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Democratic Management in the Rural Communes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
Extract
At the lowest level of state administration in China some direct popular control of government is formally sanctioned. It is, therefore, at this level that the apparent conflict between the Chinese Communist Party's desire for mass participation in government and Party leadership over policy formation and execution can be analysed. The rural communes serve as a logical point of departure in this analysis. When formed in 1958, the rural communes replaced the hsiang as the basic unit of government administration for roughly 80 per cent, of the population. At the same time “democratic management,” a Party term for all kmds of mass political activity was emphasised, and by the autumn of 1958 a movement for the “Democratisation of Management” was under way. By December of the same year, however, the Central Committee of the Party warned that “militarisation of organisation” (another battle cry of that period) must not be used as a pretext to impair “democratic life” in the communes. From then on, the rural communes have been, in effect, a testing ground for the Party's policy towards popular participation in government.
- Type
- The Rural Communes
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The China Quarterly 1963
References
1 “Resolution on Some Questions Concerning the People's Communes,” Sixth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1958), pp. 43–44.Google Scholar
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4 At the two higher levels a supervisory committee, elected by the members' congresses, supposedly oversees and audits the work of other commune organs, hears complaints, etc. As it is responsible to the local people's procuratorato and has little contact with the masses it will not be discussed in this article.
5 Illustrations of commune management structure can be found in: “Wei-hsing Jen-min Kung-she Shih-hsing Chien-chang, Ts'ao-an” (Experimental Charter of Weihsing People's Commune, Draft), People's Daily, 09 4, 1958Google Scholar; Lun Jen-min Kung-she Yü Kung-ch'an Chu-i (The People's Communes and Communism), ed. by the Basic Marxism-Leninism Department of the Chinese People's University (Peking: Chinese People's University Publishing Co., 1958)Google Scholar; Wei, Tso, “Jen-min Kung-she Ti Tsu-chih Yüan-tse Shin Min-chu Chi-chung Chih” (The Organisational Principle of the People's Communes is Democratic Centralism), Workers' Daily (Peking), 08 4, 8, 1961.Google Scholar
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37 “Communiqué of the Tenth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China,” Peking Review, No. 39, 1962, p. 6Google Scholar. One of the first authoritative admissions of the presence of some popular dissatisfaction and some official incompetence was the report of the Central Committee's Ninth Plenum in January 1961. See Peking Review, No. 4, 1961.Google Scholar
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