Chapter 2 Corporate History Figures Jiangcun Economy

In the spring of 1938, a 28-year-old Chinese student, Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005), completed his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics and Political Science, which was published under the name Jiangcun Economics the following year.This book was later regarded as the foundational work of Chinese anthropology. Fei Xiaotong was also the first economist in the world to point out that rural areas can also develop industrial economy. In fact, there is no such a village as "Jiangcun". Its prototype is Kaixiangong Village, which is located in Zhenze District, Wujiang County, Jiangsu Province (now Zhenze Town, Wujiang City), 100 kilometers away from the "isolated island" Shanghai.

The trigger for this book is a heartbreaking tragedy of youth.Just a few years ago, in the autumn of 1935, Fei Xiaotong, a sociology student at Yenching University, and his newlywed wife Wang Tonghui went to Dayao Mountain in Guangxi to do a field survey of the Yao village. In order to save him, Wang Tonghui left alone to seek help, but accidentally fell into the abyss and died.In the spring of the following year, in order to heal his wounds and heal the pain of losing his wife, Fei Xiaotong came to Kaixiangong Village where his sister Fei Dasheng lived. Here, on crutches, with a broken young heart, he A detailed field investigation was started, and "Jiangcun Economy" is the result.

The Suzhou and Changzhou areas in southern Jiangsu have been one of the most developed regions in the south of the Yangtze River since the Ming and Qing Dynasties. After the European weaving technology was introduced to China in the late Qing Dynasty, the textile industry here began to sprout. Fei Xiaotong accidentally found The best test points for observing China's rural industries.The prevailing economic view at that time believed that the development of industry must be concentrated in cities, and that the countryside was at most the source of raw materials and labor. Fei Xiaotong did not think so. The silk industry turned the peasants who were able to maintain their livelihoods into starving people and people in debt. As a result, the peasants could not hold on to their arable land, and they all concentrated in the cities. In the countryside, it was the bankruptcy of the economy, and in the cities it was the loss of the labor reserve team. The sharp increase will affect the vitality of urban workers... Therefore, what we want to achieve is to keep the silk industry in the countryside and make it a sideline industry for the prosperity of the countryside. Setting up factories in the countryside will be limited by the population, so We seek the factory unit with the smallest scale and the greatest efficiency.” Fei Xiaotong’s observation surpassed all his contemporaries, not only in China, but even in the global academic circle, which is completely different from Adam Smith and Ricardo’s The concept of large-scale industry, but a kind of economic thinking from China.In fact, the great economic reform in China that started in 1978, with the township enterprises as the "unexpected" breakthrough, sprouted from here.

In January 1929, Kaixiangong Village purchased an advanced silk reeling machine and set up a raw silk refining and marketing cooperative silk factory. It is considered to be the first silk factory run by farmers themselves in the history of modern enterprises. The village also established Fei Dasheng, Fei Xiaotong's sister who graduated from the silk department of Tokyo Higher Cocoon School, is an important advocate of this cause.The appearance of these new things made Fei Xiaotong very curious.He regards Kaixiangong Village as “a representative example of the process of industrial transformation in China. The main change is that factories have replaced the cottage industry system, which has resulted in social problems.” His final investigation conclusion is as follows: “ Due to the decline of cottage industries, farmers can only choose between improving products or giving up handicrafts. Improving products is not only a technical problem, but also a problem of social reorganization... Therefore, only implementing land reform and reducing land rent 1. The equalization of land rights cannot finally solve China’s land problem. The ultimate solution is not to tighten farmers’ expenditures, but to increase farmers’ income. Therefore, let me reiterate that restoring rural enterprises is the fundamental measure.”

In the spring of 1938, Fei Xiaotong completed his doctoral dissertation at the London School of Economics and published "Jiangcun Economics"—this book was not translated into Chinese and published in China until 1986. It was regarded as the foundation of the Chinese school of anthropology The representative work is a brand-new attempt of anthropological research object from "foreign land" to "native land", from "primitive culture" to "economic life".However, its economic significance has never been discovered.Because from the 1940s to the 1970s, no country has ever tried to cultivate its own industrial base in the countryside, because this is anti-big industry and it is ridiculous.

Fei Xiaotong has always been regarded as a sociologist. He has served as the director of the Institute of Sociology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the president of the Chinese Sociological Society. His views were first criticized in the field of economics. In 1957, he returned to Kaixiangong Village, where he had not returned for more than 20 years, to do research, where he picked up the doubt that grew up 30 years ago from the field, "Why are farmers still so poor?", he In the article "Returning to Jiangcun", he boldly asked, "Now that the land system has changed, and every peasant household has land, why is there still a shortage of food?" It's "the problem is with the sideline."

