The Ding Xian Experiment (Chinese: 定縣實驗; pinyin: Dingxian shiyan; Wade–Giles: Ting Hsien shih-yan) during the Republican period of Chinese history was a project in Rural Reconstruction sponsored by James Yen's Mass Education Movement (MEM) 中华平民教育促进会 in Ding Xian (Ding County), Hebei, some 200 miles south of Beijing.
The project was started in 1926 and lasted until the Japanese invasion of 1937. The county was to be a social laboratory in which to develop and demonstrate ways to raise the standard of living, health, political responsibility, and culture of the Chinese village.
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 be all across China using mainly resources from within the village. They hoped to show that the causes of poverty, ignorance, sickness, and disorganization could be addressed without class warfare and that violent revolution was not necessary to change village life.
The program
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. The village of Zhaicheng, in Ding Xian (Ding County) in central Hebei, had started a program of local self-government nearly a decade before, and was chosen because of the welcome offered by village elders. The MEM started programs of literacy education, but in spite of original success, one villager explained to Yen, "Dr. Yen, I am grateful to know how to read, but my stomach is just as empty as my illiterate neighbor's." Yen realized that literacy, in fact, no one approach, could address the village's problems. 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:
- The problem of "Ignorance" was to be addressed by village schools and cultural programs which included village drama. among others.
- The problem of Poverty was to be addressed by farmers' cooperatives, improved agricultural techniques, seeds, and new breeds of plants and animals.
- The problem of Health was addressed by a pyramidal structure in which Village Health Workers were trained to keep records, treat minor problems, give basic inoculations, and refer more serious cases to clinics in the market towns.
- Politics. As the work expanded from Zhaicheng village to encompass most of Ding Country, the MEM saw greater and greater need to address political problems such as taxation, land ownership, and corruption. in 1932, the Hebei provincial government turned political control of the county over to the MEM, creating the Hebei Institute for Political and Social Reconstruction (IPSR).
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. The National Rural Reconstruction Movement held three national conferences involving several hundred government and private projects. James Yen and Liang Shuming were the most prominent leaders.
In 1937 the Japanese invasion of Hebei and North China ended the Ding Xian Experiment.