Introduction

The Chinese countryside was transformed during the short period from Mao Zedong's death in 1976 to the mid-1980s when decollectivization was put in place. The most important aspect of the transformation was the greatly enhanced living standards of China's peasants, something leading observers to credibly speak of an "agricultural miracle". Although part and parcel of the initial post-Mao impulse to repair the damage caused by the Cultural Revolution, agriculture and rural organization occupied a somewhat secondary position in emerging Chinese Communist Party (CCP)policy, and particularly in the policy preoccupations and politics of the central leadership through to the 1978 Third Plenum. The establishment of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the new Communist rulers set out to uplift the rural areas from the backward small-scale farming and periodic famines of the preceding periods. The developmental aspect was particularly manifest in efforts to promote agricultural mechanization. Paradoxes of Post-Mao Rural Reform created measures to give more profits to the peasants, such as increased agricultural purchasing prices.