ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the severity of the current state of agriculture. In Ji Dengkui's view, the way out was to enhance agricultural productivity and accelerate the growth rate to a new target of 4 to 5 percent per year. Ji laid out major measures to speed up agricultural development. In addition to stepping up farmland capital construction and giving priority to the supply of seeds and chemical fertilizers, he called for increased investments in agriculture. In his view, promoting agricultural development depended largely on arousing the initiative of farmers and cadres in grass-roots units. The Third Plenum, or more precisely the five-week central work conference preceding the plenum from November 10 to December 15, 1978, holds a special place in the Chinese community party (CCP's) official mythology and a dominant position in foreign scholarship. Hua Guofeng inevitably would have been involved in the key decisions of the work conference that increased state resources to agriculture and reduced peasant burdens.
