the human face of desertification || striking a blow against desertification: cooperative initiative...

Clark University

Striking a Blow against Desertification: Cooperative Initiative in Chungwei County, Ninghsia-Hui Autonomous Region, ChinaAuthor(s): Joseph WhitneySource: Economic Geography, Vol. 53, No. 4, The Human Face of Desertification (Oct., 1977),pp. 381-384Published by: Clark UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/142978 .

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STRIKING A BLOW AGAINST DESERTIFICATION:

COOPERATIVE INITIATIVE IN CHUNGWEI COUNTY, NINGHSIA-HUI AUTONOMOUS REGION, CHINA

JOSEPH WHITNEY

University of Toronto

"My name is Chang Hang-chih, a party member of the Sun Chihhui production brigade and a member of the Chungwei County Revolutionary Com- mittee of the Ninghsia-hui Autonomous Region. Until this area was liberated by the Red Army in 1949, the Tengri Desert had been advancing on our lands at the rate of about 15 kilometers per century. The feudal landlords and rapacious of- ficials of Chungwei County did nothing to prevent this encroachment. Indeed, their greed for higher taxes and rents contributed to the rapid advance of the sand because the peasants were forced to raise more crops than the land could support, and fallow land had to be put under cultivation until all the precious top-soil had been blown down to the sand beneath. An old folk-song that used to be sung in the county sums up the predicament well: 'Dead wood and yel- low sands fill the eyes with sadness.'

"When I was fifteen years old our family's land was engulfed by the sand and we were forced to flee to neighbor- ing Shensi Province. Later, I joined the Red Army and returned to my homeland in 1950 determined to apply the princi- ples of socialism to transform the people and the land of my birthplace.

"Success was not achieved easily, however. I was faced with both natural and human opposition. Little more than 50 mm of rain falls on Chungwei County every year and the evaporation is twen- ty-three times that amount. There are no permanent rivers or streams, and water fills the riverbeds only for a short time after occasional heavy storms. The main problem is that even if a small plot

of land can be reclaimed from the desert the sand dunes blown by the strong northwest winds in winter soon engulf it. Before the Cultural Revolution grain yields averaged around half a ton per hectare per year, insufficient to feed the 100,000 people living in the county, and making it necessary for the deficit to be provided by the state. Today, yields average 3.5 tons and the county even sells surplus grain to the state.

"Then there was the human opposition to change. Years of oppression and de- feat had made the peasants listless and fatalistic and unwilling to take the initiative in controlling their own destiny. They said: 'The shifting sands can never be conquered. We should be thankful that when the shifting sands engulf one area, the sand is blown from others.' Some of the comrades in the Chungwei Party Committee opposed me saying: 'Nothing can be done until the state gives us bulldozers and machines to push the sand away.'

"The main problem before the communes were established in 1958 was to mobilize the masses for collective action against the desert. Each family unit was too small and impotent by itself to do much, and was unwilling to give labor for collective action for fear that effort applied to someone else's land would mean reduced yields on one's own.

"The real battle against the desert started with the rise of the People's Com- munes. The commune pooled the re- sources of separate communities and mapped out unified plans. In Spring and Autumn every year each commune con- centrated its manpower, transportation



ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

facilities, and money to drive back the sand.

"In the early 1960s the Chungwei Party Committee called a meeting of cadres from the communes in the county to sum up the experiences of sand control gained during the previous dec- ade. Some capitalist-roaders at the meeting were blind to the socialist initiative of the masses and insisted that the county could not be transformed. Under their influence, at first a number of cadres became despondent, but after much struggle and criticism the correct revolutionary line prevailed. The battle against the sand was to be waged on a number of fronts. Of prime importance was the need to raise the political consciousness of the masses for then, and only then, would they learn that even nature bends to the will of the people. We also studied the pathbreaking experiences of Tachai* and the story of the Foolish Old Man who Moved Mountains, and we resolved that in our fight against the desert we would rely on the masses and on local initiative and would not seek aid from the state.

