Land Reform in China (1911-1953)

Home , Chinese Land Reform, East China, Land reform, Land Reform in Taiwan, New Marriage Law

University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange

Masters Theses Graduate School

12-1967

Chen-hung Keong University of Tennessee - Knoxville

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Recommended Citation Keong, Chen-hung, "Land Reform in China (1911-1953). " Master's Thesis, University of Tennessee, 1967. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_gradthes/3225

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council:

I am submitting herewith a thesis written by Chen-hung Keong entitled "Land Reform in China (1911-1953)." I have examined the final electronic copy of this thesis for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Master of Arts, with a major in Political Science.

Vernon Iredell, Major Professor

We have read this thesis and recommend its acceptance:

Selwyn Geller, Salo Engel

Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges

Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School

(Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Ma y 19 , 1967

To the Gradua te Council:

I am submitting he rewith a thesis written by Chen-hung Ke ong entitled "Land Re form in China (1911- 1953) ." I recomme nd that it be accepted for nine quarter hours of credit in partial fulfillme nt of the requirements for the degree of Ma ster of Arts , with a major in Political Sc ience .

Ma jor Professor

We have re ad this thesis and recomme nd its acceptance : c ��

Accepted for the Council:

Vice President for Gr aduate Studies and Research LAND HEFORM IN CHINA

(1911 - 1953)

A Thesis

Presented to

the Gradua te Council of

The University of Te nnessee

In Partia l Fulfillme nt of the Re quirements for the Degree

Ma ster of Arts

Che n-Hung Ke ong

December 1967 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

All of my gratitude goes to Professors Vernon Irede ll, Selwyn

Ge lle r, and Sa lo Enge l for their he lpful suggestions and valuable criticism.

7681_�)5 TA BLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. PEASANT PROBLEMS IN CHINA 1

II. LAND REFORM MOVE11ENT IN THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC

(1911- 1949) 36

III. LAND REFORM IN COMMUNIST CHINA (1949- 1953) 69

IV. CONCLUSION 87

BIBLIOGRAPHY 104

iii CAAP�R I

PEASANT PROBLEMS IN CHINA

China 's peasant prob lem is as old as its civilization . Agri culture is so important to China tha t not only the pe ople 's live li hood but also the socia l and powe r struc ture have been closely linked with the land sys tem. By utilizing the ma teria ls tha t are available , this the sis attempts to describe the rea litie s of the Chinese peasant problems and the peasant moveme nt in the pe riod of the Repub lic (1911-

1949) ; at the same time it attempts to examine the land re forms carrie d out from 1950 to 1953 in Communist China .

The significance of the Chine se land re forms consis ts in the elimination of the land lord-gentry class and redistribution of land among the peasantry. It is , there fore , necessary to evaluate the following ma tters , before discussing land re form itse lf.

1. Since Confucianism has domina ted the Chinese minds for about two thousand ye ars , it wi ll be useful to examine its impact on both the land lord-gentry class and the peasantry.

2. In the Chinese history , the landlord-gentry class con stantly played an important and active role in social, economic and political affairs . A study of its origin , deve lopment, and struc ture wi ll undoub tedly he lp us to understand the land lord-gentry class of the period of the Re pub lic , which wa s actua lly the extension of the ancient one .

1 2

3. The concentration of land owne rship gave rise to the tenancy system. Ove rpopulation caused the peasants ' suffering . A discussion

of the peasant prob lems in terms of land ma ldistribution , te nancy sys tem , ove rpopulat ion , and political instability , wi ll te ll us why

land re form was urgently necessary.

Social stratification can be made by various criteria. Ka rl

Ma rx , for example , asserted tha t society should be stratified in te rms of the owne rship of the me ans of production. There is , according to

Ka rl Ma rx , a class dist inction between the capita list who owns the means of produc tion and the prole tariat who does not. In addition to the possession of economic me ans , Ma x We ber suggested two other criteria, name ly , the exte rnal standard of living and cultura l and 1 recreationa l possibilities.

In contra st to th ose ob jectivists such as Ma x Weber and Ka rl

Ma rx , the re we re certain subjectivists who be lieved tha t some subjective factors should be emp loye d to divide the society. According to them, people who are analogous in income , occupation , education , or 2 re ligious be lie f can easily get together.

Social differentiation may be de termined by social status rathe r than class . In this case , an individua l's rights and duties are fixed; social mobility is entire ly impossible . Howeve r, if

1 Paul Mombert, "C lass ," Encyc lopaedia.£! the Social Science , III (New York : The MacMi llan Company , 1930), 53::.. 2 Ib�d. . p. 533. 3

socia l diffe rentiation is based upon class ra the r than status, there is 3 no obstacle standing in the wa y of interclass mobility .

Although a lot of subjective or objective criteria have been pro-

vided by various writers , it is still difficult to draw a clear-cut

line between classes , since socia l classes are not so rigid as a caste

sys tem. Perhaps the mos t important criterion is psychological.

Members of a class share common ideas , attitudes and fee lings , and 4 regard themse lves as be longing to one group .

Class distinct ion re flects in we alth, prestige and power. The se

three things are actua lly inte rre lated with one another. The we althy

people can easily obtain power; the powerful persons can easily become

rich; and prestige seems to be monopolized by the rich and powerful

persons .

In China , a the ory conce rning social classification was deve loped by Confucius . Under the aristocratic and feudal sys tem

of Confucius ' time , which can be dated back to 1100 B.C., the farme rs we re ignorant persons who live d a primitive life. The Chine se farme rs

jus t like other ancient peop les , lived at the me rcy of nature . How- ever the y we re fortunate because huma nism deve loped in the ruling ,

learned , and wealthy aristocratic class . It seems to be the olde st princ iple of ruling to treat farmers in a benevolent wa y. On the

3 Ib.:d.L . p . 531 . 4 Morris Gindberg . "C lass Consciousness , " Encyc lopaedia .£i the Social Sciences , .E.!?· cit. , p. 536 . 4 basis of th is oldest principle , Confucius built his own theory according to wh ich the functions of the aristocrat and the farme r we re close ly distinguished. The farmer should not play politics , wh ile the aristocrat need not know how to cultivate the land . In other words , the y we re classified in te rms of the ir functions . There we re , according to

Confucianism , on ly two classes , namely, the gove rning and the governed classes. In th is respect , the Confuc ian social diffe rentiation is simi liar to that of Ka rl Ma rx , although the ir bases are entire ly diffe rent .

Confucius ' viewpoint of the "me n above " can be illustrated by the fol lowing story about his te aching . When one of his students asked him about farming , Confucius replied , "lam not as good as an old peasant."

When th is student we nt out of the classroom , Confuc ius told others ,

"What a nit-wit , that Fan (the name of the student who asked Confucius about farming) . If the men above love the rites , no one of the peop le wi ll dare be irreverent. If the me n above love justice , none of the people will fail to conform . If the me n above love veracity , none of the people will want to use mendacity. When the great one is like this , the people of the Four Square s (the wor ld) will come to him with the ir childre n on the ir backs . What doe s he need to know about 5 farming ?"

The farme rs ' attitudes might be indicated by the fol lowing folk song wh ich prevailed in the Chinese countryside about 2500 years ago.

5 confucian. Ana lects (Trans lated by Ezta Pound ) (New York : Re view, Inc. , 1950) , p. 59. 5

Sunrise to work , Sunset to stop , Dig we lls to drink. Till fie lds for crop. 6 The king's might to me what good 0?

Th is division of function was made in accordance with the Con- fucian ethical system instead of the princ iple of division of labor .

The rulers regarded the peasant problems as the cente r of the ir state - craft on the one hand , and tre ated the farme rs as little nit-wits on the othe r. Re volution was allowe d only on the condition that the rule r proved to be a tyrant. The Confucian idea of revolution provided the peasant rebe llions with a theoretical basis .

In 206 B.C., China was unified by Chin . The unification ind icated the collapse of the old fe uda l system as we ll as the end of the simp le , primitive and ignorant pe asant way of life. The concentration of land ownership sta rted in the wake of the legali- zation of land purchase . Poor peasants lost the ir humanitarian guard , and had to face the new social re alities - the rich became richer, the poor , poorer. The concentration of the land owne rship gave rise to the landlord-gentry class wh ich replaced the aristocrats and dominated Chine se politics until the Communist take-ove r in 1949.

The new governing class continued to adopt the Confucian idea of functiona l division in order to justify its ruling position.

The origina l elements of the landlord-gentry class were the branche s of the Chou nobility and the we a lthy officials of the

6 Lee We n, Poems from China (Taipe i: Te ng Kiang Book Company , 1958) ' p. 13 . 6

Chin and Han Dynasties . With the passage of time, some of them dec lined and were rep laced by new elements such as rich merchants and mi litarymen . No matter what kind of persons they were , they, as the elements of the land lord-gentry class , sha red the following characteristics : (1) ) The basic unit of the landlord-gentry class we re families rather than individua ls . (2) The financial support of the big families came from their large estates wh ich were tilled by tenants . (3) They were the only literate persons and th us monopolized 7 political enterprise.

