standpoint of 72 reproduction). A favourable balance between the sexes was another important factor.

p These changes in the conditions for the reproduction of the population soon rapidly swelled the younger age groups. According to my estimates, in 1950 there were 170 million persons in the 0-15 age group, in 1955—200 million and in 1960—245 million.

p But it was the rapid lowering of the death-rate that was the main cause behind the higher rate of population growth. In old China, the death-rate had been high because of considerable infant mortality (250-300 per 1,000 live births), and also mortality caused by highly infectious diseases and malnutrition. Urjpn liberation, the influence of these factors began to lessen. Thus, from 1949 to 1959, infant mortality, that is, mortality in the 0-1 age group, was down by 70-75 per cent, to 75 per 1,000 (in the towns). The establishment of a national mother and child welfare system (largely with Soviet assistance) helped to reduce or eliminate the main causes of high mother and infant mortality in the towns and some rural areas. The mortality structure was also changed as a result of a sharp drop in the number of deaths from cholera, the plague, smallpox, bilharziasis, and other diseases (chiefly owing to the Soviet Union’s help in setting up a national anti-epidemic service).

p Over the PRC’s first decade, the average death-rate was down by one-half, to 12-14 per 1,000 persons, with very little change, however, in the 1-14 and 15-49 age groups, because mere sanitary and hygienic measures were not enough to reduce the incidence of disease and mortality in these groups, for that required drastic improvements in nutrition and working conditions, that is, a radical improvement in overall living conditions. But in the early years of the people’s power that could not as yet be done.

p On the whole, therefore, from 1949 to 1959, natural population growth was on the increase as a result of a 50 per cent drop in the death-rate combined with a birth-rate that was very high most of the time. As a result, the absolute increase grew from year to year: the annual average over that period was 14-16 million, or an annual growth rate of more than 2 per cent.

p In the 1960s, there was a sharp change in the 73 reproduction pattern, chiefly as a result of the changes in the CPC leadership’s population policy. Since the beginning of the PRC’s second decade, the Mao group has sought to ease the mounting population pressures on the country’s economic resources by shaping an entirely new nationwide attitude to child-bearing and family size. The two main goals are, first, late marriages (as late as possible) and, second, a limit on the number of children per family (no more than two). The Chinese leaders have been taking vigorous measures to attain the two goals of their population policy, using effective economic measures to back up their purely administrative and enforcement measures.

p It is easy to see that the worsening of the economic situation in the country upon the failure of the “great leap forward" promoted the implementation of the new line, for most married couples were quite deliberate in deciding to have a limited number of children. As for “raising the marrying age”, this artificial process (the most radical means of achieving a temporary cut-back in the number of births) was chiefly brought about by the propaganda of Mao Tsetung’s “new ideas" on this point.

p Chronic malnutrition among the bulk of the population at the time also served to reduce the birth-rate.

p How has the raising of the marrying age affected childbearing in China? In 1960, there were 24 million women in the 20-24 age group, in 1965—26 million and in 1970—35 million. As the marrying age went up in the 1960s to 25 for women and 28 for men, the child-bearing sections were reduced by 90 million, that is, by an average of 9 million a year. “Deferred marriages" reduced the number of births throughout the country by 30-35 per cent, that is, by 7-8 million a year.

p Another factor adding to the drop in the overall birthrate is the “statutory” limitation of the number of children to one or two per family. This makes for an annual reduction of 1.5-2.5 million, as compared with the traditionally “normal family size”.

p On the whole, the propaganda campaign aimed to limit the birth-rate, “reinforced” by the introduciton of a tougher rationing system and the constant malnutrition of most of the population, was, according to Maoist intentions, to have 74 reduced the birth-rate and so helped solve the population problem.

p Administrative interference in family life, however, cannot in any way ensure the success of the new policy or be effective for any length of time. In the conditions of so vast a country, families can deliberately forego having children and young people abstain from marrying only in an emergency (war, forced labour, chronic famine or lack of sources of livelihood among the adult family members). Under other circumstances, the natural urge to marry and have the desired number of children will always gain the upper hand, while any attempts to divert the energy of the young into “revoluionary” (mutinous) and other forms of activity are fraught with very grave consequences for the regime. This is another important social aspect of the antipopular Maoist policy.

