A New Direction for China's State Farms

ONE OF THE lesser researched aspects of Chinese society has been the operation of its state farms (guoying nongchang) and state livestock farms (guoying muchang).' Works on the Chinese economy, and even specific agricultural studies, typically either completely ignore state farms or else devote a cursory few pages to them.2 This dearth of studies on China's state farms mirrors the previous lack of coverage given them in the Chinese press, and is understandable in view of the limited percentage of total cultivated land which they have occupied. Thus in 1957, a year after the establishment of the Ministry of State Farms and Land Reclamation, state farms operated on only 0.89 per cent of China's cultivated land.3 By 1964, this figure had increased to about 4 per cent4 which, according to Brugger's calculations, still held true in 1978.5 Yet, despite their apparent marginal impact overall, state farms have been significant in certain regions and by virtue of their undertaking certain specialized tasks. Changes in their role which have been foreshadowed since 1977, moreover, indicate that they will be of increasing importance to the Chinese economy. Traditionally, state farms have mainly been used for land reclamation work-especially in frontier regions. Thus, the larger state farms are primarily in the major reclamation areas of Xinjiang, Heilongjiang

Algorithm · China · Geography · Political science · State (computer science) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Computer Science · Law

• Resistance to state-orchestrated modernization in Xinjiang

  Open Access•Hasan H Karrar•China Information•2018

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