Story of the birthplace of rural reform

By He Jianwei

In 1978, 18 farmers from Xiaogang village in east Anhui Province signed a secret agreement to divide communally owned farmland into individual pieces called household contracts. It inadvertently lit the torch for China’s rural reform.

In 2008, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of China’s conomic reforms, authors Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao spent half a year in Xiaogang and uncovered the unknown history of this small village. Last month, they published their investigations in the book Story of Xiaogang Village (321pp, Huawen Publisher, 32 yuan).

Before 1978, the village was infamous for its poverty. Every resident received only 50 kilograms of grain every year, forcing many to roam the countryside begging after each harvest. One reason for this was the system of people’s communes, or collective land ownershi. The production team decided all matters regarding the land, so farmers had little incentive to work hard and good harvests weren’t expected.

On a night in December 1978, all 18 of Xiaogang’s households met after dark n the biggest house in the village. After a short discussion, they signed or put their thumbprints on a 79-character document agreeing to divide the commune’s land into family plots.

In 1979, the village’s grain output ncreased to 90,000 kilograms, roughly equal to the aggregation of all yields in the previous 20 years. The grain the village delivered to the government was seven times the fixed quota. Per capita annual income reached 400 yuan, about 18 times higher than the previous year.

Neighboring villages copied Xiaogang’s reform. The central government gave its approval for the trial in 1980.

The household contract responsibility system was popularized nationwide four years later, which started rural reform.And Xiaogang was regarded as the “No. 1 Village of China’s Reform.”

The book looks at the history of how rural reform started in Xiaogang and the difficulties of popularizing the movement nationwide through interviews with those 18 villagers.

Despite great improvements in their standard of living, the residents of Xiaogang are still far from wealthy. Since the 1990s, rural areas have lost huge amounts of resources and many young people started heading to cities to become migrant workers.

The book also lets readers think about the social problems of rural reform and ask why Xiaogang cannot recreate its splendid history.