the boss says we're all in it together

Wu Renbao died this week, who as the party boss of famed rich village Huaxi constructed a hybrid collectivist-capitalist economy glued together by what looks to me like feudalism. The WSJ interviewed sociologist Hou Xiaoshu on the community capitalism found in Huaxi and various other places in China:

How does it all work?

The village finances are kept in the village. In Huaxi’s case, there are three different forms of distribution. One is the “communist” part, which is distribution according to one’s need. So it provides the villager with basic subsistence fees. They also have what they call the “socialist” part of distribution, which means that you have to work in the village, at a factory or in a service area, in order to get paid. That’s a salary. The third part is called the “capitalist” part. That’s the dividend based on factory shares and village shares that you own. Not every villager has that.

So how do they live in China’s richest village?

I visited some of their houses. They live in these very luxurious, kind of European-style villas. The furniture is all furnished collectively. It is all the same, along with the TVs and stereo systems. What they ate…it was basically salted fish and stuff like that. It’s not as if they are having very luxurious food or eating lobsters every night. For the cars, they buy the cars collectively. They might have upgraded the cars but I didn’t see people driving Lamborghinis or BMWs

Ms Hou thinks the whole thing is broadly sustainable, though not as a model for the country as a whole. She notes in particular that the collectivist property structure has helped the village avoid the mass incident problem. And, clearly, there's no poverty and wealth differentials are considered both essential and essential to control. But it exists in Huaxi and various other places in China not as an expression of popular will but of the immense latitude local bosses like the late Mr Wu have over matters of economic development. I suppose the nearest British equivalents wouldbe places like Bournville or Port Sunlight, as they were originally conceived. Anyway, Here's the website of Nanjie, the most explicitly Maoist collectivist settlement. It's in Chinese, but you get the drift.

 

Comments

[Malcs]

Funnily enough, I was reading about Nanjie the other day after a reference in Graham Hutchings' 'Modern China'. There's an NYT article from 2011 about it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/magazine/in-china-a-place-where-maoism-still-reigns.html?_r=0

I particularly like the bit about the inhabitants venturing beyond the city limits for a kebab and a bit of shopping. It might feed into my long-nursed project for a long form TV detective drama called Stalingrad, loosely stylistically based on Polanski's Chinatown, where Stalingrad is an area of Los Angeles subject to Soviet rule but people are free to come and go.

[Strategist]

my long-nursed project for a long form TV detective drama called Stalingrad... where Stalingrad is an area of Los Angeles subject to Soviet rule but people are free to come and go

That's my B&T quote of the week so far, going into Friday. I don't know if we should band together to crowd fund this or to organise an intervention.

[Malcs]

May I suggest crowd funding? I might set up a Kickstarter page... FYI, am working on the detective figure whose journeys in and out of Stalingrad will help contextualise the place for a TV audience. At the moment I picture him as a renegade Quaker with an amphetamine problem and a habit of swigging a heady concoction of infant formula and spiced rum from a baby bottle he keeps about his person like a hip flask. I got the idea by conflating the names of two campaigning charities in the UK, Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs and Baby Milk Action.

[ajay]

Oh, man, I'd watch that. What's the backstory? Is this a kind of Kowloon Walled City that stayed in Russian hands after the US took over the rest of California? (As you know, Bob, the Russians had outposts along the coast of California in the 19th century, though more up around San Francisco).

[Malcs]

I think that's going to be left largely unexplained, at least for a while, although your suggestion sounds like it would work a treat. At the moment I'm trying to work out what kind of arc will get us to the end of season 1 finale in which Stalingrad is besieged by the Aryan Brotherhood.

[ajay]

Retelling the history of the Soviet Union in the form of rivalry between LA street gangs is a distinctly promising project. Kind of Dr Zhivago meets The Warriors.

[Malcs]

I'm definitely going to steal that for the poster tag line.