Taiwan Today

What is a Commune?

In a move unparalleled in history, Peiping recently drove more than 90% of China’s six hundred million people away from their homes, and enslaved under the whip of the “people’s commune.”

Men and women under the commune have now lost the last vestige of individuality—they had lost their freedom long before. As more cogs in a collective wheel, they are fed just enough to keep on toiling, and thrown away when no longer serviceable.

Said President Chiang Kai-shek on January 1, 1959: The commune is “the creation of slave system unprecedented in human history. Under this system not only are all private property of the people confiscated, but family life and ethical concepts are destroyed as well … In fact, it is nothing short of hell itself.”

In mainland China today, hundreds of millions of people are living the life of slaves. Men and wives, parents and children are separated and grouped into labor companies, schools and nurseries. At daybreak, the sound of bugle calls them into factories, paddy fields, or far-flung labor sites. For 14 to 17 hours a day, they toil like serfs, taking their meals at “public mess halls.”

After a day’s labor, they have no homes to go to. There can be no family gathering around the hearth because, in an increasing number of cases, people no longer have families. Men and wives live in separate dormitories, away from their own children. Sometimes, taps are not sounded until well after midnight, for under the Communist “Great Leap Forward” drive they have night work to do. And Peiping has found it necessary to decree that the people shall be “allowed” five to eight hours of sleep a day.

This is how the mainland Chinese are living under the “people’s commune” system. By the end of September, 1958, barely two months after the commune system was enforced, 121,936,350 households had been herded into 26,425 communes. They represent 99% of Communist China’s total peasant population plus millions of city dwellers. Peiping, the “capital” of Communist China, has 56 communes embracing all its 663,124 households. Metropolitan Shanghai has 23 communes comprising 256,000 households. In 15 provinces, the people have hundred percent joined the communes. In seven other provinces, from 92% to 99.4% of the population have joined. Only three outlying provinces have fallen behind: Ninghsia 67.3%, Sinkiang 59.3%, and Yunnan 31%, because of the “autonomous rule” of minority races in these regions. These figures are officially released by the Communists themselves.

From Land Reform to Commune?

The commune is the last step of a three-phased program of communization. From 1950 to 1952, shortly after they had seized control of the mainland, the Chinese Communists launched the so-called “land reform” campaign, by instigating the peasants to struggle against landlords and rich farmers, liquidating their properties. In two years, the Communists confiscated some 63 million acres of land, about 70% of the arable land on mainland China. Some 50 million people were liquidated, among them seven million are known to have been murdered, and some 30 million more thrown into slave labor camps.

The land was divided and the average farm household was allotted about half an acre of land. This was the first step-as the Communists put it-“let the poor turn over on their backs.”

To follow up on the “back-turning,” the “agricultural collectivation” drive was then launched in 1953 and completed in 1958. Peasants were forced to turn all their land, farm implements and cattle to the “cooperatives” as their shares. Some households were still allowed to retain a small plot of vegetable yard, an orchid or a fish pond. The Communists held a rigid control of foodstuffs and rationed daily necessities items. The state monopolized the selling and buying of all these items. According to Chou En-lai, the average income of a peasant household in a “cooperative” was hardly JMP$6 per month, or US$2.55 at the Communist official exchange rate, as a reward for working fourteen hours a day.

Then came the final blow. In April, 1958, the Chinese Communist put into experiments the commune system in three mainland provinces. Obviously satisfied with the results, Peiping launched in late August an all-out campaign to establish people’s communes throughout mainland China. In three months the Communists have torn into shreds China’s social order, destroying all family ties, and putting the mainland people under absolute control of the Peiping regime.

Bigger Unit, Tighter Grips

Under the previous “cooperative” system, there were usually half a dozen cooperatives in each hsiang which is roughly equivalent to township, comprising tens of villages. Now all the cooperatives in a hsiang have been merged into a big unit called the people’s commune. In some places, several hsiang are grouped together to form one commune.

Previously, the Communist hsiang government took charge of the administration, while the cooperatives concentrated on production. Now both tasks are given the commune. As the Communists conceive it, the administrative organ and production team now form a single entity.

A typical example is the Communist “Sputnik People’s Commune” of Shui-ping Hsien (County), Honan Province. It is an amalgamation of 27 agricultural cooperatives of four hsiang, consisting of more than 9,300 households totalling over 43,000 persons.

Deputies to the hsiang people’s congress are at the same time deputies to the commune congress. Members of the hsiang “people’s committee,” i.e., the govern men t, act concurrently as members of the commune administrative committee. The hsiang Communist Party secretary is in most cases the commune director. So it is actually a “two-in-one” system - the administrative and economic structures combined, with the Communists controlling both.

Elaborate Set-up

Nominally, the highest organ of a commune is its congress. But the Communist Party committee wields the real power, gripping all labor units and departments of the commune through Communist cells. The commune congress, consisting of representatives of production teams and professional groups, is only a puppet pulled by strings in the hand of the Communists.

Under the commune director are a number of staff departments, in charge of agriculture, water conservancy, forestry, animal husbandry, fishery, industry and communications, interior and labor, finance and food, armed defense, commerce, culture and education, scientific research, political affairs, sanitation, etc. It looks even more complicated than a cabinet. In most communes, these departments exist on paper only.

There is a supervisory commission, a kind of police and NKVD combined. This watch-dog body, taking orders directly from the state supervisory set-up, keeps every member of the commune under surveillance.

Each commune also has a planning commission, which sets production targets for the laborers to fulfill.

A so-called “supply and distribution department” sees to it that all products by the commune are turned to the state. It is the smallest cell of the Communist state-run commercial establishment. Limited quantities of miscellaneous items are sometimes put on sale at the department’s retail shops.

