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The Guiders and the Guided

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Andrew J. Watson
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Extract

One of the most frequent questions one is asked on returning from a visit to China is whether the tour was guided or whether one could do what one liked and forage for oneself. The question worries both academics and non-academics, whatever their particular interests. The assumptions behind the question would appear to be that one can only really discover anything of value by working as an individual and that a guided tour is only a propaganda exercise. While both assumptions contain an element of truth, they certainly do not express the full reality. The academic aim of extended field work in China is a practical impossibility at the moment and, even were it possible, it would require the assistance and guidance of large numbers of Chinese. The interpretation may belong to the academic but his data depend on the co-operation of others. Similarly, the extent to which a guided tour is a propaganda exercise is a function of one's previous experience and knowledge. The more Chinese one can speak and read, for example, the less likely it is that one can be misled.

Type
Report from China
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 49 , January 1972 , pp. 136 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1972

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References

1. For example at Tachai Commune we were told at one time that there were 150 labour powers (lao-tung-li) in the brigade, that the average income per labour day per labour power was 1·50 yuan, and that the average income per head for a population of 420 was 300 yuan per year. Assuming the labour powers worked 300 days per year, they could earn a total of 67,500 yuan but the average income for 420 people required 126,000 yuan. Fortunately we were at Tachai long enough to be able to question this point and be told that there are in addition supplementary labour powers (women, children and the elderly) capable of working 100 labour days and also half labour powers. More than 90 per cent, of the people take part in paid labour and also full labour powers work up to 340 days per year. (The definition of a labour power varies according to locality but is usually related to the working capacity of a healthy adult male.)Google Scholar

2. The visits were made during a tour of China for members of the Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding, on 3–27 04 1971.Google Scholar

3. The Socialist Education Movement began in 1965 in the area south of Sian. During the first half of 1966 a team of students from the Foreign Languages Institute in Sian went to Lan-t'ien County to assist the movement. Their work was interrupted by the Cultural Revolution.Google Scholar

4. The per capita grain issue is made up of two amounts of grain. The basic amount consists of the quantity of grain considered essential for subsistence. This is issued to all commune members regardless of other factors. The rest depends on the amount of labour performed.Google Scholar

5. I.e., the extension of private plots and of free markets, an increase in the number of small enterprises with sole responsibility for their own profits and losses, and the fixing of output quotas on the basis of individual households.Google Scholar

6. At Shuang Wang Brigade it was said that each household has to supply the collective with 20,000 catties of manure per annum for each pig owned. In return, they are awarded one labour day for each 1,000 catties. However, as a pig is not capable of producing 20,000 catties of excreta per annum, the first figure is wrong. It may have been 2,000. This is another example of the need to digest and check on information by supplementary questions and also of the uneven quality of the statistics provided.Google Scholar

7. Comparative data for other brigades and communes are (all quantities per mou per annum):Google Scholar

8. Communes near Sian and the commune near Weinan own lavatories in the respective cities.Google Scholar

9. This method is the local variant of the Tachai method. At Tachai we were told that evaluation meetings are now only held once a year. Moreover, although time spent working on various tasks is still recorded, there is a minimum differentiation between the work points awarded for different types of work.Google Scholar

10. A brief account of this factory from published sources is given in Liu, Jung-chiao, China's Fertilizer Economy (Edinburgh University Press, 1971), p. 132.Google Scholar

11. At another factory there was also a “director's office” which was described as “having relations with superior levels over major matters.” It would appear that as yet there is some variation in the number and role of these offices under the revolutionary committee.Google Scholar

12. (Kung-jen tai-piao ta hui.) Workers' congresses are also the successors of the workers' mass organizations of the Cultural Revolution. During the period of the visit they were still being established in factories throughout the country. The rate of establishment and type of structure appeared to vary. Most factories already had them in Canton and Hangchow but the Shanghai Machine Tool Plant had not, and the Shanghai Docks area which we visited only had a preparatory committee. The structure was hierarchical from factory level congresses up to municipal at least. By contrast I was told at the Sian Handicrafts factory that the workers belonged to the Sian Workers' Congress and that individual factories did not have their own individual unit.Google Scholar