Responsibility system (also contract responsibility system or household responsibility system; simplified Chinese:家庭联产承包责任制; traditional Chinese:家庭聯產承包責任制; pinyin:Jiātíng liánchǎn chéngbāo zérènzhì) was a practice in China, first adopted in agriculture in 1979 and later extended to other sectors of the economy, by which local managers are held responsible for the profits and losses of an enterprise. This system partially supplanted the egalitarian distribution method, whereby the state assumed all profits and losses.