Ding Xian Experiment

Although the program received financial aid from the Rockefeller and other American foundations, Yen and his team of experts aimed to develop affordable techniques and prototypes which could then be made productive all across China using mainly resources from within the village.

They hoped to show that the causes of the extremely low standard of living in the Chinese countryside could be addressed by co-operation without class warfare and that violent revolution was not necessary to change village life.

Through their work the reformers attempted to produce a way of modernizing the countryside based on local conditions rather than by importing prevailing methods and concepts of Western origins.

[1] In 1926, after developing successful literacy campaigns across the nation, mainly in cities, James Yen and the Mass Education Movement (MEM) decided to start programs in the countryside.

He then identified the "Four Weaknesses" of China as "poverty, ignorance, disease, and misgovernment," and invited Chinese experts to come to live in Ding Xian and design experimental program to address each one of them:[2] The work at Ding Xian attracted nationwide attention and developed many new techniques for rural development which did not depend on central government control, violent revolution, or large infusions of foreign money.

A radio receiver set up as part of the Ding Xian Experiment in 1935. When the picture was taken, lectures were being broadcast by the Mass Education Movement in an attempt to combat illiteracy.