Die Vertragsverantwortungssysteme im Kontext der ordnungspolitischen Umgestaltung der chinesischen Landwirtschaft

Abstract Dealing with the development of the responsibility system in Chinese agriculture since 1978 the author stresses the relationship between the reform attempted by Chinese intellectuals and the communist party's policy of restructuring its governmental force in the countryside. The relationship between the intellectuals and the party had never been clearly defined, so the intellectuals had taken the reform concept of the party as a chance to strengthen their position within the party-dominated state. They thus looked for a role which would make them more acceptable to the party. They soon became proponents of the reform in order to accelerate economic develop- ment, which in turn would provide increasing demand for their expertise. Seen in this way, the analysis of the party’s policy of decollectivization of agriculture made by the scientists of the Guowuyuan Nongyanzhongxin Fazhanyanjiusuo (Development Research Institute at the Agricultural Research Center of the State Council) during the mid-eighties reads more like the propagation of the introduction of market forces, of commodity-orientation than of subsistence production by petty farmers, the diversification of property forms etc than of the real changes that had taken place in the countryside. The statistical material presented by the State Council’s researchers is meagre and filtered so as to stimulate continuance of the reformers’ policy. It therefore only stresses the advantages of reform and illustrates certain achievements of the restructuring policy in the early eighties like rapid income increase through peasant sideline production, house building and so on. But no attention was given by the researchers to one of the severest problems of China’s development: the impact of the household-centered agricultural policy on demographic growth and the resulting demand for food etc.