What was formerly the People’s Bank is now reorganized into a credit department under the commune. The department is the treasury of the commune. Profits go to the People’s Bank headquarters after deducting a certain percentage for the commune.

The Backbone

The backbone of a commune, however, is its vast slave labor force. Everybody who is not incapable of moving his or her limbs is organized into labor units. In bigger communes, the labor units are called regiments, battalions, companies, platoons and squads, just like a military force. In other communes, they are simply known as “big groups,” and “small groups.” Throughout these groups there are Communist Party or Youth Corps cells to “lead” the laborers.

In each commune, there are grade schools, middle schools, “agricultural colleges,” and “red-expert universities.” The latter are in fact elementary vocational training schools for the peasants. The glittering terms of “colleges” and “universities” are meant to elevate the prestige of the peasants and deflate the ego of the intellectuals. Almost anybody may enter these “colleges” or “universities” and get a diploma as a “red-expert” in no time.

As the Communists seemed to have set up the communes in a hurry, things are still rather confusing. What one commune is practicing may conflict with the conditions of another. Here, the Sputnik Commune may again serve as an example.

All citizens aged 16 and over are to join the commune as regular members. Former landlords, rich peasants, “counter-revolutionaries” and disfranchised persons will only be admitted as “non-regular” members, having no voice at all, though working necessarily harder.

The Communists have claimed that the communes were formed on a “voluntary basis,” by the people themselves “under the leadership of the Communist Party and the People’s Government.” They claim that 99% of the mainland peasantry “voluntarily” joined in three months’ time. In some places, the Communists said, peasants marched up in columns, holding banners and beating drums, to join the communes “out of their own volition.”

Commune At A Glance

- Everybody has to join the commune.

- One works from 14 to 17 hours a day, 23 to 29 days a month, and 341 days a year, plus “night battle.”

- In return, one gets three coarse meals a day, plus JMP$2 to JMP6 (US$0.85 to US$2.55) a month.

- Eventually, nobody will have a home. Private houses are being pulled down to give way to public dormitories, where men and wives live separately.

- Parents are seldom allowed to see their children, who live in schools and nurseries to be brought up by the State.

- People eat at “mess halls.” “No work, no eat.”

- Every able-bodied person is made a soldier.

- Women take military training as reserves.

-One owns nothing except very personal belongings. In some cases bank accounts have been taken away.

- The Communists own everything, and control everybody.

- People have no freedom to choose their jobs, they till the land one day, work on steel production the other. The Communists decide what one shall do.

- Altogether 121,936,350 households, representing 99% of the mainland China’s rural population and some urban residents, have been herded into 26,425 communes.

No Private Property

When several agricultural cooperatives are merged into a commune, they shall turn all their common properties to the commune. Independent households shall place their “private houses, land holdings, livestock, trees and farm tools under the commune ownership,” or rather “ownership by the whole people,” as the Communists put it. Thus people have lost what little they still had, except some “small numbers of domestic animals and poultry which they may keep for the time being.”

Eventually, these small numbers of domestic animals and poultry will be turned over to the state, the Communists have ruled. In many places, people have already lost their last hogs or chickens. In late December, possibly to soothe the widespread unrest among the mainland population, the Communists backed down a little and promised to let people keep their houses, clothing, small furniture pieces, small tools and poultry.

But in most places, private houses have already been pulled down. And it is doubtful whether the people will ever get back what has been “voluntarily” surrendered to the commune.

In may places, the people, no longer having families, are told to take shelters in the commune’s “dormitories” for “collective living.” In the case of the Sputnik Commune, private houses of the members are being dismantled, and “bricks, tiles and timber are put to use by the commune according to need.” Commune members have to pay rental (out of their small wages) for a place to sleep

Collective Living

Their dormitories are hardly better than prison cells, except for the absence of steel bars. Usually, people sleep in a stable-like house, with a dozen members or more sharing a big, wooden platform, which is their bed. Women live in their own dormitories of much the same conditions. Seldom are man and wife permitted to stay together, except on a Saturday once every few weeks.

People are no longer free to choose their jobs. One may be a peasant today, and tomorrow he is sent to dig coal or work at a blast furnace. He simply does what the Communists tell him to do. In some provinces, men are driven to the field to pull the plow and take the place of draft animal. Often tens of thousands of people are seen stretching over the horizon, plowing the land or carrying ores. They are what the Communists call “an ant army.” Commune members are sometimes ordered under short notice to march to hundreds of miles away where slave labor is called for.

In the initial stage when the commune system was first enforced, people worked for 14 to 17 hours a day. Whenever the Communists thought it necessary, the commune members were “challenged” to “night battles,” which mean toiling overtime till after midnight. Take the daily working schedule of the Shunhua People’s Commune, Kwangtung Province: Get up at 4 a.m.; breakfast; work from 4:30 a.m. till 11:30 a.m.; lunch and break; work again from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m.; supper and brief rest; “night battle” work from 7:30 p.m. till 11:30 p.m. Total work: 16 hours a day. Sleep: 4 ½ hours.

The mainland Chinese, drudging like animals, are disgruntled. The situation is serious enough to force the Communists to make
some concessions. The Communist “Finance Minister” Li Hsien-nien made an extensive tour in September, 1958, and went back to Peiping with a recommendation for limiting daily work to 12 hours “under normal conditions.” But in many communes, these “normal conditions” apparently do not exist, for people are still toiling as hard as before.

What Do People Eat?

Year after year, the mainland Chinese have been told of “unprecedented, record-breaking bumper crops of rice.” But in their bowls they don’t see much rice, for ages the staple food of the. Chinese people. Mainland refugees who recently fled out of the Bamboo Curtain said they now discovered rice was being exported to Southeast Asia. For laborers of the communes, the Communists think sweet potatoes and corns are good enough.

