 How Did "Free Markets" Start? |
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| How Did "Free Markets" Start? |
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| 1. Commune System Disbanded The government directed that the People's Communes, which had the basic unit of agricultural production since April 1958, be disbanded beginning in October 1983. By the spring of 1985, when the work was completed, 56,000 communes had been reorganized into 91,138 townships, which were further subdivided into 940,000 village committees.* Commune land under the village committees was divided up into small plots (about 10 Chinese mu (  ), less than 2 acres). For a nominal fee, the government leased
the land back to individual farmer families. This was an astounding change for
farmers who had lived under a production system tightly controlled by the government for
35 years -- a system that told them what to grow, subsidized their farm tools and
fertilizers and bought all of their output at fixed prices set by the government. |
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* Statistics from The Reform and Development of China's Rural Economy, edited by Gao Shangquan and Chi Fulin, Foreign Language Press, Beijing, 1997.
