PROGRESS OF THE 1960 URBAN COMMUNES MOVEMENT IN COMMUNIST CHINA

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• Collection: General CIA Records
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• Document Page Count: 12
• Document Creation Date: November 16, 2016
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• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: September 12, 1960
• Content Type: BRIEF

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CIA/RR-CB-60-48 NOFORN Copy No. ` '~
CURRENT SUPPORT BRIEF
PROGRESS OF THE 1960 URBAN COMMUNES MOVEMENT IN COMMUNIST CHINA
OFFICE OF RESEARCH AND REPORTS
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
This report represents the immediate views of the
originating intelligence components of the Office
of Research and Reports. Comments are solicited.
This document contains information affecting the national defense of
the United States, within the meaning of the espionage laws, Title 18
USC, Sections 793 and 794, the transmission or revelation of which
in any manner to an unauthorized person is prohibited by law.
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PROGRESS OF THE 1960 URBAN COMMUNE MOVEMENT IN COMMUNIST CHINA*
An assessment of evidence accumulated since March 1960, when the
movement to communalize city dwellers was revived in Communist China,
suggests that the Chinese Communists have managed in 1960 to disrupt
much of urban society without obtaining commensurate economic gains
or advancing. appreciably toward their long-term goal of building beau-
tiful new garden cities. The Chinese, nevertheless, seem determined
to keep on pushing the urban commune movement. Peiping's pretension
that the urban commune is another step toward achieving the pure Com-
unist way of life must have offended the ideological sensibilities of
Moscow, which had just been coming around to a qualified acceptance
of the Chinese rural commune as a useful agricultural organization
for China.
The Chinese Communist leadership, driven more by ideological con-
victions than economic considerations, has declared that it is time
for urbanites, like their country cousins in 1958, to begin taking
their first steps toward attainment of pure communism through col-
lectivizing household tasks and putting "emancipated" women to work
outside the home. The July issue of China Reconstructs, a pictorial
published in many languages for wide inter at ona distribution, con-
tains one of the most forthright claims that the Chinese Communists
have ever made for the sociably advanced character of the urban com-
mune movement: 1/
"Universal for two years in the countryside, the people's
communes, after an experimental period, are spreading ra-
pidly to urban areas with their more complex problems...
Here the communes... besides serving as a bridge to the
future communist society are a means of transforming the
towns inherited from the old exploiting order. Through
them, China's new garden cities are growing with great
speed."
Holding these views, Peiping has been pushing doggedly ahead
with the urban communes in spite of their economic inefficiency and
unpopularity. Out of the Chinese Communist urban population of
100,000,000, 20,000,000 reportedly were in communes after the first
spurt in March 1960. 2/ By 20 May, there were 1,000 communes with
42,000,000 members, 37 and, by the end of June, enrollment had in-
creased to 52,000,00U in 1,027 communes. 4/ (Note that during June
the average size of communes increased fr?m 42,000 to 51,000 mem-
bers.) Preparations possibly are being made to bring the population
of most remaining urban areas of China under communes by 1 October--
Communist China's National Day--in a final dramatic push. An indi-
cation of such a push is to be found in an interrogation report which
states that housewives in Soochow, a large city near Shanghai, had
been ordered to work this summer as apprentices without pay in some
trade such as making matchboxes in preparation for the establishment
of communes covering the entire city on 1 October 1960. 5/ Chinese
Communist propaganda broadcasts in July, reporting' that 1ousewives
in Shanghai are being taught vocational skills and that small-scale
"community" industry is mushrooming there, suggest that the authori-
ties may be softening up Shanghai for early communalization. With
a population of 6,900,000 in 1958, Shanghai is China's largest city,
as well as its most intransigent.
This paper is a o lowup to CIA/RR CB-60-23, The Urban Commune, What
Is it?, 18 April 1960.
1,2 September 1960 CIA/RR-CB-60-48
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Although still pushing ahead, Peiping may be losing the edge
of its enthusiasm. It has issued little publicity on the urban
commune movement since July. When an editorial in the authoritative
Peo le's Daily reviewed the progress of various domestic policies
on 18 August, all it could say for urban communes was that they were
"developing at a steady pace." 6/ This editorial was on the front
page and was printed in a large, special type reserved for important
statements.
