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Once the PRC was established in 1949, it took about two years to start
the economic rehabilitation of the nation and to bring the economy
under central control. With embryonic government agencies in place to
start the process of central planning, by and large inspired by the Soviet Union, a first Five Year Plan
for the development of the economy was designed for the period
1953-1957. Focusing largely on the creation of an industrial base, and
mainly heavy industry at that, agriculture had to generate a surplus to
enable that creation while consumption was to take last place. In the
process of unfolding, the Five Year Plan was reformulated time and
again, partially as well the result of a planning structure that was
becoming more and more able to tinker with plans that guided all
economic activity on a nation-wide scale. The plan was only formally
adopted in 1955.
This may be the reason that a set of educational materials, designed to
explain the Plan and mobilize the population to support it, was only
published in 1956, well after the start of the whole undertaking and
almost too late to see the end of the plan for which it was designed.
The series comprehensively explains the workings of the various
economic sectors, the amount of input needed to realize the goals, as
well as the specific increases that will result from adhering to the
plan. At the same time, maybe unwittingly, the series illustrates
everything that has not been accomplished yet, thereby putting into perspective
the effects of other, earlier campaigns. The calls for the eradication of counterrevolutionaries, for example,
only addressed towards the end of the plan, serve as a good illustration.
The series opens with a so-called 'head', showing Mao and part of the
text of the decision to adopt the Plan. On the right, the larger issues
at stake are explained, in particular what the input of the various
economic sectors will amount to in terms of the accumulation of
national wealth.
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Industry or its construction, obviously, is
paramount in the plan. The spatial dimensions of the creation or
expansion of existing major plants in energy, steel, chemistry,
shipbuilding, railroad construction, etc. is provided in the sheet
below. But the rest of the series is characterized by the introduction
of an interesting hierarchy in the planned economic activity.
This hierarchy is introduced straight away with the
poster below left, indicating that the steel industry lies at the basis
of all industry. However, as the poster below right informs us,
electrity moves all industry forward. And for those of the spectators
who might not know what steel and/or industry are used for, convenient
examples are provided.
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Source:
E. Stuart Kirby (ed.), Contemporary China 1955 (London: Oxford University Press, 1956)
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