p Population structure is of vast importance from the economic and strategic standpoints, as well as from the standpoint of population reproduction proper. The number of persons in the working age group and the balance between the young and old age groups determine the economic load per working person. The manning of the army and the home guard, too, depends on the number of persons of recruiting age. China’s population structure has a number of specific features. First, there are more men than women. Since the establishment of the PRC, the absolute gap has increased from 18 to 22 million, to 107 men per 100 women. In some provinces, above all in the outlying areas of the North-West and the North-East, and the Sinkiang-Uighur Autonomous Region, the prevalence is very great. The constant and marked prevalence of men is due to several causes, but mainly to the extremely hard conditions of the Chinese women’s life and work: work since childhood, early marriage, frequent childbirth at an early age, housekeeping combined with heavy production work, chronic malnutrition and other factors produce a high incidence of disease and high mortality among the women. Their life expectancy averages 40-42 years, or four to five years less than that of men.

p The age structure is marked by intensive rejuvenation: the share of young persons under 15 years of age has been increasing, and that of old persons over 60 has been going 75 down. In the PRC’s early years, the young accounted for 34 per cent of the population, whereas now the figure is more than 43 per cent. These changes have admittedly had a negative effect on the economic situation in working people’s families: in 1949, there were 1.3 dependents per wage earner as against 1.7 in 1969. In something like 15 years after the start of the population surge in China, the working age groups began to swell. These large groups, however, must be provided with economic conditions that would enable them to use their ability and knowledge in their work, something that requires millions of additional work places and more objects to which they can apply their labour. Where the latter are provided, the additional groups of persons capable of work at once become a source of additional production and wealth for the country, but where these are not provided, the additional manpower resources are a heavy burden on society.

p Under these population conditions, the changes in the Chinese leaders’ views of the population problem have mirrored the whole process of their ideological transformation. This has gone through three stages.

p Stage one, from the PRC’s establishment to 1956, was marked by utter disregard of population problems and neglect of the complex questions connected with the need to reckon with the population factor in economic and cultural construction. Although the existence of a vast population and its explosive growth had already been recorded by the planning and statistical agencies in the PRC’s early years (in the voluminous documents of the 1953 census in particular), neither during the rehabilitation nor in the early years of the first five-year period did the Chinese leaders recognise or try to eliminate the problems and difficulties facing the economy because of the explosive population growth. They ignored the need for timely reorientation of the entire health system, primary education and cultural institutions to repel the swelling “population” tide, although it had already become clear that it would soon be hard to provide the rapidly growing population with the necessary means of livelihood.

p Stage two was marked by the emergence of writings and numerous statements by Chinese sociologists and economists 76 which betrayed their sense of panic over the population problem. Chinese social thinkers, mostly scientists educated and trained in the West and partially influenced by Malthusian views, spoke at length of the need to take resolute steps to curb the explosive population growth. Though professing to disown Malthusianism, they saw no other way out than to stem the birth-rate by allowing abortions, sterilisation, and so on. These remidies were, for instance, suggested by the well-known scientist, Professor Ma Yin-chu. This collective opinion did not go unheeded. In one of his reports, Chou En-lai said that it was advisable to limit the birth-rate in some areas. The predominant standpoint, however, was still expressed in Mao Tse-tung’s dogmatic maxim: “It is good to have many people.” It reflects the eclectic nature of his “thought” as a whole: it contains elements of views that were typical of the early feudal society in China, which regarded the big family as a source of wealth, and the Sino-centrist view that a vast population was the mark and earnest of any state’s might and prosperity. While scientists were trying (albeit from erroneous, or even Malthusian motives) to convince the Chinese leadership of the need to take resolute steps to modify the reproduction processes, Mao Tse-tung and his group launched a “world historic" experiment to use China’s specifics, that is, its vast population, in their own interests. The “great leap forward" and the “people’s communes" policy was based on the nonMarxist and unscientific proposition that unlimited living labour resources could be put to the utmost use to achieve high development rates. The “great leap forward”, to be carried out by any possible means, that is, by wasting human energy, “economising” on modern means of production and making hundreds of millions of people work without pay, was to have provided proof of China’s exclusive way of industrialisation and communist construction, a way that “bypassed socialism”. At that stage, there was a clash between the ideas that population problems were intractable, expressed by some bourgeois-nationalist scientists, and the rash and ambitious projects being carried out under the banner of the nationalist dogmatists within the Chinese leadership. The negative effects of population growth were becoming more and more pronounced.

