Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the roots of agricultural collectivisation in Northeast Asia are in the State Capitalist and total war ambitions of Imperial Japan, and experiments in Manchukuo, Korea and North China, and have left legacies for post-1945 policies in Northeast Asian nations.

Paper long abstract:

Agricultural collectivisation in Northeast Asia is usually assumed to be a disastrous policy enacted by post-WWII socialist regimes, leading to catastrophes such as the People’s Communes and the Great Leap Forward. This paper argues that collectivisation here had its roots in fact in the State Capitalist and total war ambitions of Imperial Japan, and was a pillar of the “1940 System” that lie at the basis of the so-called “East Asian Model”. In the late-Meiji years, German-inspired cooperatives were started by Hirata Tōsuke in Japan, and by 1918-20, nationwide cooperativisation was first proposed for Japan by Nishihara Kamezō and for China by President Hsu Shih-chang. During the 1920s-30s news of Soviet efforts aroused new interest in East Asia, and Korean Governor Ugaki Kazushige’s efforts at rural cooperativisation is now a classic case of “Colonial Corporatism”. Meanwhile, collectives were envisioned for Japanese emigrants to Manchuria by Tachibana Shiraki. Facing an impending war in 1937, leftwing intellectuals in the South Manchuria Railway Investigation Department led by Satō Daishiro, proposed a revamp of the Manchukuo agricultural economy through collectivisation. Their experiments in the Harbin-Suihua area, known as the “Pinchiang Course”, became a phenomenal success. Despite Kempeitai purges and the death of many leftists including Satō himself, the establishment of “Agricultural Revival Cooperatives” became Manchukuo national policy, completed by 1941. In 1940 the Colonial Korea Government set up “Hamlet Leagues” throughout with “Production Responsibility Systems” as part of a governing apparatus, the “National Totality League”. Meanwhile Tachibana’s influence on the New People’s Association (NPA), which oversaw the North China collaborationist regime, ensured that collectivisation was also tried in North China, following Kuomintang experiments elsewhere in 1936. The legacy of these experiments was enormous. Early Communist Manchuria under Chairman Gao Gang (1948-53), dismissed land redistribution and spearheaded cooperativisation, emboldening Mao’s claims that this was more progressive than small production. Cultural Revolution-era CCP Poliburo member Chen Yonggui, a successful People’s Commune leader, had worked in an NPA cooperative. Taiwan too, in the 1950s-80s, embraced cooperatives. In North Korea, colonial cooperatives were preserved intact. In South Korea it indirectly influenced the Saemaeul Movement of the 1970s.