In the vast sections of north and northwest China, the main dish for commune members is “O-Tou,” a kind of hard, dark bread made of corn mixed with other grain dusts. Rice is tasted only once or twice a week, as if a luxury. In the communes around Peiping, “O-Tou” is served three times a day with a little salted vegetable or cooked cabbage.

A best description of “O-Tou” is furnished by the Communist “Ta Kung Pao” in a signed article by three women laborers:

“Last spring, we went to dig a canal at Mount Jade Spring near Peiping. The O-Tou we brought along was frozen into icy lumps. We couldn’t bite a piece off. We baked it on fire. It got charred outside, but inside it was still icy cold.”

To attain variety, “O-Tou” appears on the mess hall tables sometimes slightly sweetened, or mixed with garlic, beans, or dates. In a model menu published by “Ta Kung Pao”, it is the main food for 14 meals in a week. In the same week, meat is doled out only twice.

In southern and central China, “O-Tou” gives way to sweet potatoes. Proudly, the Communists are publicizing a new invention-“sweet potato bread.” For the people, this is their only food for breakfast and supper. Rice is served for lunch. There are villages where nothing but sweet potatoes is served on the tables for weeks. The Communists have been boasting of a seven-course dinner with soup, salad and everything, entirely made of sweet potatoes. Of course only high level Communist cadres are privileged to enjoy such a dinner after they are fed up with meat and fish.

Even the “O-Tou” meals or potato meals are not served on schedule. According to the Communists’ own stories, people sometimes worked from 3 a.m. in the morning till midnight, and “refused to take supper until we finished our job.” In certain communes, the Communists have plainly ruled: “No work, no eat.”

Once people join the commune-and they all have to-they cannot find anything to eat except at the Communist mess halls. The Communists have taken away all their cooking utensils, bowls, dishes, chopsticks and kettles. The table wares are used in public mess halls, while surplus pots and pans are collected to make steel. In short, nothing is left in what was previously the kitchen.

Wage & Supply

The Communists have been extolling a theory that right now, people should “work to the best of their abilities, and get what they deserve.” But in future, if there are “abundant products” and a “high degree of people’s awakening,” people may hope to receive “according to one’s needs.”

In principle, people will be given three meals and a place to live in, plus some wages, for all the work they do for the Communists. It has been ruled: “When income is stable, funds are ample and members are able to strengthen the labor discipline consciously, the commune shall introduce a wage system.” Otherwise, if anyone of these conditions is not met, there will be no wage. Even after the introduction of the wage system, the Communists may cut the wage at any time “in case of absenteeism.”

During tour through several key provinces the Communist “Finance Minister” Li Hsien-nien found quite a confusing picture about the practice of the wage system. He said:

“Most of the people’s communes follow a distribution system of part supply and part payment in wages, which is an inevitable product of the development of the people’s commune. The portion in the form of supply is to meet the basic requirements of life of the members, while the portion in the form of wages is to meet other expenses, including miscellaneous spending ....

“In the case of the several communes we have visited, the portion in supply in some communes covers seven items: food, clothing, medical care, maternity care, education, housing, and marriage and funeral. In others, taking the financial conditions into consideration, it covers only five or six items, or only-grain and meals.

“The portion in wages is of different grades, ranging from JMP$4 to JMP$15 a month, with some at JMP$2 or JMP$3. Those members who have good work records will be granted additional wages as a reward .... Taking the Chiliying People’s Commune of Hsinhsiang for examples, .... it is 50% in supply and 50% in wages. In the case of other communes, the proportion of supply is bigger than that of wages, or vice versa.”

In practice, the so-called “supply” system is all what people get for their labor. Under the system, all commune members eat at “public mess halls” without payment. “Individual lazy-bones who do not work well and who refuse to change their way despite advice” will be forced to “work and reform themselves under supervision.” Invariably, people have nothing to eat if they don’t work.

And Bonus?

However, the Communists have laid elaborate rules on wages and bonus. The People’s Daily, for instance, classified the wages into eight grades. The lowest monthly pay is two-odd JMP dollars, for four “work points” earned. The highest is JMP$7.6 (not JMP$15 mentioned by “Finance Minister” Li) for 15 work points. It is not known in how many areas this system has been put into practice.

A concrete example is the Kuolin People’s Commune, which has a total of 6,794 men laborers and, quite notably, 7,899 women laborers. According to the Communist Financial and Economic Journal, this commune has five grades of wages: from JMP$4, to JMP$4.8, JMP$5.4, JMP$6, and JMP$6.7 a month. But from the wages is to be deducted JMP$3 to cover the meals. So ‘what is left will be JMP$1 for the lowest grade, or JMP$3.7 for the top grade. In addition, each person has to pay a 10-cent medical fee a month.

It must be rather difficult to get a bonus, for the Communists have laid at least five conditions: A laborer must:.

(1) Obey the Communist leadership and work enthusiastically;

(2) Fulfill or over-fulfill production quotas, which are always set very high;

(3) Love and protect public property, struggle against “evil elements and evil practices at all times;”

(4) Work at least 28 days a month under general conditions;

(5) Study hard for cultural, political and technical advancement.

No matter how hard a laborer may toil, he will not get more than JMP$57.60 a year, including food, wages and bonus, even if he takes the Communist promises for granted. What he will get a month, including food, will hardly come up to JMP$5 at most. This calculation is worked out by the Communist Sputnik People’s Commune, which sets its annual income at 9.2 million JMP dollars.

Of this total, taxes, production costs and administrative expenses will take away 18.6%. The lion’s share of 54.5% will slip into Communist pockets in the form of grain reserves, public accumulated fund, mobile fund, and other high-sounding terms. What is left for the commune members will be only 26.9%, -or for each person, JMP$ 57.60 a year. If the annual income should go up to 14 million JMP dollars, the portion reserved for commune laborers will be cut down to 23.8%.