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p Stage three of the evolution of the Chinese leaders’ views on population problems followed the failure of the “great leap forward" and the “people’s communes" policy. There was a steep swing away from the old economic strategy: the “revolutionary measures" in the economy gave way to agonising half-way measures to order the economy, and the reckless optimism in respect of the time-scale for building a communist society—to sceptical forecasts that industrialisation could not be carried out in China for decades or even a century to come.

p This also had a direct bearing on population views. The old formula, “It is good to have many people”, was modified as follows: “It is both good and bad to have many people.” In a talk with Edgar Snow, Mao Tse-tung voiced his dissatisfaction with the fact that the peasants were “slow to adopt birth-control methods”.

p Having failed in their attempt to resolve the contradiction between the growing population and the limited economic resources through the “great leap forward”, the Chinese leaders started a vigorous administrative campaign to slice the birth-rate, making use of drastic measures such as official raising of the marrying age, forced separation of young married couples on the pretext of “serving the people”, broad propaganda of the health benefits of sterilisation and the need to have fewer children in the interests of the state, the restructuring of the rationing system to the disadvantage of large families, and so on. The whole campaign to “hold down" population growth has been based on administrative and bureaucratic measures, affecting the life and health of tens and hundreds of millions of people. In the gloomy years of the “cultural revolution”, tens of millions of young people were made to waste their energies on crushing the legitimate Party organs, spreading anti-Sovietism and preparing the whole people for “war and famine”. Fanatical ideals were being fostered among the youth: “To take delight in privation, and make sacrifices for the sake of the people.” These drastic swings in the Chinese leaders’ views are not accidental: they are typical of nationalism and petty-bourgeois revolutionarism.

p The interconnections between population growth and economic development differ in intensity from one social 78 stage to another: the higher the level of the productive forces and the development of manpower resources, the deeper and more organic are the interconnections between the type of economic development and the population growth rate. These interconnections are realised through the quantity and productive capacity of the working sections of the population, but the conditions for the fullest and most effective use of the latter differ from one socio-economic formation to another. Capitalism does not eliminate the disproportions between the available manpower resources and the possibilities for providing these with gainful employment, whereas socialism, transferring the basic means of production into the property of the whole people and the co-operatives, increases the degree of the population’s employment in a balanced and intensive manner, shaping new proportions between living and embodied labour.

p In the socialist countries there is on the whole a relatively high level in the use of manpower resources. As compared with the advanced capitalist (to say nothing of developing) countries, most socialist countries have achieved considerable success in the rational use of manpower resources, absorption of the agrarian population, and increase in worked time. All those are important factors of production growth.

p China’s complex problem concerning the use of manpower is still to be solved, chiefly because the Chinese leaders have no clear-cut strategic line on employment and have been unable, by working scrupulously and step by step, to overcome the unfavourable situation involving the vast pool of manpower resources and the limited resources of embodied labour.

