S09: Land Reform

Now, evil, idle sons—sell the land! . . . It is the end of a family—when they begin to sell the land . . . Out of the land we came and into it we must go—and if you will hold your land you can live—no one can rob you of land. . . . If you sell the land, it is the end.

When did it start?

• 1927-04: White Terror
• 1936: Xi’an Incident – kidnapping of Chiang Kai-Shek by his own general Zhang Xueliang to force a united front against Japan with the Communists
• 1941-01: New Fourth Army Incident; Collapse of United Front
• 1945: End of WWII
• 1949: Founding of the PRC

Has it really ended?

• 1971: ROC evicted from the UN; PRC as the “only legitimate representative of China”
• Divided strait: Taiwan as “renegade province”

• Major social platform of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and a key founding principle of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
• Between 1946 and 1950, the CCP redistributed 47 million hectares of farmland to 100 million peasants.
• One of the largest redistributions of property and power in history.

China

• Mid-19th century: Taiping Heavenly Kingdom land confiscation and redistribution
• 1927: Mao Zedong, “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan”
• 1940: CCP double reduction campaign
• 1943: Chiang Kai-shek published “China’s Destiny”
• 1947: CCP Basic Program on Chinese Agrarian Law
• 1949: Nationalist Party passed land reform law in Taiwan

World

• 19th century: Emperor Meiji pensioned off feudal lords (daimyo)
• 1945-1946: General Douglas MacArthur made ‘land to the tiller’ official policy.
• 1953: Land reform law in South Korea

• Who owns land, and why does it matter?
• How to carry out land reform? Case of Long Bow Village
• Did land reform contribute to the economic success of East Asia? China, Taiwan, and Japan compared

• Since Song Dynasty (960-1279), political power was based on education and civil service degrees controlled by the state.
• As the economy commercialized, wealth in China continued to be invested in education and officialdom rather than capital and markets.
• In late Imperial China, political power and status were primarily derived from generational seniority and social relationships at the community level, rather than property ownership.

• Single-surname village or multi-surname community bound by marriage alliances
• Genealogy of descent from common ancestor
• A single corporate body, made up of male kinsmen
• Collective rituals of ancestor worship
• Corporate group with common land, property, and income
• Source of mutual aid and social support

• Tension between local self-governance and central vigilance against local accumulations of power
• Elite voluntarism and local activism: Gentry as community leaders
• Governance on the cheap: no magistrate below county level
• End of Qing: growing population but declining tax base and bureaucracy

• Enclosure movement: consolidation of communal lands into individually owned farm plots.
• Before enclosure: farmland was open for community use; “tragedy of the common”
• In England, the end of common grazing rights occurred significantly from 1450-1640 (for pasture) and 1750-1860 (for efficiency) and was mostly complete by the end of the 19th century.

• Enclosed plots allowed for improved farming methods, increasing agricultural productivity and creating a surplus that supported population growth.
• The influx of former rural dwellers into cities fueled rapid urbanization and provided a large pool of cheap labor for factories during the Industrial Revolution.

• Wealth became concentrated among fewer landowners, and traditional communal structures in rural communities were dismantled.
• Many small farmers and commoners lost their traditional livelihoods and access to land, forcing them to migrate to urban areas to find work.

• Dekulakization was part of Stalin’s “second revolution” and involved the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.
• The economic backwardness and political estrangement of the peasantry as obstacle to Soviet modernization.
• Initially, the peasants supported the Bolshevik revolution: 1917 Decree on Land, granting ownership of the land and fulfilling the dreams of rural Russia since the peasant uprisings of the 17th century.

• During civil war, their support waned as forced grain collections and attempts to collectivize the countryside alienated them.
• In 1921, the New Economic Policy (NEP) was introduced, which allowed peasants to accumulate and trade in grain products.
• The dekulakisation campaign, starting in 1930, had two objectives: to collectivize millions of peasant households and to colonize inhospitable regions like Siberia, the Northern Region, the Urals, and Kazakhstan.

• Sun Yat-sen: “Land to the Tiller!” as objective since 1905
• Even after the split between the KMT and the CCP in 1927, both parties implemented land reforms.
• The KMT passed a land law in 1940 to limit land rents, but it was not fully enforced.
• After Civil War, the focus shifted in Taiwan towards increasing agricultural productivity to address rural issues.

• Why does Chiang Kai-shek want to equalize land rights?
• How will he do that?
• Who benefits? Who loses?

• In 1940, the CCP implemented the double reduction campaign in its Shaan-Gan-Ning base area.
• The campaign aimed to lower rents and interest paid to village elites before expansion to other base areas.
• The majority of landlords were patriotic, leading the party to insist on limited, private, and nonviolent class struggle.
• Only the most stubborn landlords faced public rebuke, while others were dealt with in a more restrained manner.

• How should class labels be assigned? Landlord, Rich peasant, Middle peasant, Poor peasant, Worker
• Who should get what, and why?
• Are there any considerations for deciding class labels and land distribution?

Context:

• The name of the village is Two Bridges Village.
• It is located in Northern China, had been under Japanese occupation, was liberated in 1945, and has a small Catholic population.
• The year of this land reform exercise is 1947.

Roles:

• Zhen Xiaoqi
• Wang Poming
• Yu Taohui
• Shi Aiqian
• Sun Dayun

• Land reform deemed necessary to achieve social and political equality and modernization.
• In practice, land reform required redistributing political power first: state penetration to grassroots society.

“In short, if poor countries are to become rich, then the equitable division of land at the outset of development is a huge help. Japan, Korea and Taiwan put this in place.”

• How did these countries conduct land reform, and to what effects?
• How did they compare with Communist China?

• East Asian states (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan) implemented radical land reforms after WWII by dividing land equally (accounting for quality) among farmers.
• This incentivized small farm owners to maximize production, leading to significantly increased yields.
• High yields resulted from small farm size combined with infrastructure for inputs, storage, marketing, and sales.

Increased agricultural output created ideal competitive conditions, boosted rural consumption, driving demand for consumer goods and helping export-driven economies.

Maximizing agricultural output reduces the need for foreign exchange spending on imported food, freeing up resources for technology imports.

Household farms provide a crucial welfare role in poor countries lacking unemployment benefits, preventing widespread poverty and squatter camps seen in nations with large-scale farming.

Land reform:

Forcibly buy up tenant farms from landlords and give it to the tenants; this increases farm productivity per unit of land area, gives rural people more to do, pushes landlords to cities to start more productive businesses.

Export discipline:

Push companies to export instead of just selling domestically. Cut off support to companies that try to export and fail.

Financial control:

Push banks to support exporters instead of putting their money into real estate bubbles and the like.

• Half of England is owned by less than 1% of its population
• About 25,000 landowners – typically members of the aristocracy and corporations – control half of the country.

• Grandchildren of the pre-revolution elite in China earned 16% more, had more schooling, and held better jobs by 2010.
• Grandchildren of the elite had a 14.5% chance of staying in the top decile, comparable to or exceeding some capitalist economies.

• China’s 1950 agrarian reform law seized land from landlords and redistributed it to poor farmers.
• But descendants of the old elite have prospered, out-earning the Chinese average and even Communist Party members by 2010.
• Why?

Cultural capital:

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu: Non-financial social assets – like knowledge, skills, education, and cultural tastes — that influence a person’s status and opportunities in society.

Forms of cultural capital:

Embodied (personal traits and knowledge), objectified (cultural goods like books or art), and institutionalized (qualifications or credentials).

What’s distinctive about post-Mao China

The resurgence of the elite is not due to land inheritance or formal education, but non-school human capital and family- and kinship-based social capital.