‘Liberation’ of Women

Nine years after the Communist “liberation” of mainland China, this time, Chinese women are “thoroughly liberated” under the people’s commune. So wrote three Chinese women near Peiping in the November 6, 1958, issue of the Communist “Ta Kung Pao.”

Before they arrived at this conclusion, the three authoresses made a revealing account of their daily life in all these nine years.

“Every time we got our monthly allowances, we had three sleepless nights, calculating how to make the best use of the money and get along. Sometimes, we did not have enough food to eat, and in the last few days of the month, we were worrying just how we could make both ends meet.

“Moreover, which of us women ever had a good night’s sleep in these years? After the day’s labor, we returned home to cook meals, did some sewing and patching. We could not go to bed until after 11 p.m. and we were up again at 3:30 a.m. the next day.

This, in the Communists’ own words, was the life of Chinese women in mainland China before the commune system was imposed on them. At least they had their homes.

How are they living under the commune?

Now Chinese women are driven away from their homes, away from their husbands, and away from their children. For the “Ta Kung Pao” story continued: “In our Company, we women have hundred percent come out to join the labor.” Mrs. Pai Chin-ju, who had six children and an 86-year-old sick mother, was made a squad leader of the labor force, “thanks to the mess hall and nursery.”

We all eat at the mess hall, at right after the meal we go down to the field and work hard.” Indeed they are toiling so hard that “In these days our working spirit couldn’t be better. After a whole day labor, we go on for ‘night battle’ (till after midnight). Nobody is complaining, and nobody is passing the buck. In our hearts, we are so fine and swell. Isn’t it right? This time we women are truly and thoroughly liberated.”

In Canton alone, the Chinese Communists drafted housewives into labor teams by the end of 1958. To the Communists, the fair sex stands for nothing but serviceable working tools.

In Hai Ting, right under the shadow of Peiping, the village women. took the toilsome job of autumn harvesting after they were “liberated” from their homes. Women of the village were lined up into “rocket squads” to “challenge” men in deep plowing.

The people’s commune, as Communist jargo goes, has “turned the Chinese women over their backs,” that is, they are liberated from the warmth and love in their homes so that they may become slave laborers.

“Happy Home” For The Aged

For the aged, the people’s commune has its “Happy Home” where the grandpas and grandmas are supposed to spend “happily” the last years of their lives. But to many of the aged people, these “happy days” turned out to be all too short.

Old folks who are incapable of any manual labor are often persuaded to take “nutrition injections,” mainland sources reported. Death came at the heel of these injections, usually one to two weeks later.

Those who still can do some work are organized into labor companies. Old men are grouped into “Huang Chung” teams, because General Huang Chung (of legendary fame) could match any young warriors in muscular prowess in his 70’s. Grandmas are herded into “She Tai Chun” companies. In Chinese history, Grandma “She Tai Chun” spread terror when she marched to the battlefield.

Laden with these honorary titles, the white-haired mainlanders are forced to work no less hard than their sons and daughters. After they have exhausted their last drop of strength and fallen dead, their bodies could still serve some purposes. The Communists put human remains into big chemical instruments to be converted into fertilizers.

The age-old Chinese virtue of filial piety, under which sons and daughters used to provide a comfortable living for their aged parents, is completely smashed by the Communists. In mainland China today, no son or daughter is allowed, and able, to support his or her parents.

People Shed Tears

Such a system, however, is played up a great deal by the Communists. Said the New China News Agency: “On the first occasion when the wages were distributed, some people’s communes held a solemn ceremony which was attended by both men and women, young and old. On obtaining their wages, some of the peasants were moved to tears.” Working as slaves under the commune system, they had every reason to shed tears.

The Communists described this system as a “great event without parallel in history, for the peasants to have free meals for his family and draw regular income in the form of monthly wages.”

But, immediately, the Communists made it clear that even such small wages will not last long. Eventually, according to the Communists, the “supply” system will be expanded to include not only food, but other necessities, while the wages will be gradually cut down to nil. “The portion for distribution according to needs and for supply in given quantities will be gradually increased, and the portion of payment according to the work done will be gradually reduced. And so, the transition to Communism will be realized step by step.”

The Communists promise “mass cultural, recreational and sports activities” under the commune system, and talk about “library, theater, clubs reading room, broadcast listening.” But when people work 14 to 17 hours a day and barely snatch a few hours for sleep after their “night battles,” they can hardly enjoy these goods things even if they did exist other than on paper.

Of the commune’s total annual earnings, not more than 5% will be allowed for “educationa1, health, cultural and other welfare undertakings.” There will be no dividends to members, who are nominally shareholders of the commune.

Mess Hall

“Mess hall” is a very misleading term for the place where people eat their meals. Often, it is everything but a “hall” And definitely it doesn’t look like a cafeteria.

In some villages, people take their meals right in the fields, or under a tree. The place is “mess hall.” In other communes, a bamboo shed serves the purpose. Seldom is the “mess hall” a suitable building. Whatever the “mess halls” are, they have one thing in common: they are over-crowded.

Illiterate Professors

One of the strangest things about a commune is its education. Literally overnight, some hundreds of thousands of “colleges” and “universities” have sprung up across the Communist-controlled mainland, where most people are still illiterate. What these colleges and “red-expert” universities really are can be gauged by the qualification of their “professors”. The New China News Agency revealed on October 16, 1958: “Teachers are chosen in accordance with their production experience and real knowledge. Li Kuang-yuan, a blacksmith, and Liang Yung-lung, a carpenter, are teaching in the industrial college. With their experience of scores of years in production, they are able to combine education with productive labor. In this way, the shortage of teachers is never felt.