Professor Wol fram Eberhard has vividly described how the land lord- gentry class associated itself with the officia ldom. He wrote:

In a typical gentry fami ly , another branch of the family is in the capita l or in a provinc ia l administrative centre in official position . These officials at the same time are the most highly educated members of the family and are often called the "literati" ... If difficulties arose in the estates either by attacks of bandits or by war or other catastrophes , the fami ly members in official positions could use their influence and power to restore the property in the provinces . If, on the other hand , the family members in officia l positions lost their positions or even their lives by displeasing the court , the family branch could always find ways to rema in untouched and could , in a generation or two , recruit new members and regain power and influence in the government . 8

The close association between the land lord-gentry class and the officialdom undoubted ly accelerated the concentration of land mvnership , which , in turn , fiastened the dec line or rise of dynasties .

7 Wol fram Eberhard , � History of China (Berkeley and Los Angeles : University of Ca lifornia Press , 1966) , p. 72 . 8 Ibid. , pp . 72-73. 7

In Chinese history, we discover many means which v1ere suggested for dea ling with the peasant prob lems, various plans to mitigate the farmers ' suffering. All of these reforms, however, were based upon the

Confucian theory of functiona l division, and, thus could not thoroughly sett le the prob lems . When they fai led, there were social upheava l, and . 9 peasant upr�s�n. gs .

The Confucian inte llectua l monopoly started in the ea rly years of the Han Dynasty and lasted until the 1920's. During this period , none dared to deny the truth of Confucianism, although there wa s a wide gap between the Confucian theory of functiona l division and the social rea lities . What the dissident intellectua ls could do was to reinterpret Confucianism and give it new meanings . Re interpretation, however, had its limits . It had to be done within the framework of the orthodox classics .

The first intellectua l who attempted to change the existing land system by reinterpret ing Confuc ianism was Wang Ma ng . As a relative of the Emperor, he was once the most powerful official in the Han Court .

In 9 A.D. he established his own dynasty and put forward a series of economic and social reforms . Most of these reforms were carried out in the name of the classic Confuc ian books, especially The Rite £f Chou. 10 He reinterpreted these books and added ma ny new ideas .

9 Chiang Monlin, "Land Problems and Population , " Collected Works of Chia.ng Monlin (Taipei : Cheng Chung Press, 1954), p. 105 . 10 Eberhard, ££· cit., pp . 93-95 . 8

First of all he nationa lized all the arable land and ca lled it

"the land of the Kingdom. " Then he redistributed the "land of the

Kingdom" to farmers. This land reform actua 11y arose from a back- 11 ground of concentration of land ownership . Wang Ma ng 's reform was

defeated by both the resistance of the land lord-gentry class and the

ignorance of the poor peasantry. The fai lure of the reform led China

into a period of socia l upheava l. When the Han Dynasty was restored ,

concentration of land ownership started again.

The period of the Northern Dynasties marked a lasting power

struggle between the rulers of the northern nomads and the Chinese

land lord-gentry class . The Northern Dynasties wh ich were established

by the leaders of the northern nomads, adopted a system of land allot-

ment as a means to derogate the land lord-gentry class. Under this 12 system , one hundred mou of land were allotted to each ma le farmer ,

sisty mou to each fema le farmer . A part of the alloted land (about

twenty mou) was regarded as private land , and thus could be inherited

by their descendants . The rest of the land was returned to the govern-

ment after the farmer 's death . This system with a slight change , was 13 also adopted by the Shi and Tang Dynasties .

11 Tao Hsi-sheng , �History £i Chinese Political Thought , II (Taipei : Shang-ming Press , 1954) , 6. 12 "Mou" is the basic unit of land . The mou of the Northern Dynasties was sma ller than the mou of the present system . According to the existing mou system , six mou equa l one acre. 13 chiang Monlin, "Land Prob lems and Population ," .£12.· cit. , p. 89. 9

This sys tem could work we ll on ly if there was a large supply

of farmed land and a re la tively small population. The aim of this

sys tem was , obvious ly , to mitigate ra ther than to abolish the concen-

tration of landownership , since part of the allotted land was per-

mitted to be inherited by the allotees' descendants .

In the eighth century , the concentration of land ownership

reached a new peak , but no new allotment was made until the twentieth

century. The peasant's situation in China deteriorated when concentra-

tion of land ownership comb ined with the prob lem of overpopulation in 14 t h e eig h teent h an d nln. eteenth centurl. es . Unfortunately, these

centuries also marked the dec line of the Chinese Empire. It was a

time when peop le still remembered past prosperity and stability on

the hand , and faced current misery on the other . Chinese cultural

superiority was still firmly believed in by the intellec tua ls . The

West with its vanguard -gunboats , had to fight its way into the

Chinese Empire.

So, China , in the early years of the twentieth century , wa s

in a dilemma . She was forced to modernize herself on the one hand ,

and insisted to uphold some traditional principles on the other . A

new formula was deliberately designed to dea l with the new situation .

According to this new formula , Chinese ideas should be regarded as essential principles and Western ideas as practical applications .

Western gunboat policy gave the Chinese peop le the impression that

14 Ibid. , p. 107 . 10 military might was the essence of industrialization . This fa llacious idea comb ined with the feeling of cultura l superiority started China 15 on a wrong pace towar d mo d ern�. zat�o. n.

A self-strengthening movement based on the above formula was fiercely advocated by both the government and the intelligentsia.

The aim of this movement was ma inly to build strategic industries for mi litary purposes . Th is movement fai led because its designers paid no attention to some basic changes wh ich were the prerequisites of indus trial development. Among these basic changes , land reform was and is the most important one in China. The prerequisite of a successful land reform in China was and is , undoub tedly , also the abolition of the Confucian theory of functional division . In other words , a successful land reform requires the positive participation of the peasants as we ll as the enlightened coopera tion of the land lord- gentry class.

However , the land reform movement put forward in the period of the Republic proves how difficult it wa s to make a peaceful transfer of land ownership from the powerful land lord-gentry class to the ignorant farmers . Since economic power was identified with political power , the power struc ture in the countryside was bound to be changed by land redistribution . In the traditional Chinese society , the landlord-gentries were actua lly the rulers of the countryside . Land

15 John K. Fairbank , The United States and China (New York : The Viking Press , 1965) , p. 143 . 11 reform would undoub ted ly provoke their resistance , since land reform would attemp t to deprive them of their ec onomic power as we ll as their political authority. The landlord question , therefore , has been the center of the Chinese peasant problem . The different attitudes toward land lords adop ted by the nationalists and the communists reflec t the ma in differences between their land policies .

Confucius' idea of functional division still dominated the minds of the nationalists , and formed the foundation of their land policy.

They cooperated \vith the land lord-gentry class and the newly-emerged compradors . The large commercial cities along the coast became the ma in political centers . The we lfare of the peasantry wa s actua lly 16 neg lee ted .

In the countryside , Confuc ius' idea about revolution preva iled .

It gave active and agress ive farmers an excuse for launching uprisings.

This idea also help certain conservat ive farmers to wipe out ethical and mora l obstacles . To the communists , it served as an exciting slogan.

Unless we know the role played by Confuc ian ideas in the Chinese society, we can hardly understand the peasant prob lems as we ll as the different attitudes adopted by the nationa lists and the communists.

However , the Confucian idea of revolution does not coincide with the Ma rxist idea of class struggle . Their difference consists in the following points : (1) Ma rx regards the conflict between the

16 Wu Hsiang-hsiang. "Mr . Chang Chi- luan, China 's Outstanding Publicist;' Biographical Litera ture, V (September , 1964) , 27. 12

governing and the governed classes as a scientific certainty, since

those wh o own the means of produc tion,are bound to suppress those wh o

do not . According to the Confucian idea of revo lution , the conflict

between the rulers and the people is avoidable . (2) In the Ma rxist

point of view , class struggle is the result of economic exploita tion; while Confucianist revolution is caused by human brutality and ethical

immora lity .

Although the Chinese Communist , called themselves disciples

of Ma rxism-Leninism , they had to associate with the old Confucian

idea of revolution in order to gain the support of the peasantry.

This can be illus trated by the fact that the communists , when con- ducting an antiland lord campa ign , always tried to disclose the wrong doings and brutal behaviors of the land lords.

According to the Chinese communists , land lords consist of

those persons who own land but do not cultiva te it. 17 Th is definition

is obvious ly different from the traditional one . The Chinese communists wanted to abolish not only the traditional landlord-gentry class , but also the parasites who lived by exploiting others . How- ever , the traditional land lord-gentry class rema ined as the ma in

target of the communist revolution .

1 . 7c overnment Ad m�· n�s · trat�. ve C ounc�' 1 , �Th Agra r�an Re f orm Law of the People 1 s Repub lic £!. China and Other Relevant Documents (Peking : Foreign Language Press , 1959) , pp . 18- 19 . 13

In order to know how the pea sants we re exploited and why land reform was of urgent necessity, we have to examine the actual cond i tion of the Chinese countryside in the period of the Republic .

The actual condition of the Chinese countrys ide in the period of the Repub lic (1911- 1949) wa s characterized by the following factors :

(1) The peasant prob lems were neg lected by the urban ruling class wh ich monopolized power for decades. (2) The ma ldistribution of land wh ich gave rise to the landlord-gentry class continued to exist in this period . The land lord-gentry class, closely linked with the urban ruling class, actua lly dominated the countrys ide. The rise of the tenancy sys tem was also the result of the concentration of land owner ship . The tenants, as the mos t miserab le segment of the rura l population, lived at the mercy of the land lords. (3) So far as agriculture is concerned, China has its physical weaknesses. The amount of arable land in China is limited . A large part of Chinese territory is occu pied by mountains, desert and eroded land. Overpopula tion, since the eighteenth century, has been one of the main menaces to the people 's livelihood .

