Science a la Mao

December 6th, 1998

This is a cleaned-up photocopy of a paper I found many years ago:


Here’s a transcription of the main part for those who might have difficulty reading it:

CHAIRMAN MAO’S BRILLIANT PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT GUIDES ME IN WINNING TRIPLE CROPPING WITH HIGH YIELD
Li Kuang-Ching
(Secretary of Party Branch of Chuangchiachiao Production Brigade, Fengshu People’s Commune, Taoyuan County, Hunan Province)
Received Nov. 5, 1976

ABSTRACT

Guided by the dialectic thought of unity of opposites, we have engaged ourselves in scientific farming, exploring the laws governing the growth of crops, transforming the contradictions and adopting corresponding technical measures, and as a result, succeeded in carrying out the experiment of "wheat-rice-rice" triple cropping in Taoyuan County. In the course of practice, knowledge, again practice and again knowledge, the late-season rice has continuously outyielded the early-seasoned by virtue of our incessant improvement of technical measures, thus gradually cracking the nut of wheat low-yielding in that locality. In 1976, our 4.3 mu [footnote: 1 mu = 1/15 hectare] experimental plot gave an output of 3,403.8 jin [footnote: 1 jin = 1/2 kilogram] per mu and the 600 mu triple-cropping field of our production brigade 2,000 jin per mu.


I am a peasant of 71. Dragging myself along for 44 years in the old society, I worked for the landlord like a beast of burden. In 1949, I was saved by our great leader Chairman Mao and the Communist Party of China from abyss and misery, and just then began to lead a man’s life. I always keep thinking: I owe my all to Chairman Mao. To live up to Chairman Mao’s expectations, I will do my best to yield good crops for China’s construction as well as the world revolution.

For more than 20 years I’ve studied conscientiously Chairman Mao’s works, taking Chairman Mao’s brilliant philosophic thought as a guide to my scientific farming. Responding to Chairman Mao’s call:
"Get organized" and "Develop production" I took the lead in establishing the first mutual-aid group in our county as early as 1952. In the same year, I began my trial cultivation of two crops of rice a year and made a success of it. Experiments in “wheat-rice-rice” triple cropping (one crop of wheat and two crops of rice) have been made since 1966. In recent years, under the direct leadership of the Prefecture and the County Party Committees, the yield of triple cropping has got ever higher, and its acreage ever larger, with the result that the grain output has increased steadily.

The seven production teams of our brigade have paddy fields 1,400 
mu. The grain output has increased from about 200 jin per mu in the early post-liberation...