He wrote, "My proposition is inconsistent with the current trend. At least in the past few years, it seems that some agricultural cooperatives only engage in agriculture, so the production activities of processing nature must be handed over to other system departments and concentrated in towns. Do it. Even things like husk processing are not allowed in agricultural cooperatives. In Kaixiangong Village, I saw a rice huller that can process husk into feed for pigs. But the town The rice husking factory does not allow them to do this, and would rather let a large amount of chaff be burned as fuel in the village. Speaking of silkworm cocoons, the cocoon drying process should also be assigned to the commercial sector. The result is not very good. But it seems that the country has suffered losses. It’s small, but breaking the rules is a big deal.”

Fei Xiaotong reiterated the conclusion he came to when he was young, "There are many light industries in our country, and it does not have to be concentrated in a few cities in order to improve technology. As far as silk is concerned, I have consulted many experts , They all admit that a small factory of a certain scale can produce high-quality raw silk, and economically, it is much cheaper to put the processing industry in the place where the raw material is produced.” He boldly used statistics to explain the regression of rural industries, "In general, the current level of sideline business is not as high as it was 21 years ago. To make a rough estimate, in 1936, sideline business accounted for more than 40% of the total income of agricultural sideline business, but in 1956, it was less than 20%. %."

Naturally, such views have been fiercely criticized. Fei Xiaotong was accused of "making a lot of articles attacking the Communist Party on the sideline" and "opposing socialist industrialization." In the ensuing anti-rightist movement, he was classified as a famous The great rightists lived in misery for the next two decades, claiming that they "do not even have a desk." In 1978, Fei Xiaotong was rehabilitated.No one expected that the "rural enterprises" he expected in 1935 would become the breakthrough point of China's economic reform in the future. In 1981, Fei Xiaotong visited Kaixiangong Village for the third time. He saw that household industries began to recover, and household sideline income accounted for half of the average personal income. Large factories compete for raw materials, energy and markets. At the end of 1983, Fei Xiaotong wrote the article "Re-exploration of Small Towns", arguing that "farmers make full use of the original rural living facilities and go to towns to engage in industrial and commercial activities. At present, it is the most economical and effective way."?It was in this article that he proposed the "Southern Jiangsu Model" for the first time.He wrote, "From the historical experience of the development of the Western industrial revolution, the township industry in southern Jiangsu is nondescript and incomprehensible, but from the perspective of the family economic structure in rural China, the township industry is natural. Things...compared with the history of the industrial revolution in the West, grassroots industry is undoubtedly a remarkable pioneering work of Chinese farmers."

In 1986, Fei Xiaotong, who was already the vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, saw in a news report that there was a private industry in Wenzhou in the south of Zhejiang Province that was different from the southern Jiangsu model. He immediately went there at the age of 76 Wenzhou inspection, the accompanying person described, "Fei Xiaotong and his party were listening to the introduction in the reception room of the township government. The glass of the surrounding windows was incomplete, and the cold wind was blowing in. Although he was wearing a woolen coat, his nose was still dripping involuntarily. When I got down, my feet were cold and uncomfortable, and I couldn’t sit still.” However, what he saw in Wenzhou still made this wise old man very excited.At that time, domestic critics and crusades against Wenzhou's private economy were heard endlessly, but the enlightened Fei Xiaotong believed that "the method of cutting will not work, and it will grow back." He wrote a long research report "Wenzhou "Xing" to spread, and later put forward the concept of "Wenzhou model".The Southern Jiangsu model and the Wenzhou model have become the two most eye-catching growth models of China's private economy, and they all come from Fei Xiaotong's observation, and his contribution is the greatest. Before 1990, township and village enterprises were subject to rectification whenever macro-control was implemented, and Fei Xiaotong has always been the most staunch and vocal defender.

Fei Xiaotong lived a long life and died in 2005. He became famous all over the world in his later years.He was handsome and thin when he was young, but he was fat and cheerful when he was middle-aged. He could write well-regulated poems, but when he wrote academic articles, women and children could understand them and lift them with ease.Facing the young students of the younger generation, he always took the trouble and treated them patiently. He said repeatedly, "If the problems of farmers and rural areas are solved, China's problems will be solved." Thinking back to the early spring of 1936, when the young Fei Xiaotong curiously walked into Kaixiangong Village on crutches, he was a careful reformist. In his opinion, "Society is such a clever society. How can an organization stand up to hard-handed attempts? If the general knowledge of the people is not enough to maintain a new system, the system will sooner or later degenerate."