In 1952, he was appointed Minister of Rural Affairs, and two years later, he became Deputy Prime Minister in charge of Agriculture and Forestry. ** is the person in charge of the rural work personally selected by *** and ** personally, and his work achievements are highly recognized.
However, in 1955, he was severely criticized by ***, why?
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, remarkable results have been achieved in rural land reform, and peasants have obtained their own land, and their enthusiasm for production has been greatly improved. However, with the improvement of the economic status of peasants, the trend of middle peasants has intensified, and small and medium-sized peasant groups have gradually formed, and they have gained more benefits from land distribution, resulting in a gradual widening of the gap between the rich and the poor.
In the process of building socialism, resolving the gap between the rich and the poor has become a top priority. Therefore, the idea of agricultural mutual aid was put forward and gradually transformed into rural cooperatives.
** The Chairperson stressed that the foundations of the private economy could be shaken through the unification of operations and the formation of new productive forces. In 1953, the "Resolution on Mutual Aid and Cooperation in Agricultural Production" was issued, and the chairman also talked with him, emphasizing that rural cooperatives should speed up the pace.
* The meeting was held to study and issue the "Resolution on the Development of Agricultural Production Cooperatives", and rural cooperatives entered a period of rapid development. **After verifying the information of various places, the idea of developing 100,000 cooperatives a year was proposed, and finally 9The goal of 70,000 cooperatives.
In order to further promote the development of cooperatives, the idea of speeding up the pace was proposed, but the specific person in charge *** had reservations about this. It is hoped that the decision will really benefit farmers, but at the same time, it is worried that too fast a step may lead to unstable policy implementation.
Therefore, ** sincerely expressed his opinion to *** and suggested that the cooperative should be steadily promoted as originally planned.
At the beginning of 1957, a meeting of the secretaries of the provincial and municipal party committees was held again to discuss the indicators of rural cooperatives. Eventually, the Politburo approved the goal of reaching 1 million cooperatives, and although *** disagreed, it still accepted.
** After a visit to the south, he was very optimistic about the prospects of rural cooperatives, and proposed that the number of rural cooperatives should reach 1.3 million by 1957. However, ** firmly opposed, believing that it is more appropriate to maintain 1 million cooperatives, and that too rapid development will bring many problems.
Although the two sides argued for several hours, in the end there was no agreement, and neither could convince the other. After returning home, **'s wife Chen Lan advised him to talk less and not to conflict with ***.
However, he insisted that he was given this position in order to listen to his opinion on the subject. He must truthfully report what he sees, and it is his responsibility to express his opinion, whether he listens or not.
On July 31, 1955, while presiding over the meeting, he made a report entitled "On the Problem of Agricultural Cooperativeization" on the issue of rural cooperativeization. In the report, ** criticized the erroneous views of some comrades on the socialist mass movement in the countryside.
These comrades are like women with small feet, walking very slowly, always complaining that others are walking faster, and not standing on the standpoint of the working class to make decisions for the whole country and the whole people.
Although these words were not named, everyone knew that what they said also put *** under a lot of pressure and had to review it at the meeting. Although drastic measures were taken at that time, the steps were too big and too fast, and many problems arose in the work in the countryside, which eventually led to the tragedy.
It wasn't until 1960 that **let *** go out of the mountain again, go down to investigate, and **publicly praised *** at a meeting to rehabilitate him.