How should the path of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics be taken?

A large population, relatively scarce agricultural resources, a large volume of grain consumption, and an insufficient capacity of agriculture to support the population - these are the prominent features of China's national conditions. How to feed about 20% of the world's population with about 10% of the world's arable land and 6.5% of its water resources has long been the number one development challenge facing modern China.

Agriculture is the foundation of the national economy. After the founding of New China, China's agricultural development and transformation were essentially agricultural modernization, and its special national conditions determined that it had to embark on a path of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics. This path is not only one of the specific paths of the "China's overall path," but also an important component of China's "five-sphere integrated" socialist modernization. In our large developing country with a population of more than a billion, this has been an objective law repeatedly proven by history. This article examines the development process, characteristics, and forward direction of the path of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics, with a view to anticipating the tomorrow of China's agricultural development.

I. The initial period of agricultural transformation and development (1949-1978)

The period from the founding of New China to the eve of reform and opening up was the historical starting point of China's agricultural modernization and transformation. During this period, China was not only the world's most populous country, but also the world's largest rural-population country and the world's largest poor-population country. Mao Zedong had a fairly profound understanding of this basic national condition. In his report at the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, he pointed out: "China still has about 90 percent of scattered, individual agricultural economy and handicraft economy, which is backward and not much different from ancient times; about 90 percent of our economic life still remains as it was in ancient times." "For a fairly long period to come, our agriculture and handicrafts, in their basic form, are and will still be scattered and individual - that is to say, similar to ancient times." This shows that China was a very typical traditional agricultural society and an underdeveloped country.

In 1952, China's rural population accounted for 87.5% of the total, and the agricultural labor force accounted for 88.0%. At that time, the rural population was almost entirely absolutely poor. In fact, China's agricultural labor productivity was extremely low. According to Angus Maddison's calculations, if calculated at constant 1987 prices, China's agricultural value added in 1952 was only equivalent to 92.3% of that in 1933, and agricultural labor productivity was equivalent to 94.8% of that in 1933. This shows that the level of China's agricultural development in 1952 was still below the level of 1933.

In 1949, when New China was founded, the level of agricultural production was greatly lower than that of 1936. National agricultural production fell by 25% compared with 1936, of which grain fell by 22.1% and cotton fell by 48%.

Historically, China was also a very typical country of great famines. During the great famines in the South in 1946 and 1947, in just two years 17.5 million people starved to death in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hunan provinces alone. During the three-year period of national economic recovery, agricultural production clearly recovered, but calculated at constant prices (1987 prices), China's total agricultural output value in 1952 was only equivalent to 93% of that in 1933, and agricultural value added was equivalent to 92.3%.

Since the founding of New China, China's agricultural development has been directly affected by the government's agricultural reform policies. Angus Maddison believed that since 1949 China has had six major policy changes affecting the agricultural system, but not every policy adjustment was successful; this has been a process of continuous adjustment and continuous improvement. In essence, this kind of policy adjustment was, against the broader background of accelerated industrialization, an adjustment of the relationship between the state and farmers and between industry and agriculture. Practice is the only criterion for testing policy: any good policy can simultaneously achieve the two goals of "increased agricultural output" and "increased farmers' income." Otherwise, it cannot achieve the goals or can achieve only one of them.

The first was land reform, and it was also the most successful reform to "liberate the farmers." As soon as New China was founded, it made land reform its primary task. On June 28, 1950, the Eighth Meeting of the Central People's Government Council passed the Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China. Article 1, the general principle, explained the basic purpose of land reform: "Abolish the land ownership system of feudal exploitation by the landlord class and introduce the system of peasant land ownership, so as to set free the rural productive forces, develop agricultural production, and thus pave the way for New China's industrialization." By the end of 1952, more than 300 million landless and land-poor peasants nationwide had obtained 700 million mu of land and other means of production free of charge and had been exempted from land rent of 70 billion jin of grain per year, greatly liberating the peasants. By 1952, China's grain output had increased by 44.8% over 1949 and also exceeded the highest annual output before liberation by 18.1%. In the same period, China's grain yield per unit area increased by 28.4% over 1949. In 1953, peasants' net monetary income increased by 123.6% over 1949, and average net monetary income per person increased by 111.5%. Peasants' purchasing power for consumer goods grew severalfold, rising by 111% in 1953 over 1949, and average consumer goods purchasing power per person doubled. In 1953 compared with 1949, grain retained by peasants increased by 28.2%, of which grain for living use increased by 33.6%. The Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China was an economic program and economic policy suited to China's national conditions, and it was also an earth-shaking land reform in Chinese history. As Mao Zedong said, "As for land reform, from Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, the Duke of Zhou, and Confucius all the way to Sun Yat-sen, none of them did it; only we have done it." Land reform conformed to China's national conditions and was the largest and most successful rural reform in China in the 20th century. From May 1946 to the end of 1952, in only a little more than six years, the Communist Party of China completed this large-scale land reform.

