"Big Pot Rice" is an image metaphor of egalitarianism in distribution, which includes two aspects: first, enterprises eat the "big pot rice" of the country, that is, regardless of good or bad business, profits or losses, wages are paid as they are, and the total wages of enterprises are out of touch with business results; second, employees eat the "big pot rice" of enterprises, that is, within enterprises, employees, no matter how much they do, whether they do well or not, will not affect individual wage distribution.

The concept of big pot rice can be traced back to the appearance of 1958 "People's Commune", which is also closely related to the acceleration of industrial accumulation in the Great Leap Forward. In a cooperative, farmers' rations were distributed to one household. After entering the Great Leap Forward and the People's Commune, the commune and the production team were in charge of rations. This is also the most criticized "canteen" and "big pot rice" today. At that time, "big pot rice" was cooked in a small pot relative to the distribution of rations, and "big pot rice" was an image metaphor for the egalitarian phenomenon in distribution. In the 1960s and 1970s, the phenomenon of "egalitarianism" still existed, which led to the emergence of negative thoughts, and "doing the same thing well and doing the same thing badly" led to serious internal friction. Then it was abolished.