Following the expansion of supply and marketing cooperatives in rural areas, the Chinese government will build state-run dining halls and other facilities in urban communities.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the Ministry of Civil Affairs of the Communist Party of China issued a notice on October 31, requiring each city (district) to select 3 to 5 communities to carry out pilot projects for the construction of “complete communities”, which will be promoted nationwide in two years.
According to the notice, it is necessary to pilot and improve community service facilities, and plan to build community comprehensive service facilities, kindergartens, nurseries, elderly service stations, and medical service stations. Every 100 households have comprehensive service facilities with an area of not less than 30 square meters; and convenience stores will be built. , vegetable shops, canteens, mail and express delivery service facilities, barber shops, laundry shops, pharmacies, maintenance points, housekeeping service outlets and other convenient commercial service facilities to provide “one-stop” services for residents.
“Complete community” refers to living units that provide basic services and facilities for people’s daily life. Each community has a population of 5,000 to 12,000 and provides comprehensive public services and management. According to preliminary requirements, there are 20 specific construction indicators.
Hong Kong Ming Pao reported on November 2 that among the various indicators, community canteens caused the most discussion. “Wuxi Daily” commented yesterday (November 1) that many local streets and communities have set up community cafeterias in recent years, the purpose is to let the elderly living alone, the elderly and the disabled “can eat” hot meals at their doorsteps ‘”.
Ming Pao mentioned that at the just-concluded 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Liang Huiling, director of the Council of the All-China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, was promoted to a member of the Central Committee, and the outside world paid attention to the improvement of the political status of the supply and marketing cooperatives.
The Supply and Marketing Cooperative is a ministerial-level unit under the State Council of the Communist Party of China. 60-year-old Liang Huiling has worked in Hubei for a long time. Hubei has actively restarted supply and marketing cooperatives in recent years. Officials say that the number of employees in its rural supply and marketing system has increased fivefold in five years.
In connection with the current restart of supply and marketing cooperatives across the country, many people feel that they are returning to the planned economy period, and they are worried that the policy will lead to a setback in reform and opening up.
Current affairs commentator Liu Ruishao believes that the pilot is a contingency method for material allocation and community management under the economic contraction. “Currently, the supply chain of materials and people’s livelihood is likely to suffer from a local shortage of supply. The government must prevent this from causing a crisis and affecting social stability.”
Liu Ruishao also pointed out that in China’s current GDP structure, private and foreign capital account for a considerable proportion, and it is impossible to fully restore the planned economy, which will break the reform achievements and the society will not accept it. However, he also reminded that local policy “deformations” often occur in the process of implementation, and it is necessary to observe whether there will be injustice and politicization in the implementation of the pilot program in the future.
Pengbai News published an editorial on November 2, saying that starting from mid-to-late October, supply and marketing cooperatives have been restarted in many places in China. In early November, news of the rebuilding of state-run dining halls in Hebei and Xi’an caused a public uproar.
Supply and marketing cooperatives and state-run dining halls are one of the landmarks of China’s planned economy era. The re-emergence of two things has caused people to fear whether they should return to the planned economy era.
The people’s inner fears include the resurgence of “food stamps, oil stamps, cloth stamps, meat stamps, people’s communes, work points, production teams”, and even more fear of the “Great Leap Forward, Rectification, Suppression of Rebellions, Four Cleansing, Cultural Revolution” and other movements Also with the planned economy re-emergence.
They are neither willing to return to the era of material scarcity and constant struggle, nor to live in a rationing system in which all household necessities are incorporated into all-encompassing rations.
According to a report by Free Asia on November 2, current affairs commentator Ma Ju believes that the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China emphasizes the spirit of struggle, which has the characteristics that the CCP leadership has entered a wartime state. He said: “The establishment of the canteen is to control the people. Through food, materials and other means of production, the voice of opposition in the society will be reduced, and the people will feel that the Communist Party is deeply rooted in the idea of feeding us. The purpose is to implement emergency measures anytime, anywhere. state.”
As Sino-US relations continue to deteriorate, Ma Ju said that the CCP is also deploying its influence among the people: “It is to fight against the United States and to dare to fight against the United States. You may think that this may be unfounded, but over the years, we have Through observation, we can see that China has been hoarding food and various strategic materials around the world that we know, the only answer we can get is to fight for a new world.”
Ma Ju believes that on the Taiwan issue, the CCP is also implementing its existing plans under the above-mentioned framework.
Ming Pao Jiadong.com published a commentary on November 2 saying that public canteens in China were born with the “Great Leap Forward” and the People’s Commune Movement. communist imagination.
Economist Zhang Shuguang wrote in the article “The Rise and Fall of a Communist Utopia: Public Canteens and the Canteen Report” that public canteens are a specimen of Mao Zedong-style communist utopia. Its prosperity is also booming, and its decline is also sudden, just like a thunderstorm in summer with catastrophic consequences.
Zhang Shuguang said that Mao Zedong regarded the public canteen as the “most important” issue of the Great Leap Forward and the People’s Commune, because it was a concentrated expression of the extreme centralization of the Communist Party. It shows that at that time the Communist Party not only wanted to implement comprehensive and unlimited public ownership and control the political and economic life of the whole society, but also to collectivize life, forcibly enter the private sphere, and control individual life decisions. It not only goes against human nature, but also goes against common sense. Because it has gone to the extreme, it will turn against the extreme. It is only because of Mao Zedong’s strong insistence that what is good at the top will be bad at the bottom.
Zhang Shuguang pointed out that the realization of communism is the highest program and ultimate goal of the Communist Party. So, what is communism? Mao Zedong made it very clear at the Eighth Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China: “Public canteens, no money for meals, is communism.”
Zhang Shuguang mentioned in the commentary of the article that according to Bo Yibo and Li Rui, the invention right to eat without money belonged to Ke Qingshi, who had served as the first secretary of the East China Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
According to Li Rui, “When discussing the second “Historical Resolution” in 1980, Xia Yan recalled that he personally heard Ke say to Mao at the second meeting of the Eighth National Congress, ‘Next year Shanghai can try to eat without money’. Mao He was very happy to say, ‘If you don’t need money for food, your influence in the world will be much greater than that of the Soviet Union putting a satellite'”.
However, the result of “no money to eat” was disastrous.
Zhang Shuguang quoted Yang Jisheng’s “Tombstone” record as saying that in Xinyang, Henan, “the phenomenon of food shortage occurred in September 1959. … In October and November, the canteens were generally closed … Wuji Brigade was in mid-September (August 13 of the lunar calendar). , two days before the Mid-Autumn Festival), stopped allocating food to the cafeteria. In mid-October, all the cafeterias of the entire brigade were closed. The whole commune did not even have a live elm tree, and they were all eaten up… After the food was cut off, the commune members first lost weight and then became swollen. , and then thin until death. The thin and dead people spit water when they die. The two types of deaths are characterized by no fever when they die, but a drop in body temperature. When they die, they can eat something, and some even shout to eat.”
Zhang Shuguang pointed out that for thousands of years, Chinese farmers have been struggling to survive, and the biggest problem is food and clothing. From a subjective point of view, Mao Zedong opened the public canteen, perhaps to make the peasants fed and clothed and live a so-called communist life. The result, however, backfired, with widespread starvation, mass death. As the inscription to chapter 2 of Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” quotes the German poet F. Hoelderlin as saying, “It is those who make the world into hell who want to make the world what he imagines it to be. people of heaven.”