[4][citation needed] In December 1978, the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party was held in Beijing.
[citation needed] Initially, these policies were only allowed as an exception applicable to poor and remote areas where peasants struggled for subsistence.
[1]: 162 In early 1979, the National Agriculture Council was founded, which started a heated debate over whether China should adopt the household responsibility system within the Chinese central government.
Wang Renchong, the Head of the National Agriculture Council, kept emphasizing the advantages of the collective economy and opposing the idea.
In the end, Hua Guofeng, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party at the time, concluded that collective production did work, yet a certain amount of flexibility was also needed.
However, Zhou's idea received severe criticism from many representatives from other regions and provoked a huge debate over whether the household responsibility system was the right approach to take.
In the end, Deng Xiaoping concluded the debate with the observation that household responsibility was a highly complicated and critical issue, and that it was unlikely to reach a simple conclusion.
[citation needed] While the central government was still struggling with the idea, going back and forth, more and more villages went ahead and started adopting the household responsibility system.
[3]: 160 In April 1980, at the Long-term Planning Meeting of the Central Committee of CCP, Deng Xiaoping argued: "In underdeveloped and impoverished regions such as Northwestern China, Guizhou, and Yunnan province, approaches such as household responsibility system should be adopted".
[citation needed] In December 1981, the National Agricultural Work Meeting was held in Beijing, which emphasized the idea of letting people choose by themselves which systems to use.
[6] 《杜润生自述:中国农村体制改革重大决策纪实》(Accounts from Du Runsheng: Record of Major Decisions on China's Rural System Reform) 《邓小平文选》第二卷 This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.