RURAL POLICY OF THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Abstract

The report examines rural development of the People's Republic of China and agricultural policy of the Communist Party of China in the second half of the 20th and early 21st centuries. After the end of World War II, the Chinese Communist Party largely secured its victory over the Kuomintang in the Civil War (1946-1949) thanks to the rural population of China, a predominantly agrarian country at the time. The reforms in the village envisage the implementation of an agrarian reform, expressed in the confiscation of land and means of production from the large landowners and wealthier peasants using hired labor and their distribution among the landless peasants. The first stage of the agrarian reform was carried out until 1952 and was related to the land acquisition of poor peasants. The second stage took place during the First Five-Year Plan (1953-1957) and was related to the collectivization of agriculture. In practice, the agrarian reform ends with the complete cancellation of private ownership of land. At the beginning of the period of the so-called "Great Leap Forward" (1958-1961), cooperatives were transformed into people's communes - basic public organizations in which agricultural and industrial production, trade, education, etc. was developed. After a short period of calm between 1962 and 1965, in May 1966 Mao Zedong launched the "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", whose vanguard were the student-run "Red Guard Squads", the so-called "Hóng Wèibīng". Undoubtedly, the impact of the Cultural Revolution (May 16, 1966 – October 6, 1976) on the PRC in social, political, cultural and economic aspects was very negative. The economy was hit particularly hard in 1967-1968. The death of Mao Zedong on September 9, 1976, the elimination of the far-left Gang of Four, the complete seizure of power by Hua Guofeng on October 7, 1976, and the rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping, set the stage for major changes in the country's economic management. The beginning of economic reform is associated with the 3rd Plenary Session after the 11th Congress of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, held from December 18 to 22, 1978 in Beijing. The reforms start in the rural areas where 80% of China's population lived at that time and marked the beginning of the new path of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, initially reviving the family form of land management, and then developing channels for the sale of agricultural products, reviving rural enterprises related to the processing of raw materials from the rural economy. First coined by Deng Xiaoping in 1982, the concept of socialism with Chinese characteristics aims to redefine the relations between planning and socialism, and market economy and capitalism. It has preserved institutions of socialism and public ownership while importing sophisticated management experience and advanced market mechanisms from developed countries. The term "socialist market economy" was introduced in 1992 by Jiang Zemin.