Great Leap Forward
People's communes

An experimental commune was established at Chayashan in Henan in April 1958. Here for the first time private plots were entirely abolished and communal kitchens were introduced. At the Politburo meetings in August 1958, it was decided that these people's communes would become the new form of economic and political organization throughout rural China. By the end of the year approximately 25,000 communes had been set up, with an average of 5,000 households each. The communes were relatively self-sufficient co-operatives where wages and money were replaced by work points.

The commune system was aimed at maximizing production for provisioning the cities and constructing offices, factories, schools, and social insurance systems for urban-dwelling workers, cadres, and officials.And also a semi governmental structure where activities in the countryside could manage what went on in there. People's commune took care of every aspects of people's lives: health care, job employment, food, housing, finance, defense, culture, education, political affairs and entertainment. People in the communes were united with the saying: Exceeding the UK, catching the USA, created by Mao to energize the people and their work ethnics by reducing the influence of Western Countries and reinforce his leadership legitimacy. Citizens in rural areas who criticized the system were labeled "dangerous". Later on, as more and more families link together to form people's communes, peasants started to lose individual identities, since families were from vastly different communities with different cultures views, political views, family and financial background, which created conflict regarding the means and modes of production. Some wealthier families who refused to join a People's commune might be labeled as rightists. Escape was also difficult or impossible, and those who attempted were subjected to "party-orchestrated public struggle", which further jeopardized their survival. Besides agriculture, communes also incorporated some light industry and construction projects. Harvests did increase. However this was because of exceptional weather, not, which a lot of officials mistook, as the result of hard work of the peasants, creating further complications. (106) This lead to famine in the countryside since they were required to reach set harvest goal, leaving not enough food for themselves.
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