Because of the tremendous success of land reform, the Communist Party of China was eager to transition to socialism in the extremely poor and extremely vast rural areas, and soon carried out a second policy adjustment by implementing socialist transformation in the countryside - specifically, mutual-aid teams or elementary cooperatives. This meant that China's agricultural development path shifted from a model of private land ownership and individual household operation to a cooperative path, that is, from elementary cooperatives to advanced cooperatives and then to people's communes. In the process of agricultural cooperativization, although agricultural production still grew and farmers' incomes still increased, farmers' autonomy and decision-making power were restricted, and this also directly affected the growth rate of total agricultural output and peasant consumption. In 1953 and 1954, total agricultural output value grew by 1.9% and 1.7% respectively, and rural residents' consumption level grew by 2.8% and 1.2% respectively.

In January 1956, the Communist Party of China carried out a third policy adjustment. The Draft National Agricultural Development Outline from 1956 to 1967, formulated under Mao Zedong's direction, laid out the goals of elementary agricultural cooperativization and advanced agricultural cooperativization. It took only one year to develop from elementary cooperatives to advanced cooperatives. By the end of 1956, households that had joined advanced cooperatives had already reached 87.8% of all peasant households (see Table 1). In fact, after the agricultural cooperativization movement was completed in 1956, grain production did not grow substantially, while livestock declined greatly and agricultural productive forces were damaged, which also directly affected peasants' consumption level. In 1956 and 1957, rural residents' consumption level grew by 1.3% and 2.0% respectively.

Although elementary cooperatives and advanced cooperatives had already carried out leap-style adjustments in production relations, a fourth adjustment was carried out in 1958. On July 16, Mao Zedong proposed: "Our direction should be to gradually and in an orderly way organize 'industry (industry), agriculture (agriculture), commerce (exchange), learning (culture and education), and militia (the militia, that is, arming the whole people)' into a large commune, thereby constituting the basic unit of our society." By the end of that year, people's communes had been established in almost all rural areas nationwide. The 123 million peasant households in 753,000 advanced cooperatives were distributed among 26,000 large people's communes, each with about 4,600 peasant households and 6,700 laborers. Among these people's communes there were 500,000 production brigades and more than 3 million production teams. This not only directly affected peasants' consumption level, but also had a great impact on agricultural production. In 1958, 1959, 1960, and 1961, agricultural value added grew by 0.4%, -15.9%, -16.4%, and 1.4% respectively.

China's agricultural policy underwent a fifth adjustment in 1962. Although people's communes continued until the mid-1980s, at this time agricultural management and operation shifted to smaller production units - production teams averaging 30 households. Private plots were restored, rural fairs reopened, and communal canteens were abolished. The central government allocated large sums of funds to support agricultural modernization, including the purchase of chemical fertilizers, electric tools, and tractors. Peasants' remuneration was calculated according to work points recorded by their collective. Under this system, the reward obtained from labor effort and labor enthusiasm were far lower than under a farming system in which peasant households were the decision-making subject.

From 1952 to 1978, the main structural indicators of rural areas and agriculture underwent historic changes along with China's overall development. During this period, growth in agricultural output came mainly from various factor inputs. The first was labor input. Total employment in the agricultural sector increased by 68%, with an average annual growth rate of 2.01%. This sector absorbed a large number of newly added rural laborers, but from the perspective of agricultural labor productivity, 1952-1957 saw positive growth of 1.66%, while 1957-1978 saw negative growth of -0.19%, reflecting that the people's commune movement dampened peasants' enthusiasm. The second was that total cultivated land area decreased, but irrigated area increased substantially. Among this, the average annual growth rate of irrigated area from 1952 to 1957 was as high as 6.46%, and from 1957 to 1978 it still maintained an average annual growth rate of 2.41%. In addition, this also included inputs of various agricultural production factors. According to Angus Maddison's calculations, from 1952 to 1957 the growth rate of agriculture's total factor productivity (hereinafter referred to as TFP) was 0.63%, and from 1957 to 1978 it was 0.57%. According to Wen Guanzhong's calculations, from 1952 to 1957 agriculture's TFP growth rate was 0.08%, and from 1957 to 1978 it was -1.53%.

Looking at changes in the Engel coefficient of rural resident households, according to data published by the National Bureau of Statistics, the lowest point in this period was 65.7% in 1957, then it rose to 67.1% in 1964, 68.5% in 1965, and by 1978 it was 67.7%, higher than in 1957. That is to say, during the period from 1949 to 1978, China's rural population belonged to the "absolute poverty type."