“Such teachers have highly effective methods of dealing with their subject matter. Li Pei-hsiung, a 70-year-old peasant now teaching at the agricultural university, took his students to a field hit by leaf roll pest ...

What is perhaps more “effective” is the method of Professor Shih Hsin-chen, a 66-year-old illiterate woman. A group of intellectuals and well-educated collegians of the Shanghai College of Social Science made a visit to Professor Shih’s university. The Communist Financial and Economic Research Journal has a full, vivid account:

“Shih Hsin-chen, a 66-year-old woman illiterate, was hog-raising professor of the Sputnik People’s Commune. She gave more than 100 lectures, each lasting from one and a half hours to two hours. She claimed in her lectures that for scores of years she never fed her hogs with rice or bran, and her hogs never fell sick. She said the feed she used for her hogs were tree leaves, wild vegetables, duckweeds, pea leaves, soybean leaves. Only on new year’s eve were her hogs allowed to enjoy a luxurious meal composed of maize cores and dried potato roots. She boasted that feed mixed with alum, plaster, jin-tan, watermelon, pear, sweet roots or orpiment could prevent the hogs from :being infected with cholera in the summer.”

In the presence of the genuine professors and collegians from Shanghai, the hog-raising “professor” drew her conclusion:

“My company learn a great lot from me, several provinces, several countries, all: bring (my) experience away. I here, all the world come to learn. You come from Shanghai. You too bring it back.”

The Shanghai professors quoted her word by word, and added: “What a crone!”

This is how the Communists are giving “everybody in people’s communes” an education. In many places, the Communists claim that more than 90% of the commune members “are receiving an education.”

Nurseries & Schools

Children have lost parental love under the people’s commune system. Babies are seized away from parents and concentrated in Communist-run nurseries. Parents are seldom permitted to visit their sons and daughters. In the nurseries, babies and small children are fed and trained by the state and, when they grow up, will work, fight and die for the state. They won’t know who their parents are.

Generally, children are supposed to have better food than adults, as the Communists are pinning their last hope on the next generation. But pictures published in Communist newspapers show the kids are dull-looking, clad in drab suits, apparently the victims of malnutrition. Lack of adequate care and medical supplies further harm their healthy growth.

Once the children enter grade schools, they are eligible for manual, labor. “Manual work,” said the Communist “Nan Fang Jih Pao” (Southern Daily), “will not only improve children’s health, but cultivate their love for labor.” So grade school children are sent to the fields to carry bricks, chisel stones, collect cotton harvests, feed hogs, cut straw, whenever weather permits.

For the younger generation, the Communists follow three basic rules: “Military pattern organization, combat-like movement, and collective living.” Children below nine years old are compulsorily taken into nurseries and kindergartens. At one district the Communists made surprise raids in to all houses’ one night and seized away all kids below nine. Wailing mothers were thrusted aside.

Elder children live in school dormitories. Middle school students are organized into “people’s communes” of their own. Like the communes for adults, the youngsters’ communes follow a set pattern of military organization, with regiments, battalions and companies. Their chief task: labor.

Military Discipline

What evidently interests the Communist most is military training of the mainland Chinese. To make every able-bodied person a soldier, the commune drafts its members between 16 and 40, regardless of sex, into a militia set-up with a separate line of command. This gives the Communists the benefit of easier domination through military control and deprives the members of any chance to rest after the long working hours.

Everyday after the work is over, the squad leaders report to the platoon leaders, the platoon leaders report to the company commanders, the company commanders report to the battalion commanders, and the battalion commanders report to the regiment commanders, on what has been done on the whole day. The regiment commanders keep the commune director well informed of the situation by periodical reports.

A sweeping change has also taken place in mainland China’s economic fabric under the commune system. Before the communes were established, some free marketing was still permitted in mainland China, although most key commodities were exchanged through state-owned commerce departments. But in a commune, all purchases and sales are conducted “collectively,” that is, in bulk. Commercial dealings among individuals have practically ceased to exist except in bigger cities.

Militia - Everybody A Soldier

One of Communist China’s most ambitious plans is to combine peasantry and soldiery into one. This is a plan tried in vain several times in Chinese history, but none of the attempts has been half as thorough.

By drafting every able-bodied man into militia troops under the commune system, Peiping hopes to send into battlefield tens of millions of trained soldiers the minute it clashes with the west in an armed conflict.

Men from 16 to 40 years old form the backbone of the Communist militia force. Amid daily labor, they take military training. But generally speaking, only the most trusted core Communists are given fire arms. The bulk of militia are equipped with “wooden rifles” or wooden clubs. They are the men to be first drafted in time of war.

Men in the 41-50 age bracket are organized into reserves. Young women are also forced to join, working as nurses, litter bearers, couriers, and “troop comforters,” a Communist jargon for camp followers. Teenagers below 16, and old men above 50 are put into the logistic service.

The people’s commune in Hsu-shui Hsien of Hopei Province, once inspected by Mao Tse-tung, furnishes a typical example of the militia set-up. All the commune members have been organized into two regiments, 191 battalions and 666 companies. Every morning, they practice drilling before going to work. After day-long toil, they have to practice drill again in the evening before taps. Their squad leaders are mostly demobilized Communist soldiers.

In Canton City, for instance, the Communists have organized six divisions of militia, including two for workers, two for students, one for Communist cadres, and one for peasants in suburban districts. Retired Communist officers are given the commands of battalions, companies and platoons. But it is the secretary of the Communist district office who is the real boss.

No More Intellectuals

The young men and women in the above picture are students of the Tsing Hua University of Peiping, best known of Chinese institutions of higher learning, established in 1911. They are doing the hardest kind of manual labor.

