Agmachinery in China before 1980

[kevanos]

I spent a summer in Albania back in 1994. Albania is a fairly small country, to begin with, and had very little in the way of mechanization before, and for some time after, the fall of communism. When I was there, there were still as many, or more, horses & carts on the roads as there were autos.

Farming was mostly done by horse, but I did see some Fortschritt, Belarus/MTZ, and a few Ferrari tractors. Electricity was not a given, but was on and available, sometimes. Telephones existed only at the local telephone company, which then had a semi-trailer parked beside it for long-distance calls. Very un-modern in every way.

I know things have changed over the last 14 years, rather rapidly in some ways. There are McDonald's there, now, for instance!

[kevanos]

Red Painter -

John Deere didn't start their combine joint venture in China until 1997 (John Deere Jialian Harvester Co.), so I would question that the ones seen/heard about in the 80s would be from China.

There has been some equipment from USA and Europe that has been exported into Russia/USSR over the years. They may have been holding them to study them for future Russian/Soviet harvesting machine improvements.

[Bernhard]

Russians aren´t intrested in that kind of earning money.

They are trusting on their oil and gas.

[Red Painter]

Found some more propoganda pics from the 60's and 70's in Red China. www.iisg.nl/~landsberger/ttg.html top pic is from 64 and my guess may be an IMT Ferguson clone or import. Next three look like Minsk Belorussian or Russian design. Tung Fung Hung I think was the producer of Minsk type designs according to a book I have here. The little square nosed tractor is from 1975 and may be another IMT clone. (front axle looks like our old 9N Ford). The second last tractor may be a Japanese clone. From an article I read, Mr R of Agco has had difficulty trying to get control of First tractor and isn't impressed with this aspect of Chinese industry. Seems the Chinese want to copy already existing disigns rather than develop their own from what the article said. See: community.travelchinaguide.com/forum2.asp?i=44124

[kevanos]

As an example of AGCO's CEO's statement on China's copying parts and designs, from YTO: