Author Mao Keji
In the winter of 1955, a Chinese scholar arrived at the Prime Minister's residence in New Delhi. He stayed in the residence and spent half a month with Nehru and Indira Gandhi, having breakfast and dinner together every day, followed by long walks and discussions, creating a very harmonious and productive atmosphere. As a result, Nehru specifically mentioned the profound insights of this scholar in his biweekly letters to the chief ministers of various states.
What was the opportunity that led the Indian Prime Minister to treat a Chinese scholar with such exceptional hospitality? This scholar was the Chinese economist Chen Hansheng. The reason why Nehru invited him to stay at the residence and repeatedly engaged in lengthy conversations was because he wanted to obtain the latest construction experience from China through Professor Chen.
When people talk about Tagore's slogan "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" (Indians and Chinese are like brothers), many will think of the close cooperation between China and India at the Bandung Conference and the shared memory of advocating the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. Few remember that, in the field of economic construction, a significant "learning from China" trend had swept through India more than 70 years ago.
In November 1954, just before India was intensively formulating its Second Five-Year Plan, Nehru learned that China's First Five-Year Plan had achieved major successes. He was both pleased that another Asian giant had made outstanding achievements and felt a great sense of competitive pressure.
Nehru said: "The Western countries have experienced over 150 years or even longer periods of industrial development... We don't have 100 years to catch up. Our problems are essentially similar to those of other underdeveloped countries in Asia. That is why I am particularly interested in what is happening in China. The most exciting countries today are also India and China."
Nehru also revealed India's determination to keep pace with China: "China and India differ in political and economic structures, but the problems we face are essentially the same. Only the future can prove which country and which government structure can achieve greater results in all aspects."
The reason for the intense interest of Indian high-level officials in China is that there is no country in the world more similar to India than China: both countries were victims of imperialist and colonial economic oppression; both face acute land and population contradictions, accompanied by widespread unemployment and stagnant productivity; both want to achieve leapfrog industrialization and face the problem of accumulating surplus capital. Most importantly, both China and India are committed to similar political ideals: promoting economic equality and achieving social fairness. What China has done, India can try as well.
For latecomer countries, the most challenging aspect of leapfrog industrialization is providing sustainable financial support, forming a large enough market, and ensuring that inflation remains under control. Achieving these three goals is inseparable from tapping the potential of the agricultural sector. The biggest challenge for India at that time was "resource constraints": leapfrog industrialization required extremely high agricultural output, but India's agricultural output could not meet the growing industrial demand; to achieve rapid industrialization, India could not divert existing investments to agriculture.
At the moment when Indian decision-makers were struggling, the Chinese experience emerged, sparking strong interest from the Indian side. Professor Chen Hansheng, who was staying at the Prime Minister's residence, told Nehru that after completing the socialist transformation of agriculture, the efficiency of human power, animal power, and agricultural inputs, even the utilization of feces, had significantly improved. The masses showed a high level of enthusiasm for production, pushing China's agricultural output to increase by 35% to 40% within five years. Moreover, China successfully increased agricultural output without adding significant resources, which perfectly addressed India's most difficult resource constraint issue.
In the mid-1950s, dozens of Indian officials from the Congress Party, both houses of Parliament, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, and the National Planning Commission visited China. They frequently sought advice and inspiration from China. Nehru and P. C. Mahalanobis, the architect of India's planned economy, visited China during this period and were deeply impressed and moved by the achievements of China's socialist construction.
Even when Sino-Indian relations fell into a low point, Mahalanobis admitted in an interview that "China provided a better model than the Western path," because the Chinese experience proved that through rural cooperative reform, self-sufficient agriculture with a low starting point could also support leapfrog industrial development.
After his visit to China, Nehru frequently mentioned to his associates "the most impressive changes in China." His admiration and curiosity for Chinese experience were so intense that upon returning home, he immediately ordered various departments to form visiting delegations to study the reasons behind China's rapid agricultural development. In 1956, the Indian National Planning Commission sent an "Agricultural Cooperativization Delegation" to visit China, hoping "to thoroughly investigate the strategies of China's agricultural cooperativization." This delegation later became the famous Patel Committee. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture also sent an "Agricultural Planning and Technology Delegation" to study what "secret" China used to improve agricultural productivity.
Both delegations arrived in China in mid-July 1956, staying for two months and traveling across eight provinces, visiting more than 20 rural cooperatives. The Food and Agriculture Ministry delegation also had in-depth discussions with experts from the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and the National Planning Commission. At the time, Deputy Chairman of the National Planning Commission, Krishnamachari, found that China's rural reforms had successfully increased agricultural output by 15% to 30% within a few years. The vigorous land reform sparked farmers' enthusiasm to participate in village collective projects, including opening up wasteland, building embankments, and digging wells and irrigation channels. One province alone dug 300,000 wells and 100,000 embankments in a quarter, doubling the irrigated area. He also found that even tasks such as collecting farm manure, which were considered dirty work, were carried out with great enthusiasm by the Chinese rural population. Before the next fertilization season, they had already collected 70% of the required manure.
The Food and Agriculture Ministry's delegation reached almost the same conclusion: "The Chinese experience shows that, under certain conditions, by organizing rural human resources through cooperatives, it is possible to ensure full employment for all villagers, not just those with land, which has reference significance for India's future development."
The Chinese experience strengthened Nehru's confidence, making him convinced that land reform could significantly improve the utilization efficiency of existing resources and increase agricultural output without relying on additional inputs. Nehru also used the Chinese experience to urge the Indian Ministry of Food and Agriculture, criticizing them for "taking for granted that only additional resources could increase agricultural output." In his letter to the chief ministers, Nehru cited the Chinese experience, emphasizing: "China has established millions of cooperative farms. How do we increase agricultural output? Some countries have rapidly increased agricultural output without using fertilizers. How did China do it? China's resources are not richer than ours, yet it has developed more heavy industry and its agricultural output growth rate has even exceeded ours. If China can do it, so can we."
Encouraged by the Chinese experience, Nehru introduced India's most historically significant land reform measure, the "Nagpur Resolution" in 1958, promising to complete all land reforms, including land ceiling limits, by the end of 1959, and vigorously promoted the rural cooperative movement: excess land in rural areas should be collectively owned by the village community rather than individuals, and managed by cooperatives composed of landless laborers and workers.
Nehru's highly anticipated "Nagpur Resolution" and India's nationwide efforts to promote leapfrog industrialization ultimately failed due to various internal and external reasons. However, the spirit of mutual assistance and learning from each other shown during this "learning from China" trend still holds significant practical meaning today.
Now, we bring up the "learning from China" trend in India because, in an increasingly uncertain world, China and India are the only two super-large countries with populations exceeding 1 billion, and they are each other's largest neighbors. They can fully learn from the cooperative spirit of that time and become better developmental partners who complement each other.
(Author Mao Keji is an assistant researcher at the Center for International Cooperation, National Development and Reform Commission.)
Source: China Youth Daily Client
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7496393186844180992/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author and welcomes your opinion through the 【up/down】 buttons below.