Top Chinese commune 'a fraud’

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 7

Top Chinese commune ' a fraud’

NZPA Hong Kong A farm touted to New Zealand visitors in late 1977 as a model of Chinese agricultural excellence has now been denounced in Peking as a fraud. The farm is that of the Tachai Production Brigade in north-central China. For 15 years it was held up to the rest of China as a model of what peasant labour could achieve through determination and hard work in adverse climatic conditions. It was included on the travel itinerary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mr Taiboys, when he first visited China in October, 1977, for official talks and a look at rural areas. Harsh winter winds chilled the visiting New Zealand party. Mrs TaL boys, the new Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Mr M. Norrish, the former Ambassador to Iran. Mr C. Beeby, and other members of the Minister’s party were given army greatcoats and fur-lined hats by their hosts at the farm, Touring the farm, the visitors saw men. women, and teen-agers ’digging out rock-pitted hillsides to form terraces for crop planting. Pictures were shown of acclaimed feats achieved by the brigade in diverting mountainous streams for irrigation. Annual food production figures were impressive. A thriving crop was hemp, being used for rope making and dried out in a field enclosed by bamboo stakes. Two years earlier the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr Hua Kuo-feng, had hailed the work of the brigade. "If every county- in Shanyi Province is built into a Tachai-type county attaining this year’s level of production in Xiyang (the county in which Tachai is situated), the total grain output of the province will rise fourfold,” he said. This month the “People’s Daily” newspaper, the official organ of the Communist Party of China, said that the brigade had inflated grain-output figures in the mid-1970s to win

political favour. In 1973 a "principal responsible comrade” of the Xiyang County Party Committee had ordered secretaries of commune committees to make false reports which had created the impression that the county had had its biggest harvest in spite of the worst 'draught it had suffered. In 1977, the year of the Taiboys visit, grain production had been reported at a level 66.1 million pounds more than actual output when communes and production . brigades had actually been short of grain. Peasants had complained that their leaders had come to fame whils they had endured hardships and had suffered from hunger. The report of fraudulent production figures comes soon after disclosures that the brigade wasted the equivalent of SUS 33 million on a grandiose project aimed at moving water across a mountain range. The project was stopped after five, years of work involving an average of 5000 workers a day. Chen Yang-gui, a former head of the brigade and now a member of the Chinese Politbureau, rose to this level of the country’s political hierarchy as a result of the brigade’s impressive production figures. His departure from the politbureau is now regarded as imminent.