When Professor Liang Shih-Chiu visited the countryside of

Shangsi Province in 194 1, he was deep ly surprised that the peasants living in the countryside were so ignorant about the outside world.

They still used the national flag wh ich had been abolished two decades ago. In a vil lage of Shang country, he discovered that people still 14

kept the customs "which could only be found in the nineteenth-century 18 nove 1 , Ju-lin Wai-Shih ."

Indeed , the inland vil lages of China have been little changed by

the Western impact , wh ich for more than one hundred years has exerted

considerable pressure on self-confident Chinese Soc iety. The coastal

cities , as compared with the inland villages , have been wes ternized .

The people living in cities have had more chances for contact with the

Wes t.

The Chinese people educated by the West have tried to absorb a great variety of doc trines in order to bring about national salvation .

They seem to have overestima ted or miscalculated the value of indus tri-

alization and technical progress , and to have put rural re form last.

It is the urban class that domina ted Chinese politics for more than one century . As a result , the rural area was comp letely neglected .

Mr . Chang Chi- luan , the most outstand ing journalist of China once tried to remind his readers of the forgotten rura l area . He

said that Chinese politics could be regarded as "urban politics."

Every doctrine or policy designed by the intellectua ls was for the benefit of the urban population . Consequently, the liv ing conditions

of 90 percent of the Chinese poulation were ignored . In his notable article , "Where is the Chinese Civilization?" he reached the conclusion

that "The Chinese politicians , indus trialists and scholars did not know

18 Liang Shih-Chiu, "A Ride in Chung-tiao Mountain ," Biogr aphica 1 Li tera.ture, II (May, 1963) , 13-16. 15 the actual condition of China . Th is might be the very reason why the 19 current reform fai led . "

This respectable journa list, in 1930 , sent the staff of his newspaper (Ta-Kon Pao) to the countrys ide of Hopei to make a series of studies of the rural villages of tha t province. He said these studies were "for the purpose of encouraging the men in powe r to do some thing 20 for the benefit of the peasantry ."

The separa tion between the modernized top stratum and the res t of the Chinese people caused both externa l and internal misunderstanings .

Interna lly, it caused res istance of the peasantry to indus trialization and modernization. The pea santry began to suspect the revo lutionary doctrines as we ll as the imported sys tems , because they saw no prospect for the improvement of their lot in the exc iting and fierce slogans put forward by the intelligentsia . Externa lly , it gave the world a wrong impression about the actual conditions of China . "Our fa ilure in understanding ," wrote Professor Fairbank ,

. springs partly from our mistaking the modern veneer of China for the wh ole of Chinese life . Th is is particularly easy because the modernized top stratum of Chinese Soc iety-- the moneyed , officials , and litera te classes--a lmost monopolize the ma chinery of powe r in China today (the 1930's and 1940's) ."21

19 wu Hsiang-hsiang , "Mr. Chang Chi- luan, China's Outstanding Pub licist," Biographical Literature , V (September , 1964) , 27 . 20 Ibid. , p. 27. 21 John King Fairbank , The United States and China (Cambridge : Harvard University Press , 1948) , pp . 5-6. 16

According to reliable statistics , China had , before 1949 , 1300

mi llion mou of arab le land , including about 100 million mou of public 22 land . About 60 mil lion households were engaged in farming . Informa-

tion about the land distribution has been scanty at best . As a matter

of fact , no nationwide survey wa s made in China before the 1950's.

There is some material provided by various local surveys . These surveys conflic t with one another , however. Some of them are tailored to support certain dogmatic theories .

The first description of land distribution was made by a noted

Communist. Tang Ping-shen , who wa s the head of the Ministry of Agri- culture of the Wuhan Nationalist Government in 1927 . (At that time the Wuhan Nationalist Government still cooperated with the Communists .)

This report is , as Tang said , based upon materials provided by "Rus 23 sians and other foreigners. " However, he made no further remarks about either the accuracy of the sources of the material or the method emp loyed to collect it.

According to Tang 's report , "land concentration in the country-

side is extreme ly serious , the ma jority of the peasants (about 55 percent of the rural population) do not have , but desire to have their 24 O>vn land ." The unique characteristic of this report is that the

22 Wang Ah-nang , !}_Study o.n the Chinese Thought .£f Social and Ec.onomic Re form (Shanghai: Chung-hua Book Company , 1950) , p. 86. 23 Wan Ah-kong , The Communist Party and the Peasant Prob lems (Hong Kong : Asian Publishing Company , 1956) , p. 53 . 24 Ibid. , p. 54. 17

crite ria used to classify the peasantry we re des igned in an extremely

radical way. Those who owne d th i rty to fifty mou of land (five to

eight acres) we re classified as rich pe asants . Landlords we re those

farme rs who owned more than one hundred mou of land .

After ana lysing the materia l by classifying the pe asantry

into six segme nts , Tang draws the following conclusions :

1. Seventy-five pe rcent of the farme rs we re short of land or

without land . Th is segme nt only owne d 20 pe rcent of the

arable land in China .

2. Eleven pe rcent of the rura l population we re middle farmers ;

they owne d 13 pe rcent of the arable land.

3. Fourteen pe rcent of the rural population we re classified as

landlords and rich farmers . They possessed 81 pe rcent of

the tota l arab le land .

Tang 's report , although adopted as the statistical basis of the

early Communist peasant movements , was modified in the Kiangsi Soviet

period . The new statistics we re re lative ly re liable , since they we re based upon a series of local surveys made in the Soviet Districts.

Under the new statistics the number of land lords as we ll as the

size of their holdings was reduced; the pe rcentage of the poor pe asants was also changed from 75 pe rcen-t to . 70 pe.rcent- ; aR.d t.l:J.e land posse.s.sed

by the poor pe asants was increased from 6 percent to 15 percent . (See 25 Tab le I.)

25 Ibid., p. 55 . 18

TABLE I

COMMUNIST STATISTICS ABOUT LAND DISTRIBUT ION IN THE 1920'S

Landlords Poor Middle and Peasants Peasants Rich Farmers P(%) L(%) P(%) L(%) P(%) L (/o)

Tang 's repor t 75 6 11 13 14 81

Kiangsi's survey 70 10-15 20 15 10 70

P populat ion . L land . This modification re flects a ma jor change of the Communist

tactics in the peasant movement. The Chine se Communist party gradua lly deve loped a policy of organizing a united front between the poor and 26 midd le peasants. A large middle peasant would undoubtedly stre ngthen

the Communist powe r in the countryside . The Kiang si Fig ures were , the re fore , offic ially adop ted as the statistical basis of the Communist land policy.

A few statistics we re made by the Warlord and the Na tiona list

Gove rnme nts wh ich favored different approaches to solving the peasant prob lem. The se statistics emphasized the fact tha t a large part of the landowne rs engage d in land cultivation themse lves. This clearly re flects the basic difference between the policies of the Communists and the

Nat ionalists . The national gove rnment , espec ially after 1930 , has tried to form a "land-to- the-tiller" policy. The firs t step of this policy wa s to mitigate the miserable condition of the tenants by reduc - ing the land rent.

A large segment of the farmers, say the statistics of the War- lord Gove rnment, possessed the ir own land and engaged in cultivation themse lves. The tenants , with only a few exceptions , we re the smallest portion of the peasantry (about 20 percent of the rural popula tion)_

The se statistics also show that there we re more tenants in the southern 27 and centra l parts of China .

26 Hu Chiao-mu , Thirty Ye ars of the Communist Party of China (Peking : Fore ign Language Press , 1959) , pp . 35-36. 27 Wan Ah- kong , The Communist Party and the Peasant Prob lems , _££. cit. ,p. 56. 20

The Nationalist survey reached similar conclusions . It indi-

cated that the largest portion of the rural population we re middle

peasants (about 67 pe rcent of the rural population) . In contrast to

the Communist assertion , the nationa lists asserted tha t it 1vas not the

landlords but the middle peasants who owne d the largest portion of the

arable land. As the Warlord statistics showed , the middle peasants we re

identified wi th the tillers. Only one third of the rural population 28 we re tenants .

No matter how extens ive the dive rgencies are between the above

findings , one thing that has been universally recognized is the miserable condition of tenants .

The tenancy sys tem is as old as private land owne rship in

China . It is the result of land owne rship concentration. The Economic

His tory of the Han Dynasty (Shih Huo Chih) indicates:

The Chin Court adopted Shang Yang's sys tem of free land purchase and abolished the anc ient sys tem of Chien- tien . ...29 (There fore ) some farmers we re forced to cultivate the land of the rich families. The y gave five tenths of their produc t to the rich fami lies as re nt . . . . When the foot paths of the rich cut across every fie ld and the benefits from the streams and mountains we re monopo lized by them, the poor had not enough ground on which to re st the end of an awl . 30

28 The China Handbook Editorial Board , China Handbook , 1950 (New York: Rockport Press , Inc. , 1950) , pp . 581- 583 . 29 "Chiang- tien" is the feuda 1 land sys tem in which the land was divided into nine portions. Among these portions , one was regarded as pub lic land , and the othe r eight portions we re allotted to eight households. The pub lic land was farme d by the eight households , and its produc t belonged to the gove rnment. 30 T suL . Ch'L, _A Sh ort History o f C h inese Civi 1 iza tion ( New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons , 1943) , p. 86. 21

Two points in the above quotation are worthy of careful notice.