"Having read Chairman Mao's essay 'On Practice' we realized the importance of combining theory with practice in dealing with the sand problem. As one Party member expressed it: 'A path is trodden by men. Experience is acquired through practice. In making revolution we should not wait to eat the meal pre- pared by other people.' We decided that we would have to grasp the laws of sandstorms and that this could be done only after much observation and experi- mentation. A number of comrades fought against the flying sand and the raging heat, and made 800 observations looking for plants that would help check the shifting sand. Eventually they found two shrubs called sand-wormwood and sand- willow that grew on the windward slopes of shifting sand dunes. Eventually, after

* The most famous model agricultural brigade in China.

thirteen research teams had been organized by the county, five other sand re- taining shrubs were discovered. These shrubs were transplanted in the Chung- wei area and initially stopped the movement of some 250 hectares of shifting dunes.

"The next step was to plant wind- breaks so that no more sand would be blown in from the desert and that evaporation would be cut down in the culti- vated land. After we had planted some 20,000 oleaster and poplar saplings early in Spring, it did not rain for four months. I organized the cadres and the peasants to fetch water from an irrigation ditch half a kilometer away. Braving the heat in the sweltering summer, young peasants ran barefooted on the hot sands with buckets of water slung from shoulder poles. As a result of this cooperative effort nearly all the saplings survived, and a tree belt some five kilometers long and half a kilometer wide was created and now holds drifting sand in check.

"In all this work we received much en- thusiastic help from comrades of the Sand Control Research Station that had been established in the county by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Not only did they give us valuable theoretical and practical assistance but they also contributed manual labor to planting trees and constructing new fields after the sand had been fixed.

"As the collective economy of the county grew, the profits acquired from selling agricultural surpluses to the state were used, in the late 1960s, to buy trucks, tractors, bulldozers, well-boring manufacturing equipment, and about one hundred rubber-tired carts to facilitate transportation on sandy roads.

"In one part of the county where rivers appear during the rainy season for a couple of months and then disappear into the sands, the chairman of the local commune, Huang Ai-jen, consulted many members to find out a way to make the flowing water do some useful

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NINGHSIA-HUI REGION, CHINA

work. In accordance with a suggestion from the masses, the chairman and a small number of comrades put up willow fences across the dry course of a river. The wind-blown sand accumulated rapidly along these fences forming sand dams. When the river rose after heavy rain, the floodwaters behind the dam washed down a number of sand dunes in the flooded area and deposited a layer of silt. In this way, by letting nature do the work of man, four people were able to move some 120,000 cubic meters of sand and silt and built sand dams total- ling 35,000 meters in length. Thus, over the years, several hundred hectares of new farmland have been created out of what was formerly a barren wasteland.

"In other parts of the county where there is no surface water at all, people wanted to tap underground sources, but the mass effort was held back before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution by those renegades, hidden traitors, and scabs that followed the counter-revolutionary revisionist line. The county revolutionary committee that came into existence during the Cultural Revolu- tion made an analysis of the problem and decided to have a mass-movement of well digging.

"One of the women comrades in the county revolutionary committee, Sung Ching-fen, said: 'Women hold up half of heaven. We will help the men to dig wells.' When some of the men heard this, they ridiculed the suggestion saying: 'How can women who have looked after the home or worked in the fields dig a well which requires drilling equipment, much experience, and strength?' But Sung Ching-fen and the other 'iron women,' as they came to be called in her group, were not deterred by these attitudes. They quietly went about the task of studying well-drilling methods and constructed their own equipment. Out of lengths of discarded pipes and pieces of metal they welded together sections for the drill, and with money they collected themselves from a num-

ber of brigades they bought an old rig motor to turn the drill.

