Tag: Rural reform

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The Secret Document That Transformed China

NPR revisits the village of Xiaogang, which, at the height of Maoism in China, wrote up a secret contract which allowed farmers to keep a portion of the crops they grew. Now, 34 years later, Xiaogang is widely known as the birthplace of rural reform in China:The farmers tried to keep the contract secret — Yen Hongchang hid it inside a piece of bamboo in the roof of his house — but when they returned to