In practical terms: the rural collective (which comprised all that which had been nationalized: plows, oxen, farm tools, land, etc.) was the social arbitration of limited resources, with the goal of egalitarianism amid increased efficiency.
Capitalists will say: "The exceptional Chinese farmer was shortchanged and denied his right to excel and live in a superior fashion!"
Yes. But there is no debate about how the collectives of the pre-CR era ended the very real poverty the average rural person was threatened with via every storm cloud:
"Substantial social security guarantees were embedded in the collective distribution system in Jimo. No matter whether a villager could work or not, the collective undertook to provide him and his family with 'five guarantees', (wu bao) food, clothes, fuel, education for his children and a funeral upon death". The collective, thus, provided a de facto institutional retirement plan for villagers. The government had put some thought into this unique social security system in the villages."
So even though urban peasants had it better, let's not pretend that the 1949-1964 era did not greatly stabilise and better the life for the average Chinese farmer. Certainly Trash around the West especially Blacks and Native Americans in Western countries were not guaranteed any of these things in the era of 1949-1964.
Good, Mr. Mao, but not great. Major failures were still easy to spot, and Han's book relates them.
Like in education: In Jimo County in 1950 48% of area children were enrolled in primary schools, and by 1956 that figure was just 56%. Per Han, 65% of these schools did not even have chairs or tables. From 1949 to 1966 Jimo County produced 1,616 high school graduates out of 1,011 villages; half of them left the county in a huge "brain drain". The rural-to-urban brain drain remains a major, major plague on rural Western areas today, and that may be the biggest problem the massive flight of human capital from rural areas to urban ones.
Medical care was not provided either. Han relates how villagers often relied on dangerous and often deadly witch doctors, and he relates how these witch doctors would soon be among those shamefully paraded during the Cultural Revolution and even beaten by the families of their still-grieving victims. The idea of witch doctors may be very hard for developed countries to imagine, but this was a very real phenomenon which only the modern CR exposed as a sham and then replaced with true doctors. (I would imagine that a worried parent could often rather have a witch doctor than no doctor".)
Why was a Cultural Revolution needed in already-red China? Because the record of the pre-CR era was mixed, or rather, it was unfinished. The CR needs to be seen as "re-collectivization" of an already "collective society".
Such a retrenchment requires not only 20th century socialist ideas, but also intense patriotism and not mere "nationalism". Iran was able to have a CR of their own largely because they wanted a re-collectivisation of what Iran "was" and it included Kurds, Arabs, Jews, etc thus, "Neither East nor West but the Iranian Republic". China's CR was not asking Soviet technicians to come and fix things (nor ones from the IMF, nor Brussels, nor Esperanto-speaking Trotskyist theoreticians) it was asking Chinese peasants; Iran was asking the average poor, hijab-wearing Iranian woman, humble-living mullahs and the many barefooted what good governance should be.
France in 2019 lacks both modern socialist ideas (its emphasis on RICs as some sort of Godsend is one proof) and all-embracing patriotism. However, so did China and Iran at one point.
The Great Leap Forward didn't end the desire for collectivization and empowerment, thus the CR
As we all know, capitalism is not patient they demand mercilessly quick results from socialism or else will start shoveling massive denigration. Socialism, however, cares not: Han relates that the collectives were all about taking the long-term view, the very opposite of capitalism's "get rich quick" ethos. Yes, young people worked harder than older people in the collective, but when they were sick or got old they moved to the easier jobs; couples with six children took more rice than childless couples, yes, but when the kids grew up their work supported the old childless couple. This is the "collective" mentality, and it enrages the Arizona rancher.
The CR cannot be understood without just a bit of fair, objective knowledge of the Great Leap Forward (GLF). It is pathetic that celebrated faux-historians like Frank Dikotter top Wikipedia pages with claims like "coercion, terror, and systematic violence were the foundation of the Great Leap Forward", when the GLF was undoubtedly motivated by altruistic desires to cooperate on ambitious projects which aimed to improve the nation. Briefly, from Han:
"When discussing the Great Leap Forward in China, many people see only the food shortages and other negative consequences. They do not understand that the goal of the Great Leap Forward partly was to improve infrastructure in the countryside. The reservoirs built during the Great Leap Forward benefited the rural areas for decades to come. These infrastructure improvements are why farmers who suffered most during the Great Leap Forward have always viewed it with ambiguity other than completely condemning it."
That is based on his years of his interviews with farmers it is not based on the judgment of some hack journalist writing an article 10,000 kilometres away who has no idea about anything Chinese other than egg foo young, and who knows even less about socialism.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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