![In 1978 there was little incentive to work collectively owned land. Then one village decided to rebel](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F94f6c32c-0206-11e9-9685-be54be25c61a.jpg?crop=3000%2C1687%2C0%2C156&resize=685)
Xiaogang : 1978
The chances are that the Chinese would want to describe themselves as communists. However, it would be more correct to describe them as a people who, under the guise of Communism, have used the principles of private enterprise to grow their economy thus becoming an economic behemoth that is rivalling Washington.
Collective ownership was a sacred cornerstone of China’s socialist/communist ideology in the 1970s. At this time, hunger was rampant as farmers could not use their initiative to farm the land privately considering that land was collectively owned. People had to wait for government handouts rather than working in the fields to fill their empty stomachs.
However, in 1978, some villagers in Xiaogang, in the eastern province of Anhui, rather than wait until they starved to death, decided to defy Communist Party leaders. Even though they knew that it could lead to their being publicly executed, they took the extremely bold step of dividing up the collectively owned land for private farming. Things changed drastically unlike when collective farming provided no incentive for any hard work.
In Xiaogang, the villagers had a bumper harvest in 1979. Personal incomes grew 18-fold, oil crop production was equivalent to the sum of the previous 20 years, and the grain output was four times the yearly average between 1966 and 1976.
This practice was the basis of the country’s rural reforms. Across China, it became clear that changes were inevitable.
Beijing
President Xi has called the villagers' daring move “the thunder” that heralded China’s economic reforms, which have catapulted the country into the top echelon of the world economy and given its people a quality of life far better than could have been imagined 40 years ago.
Xiaogang : 2018
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