China had a large rural population, and a large absolutely poor rural population; this was the greatest basic national condition. During this period, how to break through or leap over the "poverty trap" was the primary task facing China, but at the time this was not recognized. Moreover, during this period, the different identity, household registration, social security, and public service systems in urban and rural areas prevented the population from migrating freely and the labor force from flowing freely, accumulating a large amount of surplus agricultural labor. Estimated by the labor-cultivated land ratio method, surplus agricultural labor continued to rise after 1961, broke through 100 million people in 1970, and stood at around 110 million by 1977 ［13］. The emergence of a large amount of surplus agricultural labor not only caused agricultural productivity to decline (to below the 1957 level), but also created an enormous loss of output opportunity cost. It is estimated that the loss of output opportunity cost during this period rose from 8.45% of total GDP in 1961 to 27.95% in 1977, which hindered China's agricultural transformation and the path of rural modernization.

Overall, during this period agricultural production conditions underwent significant changes and the production level rose greatly. The national irrigated area expanded from 300 million mu in 1952 to 450 million mu in 1978. General flood disasters in major river basins such as the Yangtze, Yellow, Huai, Hai, Pearl, Liao, and Songhua rivers were initially brought under control, and various modern agricultural factors, such as chemical fertilizers, agricultural machinery, and electricity, increased substantially. Major agricultural products such as grain and cotton nationwide achieved varying degrees of growth. Although population growth was too rapid, China still basically ensured the people's need for food and clothing by relying on its own strength.

II. Agricultural transformation: comprehensive transformation from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture

In 1982 the World Bank published the World Development Report: Agriculture and Economic Development. At that time world agriculture was facing a major challenge, namely whether agriculture could provide enough food for a continuously growing world population. At that time China also faced this major challenge.

In April 1979, Vice Premier Li Xiannian pointed out that China's agriculture had long been backward and that although it had developed somewhat after the smashing of the "Gang of Four," it was still far from being able to adapt to the needs of population growth, industrial development, and improvement of people's living standards. Although total grain output had exceeded the highest level in history, per capita grain availability was only slightly higher than in 1957. In many places peasants did not have enough grain ration, and in some places the grain ration was severely insufficient. In 1978 China's imported agricultural products accounted for one fifth of total imports. Solving the problem of feeding a population of one billion, rationally resettling surplus rural labor, and avoiding social instability had become important issues at the time.

Unlike the previous policy adjustments, this time China's leaders took a pragmatic attitude and first carried out reform in the mode of agricultural operation. As summarized in the report of the Twelfth National Congress of the Communist Party of China: the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee first grasped the link of agriculture, focused on overcoming the long-standing "Left" errors in guiding ideology, restored and expanded the decision-making power of rural communes and teams, restored private plots, household sideline production, collective sideline production, and rural fair trade, gradually implemented various forms of production responsibility systems based on output-linked remuneration, and at the same time raised the purchase prices of grain and some other agricultural products, and subsequently resolved the question of the policy of diversified operations, thus bringing about rapid and significant changes in the agricultural scene. The second was affirming the peasants' great creation of fixing output quotas on a household basis. Beginning in 1982, the central government issued five No. 1 documents for five consecutive years, affirming rural reform centered on the household contract responsibility system and supported by developing township and village enterprises and building small towns. In 1980, 14% of production teams implemented the household contract responsibility system; in 1981 it rose to 45%; in 1982 it further rose to 80%; and by 1984 it had reached 90%.

In 1992, Jiang Zemin first raised China's "three rural" issues. He pointed out: "Agriculture is the foundation of the national economy, rural stability is the foundation of the stability of the whole society, and the peasant issue has always been a fundamental issue in our country's revolution, construction, and reform." In the 1990s, the basic approach to solving the "three rural" issues, apart from further developing agriculture, was mainly to develop township and village enterprises and develop small towns; it had not yet fundamentally touched or broken the urban-rural barriers and the dual economic and social structure.

Since the second half of the 1990s, agriculture's share of GDP continued to decline, the gap in agricultural labor productivity relative to non-agricultural industries further widened, the urban-rural income gap continued to rise, and the "three rural" issues became increasingly prominent, fully reflecting that many contradictions existed in China's agricultural development and that China's agriculture was in a stage of rapid transformation.

Since 2004, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has for ten consecutive years issued No. 1 documents, putting forward new ideas for solving the "three rural" issues and adopting comprehensive measures: gradually changing the urban-rural dual economic structure and implementing the principle of industry nurturing agriculture and cities supporting agriculture; establishing a rural public finance system and realizing the equalization of public services for urban and rural residents; improving rural markets and the agricultural service system and increasing rural infrastructure construction; actively developing township and village enterprises and striving to open multiple channels to transfer farmers to urban employment; developing small towns and promoting the transfer of rural labor and population from less developed areas to developed areas, from the interior to coastal areas, from rural areas to cities, and from small towns to large and medium-sized cities; establishing, improving, and implementing protection of the lawful rights and interests of migrant workers so that they become true urban residents; and further accelerating the development of modern agriculture and promoting agricultural modernization.