Chapter 2 Post in the "Great Leap Forward" and Economic Readjustment Period

After the recovery and reorganization in the early period of the establishment of the P.R. China, the postal service had initially developed and accomplished the first Five Year Plan ahead of time, with a good trend of vigorous development. But by 1958, with the set-off of the Great Leap Forward campaign through out the counts, the "Left" mistake with High Target, Blind Order, Boastfulness and Winds of "Communization" as the main symbols had been spread out. The postal communications had experienced supernormal and abnormal development in a short period of time, seriously disturbing the postal communications. From 1961, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications determinedly carried out the principle of making readjustment, consolidation, enrichment and improvement of the national economy specified by the Central Government. After 3 years of readjustment, the postal service, with recovery and development, had been put on the right track again.

Section 1 Post in the "Great Leap Forward" Movement

From 1958, the Great Leap Forward campaign set off throughout the country' With the good will to change the backward situation and speed up the development of the postal service, the postal sectors made active response to the call of the Central Government in April 1958, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications held the 7th State Post and Telecommunications Working Conference, the theme of which was to initiate and deploy the Great Leap Forward campaign across the postal sectors. It called to "sweep all the obstacles and get free from the trammels and impact of the 'Right' Conservatism, the empiricism and the dogmatism". It put forward that "the whole country run the post and telecommunications, the network and routes make great development, the service catch up with the advanced, the quality breaks the record, and the work makes a great leap forward". The Great Leap Forward campaign with "High Target, Blind Orders and Boastfulness" as the main features had been spread Out quickly throughout the postal sectors.

By June 1958, under the circumstances at that time that the central state-owned industrial enterprises were transferred in succession down to the local authorities, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications asked for approval of the State Council to transfer the postal enterprises down to the local authorities. Except that the post and telecommunications enterprises and first-class communication trunk lines were still mainly under the leadership of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, other postal enterprises across the country were completely transferred down to the local authorities, adopting the leadership system of taking the local authorities as the main body. The construction of the network and routes of the bureaus and offices of the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions were listed into the local plans. Since the local authorities made no preparation for the transfer of the postal enterprises and made rough , work with inconsistent requirements, some local authorities transferred the postal enterprises layer by layer and even transferred the rural branches down to the counties and the people's communes. The integral communication system across the country were split up artificially, causing sever confusion to the management system.

In September 1958, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications put forward the slogan that "the central government newspaper arrives the province the same day; the provincial newspaper arrives the county the same day; the county . newspaper arrives the commune the same day". In December, it again put forward the principle of "the postal service taking the issue of newspaper as the guiding principle" to vigorously develop the issue of newspaper. This at some degree promoted the development of the postal communication network, improved the transportation capability and shortened the time of the delivery of mails and newspaper. But the fact to put undue emphasis on the "three-arrival" o f the newspaper regardless of the regional conditions not only lose contact with reality, which was hard to realize completely, but also caused great waste. In the high tide of organizing the countryside across the country into the People's commune in 1958, the postal sectors put forward the target of "setting up facility in each commune, establishing mail route in each village" to speed up the development of the post bureaus and offices. By 1960, there were 7,621 new post bureaus and offices in 3 years successively, up 38% than 1956. The increase of post bureaus and offices by the postal sectors was benefitial to the improvement of quality and service, but the excessive expansion of post bureaus and offices had caused heavy burden to the enterprises. 

Zhu De inspected Beijing Stamp Factory

During this period, the postal sectors also set off a new upsurge of mass postal technological innovation. Postal staff and workers had developed and manufactured in succession various types of mail and parcel sorter, automatic teller, automatic mail receiving and sending machine, automatic platform scale, automatic packing machine, magazine counting machine, mail transport container, tray and various articles and appliances. Automatic post offices had been opened in Beijing and Shanghai. The mass technological innovation and revolution campaign had a certain degree of pushing effect on the technological advance. But to rush headlong into mass action regardless of conditions, the products developed with poor performance and low quality couldn't work effectively in the production, thus causing great waste.

In addition, during the Great Leap Forward period, the postal sectors also established some colleges, universities and factories. But some colleges and universities were established hurriedly without appropriate qualifications and were hard to ensure the teaching and studying quality. In the meantime, some postal factories set up by the local authorities mostly were poorly equipped and had insufficient technical force. The products manufactured by them were of low and poor quality, which couldn't work effectively and caused great waste. One of the successful factories was Beijing Stamp Factory established in 1959, which was the first factory in China to specifically print stamps. Since then, the postal sectors began to print stamps by itself.

In March 1959, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications held the sib State Post and Telecommunications Working Conference, demanding to continuously unfold mass movements on a large scale. Since August 1959, the upsurge of the "Anti-rightist Campaign" once again caused the further spread of High Target, Blind Orders and Boastfulness, which also caused damage to the democratic system. In the same time, because of the misunderstanding of the slogan of "emancipate the mind, eliminate superstitions" and the "great break and great set-up" of enterprise management system, a series of effective enterprise management system, rules and regulations were ceased to be binding. All this caused loose enterprise management, confused business and accounting management and poor technical maintenance, and seriously disturbed and harmed the healthy development of the postal cause.

The Great Leap Forward Campaign had caused great loss to the postal cause, but since the cadres and workers worked according to the actual requirements, active results were achieved in some areas. The achievement in the establishment of the postal production system during this period was the reform of sorting and close mail imposed through out the country. According to the reality that there were many vertical communications between the upper and lower classes of various facilities, communities, enterprises and institutions, it was specified that the close mail was adopted between the post offices in Beijing and those in the provincial capitals, between the post offices in the provincial capitals and those in the cities and counties within the province, between the post offices in the cities and counties and the subordinate branches. The straight close mail standard of "Pin Shi Gua San" (10 ordinary mails and 3 registered mails) was imposed on the post offices between the cities and counties. All this improved the efficiency and quality of the sorting jobs, enhanced the coordination between the sorting, transportation and the receiving jobs, obtaining obvious results.

Reforms also were imposed on the delivery system in the countryside, which was that the people's commune appointed an educated commune member to be the postman to deliver the mails, which improved the delivery of the newspapers and mails across the countryside under the poor economic conditions at that time. There were more than 45,000 postmen in the countryside at its maximum throughout the country. Later, upon the correction of" equalitarianism and indiscriminate transfer of resources", all these postmen were partially cancelled or partially shifted to be the employees who were paid by the postal sectors according to the mid level of labor income. By the end of 1963, after readjustment, the commune postmen (including the employees) across the country were increased to 36,332, with an increase of 15,000 over 1955.