18 farmers of Xianggang village：lighting the torch  for China’s rural revolution

 Farmers of Xiaogang village take a group photo

Xiaogang village in the past

 Xiaogang village in 2021

In 1978, 18 farmers  in Xiaogang village, in east  Anhui Province, signed a  secret agreement to divide  communally owned farmland  into individual pieces called  household contracts, thus inadvertently lighting the torch  for China’s rural revolution.  They promised that each  household would deliver a  full quota of grain to the state  and to the commune, and  keep whatever remained. Before 1978, Xiaogang  was infamous for its poverty.  Grain output increased to  90,000 kilograms in 1979,  over six times as much as the  previous year. The per capita  income of Xiaogang climbed  to 400 yuan from 22 yuan. Household Contract  Responsibility System, starting from Xiaogang village,  allows farming households  to manage agricultural  production on their own  initiatives while the farmland  remains in the ownership  of the rural collective. It also  enables farmers to use land  through long-term contracts and keep the produce  after paying taxes. It raised  productivity and increased  agricultural output, both of  which were preconditions  for nurturing the economic  takeoff, and comprehensive  industrialization and urbanization. The start of this  system is widely accepted as  a milestone in the economic  opening up.