First, the tenanc y system wa s the direct result of the policy of free

land purchase. Secondly, the land rent , 50 percent of the product ,

was collected at the expense of the tenants ' live lihood .

As we have pointed out be fore , the system of land allotment

adopted by many dynasties was officially denounced in the Sung Dynasty.

We can, there fore , say that the modern tenancy system can be traced

back to the Sung period . A historian of the Sung Dynasty wrote :

Afte r a long period of stability and prosperity , powerful officials and rich families we re accus tome d to expand the ir land by purchase or othe r illegal methods . E31n governmenta l re strictions could not stop this deve lopment.

In that period, the re nt was as high as that of the Han Dynasty. 32 A farme r could cultivate about thirty mou of land , and get two teng 33 of grain from each mou. Ha lf of the produce we nt to the land lords .

The re lationship between the landowne rs and the tenants

involved more than the simple payment of rent , however. The te nancy

sys tem was actually a system of quasislavery. A write r of that time 34 said , "(tenants) are wh ipped , driven and dominated as slaves."

31 Tao Hsi-sheng, A History of Chine se Political Thought (Taipei, Shang-ming Press , 1954) , p. 6. 32 Teng's the unit of grain. 33 Ta o Hs i-sheng , A History of Chine se Political Though t, .££.· _£it., p. 29. 34 . Ib�d., p. 29. 22

The phenome na of land owne rship concentration did attract the

attention of the inte lligentsia . At least two sys tema tic solutions we re put forward . Wong An-Shih , a radical re former in Chine se history ,

asserted that the rich fami lies , both rural and urban , should be sup-

pressed. He , however, favored ne ither the re s torat ion of the allotment

sys tem nor the utopian Chien- tien system. He suggested that a wealthy

tenancy class would che ck the expansion of the rich . The government 35 should , there fore , financially he lp the tenants.

Anothe r solution was offered by Chang He ng-Chu, a Confucian

theorist. He attemp ted to adapt the utopian Chien- tien sys tem to the

social realities of his time. All the land should be divided in accordance with the Chien-tien principles. The existing authority of

the landlord , since it could not be abolished , should be recognized by

the government. At the firs t stage , landlords should be appointed as

land officials to manage their own land . Then, after twenty or thirty 3 6 ye ars those land offic ials should be replaced by " some virtuous men. 11

To Chang , rule by virtuous me n seemed to be the fina l step in land re form .

Obvious ly , Chang's proposal is imaginative enough . It wa s deeply affected by The Ri tes of Chou , a primitive utopian socialist

35 Wolfram Eberhard , � History of China (Be rke ley and Los Ange les: University of California Press , 1950) , p. 223. 36 Tao Hsi-sheng , � History .£f Chine se Po litical Though ts, IV , .£E.. cit. ' 93, 23

book . Chang himse lf seemed never to have realized the difficulty

involved in transforming powe r from the land lords to virtuous me n.

The land system unde r the Yuan , Ming , and Ching dynasties

deve loped in such a way that the aristoc racy became involved in the

tenanc y system. The governme nt gave much arable land to aristocrats.

The size of the land grants was very large . For example , in 1601 an

Empe ror of the Mi ng Dynasty attempted to give 40 ,000 Ching of arable

land in Honan province to his third son . The offer was opposed by some of the high officials in the Court. They argued that a large

amount of arable land in that province had already been given to the

Empe ror 's othe r sons. The land already given plus the latest offe r 37 amounted to 50 pe rcent of the tota l arable land of that provLnc. e.

The combina tion of land ownersh ip with political authority undoubtedly deepened the mise ry of the tenants . When the Manchu people occ upied the whole of China in 1644 , the land that had been given to the Ming aristocrats we re taken ove r by the Manchu aristocrats. The Ma nchu people , in the early stages of the Ching Dynasty , were allowe d by the Empe ror to take any fertile private land with 38 appropriate compe nsa tion . In the nine teenth century , large estates still existed . According to the statistics made by the China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Eng land) , in the 1880's in the Northe rn

37 chou King-Sheng , An Economic History of China , IV (Taipei, 1959)' p. 885 . 38 Ibid. , p. 1065 . 24

part of Kiangsu province , there we re "many large estates. One family ,

it is said, owns 400 ,000 mou , i.e . 66 ,666 acres; another 300 ,000 mou , 39 and others sti ll possess from 40 ,000 to 70,000 mou. "

As in other pe riods , the tenure struc ture changed wi th the political vicissitudes after 1911. In the Repub lic pe riod , the large estates gradua lly disappeared. The old land lord class decl ined and a new one arose . The ma in membe rs of the new land lord class we re mili-

tarymen, officials and compa rdors.

From 1911 to 1928, the Pei-Yang mi litary clique was the polici- cal authority of North China . At the same time , the Kwa ngsi military clique and the party troops of the Kuomintang began to dominate the

Southern provinces of China . Mi litary careers were looked upon wi th increasing favor , not because the mi litary provided higher social position , but because it offe red a new way to earn a living. General

Liu Ju-ming frankly said at the beginning of his autobiography: '� biography writer may say that General Liu joined the army , because he was ambitious . He is entire ly wrong , if he really th inks so. I joined the army simply because my fami ly was so poor that I had to find 40 a way to earn a liv ing . "

39 Edward Thomas Wi lliams , China : Ye ste rday and Today (New York : Thomas Y. Crowe ll Company, 1932) , p. 92 . 40 L·�u J u-m�n· g , "Rem�n · �s · cences o f a G enera 1 Wh o Rose F rom t h e Ranks (1) ," Biographical Literature , V (September 1964) , 39. 25

In anothe r chapter of the same autobiography , Gene ral Liu tells

us wh y his family wa s so poor and how he and his fami ly endeavored to

save money for land purchase:

The pove rty of my family wa s due to the sys tem of succession (according to this sys tem, wh en a person dies , each of his sons inhe rits a part of his property) . Our property has been divided by every generation. When my great grandfather died , my grand father only received five mou of land . . . . All the members of my family endeavored to save money in order to purchase land , and we did accumulate certain land . To purchase land in that way could hard ly be regarded as exp loitation , but the Communist said it was , whe n they we re persecuting my family.4l

The newly- arisen milita ryme n and officials with their fre sh

financial powe r became one of the largest cus tomers of the declining

land lords and poor farme rs who could not ma intain the ir land .

Some warlords , with the ir mighty mi litary power, became the

largest landlords in the 1920's . GeneralWuChiun- shen, a warlord of

Ma nchuria , possessed all the arable land of Tong-hua county. When his daughter bec ame engaged to the son of a Mongolian prince , he accepted 42 600 ,000 ching of virgin land from that Mongolian prince as a pe rsona l 43 g�'f t.

The mos t flagrant war lord- landlords came from Sauchuan province .

The Sauchua n farme rs we re the mos t miserab le segment of the rura l

41 . Ib�d.' p. 41. 42 Ch�ng. is a larger unit of land . It equals fifteen mou. 43 Pe-yi , "Reminiscences of the Dragon City," Chun-Chiu, Vo l. 178 , p. 26. 26 population . The war lord gove rnment of that prov ince began to collect 44 the land tax of 1974 in 1934.

The rising of the compradors , middlemen, was the result of the

Western impact. When the isolation policy of the Chinese Empire was destroyed by the Western gunboa ts in the 1860 ' s, inte rnat ional trade stre tched to every major coastal city of China . Under these circumstances an intermediary between the Western and the loca l me rchants was badly needed. A lot of me rchants who could speak English became 45 "middlemen," and thus obtained wealth and re putation . Gradua lly they became the richest segme nt of the Chinese people . The y regarded land purchase as the safest way of investment since the economic and political situation in China was so unstable .

Those who had acquired wealth in trade and industry began to join the landlord club . Statistics show that "by the 1920 's in the area around the commercia l me tropolis of Shanghai and Canton , alre ady nine ty-five and eighty-five percent respective ly of the farme rs we re 46 tenants. "

The two new ingredients of the land lord class shared a common characteristic , i.e., both of them could not cultivate their own

44 King Kuo- po , !:. Study on the Economi. .c Prob lems of China , (Shanghai, Chung-hua Book Company, 1935) , p. 212. 45 Fairbank , Re ischauer, and Craig , East Asia: The Mo dern Transfo.rma tion (Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company , 1965) , pp . 34 6-347 . 46 Mehnert , Klaus , Peking and Moscow (Translated from the Ge rman by Le ila Ve nnewitz) (New York : The New Ame rican Library , 1964) , p. 144 . 27

land . Under these circumstances, the tenanc y sys tem reached a neiv

peak. The burden of the tenants was , in this period , one of the

heaviest in Chine se history.

First, the tenants , as the tenants of other periods , had to

pay a heavy land rent which usually equaled half or two thirds of the

produc t. Statistics gathered in Kiangsi Province in 1927 show : (1)

in twenty- two counties the land rent was 50 percent of the product,

(2) in sisteen counties , the tenants had to pay 60 percent of the product to the landowne rs , (3) in twe lve counties, the land re nt was

under 50 percent of the product, (4) in other areas , the re nt ra tes 47 ranged from 70 percent to 80 percent. The various rent rates we re

fixed according to the quality of the land.