p In the PRC’s first 20 years, according to the author’s estimate, the employment level went up considerably: the overall number of employed went up by about 100-110 million: by almost 30 million—from 10.5 to 40 million—in the towns, and by 70-80 million—from 170 to 240-250 million—in the countryside. Thus, the absolute increase in the number of employed was fairly substantial. Over the 20 years, however, the number of persons in the working age groups was also up by more than 100 million, so that the overall increase in employment at best matched the increase in the able-bodied population. Considering the rampant 79 unemployment in the towns and the overpopulation in the countryside which the new power had inherited from the old days, one is bound to say that the Chinese leaders have not found any radical solution for the problem of employment and provision of jobs for women and the young. The structure of manpower distribution between the various economic sectors continues to be irrational. Some estimates show that in 1950, 90 per cent of the labour force was employed in agriculture and only 1.5 per cent—in industry. Over these 20 years, employment in industry was up from 3 to 16 million, its share increasing to 6 per cent, but more than 80 per cent of the total was still engaged in agriculture. Consequently, employment in China today is a pyramid with a broad base of peasants, who are poorly equipped with modern implements and have a low education level and a primitive knowledge of agrotechnics. The next layer (more than 10 per cent of the total number of employed) consists of workers in the services, local transport and the handicrafts. They are also ill-equipped with production assets and work seasonally, for with the rise and fall in demand the number of workers employed in these sectors varies widely and their earnings rise and fall accordingly. Finally, the tip of the pyramid is made up of workers in the modern industries and transport, and also of highly skilled scientific and technical personnel.

p This manpower structure reflects the low development level of the productive forces and stands out in sharp contrast to the manpower structure in other socialist countries. Thus, only 2 per cent of the PRC’s total population is employed in industry, as against 18 per cent in the GDR and 12 per cent in the USSR. The manpower flow from the less productive to the more productive sectors is a reflection of economic development as a whole and obeys the regularities of extended reproduction: workers are released from various spheres of material production as the level of their equipment with advanced modern machinery rises. This rise is, in turn, due to a vast growth in investment, which goes to increase the asset-per-worker ratio.

p Solution of employment problems depends on many social and economic factors, of which the latter are the more important ones. Apart from tackling the major social problem of providing employment for all persons capable of work, 80 the country must also decide on the ways of increasing production and combining the extensive and intensive development factors to achieve the most rapid production growth, effective accumulation and higher living standards. This can only be done by optimising the rate of increase in employment, that is, by creating more work places and boosting individual labour productivity by increasing the technical level per unit of production and fitting out the new work places with more advanced equipment. This, to quote Marx, is the watershed between the extensive and intensive forms of extended reproduction.

p Every socialist country and every stage of its economic development have their own proportions between the factors of economic growth, which decide the balance between extensive and intensive forms. The criterion here is not the size of population or growth rate of able-bodied population: these indicators are merely a condition for production growth, but should not be regarded as a self-sufficing factor which determines all the other proportions. Elimination of unemployment, absorption of the agrarian population and involvement of housewives in production are important socialist gains, but these problems can only be considered solved where the requirements of socialist extended reproduction have been met. Thus, for instance, if the sphere of employment is inflated in a lop-sided manner, merely to eliminate unemployment, this could lead to a decline in the efficiency of production and the asset-per-worker ratio and, in consequence, to a slowdown of labour productivity growth. The increase in output would then be due to an increase in the absolute mass and share of living labour, equipped with means of production on a constant or even declining technical basis. Production growth would not be due to labour economies, but to the growing recruitment of unsophisticated, unskilled and low-productive manpower. From the standpoint of extended reproduction, this is a sign of social regress, rather than socio-economic progress. Socialist society does not want its manpower resources to be used to the utmost and strained to the very limit, but wants to save and economise human energy.

p The more than two decades of China’s economic development have seen sharp turns and vast changes in 81 employment policy reflecting the general tendencies of the country’s economic policy. During rehabilitation and the first fiveyear period, employment policy was chiefly aimed to reduce urban unemployment (by 1950, China had more than 3 million officially registered unemployed), to ease the pressure of excess agrarian population on the towns (at the time of the agrarian reform, the countryside had more than 100 million fully unemployed farmers with more than half the rest working less than 120 days a year), and gradually to involve housewives in social production (nine in ten women in the working-age bracket living in the towns had no employment). The problems were clearly formidable, and the Party and state attached much significance to their solution. In the course of economic rehabilitation, the agrarian reform and the first five-year period, the CPC managed to reduce the impact of the vast pool of unused manpower on the economic potential. The increase in the number of employed in modern industry went hand in hand with a rapid increase in the asset-to-worker ratio and the building of large modern industrial projects. Railway transport was being redeveloped and civilian construction was conducted on a vast scale. The abolition of landowner property and introduction of simple forms of co-operation in agriculture went to increase the number of employed and the working time per employed person. Although living labour was still the prevailing factor in the countryside and accounted for more than two-thirds of the increase in production, the average asset-to-worker ratio was nevertheless going up and labour productivity was rising at the rapid pace. It may be said that even under these extremely hard economic conditions, the CPC and the Government, working on the general principles of the Marxist-Leninist economic doctrine and taking the country’s specifics into account, succeeded in making their first steps along the arduous road towards eliminating the country’s technico-economic backwardness. Here they borrowed from the rich experience of the Soviet Union and other socialist countries and gained experience of their own.

