... with six regions as the largest divisions and thousands of 'administrative villages', each consisting of a number of natural villages as the smallest (Riskin 1987). Economic rehabilitation was partly facilitated by deflationary policies, including central control of the new currency, the renminbi (RMB or yuan), which brought inflation under control by early 1950 (ibid). The encouragement of production, however, was also a necessary part of this revival, and one which had to be achieved alongside the socialist transformation of the relations of production required by the CPC's ideological beliefs. In the rural areas this compromise was effected by land reform policies which, while eliminating the landlord class and improving the lot of poor peasants, "deliberately stopped short of complete economic equality" (Riskin 1987, 50) in order to maintain the productive capacity of rich peasants. In urban industry economic strategy was aimed, at least initially, at encouraging the productive potential of ...

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