Ample Food and Clothing by Working with Our Own Hands

The slogan put forward by the CPC when it led the military and the people in the anti-Japanese base areas to carry out the Great Production Movement for self-supporting production during the stalemate phase of the Anti-Japanese War.

After the Anti-Japanese War entered the stalemate stage, the Japanese aggressors put the main pressure on the battlefield behind the enemy lines and carried out a large-scale military attack and economic blockade against the anti-Japanese base areas. In addition, the KMT's passive anti-Japanese and active anti-Communist policy, as well as natural disasters, made the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and the anti-Japanese base areas behind the enemy lines extremely difficult in finance and economy.

Mao Zedong said, "We had a very acute scarcity of clothing, cooking oil, paper and vegetables, of footwear for our soldiers and of winter bedding for our civilian personnel.” In order to solve the financial and economic difficulties in the border areas, in February 1939, Mao Zedong put forward the slogan of "self-supporting" at the CPC Central Committee’ production mobilization meeting in Yan'an, calling on the military and the people in the border region to “do it yourself, party, government, military and civilian scholars to do it together, and to solve the problems of clothing, food and housing by themselves.”

In 1941, in order to overcome serious economic difficulties, the central government again emphasized self-supporting in production. The military and civilians in the anti-Japanese base areas responded positively to overcome economic difficulties by "launching extensive production campaigns in both military and civilian areas at the same time".

The Great Production Movement was first launched in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, and Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai and other central leaders took the lead in participating in productive labor. The Border Region Government set up production committees to formulate effective measures, and the Party and the Government encouraged the development of production by means of mutual assistance and cooperation, production competitions and rewarding labor heroes, and organized the labor force to carry out mass activities such as opening up wasteland and building water conservancy projects.

In response to Mao Zedong's call, the organs, schools and troops in the Liberated Areas also actively launched extensive production campaigns to develop self-supporting economy.

In early 1941, the CPC Central Committee ordered the 359th Brigade of the Eighth Route Army to go to Nanniwan to reclaim the land. By 1944, in addition to self-sufficiency in food and use, the army had basically achieved the goal of "ploughing more than one year", that is, the grain harvested in one year could be eaten for two years, becoming a banner of the extensive production movement.

During this period, the industrial and commercial departments, government organs and schools in the Border Region also developed a part of self-supporting economy, which not only overcame economic difficulties, improved their lives, but also lightened the burden of peasants.

On November 29, 1943, Mao Zedong said in his speech at the reception in honour of the labor heroes of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region: "We achieved the goal of sufficient food and clothing by our own way.”

The Great Production Movement not only helped the Liberated Areas overcome economic and financial difficulties, lightened the burden of the people, and strengthened civil-military relations, but also prepared the material basis for the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, and it also trained a number of cadres and accumulated rich experience for the party's later leadership of economic construction.