p But in late 1957 and particularly in 1958, the Chinese leaders left the old road to follow a “new general line”, an essentially nationalistic programme with reliance on “China’s 82 unique conditions”, which were said to be extremely favourable for building communism in unprecedented strides. It was emphasised in every possible way that a vast population offered nothing but advantages. During the “great leap forward" there was an attempt to utilise tens of millions of spare hands: farmers and intellectuals, children and old people were drawn into the nationwide “struggle for steel”. In that struggle the Chinese leaders assigned the decisive role to manpower, the mass of living labour involved in the campaign.

p But it was, of course, impossible “to outstrip in three to five years any capitalist country in production and technology" (as the leaders promised in their slogans) through the massive employment of manual labour, use of cheap and primitive implements and all-round restrictions on the use of mechanical drives and electric power, and also “economies" on the remuneration of living labour. It was all bound to end in failure.

p The “great leap forward" policy violated the main objective economic laws. It was not backed up with adequate resources or machinery; millions of “fighters for steel" lacked the skills and experience; and in that period there was no demand for the products of “backyard metallurgy”.

p The imbalance between the vast inputs of manpower and raw and other materials, and the socially negligible result well showed the extreme ineffectiveness of that production method.

p Construction costs only seemed to be low: it has been estimated that the building of one furnace required no more than 20 yuans, but involved tens and even hundreds of mandays. Every furnace was permanently serviced by dozens of workers. According to the estimates of Chinese economists, the smelting of a ton of pig iron in the primitive furnaces took an average of 50 to 60 man-days, 7 to 17 cubic metres of wood and large quantities of other costly raw and other materials.

p The average input of living labour at the small enterprises in a number of basic industries (like coal, iron and steel, and chemicals) was eight to ten times that of the large modern plants, while the input of embodied labour was on average two or three times higher.

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p Thus, the quantitative achievements in industry during the “great leap forward" which Mao Tse-tung and his group loudly announced involved the waste of human labour and accumulated assets, great overstrain of all the economic resources and distortion of the main economic proportions.

p The economic “ordering” phase (1961-65) was meant to eliminate the economic difficulties caused by the “great leap forward”. In their economic measures the Mao group chiefly aimed to use political and ideological campaigns to prevent the national economy from grinding to a halt and to apply tough measures to centralise economic activity so as to direct the country’s economy along the road to militarisation. In that period, there was a sharp change in the whole employment strategy. In 1961, the more than 20 million people recruited in 1958 to work in “backyard metallurgy" were sent back to the countryside. Employment in industry dropped from 25 million to 10 million, with another 5 million being drawn off from capital construction, transport and other sectors of material production. Millions of intellectuals were also sent out to the countryside by decree.

p The rapid flow of massive manpower pools back into the countryside had a grave effect on reproduction in the rural areas. The Chinese countryside can provide work for only a limited amount of manpower. Over the preceding few years, the farming area had not been extended to any marked degree, the production of farming implements and tools had dropped sharply, the livestock and draught animal population was down by one-third, traditional rural trades and crafts, once accounting for something like one-quarter to one-third of all employment in the countryside, had gone into decline. With tax rates up and the output of marketable farm produce down, wage fund in the “people’s communes" had shrunk in absolute terms. As a result, there was very little demand for the labour of additional millions of farmers, to say nothing of the manpower recruited from the urban areas, both in the densely populated areas and the outlying provinces with poorly developed farming. The leaders’ policy was aimed to shift the burden of maintaining millions of urban dwellers from the state to the weak “people’s communes”, which had to “pay their own way”. The fresh manpower channelled into the countryside (which 84 amounted to 10 per cent of all manpower) was a heavy burden for the Chinese peasantry.