The Chinese Communists have invented a nice name for it. It is called “study goes hand in hand with work.” According to Kao Yi, “assistant to the President of Tsing Hua University,” writing in the “China Pictorial”:

“The main aim of this change is to do away with the remnants of the bourgeois educational system, and bring a Communist educational policy of identifying the intellectuals with the workers and peasants combining mental and manual labor and integrating studies with productive work, so that the schools will be transformed into institutions of production as well as learning.”

It is, in fact, one phase of the Communist campaign to keep intellectuals in line. By forcing them to work like coolies, the Communists aim to deflate their ego and remind them of their complete dependence upon the mercy of the regime.

On the other hand, new “red and expert universities” are springing up in the people’s communes like mushrooms after the rain. Anybody who can read and write is admitted into such universities. The “professors” are often illiterate old farmers or other tradesmen. The purpose is not so much to teach them knowledge, but to give them an uplift in prestige, so that peasants from “red and expert universities” can look a real college graduate in the eye as his equal in academic training.

In the end, there will be no such thing as the class of intellectuals on the Chinese mainland. There will only be laborers, with or without technical knowledge.

Economic Fabric

Consumer goods, such as cotton piece goods, under wears, and towels, will no longer be purchased singly by individual users as in the past. The commune will take care of collective procurements. Raw materials for the commune’s blast furnaces and factories are bought in bulk. Agricultural, native and special products are sold collectively to state commercial set - ups. What an individual may still buy, with the meager wage he earns, will be only a few small articles, tobacco, and wine, if they are available.

The Bank, now operating in the form of the credit department of a commune under the control of the state, will:

(1) Handle deposits by the Communist state” enterprises, units, and individuals within the commune;

(2) Issue agricultural, industrial and commercial loans inside the commune;

(3) Undertake accounts and, transfers inside the commune and with outside interests;

(4) Act as the treasury of the commune;

(5) Undertake banking business for state-owned factories, stores and schools inside the commune area but not part of the commune;

(6) Undertake other business entrusted to it by the Communist People’s Bank.

Shortly after the communes were established, there had been a run on the banks by the people to draw out their bank deposits for fear the money would be confiscated. The people spent the money in whatever way they could think of. Finally, the Communists had to clarify that bank deposits will still belong to the depositors. However, the Communists can always make the people “voluntarily surrender” their deposits whenever necessary.

A “Utopia”

Compared with the former “agricultural production cooperative,” the people’s commune:

(1) Is a much larger slave labor camp with a bigger working potentiality;

(2) Functions under rigid, complete Communist control;

(3) Has a widened, powerful administration;

(4) Is almost self-supporting;

(5) Can be mobilized for war at once;

(6) Is therefore all at once a political, military and production unit.

As for the future, the Communists are talking about “technical revolution and cultural revolution” to narrow down the “distinction between town and country and the distinction between physical labor and mental labor.” With no exception, everybody will be reduced to a working tool, and as slaves, people are all “equal”

So this is what the Chinese Communists conceive as their “Utopia.” With 99 percent of peasant households already included in the communes, the fondest dream of Mao Tse-tung is already taking shape. Now it has been turned into the greatest gamble in Chinese Communist history, and its failure will mean the end for the Peiping regime.

The Theory

The people’s commune is an almost inevitable step on the timetable of the Communists. All Communists agree with the theories behind the commune though they may differ in its timing.

The word “Communism” itself is derived from the word “commune.” The commune, introduced to the Chinese mainland by the Communists, however, has little in common with the historical Paris Commune which, true as it is, did provide the forerunners of Communism with nebulous ideas about a future world of Communism.

To a true Communist, the ultimate introduction of Communism is but a matter of time but must go through several stages. Lenin laid down the following phases:

Capitalism → Dictatorship of Proletariat→ Socialism→ Communism

Here, Socialism is used in the Communist interpretation of the word. It means a transitional period from neo-capitalism to Communism. In a Socialist state, so say the Communists, the guiding principle is “from each according to his ability; to each according to his labor.” The guiding principle for the ultimate Communist state is “from each according to his ability; to each according to his need.”

The Communist theoreticians say that from capitalism, a dictatorship of the proletariat will arise. In Russia, it was after the October Revolution of Nov. 7, 1917 when Lenin seized power from the democratic revolutionaries. In East Europe, a few satellite countries are still in the stage called dictatorship of the proletariat under the name of “people’s democracies.” On the Chinese mainland, the Communists introduced the dictatorship in 1949 under the high-sounding name of “new democracy.”

But this dictatorship of the proletariat is by no means the final aim of the Communist. From the dictatorship in which the capitalistic classes are to be utterly broken should emerge the socialistic state. There will be collective farms (as in Russia) or cooperative farms (as on the Chinese mainland). Private ownership, in its remnant form, is to be tolerated for the moment but is actively to be replaced by collective ownership. In other words, ownership of land and factories is to be held by groups instead of individuals.

This is the stage called Socialism. Both Russia and the Chinese mainland are today in that stage.

Nevertheless, the Communists will never stop unless they have succeeded in advancing into the stage of Communism. In that stage, there no longer will be collective ownership. It will be replaced by what is called people’s ownership, meaning that the future society, not individuals nor groups will take possession of all properties on earth. State machineries and even the Communist party will cease to exist since the people will all be living in everlasting Communism.

That is the Utopia of all Communists. What determines the time for a Communist land to switch from Socialism into ultimate Communism? All Communists from Karl Marx on down agree: productive means and productivity.

Based on the presumption that all capitalistic countries in the world will have been replaced by Communist states, the Communists envisage that when productive forces have provided the material basis for transition into ultimate Communism, then. Socialism should give way. The Communists today even think that ultimate Communism could be brought forth even in the world has not been rid of capitalistic states such as the United States as long as the productive forces of the Communists are stronger than the productive forces of the Capitalists.