"A large group of people gathered on the first day when the well boring be- gan. Many expected the equipment to fail and derided the efforts of the women. The women, however, unde- terred, carried on with their work. As nightfall came, the crowd dispersed but still the group worked on. Taking turns to sleep and operate the drilling rig the women worked through the night. About ten o'clock the next morning, at a depth of 180 feet they struck water. Many of the men who had derided their efforts came shamefacedly to apologize for their attitude and offered to help the women drill more wells. Since 1970, the women's team has drilled over two hundred wells. The team's efforts triggered off a mass movement for digging wells and in the last two years some 1,700 pump wells and some 2,500 brick-walled wells have been sunk in that part of the county. In the county as a whole, some 25,000 hectares of land have been freed from the menace of drought.

"In all of our desert control work, I should not fail to mention the assistance of educated youth who have come from Peking, Shanghai, and other large cities of China. At present, some two hundred are working alongside the peasants in our county. When the youths first arrived in our area, some years ago, there was much opposition and even hostility to- wards them. 'Why must we waste our time and energy feeding and instructing these greenhorns who have never had to experience the hardship of country life before?' asked many of the peasants. The students met these rebuffs in a pa- tient manner, explaining that while they did not know much about farming or manual work they had volunteered to come to this remote area to learn from the masses and to serve the people in the spirit of Norman Bethune. On hearing this, much of the opposition disappeared and the students were accepted by a number of work teams. So hard did they

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work and so humbly were the to learn from the peasants that many brigades throughout th were asking the county chairma them more students like thes< production brigade, the educa helped the old peasants farm tares of land where they plan spiked millet, and sorghum, c

per-mou yield record of 1,200 < another commune, some stud the south successfully showed ant how to grow rice on irriga This was the first time in his rice had been grown in our c indeed in any of the neighboi Now, several thousand hectares land in the county are cultiva and a number of adjacent cour sent teams to study our experic

"After years of struggle with ert, we in Chungwei County k the sand can be conquered that the Party and the masses together and lift high the banne lutionary thought. We also k we need to train a whole nev tion in school how to wage against the desert and to make 1 stantly vigilant against its c croachments. In accordance Party's instructions regarding work, half-study educational we have organized the schoo county around the problem ( standing and controlling sand the first four years of primary < we have organized so-called classes. In these schools the deal with the immediate proble vicinity of their own homes. P1( desert have been assigned by munes for experimental pur teach the primary school studei control, afforestation, animal etc. The students grow whea millet, and green peppers on that they have reclaimed from These products are then sold to and the profits used to reduc

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

ey willing fees and to buy books and equipment very soon for the students. In the fifth and sixth ie county grades, the students go to the commune an to send school where more advanced studies of e. In one desert science are made. ted youth "During all our battles against the ten hec- sand we have received constant inspira-

ited corn, tion from the example of Tachai, the rnd set a standard-bearer of Chinese agriculture. catties. In We have sent a number of leading ents from cadres to visit the brigade and on their the peas- return, to share experiences with com- ited land. munes throughout the county. Apart story that from learning from Tachai how to con county or trol erosion and how to use mountain ring ones. torrents to irrigate farmland, we have s of farm- learned its spirit of self-reliance and self- Lting rice, sufficiency in our battle with nature. We ities have can proudly report that we have not ence. asked or received any financial aid from i the des- the provincial authorities for any desert cnow that control project in the county. We have provided developed local industries, paid for from

stay close agricultural surpluses, to such an extent ~r of revo- that we are now able to manufacture all now that the well-drilling and farming equipment v genera- ourselves, not to mention the cement

warfare that is used to line irrigation channels them con- and construct other water control proj- rafty en- ects. with the "Although the battle over the desert the half- is not yet finally won, our experience program, shows that the masses united under the ls in the guidance of the Party and Chairman of under- Mao are the masters not the slaves of [. During Nature." education 'doorstep'

students ms in the 1. British Broadcasting Corporation. Survey of ots in the World Broadcasts. Part 3. The Far East: the com- Economic Supplement. the com- poses to 2. Jen-min Jih-pao (People's Daily, Peking). nts desert breedings 3. New China News Agency. Press Releases.

t, barley, 4. United States Consulate General, Hong the land Kong. Survey of People's Republic of China the sand. Press. 'the state 5. Whitney, Joseph. Fieldnotes in North China. ce school October, 1975.



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