The economic disruption brought about by the ideologicallydetermined policies of the Great Leap Forward (1958-60), the abrupt withdrawal of Soviet experts (mid-1960), and the natural calamities of the three bad years (1959-61) led to a rethinking of communist China's approach to economic development and a revision of key economic policies. By the second half of 1960 it became clear to even the most dogmaticallyminded Chinese leaders that ideological faith and centrally-inspired mass enthusiasm were not substitutes for economic calculation. The result was the introduction late in 1960 of a series of new economic policies collectively known as Readjustment, Consolidation, Filling-Out, and Raising Standards. The methodological guidelines for the new course were gradualness, a modicum of intersectoral balance, an appreciation of the overwhelming rural realities of China's society, and a new understanding of quality as an important dimension of economic growth. However, hand in hand with the policy of prudence, moderation, realism, and restraint, went a renewed assault on the citizens' political consciousness under the name of Socialist Education. Launched in 1962, the campaign was aimed at preventing the essentially revisionist economic policies from seeping through into the realms of culture and politics and turning into the muchfeared Soviet-type revisionism after the disappearance of the present generation of Chinese leaders. Both in its intensity and the shrillness with which it was pursued, the socialist education campaign (culminating in what came to be known as the Proletarian Cultural Revolution) revealed the anxiety with which China's aging leaders viewed the possible future course of events in the country, and the continued suspicion in which they held the rising generations of technocrats, engineers, and other experts.' The campaign is still on. It injects into the new economic course an element of tension and a suggestion of impermanence which may in the end threaten the real achievements made since the abandonment of the Great Leap. Agriculture as the Foundation In a reversal of the 1953-57 Soviet-type, capital-intensive, heavy industry-oriented planning, and the 1958-60 Great Leap industry-oriented but labor-intensive political drive, the new policy inaugurated in the latter part of 1960 stresses sectoral balance and pays special attention to the hitherto most neglected sector-agriculture. In December 1964 Chou En-lai