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Small Industry and the Chinese Model of Development
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2009
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In the shadow of the industrialization programme directly carried out by the Central Government of the Chinese People's Republic over the past two decades, there has occurred a less visible effort at industrial development under the auspices of the provincial governments and other local authorities. Widely dispersed throughout China, yet the origin of over half the nation's gross industrial output in the 1950s, local industries must have significantly affected popular understanding of the development process and popular reaction to it. At times they have even been the focus of debate over alternative approaches to the problem of achieving rapid industrialization in Chinese conditions. More intimately associated with the process of industrialization than individual handicrafts, they are capable, because of their relatively simple technology and small scale, of providing a medium for alleviating a number of problems left unsolved by large-scale and technologically advanced industries. Over a period of 20 years, such problems have run the gamut from shortages of high-grade materials required by the technologically demanding large-scale sector, to the inequalities in living standards, cultural levels and life styles created or aggravated by the development of large-scale industries concentrated in urban areas.
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References
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62. For one example, see NF, 8 06 1961, p. 1Google Scholar, in which all of the industrial enterprises of a commune are described as previously having been handicraft co-operatives or co-operative small groups.
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71. About two million workers were shifted out of agriculture over the period between the iron and steel movement of autumn 1958 and the middle of 1960, comprising nearly one million transferred to industrial enterprises at the hsien level and above, and over one million moved into commune extractive, processing and manufacturing activities (Tzu-yang, Chao, “Let the Whole People Develop Agriculture Energetically,” JMJP, 23 07 1960 in SCMP, No. 2319)Google Scholar. Two million is also the number of workers reported transferred to the production teams from “various fronts” and from commune and brigade enterprises, in late 1960 (Yü, Ch'en, “Report on Work of the Third Session of the Second Kwangtung Provincial People's Congress (Excerpts),” NF, 4 12 1960Google Scholar, in SCMP, No. 2419).
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88. The quotation continues: “Where conditions permit, coordination zones, and then provinces, should establish relatively independent but varied industrial systems.” The translation is from “China's Road of Socialist Industrialization,” in Peking Review, No. 43.Google Scholar
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92. Kojima, , in The Developing Economies, 03 1967, p. 64.Google Scholar
93. For earlier discussions of the role of small-scale plants in the fertilizer industry, see Close, Alexandra, “Down to Earth,” The Far Eastern Economic Review, 8 12 1966, pp. 517–522Google Scholar; MacDougall, Colina, “Fertilizer Drive,” The Far Eastern Economic Review, 1 07 1965, pp. 14–16Google Scholar; and Kojima, , in The Developing Economies, 03 1967, p. 61Google Scholar. Perhaps because of the speed with which small-scale production was said to be growing in the period 1965–69, the estimates made by these authors of the proportion of nitrogenous fertilizer production originating in small or medium plants as of 1965 are considerably smaller than the figure cited above, although at 10–11 per cent. still substantial.
94. TKPHKE, “Small Nitrogenous Fertilizer Plants Spring Up,” 17 04 1969, p. 5.Google Scholar
95. Donnithorne, , China's Economic System, pp. 133–134Google Scholar. Some recent accounts of the development of local power production can be found in Peking Review, No. 41 (10 10 1969), pp. 36, 39Google Scholar; TKPHKE, 22 05 1969, p. 5Google Scholar; TKPHKE, 26 06 1969, p. 5Google Scholar. It is relevant here to note the claims of large increases in the production of power machinery for irrigation. Measured in horsepower, output of such machinery was reported by 1965 to have grown to 23 times its 1956 level (TKPHKE, 13 04 1966, p. 3).Google Scholar
96. Donnithorne, , China's Economic System, pp. 133–134Google Scholar. Recent reports, however, refer to construction of power stations with capacities of only a few kilowatts. See, e.g., NCNA broadcast, 17 07 1970Google Scholar, in FBIS, Vol. I, No. 140 (21 07 1970), pp. B2–B4.Google Scholar
97. One's confidence in the technology employed in these plants is strengthened by United Nations reports of a breakthrough in the technology of producing synthetic ammonia on a very small scale (UNIDO, Industrialization and Productivity, No. 7 (1964))Google Scholar. The Chinese claim to have pioneered the technology, asserting that “there is no precedent in other parts of the world for the production of synthetic ammonia in small factories” (NCNA, 7 06 1966)Google Scholar. Indeed, they were describing such factories as early as December 1959 (Hua-hsueh kung-yeh (Chemical Industry), No. 21 (6 11 1959), p. 15)Google Scholar and their scale seems somewhat smaller than that of the plants described in the above UNIDO bulletin.
98. The development of technologies which do not reflect the relative factor availabilities in advanced, industrial countries, demands a large measure of inventiveness and creativity from technical workers. The line between “rightists” and “revolutionaries” among Chinese engineers, designers and technicians seems to be drawn in part according to their attitude towards such intermediate technologies, at variance with inherited professional knowledge but adapted to Chinese conditions.
99. There has been some dispute about the method of rationalization: e.g., large-scale vs. small-scale, relatively comprehensive production vs. relatively specialized, etc.
100. “The Peng Chen Counterrevolutionary Clique's Crime is Most Heinous,” Nung-yeh chi-hsieh chi-shu, No. 6 (18 09 1967)Google Scholar, in SCMM, No. 610, p. 7Google Scholar. Also “Wipe Out State Monopoly,”, No. 6, in SCMM, No. 610, p. 15.Google Scholar
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