Household Responsibility System

A rural production system in China that contracted land-use rights to farm households, which met state procurement obligations and retained or sold much of their surplus output.

Agricultural decollectivization in China: The transfer of Chinese agriculture from collective production toward household-based farming and other noncollective arrangements. The system became the central institutional form of rural decollectivization.
Xiaogang Village: A village in Anhui Province associated with an early secret agreement to divide collective farming tasks among households in 1978. Its households' contract became a celebrated precedent for the emerging system.
Chinese agricultural growth: The expansion of agricultural output and productivity in China, especially during the reform period beginning in the late 1970s. Output rose rapidly after households gained stronger incentives to increase production.
Collective farming: Agricultural production organized through shared labor and collective management rather than individually managed household plots. The system shifted day-to-day production responsibility away from collective teams toward households.
Household contract responsibility system: A Chinese rural contracting arrangement that assigned production obligations and residual output to individual households. This name emphasizes the contracts linking household performance to collective and state obligations.
Anhui rural reform: Early experiments in household-based agricultural production and contracting carried out in Anhui Province after 1978. Anhui's experiments helped demonstrate that household responsibility could raise rural output.
Rural income in China: The earnings and material resources of people living in rural China, derived from farming and other work. Households could retain and sell surplus, contributing to substantial early gains in rural earnings.
State farming in China: Agriculture conducted on farms owned and managed directly by the Chinese state. Unlike state farms, household contracts placed cultivation decisions and production incentives with farm families.
People's commune: A rural Chinese institution that organized collective farming, administration, and social services, especially from 1958 to 1983. Household contracting replaced commune-based collective production without immediately abolishing collective land ownership.
Sichuan rural reform: Early Chinese rural reforms in Sichuan that expanded household production arrangements during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Sichuan, like Anhui, provided influential local precedents for national adoption.

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