'60 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 15.8 billion yuan, which was 28 per cent of the province's industrial total. In the 1960s, 92 per cent of rural income came from farming and side line production, whereas in 1983, rural industry accounts for 40 per cent of rural income. The character of the country side is itself changing. Big rural towns are springing up and one can see department stores, cinemas, theatres, hospitals, water works, banks, schools, hotels and gardens in the rural towns. Steadily, farming is becoming mechanized and, in the first half of 1983 itself, total area under mechanized cultivation was more than 13 million hectares, an increase of 200 thousands hectares over 1982. More than 2000 machines, that could not be used earlier and had to be put in cold storage, were brought back into service. Use of large and medium tractors increased by 19000 or 7.4 per cent, small tractors increased by 63000 or 36.7 per cent. Ninety per cent of small tractors were bought by the peasants themselves. Whereas, in the past, machines like rice transplanters were purchased by the state and collective farms but could not be used due to the apathy of the peasants, now, survey reveals that in a single county, namely, Ningan county, the peasants themselves have bought more than 1000 rice transplanters. In 1983, China produced for her 1000 million people 387 million tons of grain, 4.6 million tons of cotton, over 10 million tons of oil seeds, 14 million tons of pork, beef and mutton and 5.4 million tons of aquatic products like fish. It is stated that from 1978, agriculture has been switched to high gear. According to statistics, during the period from 1978 to 1983, the annual increase in agricultural output averaged 7.9 per cent, almost 2.5 times the annual increase from 1953 to 1978.