Volume 2, No. 6-7, June-July 2001

The Tuan Yao Autonomous County (population 700,000) in the Kwangsi Chuang Autonomous Region is in a karst area full of limestone hills — an area with one of the worst natural conditions in the region. Cultivation used to be on poor soil found here and there in numerous cauldron-shaped bottom-lands. The Great Cultural Revolution fired the local inhabitants with still greater enthusiasm to transform the terrain they toil and live on.

Guided by Chairman Mao’s revolutionary line, these people, belonging to seven different nationalities, succeeded after six years of strenuous effort in building more than 40,000 water conservancy projects which greatly changed their farmland. Despite a serious drought last year, grain output more than doubled that of six years ago, averaging more than six tons per hectare.

Chairman Mao has taught us: "Liberate philosophy from the confines of the philosophers’ lecture rooms and textbooks, and turn it into a sharp weapon in the hands of the masses." This is exactly what the Tuan people have been doing, and they owe much of their enormous success in farming to this sharp weapon of Marxist philosophy in their hands. Some examples of how they study philosophy and put it into practice are given below.

The Guts to "Nibble at a Hard Bone." In autumn 1971, members of a production team in the Chipailung Commune had a meeting at their Evening Political and Cultural School to discuss plans for capital construction on their farms after the harvest season. Some suggested tackling the Chouchiawan slope first, arguing that on this large tract a stone embankment had to be built to open up terraced fields before serious soil corrosion reduced it to only a sheep pasture in a few years. Others, however, contended that the steep and rocky slope was too hard a nut to crack and that they had better go to some other place on a mountain and raise less on a bigger area by the slash and burn method. Those who wanted to transform Chouchiawan opposed this, saying: "This is a lazy mentality, it means being at nature’s mercy." Their opposition retorted: "But Chouchiawan is a hard bone to nibble at, it just can’t be done."

With both sides deadlocked in heated debate, veteran peasant Chou Ting-lu spoke his mind. He told the meeting that there was fairly good land in their locality and elsewhere which yielded less and less every year because people had failed to develop water conservancy to improve farming conditions, but there also was rather poor land on which yields had continued to increase as a result of efforts to improve the soil.

Turning to the philosophy they had been studying, Chou said: "Our tutor explained the truth ‘It is people, not things, that are decisive’ from a philosophical point of view. This made me see that man is the principal aspect in the contradiction between him and nature. It’s man who opens up the land and grows crops on it. If he doesn’t work hard, however fertile the land, it won’t give good crops. But if we work hard on water conservancy and soil amelioration, we can surely make barren land fertile. Man can work wonders and man’s will is sure to prevail over nature.

The old man’s words aroused the interest of those present and a spirited discussion took place — whether or not to bring man’s dynamic role into full play in the light of the premise that man, not things, is the decisive factor. They finally agreed to tackle Chouchiawan and "nibble at the hard bone" After a four month herculean struggle, they built 170-odd plots of terraced land and had good harvests in 1972 and again this year.

"He Who Wades Through Deep Water Tames the Dragon." The will to act is not enough by itself; revolutionary zeal must go hand in hand with a scientific approach. At the Yalung Commune, many bottomlands in the rocky mountains were waterlogged during the rainy season because of the lack of spillways. Everyone was anxious to solve the problem but didn’t know where to start. This knotty problem haunted secretary of the commune Party committee Wei Han-fong asked himself: Why was it that all precipitation in some bottom-lands disappeared in no time even though there was no spillway while in others it did not? He took Chairman Mao’s teaching "No investigation, no right to speak" to heart and made an on-the-spot investigation in the rainy season to see for himself. He also called on and conferred with many peasants there.

An 82-year-old peasant told Wei that he had heard from his elders that there had been a sinkhole in the nearby bottom-land but it was blocked by debris, rocks and earth. No one, however, knew where the hole was. According to one commune member, he had seen a whirlpool somewhere when there was a flood and traces of it remained after the flood had subsided it was possible the sinkhole was underneath.

