Chen Yonggui; Disgraced in China Over ‘Model’ Commune

Chen Yonggui, the disgraced leader of what once was China’s most famous commune, died March 26 at age 72, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Chen, China’s vice premier from 1975 to 1980, died of lung cancer. The report did not say where he died, but at the time of his death he was an adviser to a Peking farm.

In the 1950s, Chen set up an agricultural cooperative in his home village of Dazhai in the mountains of the northeastern province of Shanxi. The village became famous in 1963 when Mao Tse-tung proclaimed, “In agriculture, learn from Dazhai.”

The slogan was written on walls across the country, and Dazhai became a symbol of hard work, self-reliance and cooperative living.

But in 1980 the official Communist newspaper, People’s Daily, reported that Dazhai had accepted millions of yuan in government subsidies as well as help from battalions of army laborers to terrace its hills and dig its irrigation ditches.

The report also said that Dazhai’s grain production figures, which had been reported to be increasing, actually had declined year after year.