The Liberation

I would find the explanation for the great and accelerating transformation of the land of China, not in any merciless regimentation of the people of China, but in the release of the suppressed and latent energy of 500 million peasant folk. I would stress that the process of change did not finish there for, if social change made possible the shaping of a new environment so, too, the process of remodelling the environment itself stimulated further change. "As men transformed nature, their own way of thinking was transformed too."

As more ambitious schemes of water conservation or afforestation were initiated the need for bigger community groupings with bigger resources of manpower and capital became obvious. The agricultural co-operative was too small a unit for such schemes—and so the new commune system was born. It was born in the countryside, from the experience of the peasant masses and not, as some would have us believe, Imposed arbitrarily on the peasants by an edict from Peking. Only if we realise this "grassroots" origin of the commune system can we understand its enthusiastic adoption by peasants through the length and breadth of China.