p The marked increase in the number of employed in agriculture combined with a fixed scale of production and extremely limited means of employment could do nothing to help the economy. As the farmers’ consumption and wage fund increased, albeit ever so slightly, there was also an increase in the share of the living labour and a drop in that of the embodied labour going into the agricultural product; there was a marked drop in the efficiency of farming and in the rate and mass of the surplus product; human muscle power was still the only source of any increase in production. Neither the “people’s communes" nor the farmers themselves were interested in boosting production, for their farming was not assessed on the strength of how they increased their labour productivity or efficiency but on how accurate and conscientious they were in paying state taxes, going out to work and studying Mao Tse-tung’s writings. That was when the technical re-equipment of agriculture slowed down owing to a cut-back in the supply of modern farming machinery by large-scale industry and the lack of effective demand for any means of production.

p The bulk of the expenditure went to satisfy the most urgent and primitive needs of the rural population: food, clothing and repair of old implements. The Mao group’s policy of forcing additional manpower into the countryside did much to impede reproduction in agriculture as a whole, creating a vicious circle, where additional manpower input was believed to be the only way to expand production, something that tended to swell wage fund and drain the resources that should have gone into modern implements and into releasing manpower to increase labour productivity. The more primitive, unskilled manual labour was being pumped into agriculture, the narrower were the possibilities of reproduction as a whole.

p Economic progress involves a gradual transition from extensive to predominantly intensive forms of farming, but the Chinese leaders tried to “intensify” farming by forcibly supercharging it with manpower. “Intensification through manpower" is in fact the most obvious form of extensive economic operations, for it leads to a steady reduction in the 85 share of embodied-labour inputs and in reproduction resources in farming itself. The reproduction fund in China’s farming (i.e., the “people’s communes’ ” surplus product minus the taxes and other deductions into the state budget) now comes to no more than 5 per cent. But in the saturation of agriculture with living labour the world has never yet known a situation as grave as that in present-day China. Even the situation in Japan at the height of its agrarian overpopulation period (in the 1950s, it had 500 rural inhabitants per 100 hectares of farmland) was not as bad as that in present-day China.

p In 1955, the livening up in population growth which had started upon the establishment of the PRC began to tell on’ the balance of China’s manpower resources. In the rural areas, the working-age group increased by 5-7 million a year, and from 1970 onwards—by 10-12 million. Thus, the annual increase in the manpower pool requiring employment amounts to 2.5 per cent and is shortly expected to rise to about 4 per cent. In the present conditions, that is, under the present employment policy, an annual growth in agriculture of even 3 to 4 per cent (an unlikely figure, not achieved over the past decade) would be solely due to the rapid and continued increase in the numbers of employed in agriculture.

p Grain cropping—a decisive sector of agricultural production—provides a more concrete example of the balance between the growth rate in production and the mass of living labour in the rural areas.

p In 1957 and 1958, grain crops covered about 70 per cent of the country’s sowing area and employed something like 40 per cent of the rural manpower resources, while their production costs amounted to about 45 per cent of the overall cost of all farm produce. During the “great leap forward" experiment, grain farming was drained of a good deal of its material, financial and manpower resources, something that entailed a sharp drop in yields, the overall output of the basic food crops and the farmers’ labour productivity.

p Under the grave food crisis in the “ordering period”, the CPC leaders came up with the slogan that “agriculture is the basis of the national economy”, with grain being “its decisive sector”. From that time (1961) onwards, the aim was to increase grain production by any possible means. The 86 CPC leaders believed that the easiest way to do this was to recruit into that sector as much manpower as possible. Let us recall that in 1958 China’s grain farming employed 80 million people a year, or about 40 per cent of the total number of man-days worked in agriculture. The rest were employed in technical crops, forestry, fishery, capital construction, the services, and also the industry of the “people’s communes”. About 20 per cent of all the manpower in the rural areas was employed in industry.^^4^^ The gross grain yield at the time amounted to about 200 million tons, that is, an annual average of 2.5 tons per farmer-year. With an average of 285 working days a year, the daily output per worker was less than 9 kilogrammes of grain. In rice production, the figure was 12 kilogrammes, wheat—8 kilogrammes, and other grain crops—about 8 kilogrammes.

