3.1 Organization and management
3.2 Planning
As stated earlier, development of fish farming in the country has benefited from the socialist policies of the Government and the collectivization of agriculture and allied industries. There is very close linking of fish culture with agriculture and animal husbandry as will be discussed in a later section.
Aquaculture production in China is largely carried out through state farms or communes and its constituent production brigades and production teams. The organization of communes in China has been fairly well documented and is described in detail in the report of the FAO Study Mission on Agriculture and the People's Communes.1/ The production team is the basic agricultural production (of which aquaculture is a part) unit. In a good many areas, it is also the basic accounting unit, although there is now a tendency to have larger accounting units, such as the production brigades and even communes. The identity of households as social units and to some extent even as economic units, is now maintained, with limited ownership rights. Even though they may own and cultivate private land on a small scale, the ownership of most of the cultivable land and of implements and machinery rests with the communes or their subsidiary units. The production brigades have major planning and administrative roles and are headed by revolutionary committees with adequate political representation in their management. The commune is both an economic collective and a basic unit of political power in rural China. It administers all activities within the commune area, including agriculture, industry, commerce, education, social welfare and security affairs, merging government administration with commune management. The standard of living and income of commune members are dependent on the success of their operations and the profits made by the commune by collective endeavour and wise management.
1/ FAO (1977): Learning from China - A Report on Agriculture and the Chinese People's Communes: 112 p.
Generally the communes undertake activities that neither the production brigades nor the production teams can undertake. In respect of aquaculture, pond fish culture can largely be carried out by production brigades and teams, but farming of lakes and reservoirs or river systems is often done by the commune and sometimes jointly by two or more communes. The commune serves as the link between production brigades and teams on the one hand, and the county and provincial administration on the other.
Besides the production units, production brigades and communes concerned with agricultural and fisheries production, there may be supply and marketing cooperatives at the commune level. They distribute consumer goods and act as purchasing agents for the state wholesale organization.
Most counties and provinces have Bureaux of Aquatic Products, which have the major role of providing technical advice to, and maintaining liaison with, production units.
The majority of counties have established state farms, which may specialize in some form of culture, as in the case of the Nanhai County Hatchery and Farm, which produces fry and fingerlings for distribution. Unlike those in the communes, production brigades and production teams, the workers in a state farm are paid employees and their incomes are not affected by the profits made by the farm. The state farms appear to be important as a support to aquaculture activities of communes and production brigades. As in the case of the Paitan Lake Fish Breeding Farm in the Hengyang County of Hubei Province, they may take an active role in extension of techniques, some types of research, supply of fry and finger-lings and short-term training of personnel. They seem to assume a leadership role in the introduction of new technologies and ideas.
Fish marketing is handled by the state through its purchasing centres, which buy the harvest at prices fixed by the state and generally transport the fish alive. The communes arrange for their supply to households within their limits.
Most of China's fish farming is done through communes, or their subsidiary units. Some of them have fish as the main crop (or 'link' to use campaign vocabulary), whereas the others have grain or livestock as the mainstay. Whether on a small or large scale, aquaculture appears to be practised wherever facilities are available and fish is an acceptable form of food.
Many of the communes have established small-scale industries, some of them producing tools required for fish farming or fishing. With the growing interest in mechanization of fish culture, an increasing number of communes are taking to the manufacture of fish-culture equipment. The group saw at least two that were manufacturing aerators and some others manufacturing different types of water pumps and a type of slush pump for building dikes.
As self-reliance, "planning from below", and peoples' participation in decision-making are believed to be some of the major factors responsible for the success of Chinese aqua-culture, the study group paid special attention to these aspects. The fisheries or aqua-culture development plan for the country forms a part of the agriculture plan, even though very recently a separate State Bureau of Aquatic Products1/ has been established in the Ministry of Agriculture, under the charge of a Vice-Minister.
1/ There is now (June 1979) a separate General Administration of Aquatic Products which is directly responsible to the State Council
The whole planning process is somewhat complex and it may not be correct to describe it as entirely "planning from below" or as "centralized planning". The fisheries or aqua-culture part of the agricultural plan, like other parts of it, appears to be worked out by a series of negotiations. The central authorities formulate a national plan for production and distribution. They then establish quotas for each province. The province, in turn, sets quotas for the counties and the counties, in their turn, determine targets for the communes. The communes consult production brigades and teams. The targets concern not only production, but also collection of tax, and purchase of produce. The targets are set on the basis of detailed information on past performance, production potential, etc. The detailed production plans are prepared at the production team, production brigade and commune levels, in which considerable discussion and participation of workers may be involved, The plan then moves upward from the production team, production brigade and commune level to the county, province and state level. At each point, integration of individual plans, including some negotiation and adjustments, may be done. If there are disagreements, individual plans may be sent back to the originators and a further round of discussions and adjustments may ensue. All these discussions and adjustments are obviously made within the framework of guidelines provided by the state, which has effective control on production by virtue of its role in allocations of inputs and in marketing. The participation of Party members in revolutionary committees ensures that deviations from the state policies do not occur. Even though the state has thus a very substantial role in production planning, the production units have autonomy in working out the details of the plan and have to agree to any changes that may be made in it. The study group was not able to ascertain exactly how long the finalization of a five-year and annual plan takes, but was told that decisions were generally made in very short periods of time, which indicates that disagreements are not too common.
In line with the policy of self-reliance, which has been a guiding principle of rural development in China, the communes are expected to rely largely on their own financial resources. They are expected to produce enough food for their own use, besides selling a fixed quota to the state for distribution in other areas or to be kept in reserve.