But the Chinese Communists have gone one step further. While Russia is hesitant to introduce full Communism, the Communists of Peiping introduced in July last year the “people’s commune” which might be termed as “junior Communism.” The Chinese Communists themselves term the commune system as a transition from Socialism to Communism which will be marked by what they call “higher phase of people’s commune.” Here is what the central committee of the Chinese Communist party has to say about the commune system:

“Though the people’s communes still practice the system of collective ownership and the distribution system whether it be the wage system or remuneration according to labor days, is still to each according to his labor’ and not ‘to each according to his need’; nevertheless the people’s commune will be the best organizational form for the building of Socialism and the gradual transition to Communism. It will develop into the basic social unit of the future Communist society.

“Our task at the present stage is the building of Socialism. The establishment of people’s communes is undertaken first of all for the acceleration of Socialist construction, and the building of Socialism is to actively make preparations for transition to Communism. It appears now that the realization of Communism in our country is no longer a thing of the distant future. We should actively employ the form of the people’s commune to produce a concrete path for transition to Communism.”

In connotations to the optimistic note contained in the last two sentences, the Chinese Communists said that a higher phase of the commune will be introduced in three to five years. However, on December 10, they revised this prophesy to twenty years or more.

Life in a ‘People’s Commune’

—Quoted from the “China Youth News” of Peiping, September 27, 1958, on the Chaoying Commune, Shangcheng, Honan Province

“At daybreak, bells were rung and whistles were blown to assemble in the Chaoying commune. In about a quarter of an hour the peasants lined up. At the command of the company and squad commanders the teams marched to the fields, holding flags. Here one no longer sees peasants in groups of two or three smoking and going slowly and leisurely to the field. What one hears are sounds of measured steps and march songs. The desultory living habits which have been with the peasants for thousands of years are gone forever. How tremendous is this change!

“To adapt itself to collective labor and collective life, the commune launched a movement for merging villages and moving from one dwelling to another. Peasants in groups carried their luggage and moved to localities near to their jobs. How marvelous is this change! Since ancient time the peasants have treasured their homes left over by their ancestors above everything else. Now that private plots, houses and part of livestock have come under the commune ownership, all the ties that bind the peasants are broken and they feel relaxed. They said: ‘It makes no difference where we move. Anyway we are in our Chaoying home.’ There is nothing left in their old home for them to long for. The commune is their home.

“Mess halls and nurseries are found in villages. All houses are locked, wi th their dwellers going to the fields and factories. One can no longer see the phenomenon in which each family cooks and rears its children. The frames of individual families which had existed for thousands of years have been completely smashed ...

“In the wide expanse of the field are seen small furnaces, chimneys of firebrick kilns, and furnaces for making cement. From many thatched houses come the sound of beating ball bearings. By the creeks groups of people are washing iron ore. On the mountains hundreds of people are opening up mines day and night ...

“In several small white-washed rooms was seen a group of old people having a good time, talking and laughing. Min Cheng-fang, known as an optimist, was telling stories with great enthusiasm from the Three Kingdoms...

“They declared: ‘We old folks must do something for the commune.’ They set up a ‘Huang .Chung’ (an aged hero in the period of the Three Kingdoms) company and She Tai-chun (an aged heroine in the Sung Dynasty) company to do some light jobs-rolling cement into balls -for a nearby cement factory ...

“Over 1,000 old people are leading a happy life in their late years at the Happy Home of the commune. Over 5,000 children are leading a happy life in their early years in nurseries. The old are looked after and the young are brought up-such a life begins to materialize here…

“When the commune was set up, the peasants voluntarily surrendered their private plots and houses after ‘comparison and debate.’ Certain members surrendered their poultry.... Thus they link their destiny closely with the destiny of their commune and thousands of peasants from a single entity. Their ideology, moral concepts, and relations between man and man have undergone a tremendous change.

“Formerly, peasants were always fond of taking things to their homes. Now they are taking things to the commune. When the commune set up mess halls and needed water jars, they brought their water jars from their houses. When factories needed desks, they brought their best desks to the factories. Almost all the non-productive articles used by the several thousands of factories were contributed by members. Here is their comment: ‘How can we expect the commune to spend money on these things?’ Now, instead of calculating their personal interests, they are calculating the interests of the commune. In the commune you can see a new rise in Communist thinking everywhere.”

New Recipes

Proof of grain shortage on the Chinese mainland from the 115th issue of “Chinese Women,” published by Peiping, urging public mess halls to following the recipes for these tantalizing dishes. Ingredients? They are all made from sweet potato and nothing else.

The Causes

Why did the Chinese Communists want to establish the people’s communes? Why did Peiping go all out to enforce a system which even Soviet Russia has not dared to attempt? And why did Mao Tse-tung decide to launch the movement last: August, probably against the advise of his subordinates?

In short, why the communes?

The reasons are not far to seek. They sprang mainly from the economic difficulties encountered by the Communist regime.

Every good Communist believes that collective farms make up the only road to the realization of Marxism-Leninism, despite the fact that the system has not worked too well after.30 years in Soviet Russia. Last year, Nikita Khrushchev overruled the opposition of such “anti-party” elements as Georgi Malenkov and V.M. Molotov and ordered the dissolution of agricultural machinery stations in the U.S.S.R. and selling of the tractors to collective farms. He was in fact moving backward in the path envisioned by Marx, but he had to do it to please Russian peasants.

Neither did the system have much success in European satellite countries. Most of them have yet to complete the collectivization program, while some have halted altogether or even given up the collective farms already formed.

Failure of Agricultural Cooperatives

On the Chinese mainland, the system has also failed.