In addition to the land rent , the tenants we re also required by the gove rnment to pay a land tax, wh ich , as compared wi th the

land taxes of other countrie s, was extreme ly unre asonable . A German,

W. Wagner, made a tax surve y in Suntung Province , and discovered that

the land tax the Suntung farmers had to pay wa s fifteen times the

Prussian land tax (in 1866) , 2.5 times the Japane se land tax and seven 48 times the United States land tax.

47 chen Po-ta, On the Land Re nt -in- Modern China , Second Edition (Peking : Peop le';-Fre ss , 1962) , pp. 31-32 . 48 K·�ng Kuo-po , _A S tudy � �h C h ine se Economic Frob 1 ems , ££· cit. , pp . 211-212. 28

The land tax was by no me ans the only tax the farmers had to pay. There we re many auxiliary taxes which we re usually severa l times the land tax. A surve y made in Chekiang Province in 1933 indicates that there we re twenty auxi liary taxes in severa l counties of that province . None of the other counties , says the same survey, had less 49 t h an e �g. h t.

The heaviest sing le tax levied on the peasantry was the tax for military purposes . In 1929 and 1930, the farme rs of 823 counties

(China had 1941 counties at that time ) had to pay military taxes 50 wh ich approxima te ly equaled 300 percent of the land tax.

The balance made for a tenant fami ly ma y he lp to indicate the actual condition of the tenants ' live lihood (see Table II) .

Table II reveals the following facts :

1. The income acquired by farmers was not sufficient to supply the ir families. Their dependents had to engaged in supplementary labor in order to make up the income shortage . If an accident happened in the ir families they we re bound to fall into the whirlpool of a loan shark . Professor Edward T. Wi lliams , formerly American Charge d'

Affairs at Peking , has described wh at he was in China :

The sight of a trave ler with his clothe s tied up in a bundle and carried over his shoulder is not a rare one . But these country people as I learned to my surprise , we re carrying

49 commission for the Agrarian Re storation , �Survey on the Villages of Chekia,ng Province , Second Edition (Shanghai: Comme rcia 1 Publishing Company, 1935) , p. 8. SO K�ng. K uo-po , A S tu dyo n� h Ch�n' e se E conom�c. P robl ems , E.E_. cit. , p. 212 . 29

TABLE II

FINANC IAL BALANCE OF AN AVERAGE TENANT FAMILY

1. Income Unit Chinese Dollar

Income of the farm 165 .93 Family labor 18.79 Family supplementary labor 20.83 205 .54 2. Mo ney Product ive Means --for

Facil ities 2.05 Cadastration 14 .62 Seed 9.88 Fertilizer material 6.31 32 .82 3. Mo ney for Living --

Family 141 .07 Employees 2.83 143 .90 4. Taxes ---

Land tax 2.4 Eight auxiliary taxes 11.0 Military tax 7.2 20.6

Source: The first three items (income , the money for product ive me ans and the money for living) were investigated by Chien Char-Chu , Heny Te-Chang, and Wu Pen-nung in Ju- lin county , Kwangsi province in 1933. See Chen Po- ta, op. cit., p. 1. The material of the fourth item was cited from King Kuo-po's-;ork, � Study on the Chinese Economic Prob lems , op . cit., pp. 211-212 . These three figures (2 .4, 11.0, and 7.2) were the approximate averages of the var ious taxes in China. Although this table is explorato�y rather than definitive in charac ter , it dis closes with reasonab le accuracy, the actual living conditions of the tenan ts. 30

the ir clothe s home from the pawn-shops , where they had been deposited earlier in the ye ar to ra ise money for the purchase of seed for the spring planting. They had had a bad season the previous ye ar, fol lowe d by a hard winter, and had exhaus ted the ir resources. This year the y had better fortune and so were able to re cover the ir winte r garme nts before the cold we ather set in. This custom of depositing clothes wi th the pawn-shops is not , ho\vever , an uncommon one , either in country or city 51 For the common people they (Pawn shops ) serve as banks .

Poverty brought the tenants political and social inferiority.

However, they we re not accus tomed to solving the ir prob lems by

political or social revo lution . Confucian teachings still dominated

the ir minds . Only when the y faced starvation , did they stand up and

fight for their lives.

2. They had no surp lus money for agricultura l improvement.

The technical backwardness of Chine se agriculture is mainly due to

the pove rty of the farmers .

The technical backwardne ss of agriculture , a part of the

backwardne ss of science in China , can be attributed to the social

struc t ure and the value sys tem. The traditional Chinese society was divided into four functiona l groups , name ly the inte lligentsia ,

the peasants , the artisans , and the me rchants . The inte lligentsia had a very high social position . The y we re , as the Confucianists

asserted, the ruling class of the socie ty. Farmers we re given a

position second only to the inte lligentsia . However, their economic position was inconsistent with the ir social position . In other words ,

51 Edward Thomas Williams , China : Ye ste.rday and Today , _££. cit. , p. 87 . 31

they we re socially near the top but mate rially poor near the bottom of

the society. They we re governed , and scarce ly became gove rning .

However, the social stratum wa s by no me ans rigid. The criterion

for socia l classification was literacy rather than origin or family background. If a poor peasant could pass the Imperial Examination , he was actually promoted to the inte lligentsia . In other words , to pass the examination me ant to improve one's social posi tion . Under such a va lue sys tem and social structure , people , inc luding the literate peasants , endeavored to master the Confucianist classics which we re useful in passing the examina tion , instead of reading other books .

In his autobiography , Chen Tu-Shiu, one of the founders of the Chine se Communist Pa rty , once vividly described how the peop le of his native district enc ouraged the ir boys to pass the examination :

Imperial Examination was not only a sign of glory , but also an implicit force wh ich dominated the social life of the wh ole pe ople . Only those wh o passed the examination could become officials ; only officials could become rich ; and only the rich could become land lords . Although sons of the poor could hardly pass the examination , the poor tenants still tried to do the ir best to enc ourage the ir sons to learn . If the ir sons took , but fai led to pass the examination , they would be treated better by the land lords . 52

The Imperial Examination sapped not only the energy of the inte lligentsia but also that of the literate peasant and handicrafts- me n. The hand worke rs were separa ted from the head workers , and scientific research was thus neglected. In Chine se history , we can

52 Chen Tu-Shiu, "Chapters of an Unfinished Autob iography ," Biographical Literature , Taipei, V (September, 1964) , 55 . 32

find many peasants or handicra ftsmen who rose from illiteracy to

literacy, becoming inte llectua ls or officials. It is hard to find

peasants who became litera te and rema ined dedicated to the scientific

deve lopment of the ir origina l careers . The story of Chi Pe-sheh , one

of the greate st Chinese printers in the 20th century, may be utilized

as an examp le.

Chi Pe-sheh wa s origina lly a poor carpenter. After working wi th

a famous carpenter of Hunan Province , he ma stered woodcarving and

became famous in his nat ive district. However , that wa s not what he

wanted. He desired to ma ster print-making and poetry , which we re

usua lly the careers of the inte l ligentsia . A care ful study of his

autobiography and other re levant materials shows how eagerly he and

the people of his time wanted to join the inte lligentsia. He le ft 53 no contribution to woodworking but he did leave bril liant prints .

The inferior social pos ition of the me rchant can be traced

back to the Han Dynasty. Since comme rce was regarded by the Con-

fucianists as a necessary evil, the Han Dynasty adopted a policy of disparaging the me rchant. In 136 B.C. , after the Confuc ian triumph ove r the legalists , a period of Confuc ian ideological monopoly began.

Confucian agrarianism was thus turned from a theory into a practical

system with the following two principles as its base : (1) peasant

affairs must be regarded as the center of statecraft; (2) me rchants ,

53 Chang Tzu- chi , '�utobiographical Account of Chi Pe-sheh (1863-1957) ," Biographical Literature , III (August, 1963) , 41 . 33 being regarded as an exploiting group , mus t be suppressed . This system has been adopted to various degrees by all the dynasties as the basis of their economic policies.

The se policies localised and decentra lized the commerce , including the purchase of surplus grain. Even in the 1940 's most of the farmers in inland China still traded with each other through a sys tem of periodic marke ts in wh ich the local farme rs me t each other once or twice each month to purchase what they wanted and to sell surpluses . Agriculture has never been commercia lized. The lack of a nation-wide ma rke t made the exchange of agricultura l know-how difficult.

After the revolution of 1911 and after fifty ye ars of modernization , the value system still remained the same . Me rchants were dis- paraged , and the inte lligentsia , adored . Even in 1964 the Chinese

Communists had to criticize the disparaging of me rchants , for many young Chinese did not like to work in commercial jobs .

As I have said before , the peasant prob lems in China worsened when land concentration combined with the prob lem of overpopulation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries . From the Tang Dynasty

(621-880) to the early ye ars of the Ching Dynasty, China had never 54 suffered from ove r-popula tion .

54 Chiang Monlin, "Peasant Prob lems and Population ," Collected Works of Chiang Monlin, .££ · cit. , pp . 102- 103 . 34

In the 18th century, China 's population rapidly increased becoming approxima tely four times wh at it had been during the Mi.ng 55 period . The increase was partly due to the re form of the land tax.

But the main factor contributing to the increase was obviously the stability and the prosperity of the social situation at that time .

