The early development of the Chinese communes was intimately linked with the decentralisation of the industrial and administrative machinery, foreshadowed at the Eighth Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1956 and carried out during 1957. The rural communes provided the most efficient unit for the management of small-scale industry set up under this scheme, for mobilising manpower in irrigation, implementing repair and other capital works in agriculture, and for generating the internal savings needed to finance investment. Further, they could be used to free women from housework, through the communal facilities they provided, so as to supplement the labour force needed for such undertakings.
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