Peiping did not reach agricultural collectivization all in one step. Immediately after 1949, the Chinese Communists started the bloody “land reform” program, promising poor peasants that they would “turn over on their backs” if they joined the struggle against landlords, rich farmers and overseas Chinese, liquidating their properties and dividing up the land. In two years, the Communists confiscated 63 million acres of land, constituting 70 percent of all arable land on the mainland. They seized without payment one million tons of foodstuffs, and US$5,000 million worth of factories, houses, farm tools, draft animals, as well as hoarded gold and silver. What the poor peasant families got from this was, however, only one to three mou of land each, or one half of one acre.

What “land reform” accomplished was not the promised “turn over” of the peasant, but the gradual concentration of land in the hands of the new landlords and the mushrooming of money-lenders in the countryside, the majority of whom were Communist party cadres. The food situation was not improved, and poverty remained as always.

Alarmed by this, the Communists borrowed from the “advanced experience” of Stalin in the 1930’s, and enforced in three stages the agricultural cooperativization campaign. From 1953 to 1957, the “mutual aid teams” gave way to “preliminary agricultural production cooperatives,” then to “advanced agricultural production cooperatives.” This was completed by the end of 1957, with some 750,000 advanced agricultural cooperatives dotting the Chinese mainland. In some aspects these advanced cooperatives, which is just a fancy name for collective farms, served their purposes. Through them, Peiping was able to strengthen its control over the production of food and other raw materials, to get more labor out of the peasants and to draw from the accumulated capital of the cooperative funds for its industrialization program.

However, Mao’s problems were by no means solved. The conversion from “land reform” to “collectivization” only resulted in the change of the form of productive relations rather than the means of production. What meager production increase there was simply could not catch up with the multiplying population. While the regime frantically searched for foodstuffs for export to exchange for machinery and tools, it found its over-ambitious industrialization program always hampered by the lack of capital. And because of the export efforts and the neglecting of consumer industries, serious shortages occurred from time to time on foodstuffs, edible oil, meat, cotton fabrics and even rubber shoes. Miserable in life, the peasants aimed their hatred on the agricultural cooperatives which they never welcomed in the first place.

Four Contradictions

Chinese Communist documents admitted of the existence of serious contradictions under the cooperative system.

The first was the conflict between the cooperative and its members. Nominally owned by all of its members, the cooperative took away year after year a sizeable portion of the fruit of their labor in the form of taxes, “voluntary” donations, bonds, grain collection, accumulated funds and public reserve funds. It demanded more work from its members, but paid them increasingly less. The peasants, on the other hand, wished to spend more time on their private reserved lots or other cottage industries. This led to all forms of sabotage, slow down strikes, stealing, setting fire to grain storages and even open revolt.

The second contradiction existed among the cooperatives themselves. Conflict of interest became unavoidable when each had to consider its own profit. Differences in location, soil fertility and vegetation made some cooperatives better off than the “poor co-ops,” adding further to the dissatisfaction of peasants in the latter.

The third one arose between “state farms” and agricultural cooperatives. The former were occasionally tractor farms, which still needed short-term help from nearby cooperatives, but mostly consisted of political prisoners serving terms of “reform through labor.” They fell into the same kind of contradiction with other agricultural cooperatives.

The fourth contradiction was built into the Communist system. It existed, and still exists, between Communist cadres and the peasants. The privileged class of Communist party members, particularly those holding key position in cooperatives, did not share the same back-breaking labor as other cooperative members, but drew far more in wages and supplies. It was easy to understand the disillusion of the poor peasant who experienced the bitterness of the two “turnovers” but found that it only left him poorer than ever before.

What is the solution to these contradictions? It lies in “the formation of the people’s communes,” said Mao Tse-tung on August 9, 1958, in Shantung province. Twenty days later, the all-powerful Central Politburo of the Chinese Communist party met in Peitaiho, Hopeh province, and gave the order to make the hitherto limited experiments in Liaoning and Honan provinces a nation-wide campaign.

Miracle Yields?

To cover up the apparent food shortage on the mainland, and in keeping with the propaganda barrage on the “great leap forward.” the Chinese Communists launched a series of “agricultural sputniks” last summer, largely on paper.

From the first one reported on July 18, claiming the record yield of 5,806 catties per mou, the figure snowballed faster than under the peak period of Dr, Goebbels. On September 4, the New China News Agency alleged that an agricultural production cooperative in Lien hsien, Kwangtung province, harvested 60,437 catties of dried unhulled rice per mou.

Since one mou is roughly one sixth of an acre, this corresponds to the astronomical yield of 180 tons of rice per acre. It is ten times higher than any world record of isolated per acre yield.

The girl in the picture underneath, according to the People’s Pictorial published by Peiping, was squatting on unharvested rice which amazingly stood her weight without bending an inch. Even in the thickest jungle in the tropic, no plant be grown so close to each other.

Japanese repatriates who returned to their own country last October gave out the secret: the Communists grew the rice in many water paddies and then transplant them together when harvesting time was near. A big ballyhoo was made at harvesting, with local party chief coming to weigh in the crop as a propaganda gimmick.

Natural Calamities

Of course, there were other factors behind Mao’s determination to push through the commune system. Not the least of which was the decline in agricultural production last year on the Chinese mainland, due to the extensiveness of areas hit by natural calamities.

On June 30, 1958, while reporting on “timely rains” in many provinces, the official New China News Agency also revealed that there were widespread droughts earlier in central Szechuan, the Yangtze valley, Honan, Shantung, Hopei, Kansu and Manchuria. Hopei “had not rained in more than 200 days,” said the despatch. The NCNA let it be known on September 17 that “the droughts in Kiangsi and Hunan provinces were partly relieved by rains.” And on October 10, the “ministry of agriculture” formally admitted that Yunnan province was affected by droughts “unprecedented in the last 60 years.” It could be seen that at least fourteen provinces suffered from drought last year. Summed up the NCNA on September 26: “The extensiveness of drought-stricken areas and the duration of the droughts were unprecedented in the history of the Chinese people’s republic.”