Consider this blog post your periodic reminder to read an essay called “The Course of China’s Rural Reform”, by Dun Runsheng.
Who was Du Runsheng?
Du Runsheng (Chinese: 杜润生; pinyin: Dù Rùnshēng; July 18, 1913 – October 9, 2015) was a Chinese military officer, revolutionary leader, politician, and economist. He has been hailed as “China’s father of rural reform”. From 1982 to 1986, he drew up the annual “Document No.1 of the Central Government” about rural reform, which promoted the development of rural areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_Runsheng
And what was he famous for?
Well, a lot of things, but this is relevant for us today:
Du Runsheng held the post of secretary general, Rural Work Department, in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee at the time the nation was founded. Concurrently he was deputy director of the Agriculture and Forestry Department of the State Council. After the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the CCP (1978), he held the post of director, Rural Policy of the CCP Central Committee, and director of the Rural Department, Research Center for Rural Development (RCRD), State Council, where he was mainly responsible for China’s rural economic reforms and development policy research. Du was often asked by the leadership to draft rural-related policy documents for the Central Committee of the CCP and the State Council. He worked in particular on the drafting of “No. 1 Documents,” which were issued continuously for five years by the CCP Central Committee, and which made outstanding theoretical and practical contributions, deepening rural economic reform and setting up the rural household contract responsibility system that advanced the market reform of the rural economy.
https://ebrary.ifpri.org/utils/getfile/collection/p15738coll2/id/125214/filename/125215.pdf
So how did China do it’s rural reforms? Please read the whole document to get a sense of how they went about it, but to me, the key words are “gradual”, “incremental” and “choice”.
Here is what he says about overcoming resistance to the proposals (all three are direct quotes from the document, please note):
- First, the reform would not initially call for abandoning the people’s communes, but rather would implement a production responsibility system within them. This approach enabled many who would have opposed the change to accept it.
- Second, the responsibility system could take a number of forms, among which the populace could choose. One did not impose one’s own subjective preference on the populace but respected its choice.
- Third, the reform began in a limited region, where it received popular support, and then widened step by step.
We economists are very good at saying that Farm Reforms Must Be Implemented. And the political parties will be in complete agreement about the importance of these reforms depending on whether they are in power or otherwise. Learn to take both of these things as a given.
But as with any good idea, it is not its inherent quality alone that matters. It is also the manner of its implementation.
I am not for a moment suggesting that we copy what China did for its land reforms.
But I am very much suggesting that learning more about how China did it (and other nations besides) might help us.
Without a successful implementation of agricultural reforms, we don’t develop. Our problem is that we are all focussed on the phrase “agricultural reforms”. Not enough of us are focussed on the phrase “successful implementation”.
EconForEverybody 