The Poor and Lower-Middle Peasants’ Association: Policy Orientation and Local Practice

In the 1960s, the Poor and Lower-Middle-Class Peasants’ Association (then abbreviated as PLMPA only in this chapter), a mass organization of farmers, emerged in rural China. Several provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities successively established PLMPA from their production teams, production brigades, communes, counties, and regions at the provincial level. After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Party, the activities of the PLMPA across the country were mostly in a semiparalyzed state; some places had even disbanded their PLMPAs and abolished the related offices. The full-time cadres of the PLMPAs were arranged to have other jobs after being inspected by the organization and personnel department. In some places, such as Hubei Province, although the PLMPA was greatly affected and was once prepared to be abolished, it carried out an experimental work in developing the PLMPAs into Farmers’ Associations with the support of the Provincial Party Committee. After gaining preliminary experience, Hubei Province took the lead in establishing Farmers’ Associations at all levels nationwide. Then, in the mid-1980s, the Farmers’ Association of Hubei Province disappeared. The PLMPAs across the country were also successively abolished. Clarifying the whole picture of the PLMPAs from beginning to end and analyzing the historical reasons for its emergence and disappearance are topics of great research value.