If the Chinese are having second thoughts about how far and how
fast they should go, they may have been influenced by their failure
to persuade other countries in the Communist Bloc that the new com- 25X1X
mane program has Marxist virtues. The Soviet ambassador, at any
rate, is not likely to send home reports praising the urban commune
in its initial form.
when urban communes were inspected in April 1960 by a group com-
posed of chiefs of diplomatic missions, including the Soviet ambas-
sador, the communes made a uniformly unfavorable impression even on
the Bloc representatives in the group. ?/
Model urban communes have not been nearly so impressive as
model rural communes. Whereas newsmen and diplomats taken to in-
spect rural showplaces often have been impressed with the seeming
efficiency, enthusiasm, and prosperity observed, comments by such
people on a variety of urban communes generally has been critical.
They have reported that in urban communes shown to them, organiza-
tion seems poor, officials confused, housewife-workers apathetic,
and production of low value or useless. Even the Red Flag commune
in Chengchow, one of the original urban communes and probably the
most publicized in China, appalled a group of non-Communist trade
representatives, including several Asians, who inspected it in May. 8/
(This commune was eulogized in the article from China Reconstructs
quoted above).
Chinese authorities have been expanding the average size of
urban. communes.by the simple administrative expedient of taking
small communes formed of residents of a single street or of de-
pendents of workers of one factory and calling them branch com-
munes of a big commune which either encompasses an entire city in
the case of small or medium cities or is based on the ch'u (ward)
division of a large city. A few communes of several hundred thou-
sand members have already been reported.
The authorities have not expanded the economic function of the
urban commune beyond the limited scope allotted to the small communes
set up in March 1960. Communes, no matter what their size, are still
enjoined from interfering with activities of state-owned factories
and large municipal utilities and are still primarily organizations
of dependents of workers in state enterprises. The principal economic
goal of the urban commune is still to collectivize household tasks
and to put the housewife to work at whatever task can be found for
her--weaving mats, sewing buttonholes, making noodles or brick, col-
lecting and reusing scrap metal, and pulling carts. She may work
either in her own home or in a commune "factory," usually a house
that has been commandeered for community use. Most of her activities
are probably more useful than some observers are willing to concede,
but it is doubtful if the commune is the most efficient way of
organizing these activites.
For the system to work the housewife must receive enough expense
money at her job to pay for the extra services that she and her family
require as commune members. These expenses are not small in relation
12 September 1960
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to typical Chinese wages. Ten yuan* per person per month has been a
standard messhall fee reported for several cities. A kindergarten in
a Tsinan commune charges eight yuan a month to take care of one child.
Another commune charges six yuan a month for laundry and other ser-
vices provided'by the service center. A set fee for medical insurance
may be charged. even housewives
who received as much as 30 yuan a month--a wage that is considerably
higher than the average for this type of work--can take home little
of their pay after paying for commune services. 9/ The average wage
probably is less than 20 yuan a month. Two recently arrived refugees
in Hong Kong have reported wages for women in communes amounting to
12 yuan per month in one case and 0.50 yuan per day in the other. 10/
The economic fact of life on which the urban commune movement
is stumbling is the difficulty that the regime has in finding paying
jobs for women who must begin paying for the child care and cooking
and laundry services now provided by the commune. There exists an
economically legitimate demand for such services, and this demand
has been expanding as a result of the rapid expansion in female em-
ployment in cities since 1957, but the Chinese Communists seem to be
trying to impose these services on many people who do not need them.
There are 25,000,000 adult women in Chinese cities, 8,000,000 of
wham work for-state enterprises (3,300,000 in 1957), and probably
about 2,000,000 are gainfully employed in community industry (1957
figure unknown). It is not credible that useful employment can be
quickly found for a large portion of the 60 percent of adult women
.in cities who at present do not work outside the home or who work
only at welfare jobs for which they receive little or no remunera-
tion. Unemployed women cannot easily be compelled to buy services
which they are performing for themselves and for which they cannot 25X1X
readily pay. For these economic reasons the number of people eating
all meals in community messhalls probably is far smaller than the
number of commune members. An extreme example reported
was that of a commune visited in
April 1960, which, with a total membership of 15,563, had only eight
messhalls feeding 542 people. 11/
In this situation, although every city dweller may soon be
nominally enrolled in a commune, it may mean little change for many
households. It appears that neither employment of housewives nor
the use of commune services will become universal in the near future,
because employment opportunities do not exist and because those house-
wives who do not find paying jobs will not need (and cannot afford)
commune services.
yuan equa s: c at the pound-sterling cross rate of exchange.
12 September 1960 CIA/RR-CB-60-48
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