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The Performance of Industry During the Cultural Revolution: Second Thoughts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Robert Michael Field
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Extract

Mao Zedong, dissatisfied with the growing ossification of the Party and government bureaucracies, in the spring of 1966 launched the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. He believed that China's youth required a “revolutionary experience” to renew their faith in a revolution that had taken place before most of them had been born or were old enough to remember. The Cultural Revolution (1966–76) quickly became a period of widespread, often violent, social upheaval that affected the performance of industry.

Type
20 Years On: Four Views on the Cultural Revolution
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 108 , December 1986 , pp. 625 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1986

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References

1. Guofeng, Hua, “Report on the work of the government”, delivered 26 February 1978, Peking Review, No. 10 (1978), p. 19Google Scholar;

2. Field, Robert Michael, McGlynn, Kathleen M., and Abnett, William B., “Political conflict and industrial growth in China: 1965–1977”, in Congress of the United States, Joint Economic Committee, Chinese Economy Post Mao (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), pp. 239–83Google Scholar;

3. Chengrui, Li, “An analysis of China's economic situation during the 10 years of internal disorder-and a look at the reliablity of the statistics from this period”, Jingji yanjiu (Economic Research), No. 1 (1984), pp. 23–31Google Scholar;

4. Ibid.

5. For a comparison of estimated indexes of industrial output constructed in 1978 – after the Cultural Revolution ended but before the SSB resumed publication of official statistics - with current official indexes, see Appendix, Table A3.

6. Annual data are given in SSB, Statistical Yearbook of China, 1984 (Hong Kong: Economic and Information Agency, 1984), pp. 220–29Google Scholar;

7. For the derivation of the series, see Appendix, Tables A2 and A3; and for a discussion of the defects of the official method, seeField, Robert Michael, “China: the changing structure of industry”, in Congress of the United States, Joint Economic Committee, China's Economy Looks Toward the Year 2000 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office), Vol. I, pp. 509–513Google Scholar;

8. The change in the structure of employment was important in the long run, but not during the 13 years from 1975 to 1978. SeeField, Robert Michael, “Slow growth of labour productivity in Chinese industry, 1952–81”, The China Quarterly, No. 96 (12 1983), pp. 647–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

9. This rate of growth, which is the weighted average of growth in agriculture, industry, construction, transport and trade, may overstate actual growth because data on the net value of output by branch of industry are not available. As a result, it does not take the change in the structure of industry into account. The official rate was 5.2%.

10. SSB, Guanghui ti 35-nian (Thirty-Five Glorious Years) (Beijing: China Statistics Press, 1984), p. 163Google Scholar;