In Pol Pot’s view, independence-mastery would grow out of economic independence. This would come, he thought, from earning foreign exchange by selling agricultural products overseas. To cynics this might seem like the colonial prescription without the material incentives connected with profit, markets, land ownership, and money. The difference in theory was that the transactions would not benefit oppressive merchants and landlords, as in the past, but the poor and landless peasants who grew the crops and had become the masters of the country. Because money had been abolished, all foreign exchange, it was thought, would directly benefit the people. The “vestiges of capitalism” (and inequality) would not survive without money in circulation.7

Pol Pot wanted to set this process in motion immediately within the framework of a national plan. To allow economic activity to occur for even a year without control, he thought, would revive capitalism, which was unthinkable. In the preamble to the plan, Pol Pot brushed aside conceivable objections, including the benefits of moving more slowly, declaring that “we mean to build the country quickly, and build socialism quickly” Cambodia was not comparable to more cautious countries. “We have a different character from them,” he said. “We are faster than they are.”8

All the same, there were many obstacles to achieving independence-mastery. Cambodia had no exportable minerals, few skilled workers, even fewer technocrats, and an insignificant industrial sector. Exports were limited to agricultural products. Of these, the most important was rice, which had been the backbone of Cambodian exports since the 1920s. There was no way of escaping the past or the reality of resources: Rice exports became the key element in the Four Year Plan. Pol Pot placed an almost metaphysical value on rice, associating it intimately with the recently empowered rural poor. Even before the plan was promulgated, the party had launched the slogan “Three tons [of unhusked rice] per hectare,” which soon became a national goal. The slogan itself, without acknowledgment, echoed a campaign launched in China by Vice Premier Hua Guofeng toward the end of 1975. The target figure of 3 tons per hectare suggests that the Cambodian leaders had not worked out any agricultural slogans or policies of their own and that what was good enough for China would suffice for Cambodia as well.