ABSTRACT
My interest in peasant household individualism was stimulated by the crisis in collective farming that took place in a village where I conducted field work in the spring of 1980. During the course of this field work, I was impressed by the basic success of collectivization in improving the condition of life for villagers in Yangbei. The establishment of the cooperative health plan and medical clinic brought effective medical care to the village, cutting back drastically on infectious disease and infantile mortality. The education system, substantially expanded during the Cultural Revolution, brought public education to the village, increasing educational attainment among younger peasants. The local government and village organizations appeared committed to local development, and they were generally staffed by cadres who impressed me as well meaning and dedicated. Finally, the improvement in the quantity and quality of factors of production developed after collectivization was substantial. Construction and maintenance of roads, development of new seed strains, availability of low-interest loans to purchase tractors, construction of a small hydroelectric plant that brought low-cost electric power to the village, the county-run agrotechnical station, the meteorological station that provided accurate weather forecasts, and many more smaller improvements have been part of a broadly based, state initiated modernization program in Wuping county. These improvements benefited peasants in Yangbei.
