The Communists tried to purge Chinese society of bourgeoise influence during the Cultural Revolution. It sparked another cultural revolution, one that thrived on black markets.
Frank Dikötter writes:
One village had abandoned any attempt to wrest food from the arid soil, opting to specialize in selling pork instead. In order to fulfill their quota of grain deliveries to the state, the villagers used the profit from their meat business to buy back corn from the market. Local cadres, instead of enforcing the planned economy as they were supposed to, sided with the villagers and supervised the entire operation.
Yan’an was not alone in taking to the market. Entire communes in Luonan had divided up all collective assets and handed responsibility for production back to individual families. Many villagers abandoned two decades of monoculture, imposed by a state keen on grain to feed the cities and to barter on the international market, and cultivated crops that performed well on the black market. Some rented out their plots and went to the city instead, working in underground factories and sending back remittances to the village.
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