Wei Han-fang took some people to the spot. They dug until they found a hole formed by the protracted corrosion of the calcareous rock 37 metres below. With the hole cleared, floodwaters from the mountains disappeared underground in a day’s time. Using this experience as an example, the commune Party committee popularized it and sinkholes were found in all the bottom-lands except one, where the floodwaters disappeared rather slowly. Why? Chairman Mao’s teaching "Without concrete analysis there can be no knowledge of the particularity of any contradiction" flashed through Wei Han-fang’s mind. He concluded that failure to solve the problem of this particular bottom-land was because the particularity of the contradiction there was still unknown and more concrete analyses and further investigation were called for.

Again he went right to the spot. There a commune member told him: "A team of hydrologists and geologists once came here and found three subterranean rivers. Is it possible that these rivers rise as a result of mountain floods, thus making it difficult for the water to flow off?" To answer this it was necessary to go down into the sinkhole. This, of course, was risky.

Using a rope, Wei Han-fang and several others descended to the bottom of the hole more than 30 metres deep, made a turn to enter a natural cave, swam through a deep pool and finally got the answer at the end of the cave. This was where the subterranean river passed through, but the crevice between two rocks through which the water flowed was too narrow. They blasted the huge rocks with dynamite and water began to run through rapidly. This was how the Yalung Commune did away with waterlogging. Summing up their success, they came to know better the significance of bringing man’s dynamic role into play.

Struggle at the "Abyss." It was an early winter day in 1970 when Pan Pao-ying, secretary of the Party committee of the Chingsheng Commune, came to the Panchiang Production Team. Team members were opening up land on a slope without bothering about the large tract of land of an "abyss" at the bed of a bottomland. He was puzzled.

That piece of land belonging to the team, washed by rain-water over the years, had too many sinkholes and all the fertile soil had been carried down to the holes. People called the land an "abyss." The commune members had thought about filling the holes and building terraced fields around them. This would mean less labour than opening up land on rocky slopes, and give quicker returns. Why, then, did they not transform the "abyss" first?

In his talks with the cadres and commune members, Pan Pao-ying was told by someone that they were too busy to work on it, as they had little manpower to spare; others said it didn’t matter which came first because, sooner or later, all the land there would be transformed anyway. He made further, enquiries by inviting the cadres and a number of veteran poor peasants to a forum where he learnt what really was the matter. It turned out that the "abyss" was a piece of land owned by the brigade collectively. While it was lying waste, a few people grew their own bamboo and plantain on it, and they were reluctant to fill it because, once the land was tilled collectively, they would be deprived of a source of private income. What was more, there was a rich peasant who had refused to turn over a new leaf and deliberately stood in the way of the growth of the collective economy.

He told people in private "The proper thing is that whoever does the growing reaps the fruit. The more you grow the more you earn. You shouldn’t fill the ‘abyss.’

Recalling this incident, Pan Pao-ying remembered what Chairman Mao had said: "When we look at a thing, we must examine its essence and treat its appearance merely as an usher at the threshold, and once we cross the threshold, we must grasp the essence of the thing. This is the only reliable and scientific method of analysis." As things were, the pros and cons of the transformation of the "abyss" reflected a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the socialist and capitalist roads.

Sabotage by the rich peasant meant class struggle, and the struggle between public and private interests in the minds of some commune members, too, was a reflection of class struggle among the peasants, the former being a contradiction between ourselves and the enemy and the latter a contradiction among the people. Only by acting in accordance with the Party’s basic line, grasping class struggle and the two-line struggle, by correctly distinguishing and handling the two different types of contradictions, could the "abyss" be thoroughly transformed. So the Party secretary and the cadres in the team studied the Party’s basic line together and a decision was reached to deal properly with the sabotaging activities of the rich peasant while carrying out socialist education among the commune members.

Pan Pio-ying and the cadres separately called on the commune members who had planted bamboo and plantain on the "abyss." They explained with great patience the Party line and policies to them and criticized the revisionist line of capitalist "free" enterprise preached by Liu Shao-chi and his gang to undermine socialist collective economy. Having raised their consciousness, the commune members held a meeting at the "abyss" to criticize the saboteur face to face and set about transforming the "abyss" without further delay.

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