p In the decade following the failure of the “great leap forward" (1961-70), there was a rapid intensification of grain farming through living labour due to two factors: an increase in the overall manpower reserves in the countryside, which was partly due to the influx of urban dwellers, and a concentration of the major manpower resources in grain farming through a reduction in the number of employed in other agricultural and non-agricultural sectors of the rural economy.

p Our estimates show that from 1960 to 1965, China’s rural population increased from about 565 million to 600 million, going up by something like 7 million a year. In 1970, the rural population was already up to more than 650 million, which meant an annual increase of about 10 million. In 1960, the able-bodied group in the countryside totalled about 280 million, in 1965—312 million, and in 1970—365 million. In the five years from 1961 to 1965, the rural manpower pool grew by 32 million (2.2 per cent a year), and from 1966 to 1970—by 53 million (3.1 per cent a year). In other words, the pace of increase in the working population in agriculture has quickened, going up from 6.5 million a year in the early 1960s, to 10.5 million in the early 1970s.

p Grain farming now employs a much larger share of the manpower resources than during the ruinous period of the “great leap forward”. It may be assumed that from 1961 to 1970, grain farming was using at least 20 per cent more 87 population in the working-age groups than in the preceding periods. The assumption is based on the fact that over the past decade the massive use of peasant labour in capital construction and the “people’s communes’ ” industry has virtually been wound up everywhere, and in the auxiliary trades has also to some extent been reduced. There is no doubt at all that throughout the 1960s, grain farming employed no less than 60 per cent of the overall manpower resources in the countryside. This means that in 1960 food crops employed 168 million, in 1965—187 million, and in 1970—219 million, with the annual growth rate averaging 4 million (2.3 per cent), and from 1966 to 1970—6.4 million (3.2 per cent).

p The mass of living labour engaged in grain farming has been further swelled as several million urban dwellers have been moved into the rural areas. In 1961-70, about 20 million of the 40 million resettlers could have been used either in grain farming proper or in the growing of technical crops, so as to release some of the farmers for grain production.

p To sum up, over the past ten years there has been an extremely high growth rate in the numbers employed in grain farming. Here is a rough estimate: 170 million in 1960 (90 million men in the 16 to 60 age group, and 80 million women in the 16 to 55 age group), 190 million in 1965 (100 million men and 90 million women, respectively), and about 240 million in 1970 (130 million men and 110 million women).

p The PRC leaders expected these vast numbers of men to ensure substantial production growth in the food crops. In fact, however, official Chinese estimates and statements by PRC leaders put grain production in 1960 at 170 million tons, in 1965—185 million, and in 1970—240 million tons. Assuming these to be the actual figures, it is not hard to see that from 1961 to 1965 the increase in food crops totalled 9 per cent (1.75 per cent a year), and the increase in the number of employed in that area—12 per cent (2.3 per cent a year). In 1960, the output per man-year, with all employed labour reduced to full-year terms, was 1.4 tons in 1960 (that is, 120 million full-year farmers produced 170 million tons) and 1.3 tons in 1965 (142 million full-year farmers producing 185 million tons of grain). This means that labour 88 productivity declined as steadily as the input of living labour increased.

p From 1966 to 1970, the output of grain crops was up by 30 per cent (5.4 per cent a year), whereas employment in grain farming was up by 26 per cent (4.75 per cent a year), so that the output per full-year worker increased to 1.5 tons (in 1970, the number of full-year workers was estimated at 180 million).

p The slight increase in the per worker output of grain was due to the following factors: the marginal improvement in the food situation and the consequent possibility to increase the work loads; the fact that large sections of the youth were reaching working age and the consequent improvement in the age structure of manpower in the countryside; and the involvement in farming of urban young people in the most vigorous age groups.

