Children of the Revolution: The Lives of China’s Model Communists

[Randy W]

Shanghai’s Caoyang New Village once stood as a monument to the prestige China’s “model workers” enjoyed after the Communist revolution. Now, it’s come to symbolize the decline of the state-run economy in a rapidly changing country.

An interesting story from the Sixth Tone about how the lives of China's workers has evolved over the years.

Children of the Revolution: The Lives of China’s Model Communists
Caoyang New Village in central Shanghai is a symbol of the prestige China’s “model workers” enjoyed after the Communist revolution — and how their status has faded in the decades since.

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“It was the most advanced residential development in Shanghai back then,” she tells Sixth Tone. “The community was filled with trees and flowers.”

Today, however, things feel very different. The compound that once stood as a monument to the newfound prestige China’s factory workers enjoyed under the Communist Party of China (CPC) has long since fallen behind the times. Now, it’s come to symbolize the opposite: the decline of the state-run economy and its workforce in a rapidly changing country.

Few passersby give Caoyang New Village a second glance these days, but its opening in 1952 was a huge moment for the city and its new Communist rulers, who had triumphed in the Chinese Civil War less than three years previously.

The party leadership was focused on rebuilding war-torn Shanghai and transforming it into an industrial powerhouse along Soviet lines. To do that, it planned to harness the power of the urban working class — encouraging workers to become “the masters of the new China.”

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Just over 1,000 workers selected from local state-owned factories and their families moved into the community in Putuo — an area just north of the Suzhou Creek that was one of China’s main industrial hubs at the time. Most of them, including Yi, were “model workers” being rewarded for their revolutionary zeal.

The CPC had launched the model worker system in the ’30s, while it was still based in its mountain stronghold in northwestern China. It was designed to create incentives within the largely egalitarian planned economy for people to work hard.

Model workers were given huge prestige and various perks — from preferential access to good housing to extra paid holiday. In return, they were expected to become leaders of the revolution, motivating their fellow workers and encouraging them to be good communists.

“These young model workers conveyed the Communist Party’s expectations of new workers,” says Lin Chaochao, a history researcher at Fudan University. “They were representatives … not only in production, but also in political life.”

The first generation of model workers needed little encouragement. Many had experienced tremendous hardship in the years before 1949 — and were fiercely devoted to the communist ideal.

As China’s economy has transformed, the type of people honored as model workers has changed, too. Under Chairman Mao, four out of five model workers were industrial workers. Now, only a “very small” number are from the traditional working class, Lin says. 

Instead, the government has begun awarding entrepreneurs, celebrities, and sports stars. Actor and director Wang Baoqiang, Olympic hurdles champion Liu Xiang, and basketball legend Yao Ming have all been named model workers. 

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As with other relics from the Maoist era, the status enjoyed by Caoyang New Village has also faded over the decades. Many younger residents have no idea their home was once nationally famous. They simply think of it as just another “old public housing” compound where rent is cheap.

These days, the community is far from a desirable place to live. Its squat concrete blocks are dwarfed by the more modern apartment towers surrounding it. Many residents still have to share kitchens and bathrooms. Clumps of tangled wires hang in the stairwells. There are several rats.

Yang Weijie, who grew up in Caoyang New Village in the ’80s and ’90s, was astonished when he read an article a few years ago describing the glorious history of his childhood home. 

 

 

[Randy W]

China’s model collective village in trouble as Communist Party marks 100th anniversary

Once dubbed the “richest village” in China, Huaxi in the nation’s eastern Jiangsu province, was the pinnacle of what one analyst calls “capitalism with Chinese characteristics”. As China started to adopt market reforms in the 1980s, local Communist Party secretary Wu Renbao switched the village economy from agriculture to manufacturing and trade while retaining its communist forms of social organisation. It subsequently developed into one of China's most successful local economies.  But later the village was caught up in rumours of bankruptcy following the suspected mismanagement of collective funds and bad investment decisions. Now, as the Chinese Communist Party marks its 100th anniversary on July 1, 2021, long-running debates about whether the village’s system is a good model are back on the table.

from the SCMP on YouTube

China’s Collective Villages Struggle to Keep It Together
Some rural villages claim to be the last bastions of the country’s socialist past — but not all residents are as happy or equal as they’d like to be.

from the Sixth Tone Dec 20, 2018

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But Nanjie, along with other pockets of China, have partly retained the former political model. They are the country’s so-called collective villages — small, often isolated settlements that retain vestiges of the pre-reform socialist system. Many such villages are openly nostalgic for a time when Mao was China’s paramount leader and the state, at least on paper, looked after its citizens from cradle to grave.

In practice, collective villages are less like throwbacks to the Mao era, and more like businesses: The village government owns and operates a corporation, residents work for it, and the corporation, in turn, plows its profits back into salaries, perks, and village infrastructure. By and large, this system leaves residents feeling wealthy and well looked-after.

But when utopian social ideology collides with aggressive business models, conflict is inevitable. In Nanjie, for instance, individualistic young people struggle to connect emotionally with the collective’s spirit of self-sacrifice. Huaxi, in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, claims to be the “richest village in China,” but some residents complain its economic success has created a privileged class of villagers who lord it over their neighbors. And in Dazhai, a village once lauded by Mao himself as a shining beacon of socialism, long-term economic malaise has pushed residents into tourism tinged with Maoist nostalgia — with mixed results.

What can the experiences of collective villages tell us about how China balances ideology, economy, and the desire to preserve social order? Over the course of several months, Sixth Tone’s reporters visited Nanjie, Huaxi, and Dazhai to find out.