Under the pressure of the rura l ove rpopulation , the land that peasant farme d decreased from fourteen mou in the 17th century to 2.5 56 mou in the 19th century. In the 1949 land re form , only about 1.5 57 mou we re allotted to each farmer. The se facts clearly reflect the grave character of ove rpopula tion in China .

Statistics gathered by the Statistics Bureau of the Na t ionalist

Governme nt in 1945 revealed that the average Chine se farm was smaller than the ave rage farm in thirteen other leading countrie s (see Table

III) .

The Re public period (1911- 1949) brought instability and misery to the rural population . Traditional ideas and ignorance still ruled the countryside but We stern ideas began to push China toward funda- me ntal re form. Peasant movements began to rise in wrath .

55 Fairbank , Re ishauer , and Craig , East Asia : The Modern Transformation , ££· cit. , p. 110 . 56 chiang Monlin, "Peasant Prob lems and Population ," Collected Works ,££· cit. , p. 105 . 57 Wan Ah-kong , Three Ye ars Un,cler � Rule .£!. the Communist Party (Hong Kong : Ta Tao Publishing Company , 1954) , p. 89. 35

TA BLE III

LAND EACH PEASANT FA RMED IN 14 COUNTRIES , 1945

Country Land Each Peasant Farme d

Canada 19.27 U. S. A. 12 .91 Chile 10.99 Denma rk 4.85 U. K. 3.70 U. S. S. R. 3. 12 Hungary . 2 '76 France 2. 69 Ire land 1. 90 Turke y 1. 70 India 1.60 Italy 1.47 Japan 0.41 China 0.29

1 unit = 1 ching = 15 mou .

Source : Chiang Mo nlin , "Peasant Prob lems and Popula tion , 11 Collected Works of Chiang Monlin (Taipei : Cheng Chung Press , 1954) , pp . 120-21. CHAPTER II

LAND REFORM MOVEMENT IN THE PERIOD OF THE REPUBLIC (1911- 1949)

Dr . Sun Ya t-sen's first revolutionary organization wa s estab lished in Honolulu in 1894 and name d Shen-chung Hui (society for the Re stora- 1 tion of China) . Mos t of its members we re ove rseas Chinese .

In the 19th century , the Ma nchu Empire wa s declining on the one hand , and the cultura l supe riority of the Chine se people was cha llenged on the othe r. The overseas Chinese became the most unstable segment of the Chine se pe ople . The y lost the protection of the Chinese Gove rnment, and fe lt shameful whe n living in "barbarian" countries. They knew wh y and how the we stern countrie s became so strong . They wanted to re form the ir own country by means of we stern knowledge and experience . Tha t is one of the reasons why the Chinese anti-Manchu revolution wa s stirred up , financially supported and imp lemented mainly by the ove rseas Chinese .

Mos t of the overseas Chine se came from the overpopulated coastal provinces of south China. The y emigrated to fore ign countries simp ly because they wanted to earn mone y to support their fami lies or re lative s who still lived in China . Whe n the y ma de enough mone y or became old , they usually re turned to China , Mos t of them purchased land and became

1 The origina l me mbers of She n-chung Hui we re twenty-three ove r- seas Chinese . Mo st of them we re middle class me rchants in the United States. See Huang Fu- l iang , Ove rseas Chine se and the Chinese Re volution (Hong Kong : Asia Publishing Company , 1955) , p. 58.

36 37

middle-class peasants. It is significant tha t they came from the peasant

class and wanted to re tire as pe asants .

Be fore the establishment of Shen-chung Hui , many secret societies

existed among the overseas Chinese as we ll as the peasantry in China .

The se secret societies can be traced to the 17th century whe n the Manchu

court seized the whole China ma inland , and Cheng Chen-kung , one of the mi litary leaders of the Mi ng Dynasty, se ized Formosa and used it as a mi litary base to ove rthrow the Ma nchu Dynasty. Re alizing that the Ming

court could not be re stored me re ly by military activities , Cheng Chen-

kung 's staff general, Che n Yung-hua , secretly organized Tien-di Hui in

south China . The simp le platform of this secret society wa s "Fan- ching

Fu-ming " (literally , fight against Ma nchu and re store the Ming Dynasty) .

In 1683 , Formosa was occupied by the Ma nchu Empire . Members of Tien-Di

Hui fled to and established themselves in Southeast Asia . In 1862 , the

potential strength of the secret societies substantially increased >vhen 2 the remnant of the Taiping rebels fled abroad to join them.

In China proper, the character of the secret societies wa s

changed. Re ligious doc trines and superstitions we re incorporated into

their platforms . Inte llectua ls we re attracted by the Imperial Examina-

tion and no longer cared about any racist appeal. Only illiterate and

poor peasants and workers , because of the ir miserable condition , we re

2 Ib�. £. ' p. 43 . .38 3 still interested in secret societies. Anti-Manchu doc trine still

existed but gradua lly lost its origina l flavor and became anti-

foreignism .

After the establishme nt of Shen-chung Hui , Dr. Sun Ya t-sen 4 successfully organized a united front wi th certain secret societie s.

Undoubtedly, such an alliance benefited both the revolutionaries and

the secret societies . The masses needed leade rship , wh ile the revolu-

tionaries needed the masses . Under these circums tances, the revolutionary

socie ty had to adopt a land policy in order to satisfy the masses , espec ia lly the poor peasants .

In 1905 , the revolutionary socie ty was re organized into Tung-mon

Hui , and adopted "equa lization of land rights" as one of the planks of

its pla tform . The land policy des igned by Dr. Sun Yat-sen was moderate

in character. It was influenced by the we stern land re forme rs of the

1890's.

In the 1890's, the land re form movement in the We st reached its

zenith . He nry George put forward the idea of sing le tax in the United 5 States. John Steart Mi ll advocated the theory tha t all une arned

3 wang Chi-Shen, � Concrise History .£!. Chinese Re ligious Though t (Shanghai: Chung-Hua Company , 1934) , p. 216. 4 Li Wen-ahi , "The 1911 Re volution and Secre t Societies," Collected Essays for the Celebra tion .£!. the 1911 Re volution, edited by the Hupeh Association for Philosophical and Social Re search (Peking : Chung-hua Book Company , 1961) , p. 177 . 5 Ma rk Carter Mi lls , "Land ," Collier's Encyc lopedia , XIV (New York : The Crowe ll-Collier Pub lishing Company , 1964) , 287 . 39 6 increments of land should go to the public . Adolf Damaschke organized 7 a land reform le ague in Germany. As a we stern-educated person , Dr . Sun wa s undoubtedly influenced by this land re form movement . In the mani-

fe sto issued by Tung-mon Hui , Dr . Sun wrote :

The current va lue of land re sulting from social improvement and progre ss afte r the revolution should go to the state to be enj oyed by all citizens in common. 8

If we compare the above stateme nt with John S. Mi ll's theory, we can easily discove r how deeply Dr. Sun wa s influenced by these we stern land re formers .

However, in the early years of the 20th century , traditiona l

Chine se thought still domina ted the inte llectua ls . Dr . Sun and his associates, although they had adopted the we stern land theory , still maintained the Confucianist attitude towa rd the peasantry. The y had no intention of organizing peasants and worke rs into their own party .

Revolution wa s still regarded as a pursuit for the inte lligentsia . The revolutionaries decided to try to ove rpowe r the warlords and establish the ir own military forces. The y focused the ir attention on the large cities rather than the countryside . In 1921, whe n G. Ma ring advised Dr . Sun

Ya t-sen to organize his party into a coali tion of classes , particularly

6 D. R. Dewey, "The Nationa lization of La nd ," Pa lgrave 's Dictionary of Politcal Economy , II (New York : Augustus M. Ke lley, 1963) , 551. 7 Theodor Re uss , "Damaschke ," New Deutsche Biographie (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot , 1956) , p. 498 . 8 Chen Cheng , Land Re form in Ta iwan (Ta ipei: China Pub lishing Company , 1961) , p. 10. 40

of workers and peasants , Dr . Sun told Ma ring that "the basis of (the

Chinese) revolutionary movement is the unbroken heritage from Great Ya o,

Shun , Yu , Tang , King We n , King Wu , Duke of Chu, and Confuc ius to the 9 present day. " A man be lieving in Confucianism can hardly accept radical

the ories such as nationa lization of land . In a speech de live red be fore

the Kwa ngt ung Provinc ial Assemb lyme n and newspape r reporters at Canton ,

Dr . Sun pointed out :

Ma ny scholars in various parts of the world are in favor of land nationa lization , which is reasonable and may be adopte d by us . But , in my view, not all land should be owned by the state , but only those parts of the land wh ich are needed for pub lic purpose . 9

Dr . Sun's land policy was not based upon detailed investigation.

As a ma tter of fact, an investigation wa s impossible at that time . During the Canton pe riod , the Kuomintang had never effective ly controlled the

Province of Kwangtung , not to me ntion the other provinces. The party lived at the me rcy of the mi litary man . Even after the establishme nt of the party force , the authority of the Kuomintang was still based upon a balance between the party troop and the Kwangsi mi lita ry clique .

Dr. Sun asserted that the land prob lem of modern China was a corollary of the pove rty of the wh ole country. China had no great landlords wh o dominated the live lihood of the common people . In the countryside the Confucian standard of morality should be maintained. In other words , the land prob lem in China should be regarded as economic in character; the social order should not be changed. This is perhaps the

9 Ibid. , p. 12. ma in difference between the land policies of the Nat ionalists and the

Communists .