p Another independent and important factor was the marked increase in the use of chemical and local fertilisers in grain farming.

p It is quite true to say, therefore, that the “stable crops gathered throughout the country over the past nine years”, which Peking propaganda keeps talking about, have been achieved through a vast input of living labour. Even assuming official Chinese data (which are in fact clearly overstated) to be correct, the 240 million ton grain crop of 1970 was produced by no less than 240 million grain farmers, which means a direct labour input of 250 man-days to produce one ton of grain, or one man-day to produce 4 kilogrammes, whereas Soviet collective farms (in 1967) were producing 240 kilogrammes per man-day.^^5^^

A comparison of cost indicators for agriculture as a whole will also show the vast inefficiency of agricultural labour in China. In 1957, gross output in agriculture totalled 60,300 million yuans in 1952 prices (53,700 million yuans in 1957 prices), whereas the number of full-year farmers was 150 million, that is, per farmer output was 400 yuans (358 yuans in 1957 prices). In 1970, agricultural production was estimated at about 80,000 million yuans (71,500 million yuans in 1957 prices) and the number of full-year farmers at 280 million, which means per farmer output averaged 286 yuans (252 yuans in 1957 prices). In terms of US dollars, 89 average per farmer output in China amounts to no more than $105. Here is how China compares with other countries and areas throughout the world:

PRO . Africa Japan . USA . Per farmer output 105 160 860 6,545 Per farmer output (per cent of the PRO level) 100 152 819 6,233

p We find, therefore, that any increase in China’s agricultural production comes through an additional input of living labour, combined with “economies” in things like electric power, machinery and draught animals. The systematic “cheapening” of manpower instead of its gradual replacement with mechanical and electrical drives could eventually bring about a state of affairs where manual labour would be a more “profitable” power source in agriculture than any modern sources of energy—and that in this age of headlong scientific and technical advance, when other countries are going through an intensive process of saving and economising working time, which is a basic regularity of social progress.

In the spring of 1966, the Chinese leaders made another attempt to tackle the employment problem, this time through the seasonal use of peasant labour in industry. Throwing a veil of “revolutionary” pseudo-Marxist phraseology over their essentially Utopian and petty-bourgeois experiments, the Peking theorists came up with the idea of combining indutsrial and agricultural labour so as to foster a “new type" of working man on the “both worker and peasant" pattern. This meant that in the off-seasons, excess manpower in the rural areas was to be used at small and medium-size industrial enterprises in the various district and regional centres. The “people’s communes" had to send large contingents for seasonal industrial work in the city, where they were engaged as auxiliary workers in the more arduous operations for several months a year. Their wages did not exceed those of the local peasants, that is, were only 30 to 50 per cent of the wages paid to urban workers. The “village workers" had to live and work in extremely difficult 90 conditions: housed in modest hostels, they had to provide their own meals, and were deprived of the privileges enjoyed by “regular workers" in state industry. When their term ran out, the seasonal workers returned to the “people’s communes”. This kind of “alternating work" was presented as the prototype of future work under communism, when distinctions between industrial and agrarian labour would be eliminated. The economic meaning of the “both worker and peasant" formula was to lower workers’ wages still further and to intensify peasant labour to an even greater degree. As enforcement measures were used in the process, it was only natural that by the end of the first few months millions of peasants from many provinces had already been involved in the undertaking. This “discovery”’, however, also came to nothing. With the onset of the “cultural revolution" in the summer of 1966, the practice was in effect abandoned, like all the earlier attempts to solve the manpower problem in the village “at one stroke”.

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p ^^1^^ See K. Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, p. 592.

p ^^2^^ K. Marx, Capital, Vol. Ill, p. 854.

p ^^3^^ The average marrying age for women in China was lowered considerably, down to about 18 years. In other Asian countries the average marrying age is much lower: in India, for instance, it is 16.5 years.

p ^^4^^ The PRC Economy, 1949-1959, Moscow, 1959, p. 221 (in Russian).

^^5^^ P. A. Khromov, V. 1. Lenin on Labour Productivity, Moscow, 1969, p. 90 (in Russian).