ABSTRACT
The aim of economic development is to meet the immediate material interests and felt needs of the peasants, lifting them up from abject poverty and from the subsistence level and raising their standard of living as fast as the Chinese economy permits. Events since the death of Mao Zedong on 1976, to the present have made it clear that the Third Plenum of December 1978 was a decisive turning point in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. Mao elevated Dazhai into a national model in order to counter the 'Taoyuan Experience', an experiment to revitalize agricultural development and to reimpose order and discipline in the rural areas. Dazhai and Xiyang represented an approach to agricultural and rural development at a definite stage of China's economic growth. The decline of Xiyang and Dazhai was preceded by the publication of two major articles which formed the ideological justification for the complete destruction of the Maoist line of the Cultural Revolution period.