In his third lecture on the princ iple of Pe ople 's live lihood ,

Dr . Sun says :

A large ma jority of the people in China are peasants , at least nine out of every ten, ye t the food v1h ich they raise with such wearisome labor is mostly taken away by the land owne rs .... If we are to increase the produc tion of food , we must make laws regarding the rights and interests of the farmers ; we mus t give them encourageme nt and protection and allow them to keep more of the fruit of the ir land ....Wh en the Principle of people 's live lihood is fully realized and the problems of the farmer are all solved, each tiller of the soil wi ll possess his own fields- that is to be the final goal of our efforts ....Alt hough China does not have great land lords , ye t nine out of ten farme rs do not own their fields . Mos t of the farming land is in the possession of landlords wh o do not cultivate themselve s ....Of the food produc tion in the fields , sixty per cent goes to the land lords , while only forty percent goes to the farme rs ....If the food raised in the fie lds all goes to the farme rs they wi ll be more 0 eager to farm and produc tion wi ll increase . 1

From the above citation , we can see that what Dr. Sun designed is a moderate and conserva tive "land-to-the-tiller" policy. He introduces no radical me thod of trea ting the land lords or of chang ing the socia l order of the peasant society . Such a policy wa s espoused by the Na tionalists , but it has never been carried out on the Chinese ma inland .

A senior Nationalist official who was an active politician during the Canton period , once vividly told how peasant affairs we re neglected by the Kuomintang officials and how the Communists adopted an opposite attitude :

10 Sun Ya t-sen, San Mi n Chu l (Taipe i: China Cultural Service , 1953) ' pp . 187-88. 42

Be fore the central pa rty organization moved northward , every district (county or city) established its own Bureau for Pe asant and Worke r Affairs . A party re solution was also adopted to set up training institutes for agricultura l administration. I wa s appointed as the dean of tha t ins titute ....Instru c tors inc luded noted Commun ist leaders such as Hui Tai-eing , Lu Yi-yen, Feng Chu-po, and many high Nationa list officials . The Na tiona list officials we re very indiffe rent and une nthus iastic about their teachings .... The Communist instruc tors adopted an opposite attitude . They worked very hard just like priests preaching the gospe l. Later, the Com munists we re driven out of the Kuomintang , agricultura l and labor affairs we re again ove rlooked , and the ins titute was fina lly c lased , 11

When the Kuomintang established itse lf in Kwa ngtung province , most of its leaders we re inte llectuals with traditiona l backgrounds .

The y scarce ly knew the peasantry . The firs t national assemb ly of the Kuo- mintang >va s he ld in 1924 in Canton. Twenty- four revolutionary leaders we re elected as members of the Ce ntra l Commi ttee , and five we re elected as members of the Control Commi ttee . An ana lysis of the ir backgrounds and their atti tude s toward peasant prob lems might he lp us to illus trate

the assertion tha t peasant problems we re ignored by the traditiona l mandarin inte llectuals.

The five members of the Control Commi ttee we re in the right-wing of the Kuomintang . All of them we re traditional mandarin inte llectuals.

All of them came from rich urban or rura l families . Among the members of the Centra 1 Commi ttee , Wong Ching-wei and Liao Chung-kai came from rich families . Though they we re the lef t-wing leaders , they put forwa rd no posi tive ideas for the settlement of pe asant problems . The ma jority of the Centra l Commi ttee , as mandarin intellectuals , natura lly opposed

11 Li Po-sen, "Working for the Party ," Centra l Daily News (Taipei) , Ma rch 23, 1966 . 43

any radical re forms . Tang Ping-shen , Li Ta -chou , and Yu Shu-- teh we re

Communists who we re elected as membe rs of the Central Committee . Later

deve lopments indicated that they we re also not in favor of radical land

re form as the Communists >ve re seve ral years later. In the Ma y Fourth

Movement, Li Ta-chou, influenced by utopian socialism , advocated a 12 new v_illage sys tem. Strictly speaking , he did not propose land re form.

However, his suggestions gave Ma o tse-tung a hint regarding the import-

ance of the countryside .

A few military me n we re also elected as members of the Central

Commi ttee . Tang Ye n-kai, wh o came from a notable mandarin fami ly, was

the military commander of the Hunan troops . Yang She-ming was a warlord

of Yungnan Province . Li Le i-chun and Po We n-we i we re the military

leaders of East China . Jus t like other military men of tha t time , their

interests coincided with the inte rests of the landlords . As a matter of

fact, mos t of the military me n we re themselves landlords or rich

peasants .

In 1924 , the Kuomintang decided to cooperate with the Communists.

Th is decision was important both to the Kuomintang and the Communists .

It was important to the Kuomintang because it marked the firs t time that

the Kuomintang had ob tained foreign aid. It wa s important to the communists because it gave the communists a chance to move into the ma in

stream of the Chine se revolutionary movement.

12 Li Lung-mu , "On Li Ta-chou's Go- to- the village Assertion Put Forward in the Ha y Fourth Movement," Collected Essays for the Fourtie th Anniversary of the May Fourth Movement , edited by the Shanghai Association of Philosophical and Social Re search , (Shanghai : Pe ople 's Press , 1960) , pp . 100- lOL 44

Be fore the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists ,

the high party leaders of the Kuomintang gradua lly deve loped an idea of establishing a party troop . The y thought that the Kuomintang could do nothing , if it continued to live at the me rcy of the warlords . In 1924 ,

Chiang Ke i-shek, after investigating the Rus sian milita ry educational sys tem , was ordere d to set up a mi litary academy at Wangpoa , Kwangtung . 13 Four months later, the firs t Rus sian mi litary aid reached Wa ngpoa !

At the same time , the Communists apparently adopted a different me thod of deve loping the ir power. They decided to start a ma ss movement to increase their strength wi thin the ranks of workers and peasants . A noted communist, Peng Pa i, successfully organized a peasant movement in his native town , Hai lufeng , Kwa ngtung , wh ich wa s the fore runner of the

Communist peasant movement. As the son of a rich Hai lufeng farmer, Peng

Pa i knew the local peasantry ve ry we ll. Ha ilufeng , . like most of the

Chinese rura l areas , was backward , conservative and poor . It seemed to be extreme ly difficult to improve conditions there. In 1921, Pe ng Pa i was appointed director of the Board of Education of Hailufeng . Th is gave him a chance to start his task. First, he organized students to ce le- bra te Labor Day (Ma y the first) , but no laborers or peasants joine d them .

He published a periodical, Re d Hea rt , as the voice of the masses , but

13 Sherr Yung-lung , The Early Deve lopment £i the Chine se Communist Party (Taipei: Free China Pub lishing Company , 195 9) , p. 40 . 45

the ma sses did not back him. Workers and peasants did not even know . 14 what he was do�ng .

The fai lure in Ha i lufeng city forced him to go to the countrys ide to re cruit support. In the villages he was treated like a tax collector; nobody talked wi th him, Howe ver , his old-fashioned gramophone he lped him. Every time he reached a vil lage , he played a record first. Whe n the peasants we re attracted and got together to wa tch his ''magic box," he proceeded to put on a slight of hand performance . In this wa y, he re cruited six cadres in the first months and organized the firs t peasants ' association. Howeve r, mos t of the peasants did not understand the significance of the association and re fused to join i L Only when the association showe d its ability to protect its members did its membership begin to increase .

The Peasants ' Association of Ha i lufeng cons is ted of nine departme nts : sanitary , education , arbitration , propaganda , agriculture , ma nagement, public re lations , finance , and bookkeeping . The most active department wa s the De partment of Arbitra tion wh ich hand led many cases 15 concerning marriage , debt, and property. The Pe asants ' Association sho>ve d its power in 1927 when a soviet gove rnment was organized in Canton .

More than ten thousand Hai lufe ng peasants los t the ir live s for the cause . . 16 o f t h. e assoc�atlon .

14 Pe ng Pa i's report cited by Wan Ah-kong 's, The Communist Party and the Peasant Prob lems (Hong Kong : Asian Pub lishing Company , 1956) , p. 62 . 15 16 . Ibid. , p. 63. Ib�d. ' p. 64. In 1925 , another peasant movement was initiated by Ma o Tse-tung himself in his native county, Shao Sen , Hunan . Th is movement was not

as successful as Pe ng Pai 's because Hunan Province was ruled by a conservative warlord . One of the contributions of this short- live d experime nt wa s the me rging of the peasant movement with Nationalism . At

that time , Japanese invasion seeme d to be iminent. Ma o, first of all ,

trie d to mix with the local farme rs in order to understand their prob lems .

Then, he organized Shui-chi Hui (Soc iety for the Abolishment of the

Nat iona l Humi liation) to mix anti-Japanese appeal with the peasant movement. In addition, he recruited a number of cadres for the Communist 17 Party. Undoubtedly , these two movements we re experimental in character.

Both Ma o and Pe ng had not had any experience before .

In 1925 , Ma o, under pressure from the warlords , fled to Canton whe re he was appointed the Director of a training instutute for peasant movements . Under the auspices of Ma o, twenty- five courses we re offered.

Mos t of the instructors we re Communists . Ma o offered courses concerning

Chinese peasant prob lems . Pe ng Pai dealt with the peasant movement in

Tung-kiang and Ha i lufeng . Chou En- lai lectured on the military significance of the peasant movement.

