ABSTRACT
The collective nature of Chinese farming draws the course to follow and sets the limitations to the mechanization strategy. Mechanization in the communes cannot proceed in a way that may lead to an excess of social costs - such as redundancy of field labour, lowering of wages, migration of unemployed - over private benefits. Mechanization, as the Chinese use the term, implies more than the introduction of tractors and other mobile gear in crop work. Motorization began briskly during the First Plan period with the creation of the first agricultural machine and tractor stations (MTS), first owned by the State, and then turned over to the xian. Chinese sources insist that farm mechanization increases employment, not only by a multiplication effect transmitted through many forward and backward linkages, but also in agriculture itself thanks to intensified cultivation. This chapter summarizes roughly the quantitative expansion of the Chinese agro-machine park and the use of engines and electricity in agriculture.
