Dazhai, Shanxi

Dazhai (大 寨镇, large fortress ') is a large municipality in the district Xiyang (昔阳 县), which belongs to the prefecture-level city Jinzhong (晋中 市) in the Chinese province of Shanxi. Dazhai is located about 200 kilometers southwest of Beijing. The United municipality has an area of approximately 183 km ² and 33,000 inhabitants ( end of 2009).

Administrative Divisions

Dazhai is made up of 61 villages. These are:

The village of Dazhai

The village came to fame in 1964 as recommended by Mao Zedong model of socialist agriculture.

Dazhai is located in the Taihang Mountain, which offers unfavorable starting conditions for agricultural use. For this reason, Dazhai was to Vergenossenschaftlichung mid-1950s, a very poor village with about 400 inhabitants. The politically active agricultural worker Chen Yonggui (1913-1986) took there as a local secretary of the Communist Party of China 's initiative to build terraces with attached, to a large extent with tractors navigable fields on the hills by maximum collective mobilization of the entire population and an irrigation system to apply. In addition to the located at Dazhai Tiger Head Mountain ( Hutoushan ) be planted with fruit trees succeeded. Dazhai is further operative to the breeding of silkworms and bees and the bauxite mining and entertained his own workshop for repairing machines. All families were given solid houses instead of the old huts, education and health care were guaranteed.

This policy corresponded with the belief of Mao Zedong that the masses of ordinary workers and peasants themselves, guided by the correct political line, in heroic efforts to pull itself out of poverty and free to design their new living conditions. " Learn from Dazhai " meant " to rely on our own strength ," do not represent short-term and personal benefits, but the long -term, conscious social transformation of the country in the center of the action. Particularly since 1968, when the Cultural Revolution attempted to mobilize the whole country in this sense, Dazhai was constantly visited by study groups from all over China.

In September and October 1975, a national conference to learn from Dazhai was held. The main speaker was the hitherto unknown Politburo official Hua Guofeng. He announced that in China the effort to create circles of type Dazhai should be strengthened. During that time the economic base unit of cooperative agriculture predominantly consisting of about a dozen families " production group " was formed at the Dazhai - type the entire village as the " Brigade" an immediate economic unit. This designated Hua as a prerequisite for comprehensive mechanization, which should be achieved by the year 1980. At the same time it was stressed in speeches at the conference that the collectives must not be guided by selfish interests, but always the interests of others, from the neighboring villages or an entire country, must keep in mind, which is why a constant raising of political consciousness necessary be.

Hua Guofeng was in October 1976 successor to the late Mao Zedong. In his management team Yonggui Chen took an important place. Hua had the by the arrest of the so-called " Gang of Four" the excessive ideological duration mobilizations by the extreme leftists who constantly quarrels fomented an end and put on a program of modernization of the country, he further held at the Dazhai model and continuity to wanted true foundations of the Mao era. Soon, however, he was urged by the gaining strength reform flow to Deng Xiaoping to the sidelines. The dispute over agricultural policies played a crucial role: the Deng - wing rejected the Dazhai model and target in the opposite direction of a de-collectivization, based on the observation that the private plots, which were allowed to cultivate in many places besides the collective farm land nor the farmers larger income provided. After initial experiments, the reform politician Zhao Ziyang in Sichuan Province, the Dengisten designed the " responsibility system ": First, it was allowed to dissolve poorly functioning agricultural collectives and distribute the land to the management of the farm families. 1981/82 this was generally taken to rule while Hua Guofeng lost his offices.

The re-privatization of agriculture was associated with a fundamental change in the development strategy of China. Mao's policy was based on the principle to avoid any dependence on foreign countries to rely on their own strength and to obtain construction services by heroic mobilization in labor-intensive large-scale operations. Dazhai was an example of this: here it was able to transform a rough and barren landscape inland Chinese to multiply the agricultural production and thus free up resources for industrialization. However, the general propagation of the Dazhai model did not bring the expected results. The strategy of the reformers aimed, first in agriculture to promote the material interest of the family economy and to develop markets, while the coastal areas have been made ​​to the engine of growth and modernization by opening to foreign capital.

In order to enforce this change was, now staged at the behest of Deng Xiaoping a veritable smear campaign against Dazhai. The once -vaunted pattern Brigade of ridicule was suddenly abandoned by it was alleged that they had achieved their performance not their own, but with government help, and the success statistics were all fake. Chen Yonggui and his family were personally brought into disrepute. 1983 Dazhai was forced to return to the family economy. In 1987, Statistics spread that should prove that it was as much there as well " accountability system " superior to the old collective system. The U.S. experts on China and agricultural expert William Hinton has pointed out the way in which these statistics were manipulated. He had visited often Dazhai and now noted a decline.

This accelerated in the late 1980s. Guo Fenglian, since the early 1970s, party secretary of Dazhai, finally managed a reorientation by establishing a local company that manufactures mainly textiles and spirits under the brand name Dazhai. Agriculture is hardly operated in Dazhai today. The allegations that the irrigation system of Dazhai had been built in reality by the state in the 1960s, has Guo Fenglian, which then belonged to the famous "iron girl from Dazhai ", decided back. Meanwhile, defending not only the well 500 inhabitants of Dazhai their history, but this is shown benevolent and balanced total return in the Chinese media.

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