One of Ma o 's noted essays , "An Analysis of the Va rious Classes of

Chinese Society ," was written and presented in the form of a lecture in

17 Ma o Yuan -yu , "Shao- sen Pe asants Educat�d by Chairma n Ma o Himse lf ," Collected Historical Ma teria ls about the Revolutionary Struggle Le d � the Communist Party in the Middle-South Area (Hankao: Chung-nan �eople 's Press , 1951) , pp . 66-67 . 47

1925 . In this essay Mao divided the Chinese pe op le into five classes :

Landlord and camprador , middle class , petite bourgeoisie , semi- proletariat, and proletariat. After ana lyzing the characteristics of these five classes , he reached the following conc lus ion :

Campradors , landlords , and a part of the reactionary inte l lectua ls are our enemies. The industrial pro le tariat is our leading revolutionary force . The semi-prolet�riat and petite bourgeoisie are our close friends . So far as the fluctuating midd le class is concerned , its right wing might be our enemy ; its left wing might be our friend . We must p ay attention to them 1 and be sure they wi ll not disturb our front . 8

Pe asants , according to Ma o, be long to either pe tite bourgeoisie or semi- proletariat. Therefore , they are the close friends of the revolutionary 19 workers .

In July, 1926, the Kuomintang launched a ma jor military expedition.

The ir victory in Hunan and othe r provinces of the Southeast China gave

Mea an opportunity to stir up a peasant uprising in his native province ,

Hunan. Peasants ' associations we re organized in thirty- five counties and 20 had a tota l membership of 5,180 ,000 peasants in 1927 . A series of strugg les against land lords we re stimula ted . The me thods used by the

Communists we re ruthless. Many land lords we re tortured or executed. The peasants ' associations began to replace the gentry class of the

18 Ma o Tse- tung , "An Analysis of All the Classes in Chinese Society," Se lected Works of Ma o Tse- tung, I (Peking : Pe ople 's Press , 1951) ' 9. 19 Ibid. , pp . 5-6. 20 Li Ra i, "The Hunan Pe asant Movement in the Period of the Firs t Re volutionary Wa r ," Collected Historial Ma terials , about the Communist Led Struggle in the Middle-South Area (Ha n Kuo : Chung-nan Press , 1951) , p. 83. 48 countryside as the political authority. Landlords we re forced to

reduce re nt and interest. Gamb ling and opium smoking we re prohibited , and paternalism was challenged. The following are Ma o's own words :

The power of the peasants ' associations we re paramount. Landlords we re not allowe d to debate . The prestige of the land lords was entirely swept away; we just punched them down to the floor and kicked them "tvith our feet. The slogan was : "Those wh o have a lot of land are land lords ; those who are gentry are depraved." In some places , people who had only fifty mou of land we re regarded as landlords , and people wh o wore robes we re treated as depraved gentry . 21

In May , 1929, a national pe asants ' association wa s organized in

Wuhan. Ma o Tse-tung was elected as its chairman. Th is organization was dissolve d when the Nationa list Government decided to sepa ra te from the Communists .

From January the fourth to February the fifth of 1927, Ma o spent thirty- two days investigating the peasant movement in the south part of

Hunan. Afte rwa rds he "tvrote a re port wh ich has been deemed as one of the classic documents of the early Communist movement in China . In this report Ma o listed fourteen programs wh ich we re carried out by the Hunan movement :

1. The peasants we re organized within the framework of the peasants ' associations .

2. The political authority of the gentry- land lord class was challenged.

3. The economic authority of the gentry- land lord class was challenged.

21 Mao Tse- tung , "Report of an Investigation into the Pe asant Move- ment in Hunan," Se lected Works of Ma o Tse-tung , I (Peking : People 's Press , 1952) , 25 . 49

4. The fudal ruling sys tem of the depraved gentry wa s ove rthrown .

5. The landlords we re disarmed, and a peasant armed force was established.

6. The authority of the county magistra te and othe r lowe r offic ials was overthrown . The peasants ' associations took ove r the ir judic ial power .

7. Pate rna lism, theocracy, and ma le authority we re cha l lenged.

8. Propaganda against impe rialism, aggre ssion and unequal treaties was wide ly spreaded.

9. Bad cus toms and habits we re prohibited.

10 . Bandits we re swept away.

11. High taxes we re abolished .

12 . Cultural improveme nts we re initiated.

13. Several kinds of cooperative s we re set up . 22 14 . Construction wa s started.

From the above fourteen points , we can see that social re form rather than land re form wa s emphasized. The Communists tried to over- throw the ruling gentry by arming the poor peasants . They intended to cha l lenge the Confucianist standard of morality and value sys tem by questioning paternalism. They attempted to wipe out bad cus toms by initia ting cultura l movement. They endeavored to stimulate the political consciousness of the peasantry by appealing to nationa lism.

No ma tter how sacred and dedic ated the aims we re , the Hunan peasant movement wa s undisciplined and irrational. It was criticized

22 Ib;,L d .• , pp. 34 - 55 0 50

and opposed by the Centra l Commi ttee of the Communist Party. A

re solution was adopted on Janua ry 25 , 1927 , by the Centra l Commi ttee

condemning the imma ture actions of the poor peasants for caus ing the 23 departure of the petite bourgeoisie from the Communist Pa rty.

Such a radical movement na tura lly led the province into a state of terror. Mi litary men took the initiative in suppre ssing the peasants .

Finally , a bloody conflict occurred in Chang-sha . At that time , the

Third Internationa l's order arrived at Wuhan, asking the communists to reorganize the Central Commi ttee of the Kuomintang and its mi litary 24 forces and to carry out a radical land re form. The order forced the

Na tiona lists to alter their pro-Rus sian policy and separate themse lve s from the Communists .

The first Communist reaction to the Na ti ona list decision was an eme rgency conference he ld on August 7, 1927 , at wh ich the Ce ntral Com- mittee was condemne d and Chen Tu- shui , the secretary-genera l of the party, was dismissed . A series of rebel lions in Southeast China we re stirred up by the new Communist leadership . Unde r the leadership of Pe ng Pai , the Communists in Ha i lufe ng and Tung-kiang established the first Soviet

Government. A few months later , the Kwa ng Tung Sovie t Governme nt was establishe d in Canton. A policy of nationalizing all the land was 25 adopted. Eve ry village and district was ordered to set up a soviet.

23 Wan Ah-kong , The Communist Pa rty and the Peasant Prob lems (Hong Kong : Asian Press , 1956) , p. 67 .

24o. Edmund Clubb , Twentieth Century China (New York and London : Columb ia University Press , 1964) , p. 139 . 25Chiang Ka i-Shek, Soviet Russia in China (New York : Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957) , p. 60 . 51

Howeve r, the nationalist army soon crushed the Soviets. More

than ten thousand Ha ilufe ng peasant mi litia me n we re slain. Ma o Tse-

tung and other communist leaders fled to the Chingkang Mountains . Thus ,

the first stage of the Communist-led peasant movement came to an end .

In 1929, the Communists established the Central Soviet Gove rnment

in Kiang si Province . The princ iples of peasant rebe llion established by the Augus t Seventh Conference we re adopted as a basis for the policy

of that period . A program of village surve y wa s conduc ted by Ma o him-

self. "The only way to understand the rea 1 condition of the various

classes," Ma o pointed out , "is to make a social survey. A universal survey is impossible and unnecessary. Wh at we should do is de liberate ly choose several cities and village s as examples and investigate them from

• • • 26 th e M arx�st po�nt o f v�ew. I I

In this way, he investigated Changsha , Hs iang- tang , Hs iang- hsiang , Heng-sen, and Hsiang- ling in 1927 ; Ning-kong and Yung-shen in

1928; and the south part of Kiangsi Province during the Soviet period.

From the se surveys , Ma o ob tained much firsthand knowle dge about the villages. For example , his surve y in She n-kuo provide d re liable ma terial

regarding the rent under the tenancy sys tem. He discove re d that in the

first, second , and fourth districts of Shen-kuo , tenants had to pay 50 per cent of the annual product to the land lords . In the third distric t

a large part of tenants had to pay 60 per cent, wh ile only a sma ll part

26 Ma o Tse- tung , "Rura 1 Surve ys ," Se lee ted Works of Ma o Tse-tung, II (Peking : Pe ople 's Pres s, 1952) , 1. 52 of the tenants paid 50 per cant of the annua l produc t to the landlords . 27 The first three districts frequently suffered from flood and drought .

The se surveys we re regarded by Chen Po- ta as a picture of the tenancy 28 sys tem of the whole of China ,

From 1928 to 1931 , at least six land laws we re promulgated . Th is fact indicated that the Communists we re trying to work out a \vay to solve the land prob lems , The first law was qui te primitive . It chose the vi llage as the basic unit for land redistribution . Peasants we re orde red to write the quality and quantity of the ir land on bamb oo planks \vh ich we re supposed to be posted on their land , and, at the same time , the y we re re quired to report to the pe asants ' assembly. The village Soviet gove rnme nts , in accordance with the data provided by the assembly, decided how much land each person should be give n and wrote the name s of the peasants on different bamboo planks . Then eve ryone we nt to the fields where the

Village Gove rnme nt arranged the division by simp ly exchanging the bamboo 29 planks .

The second and third land laws are me ntioned in Ma o's own \vork ,

"Rura 1 Surveys , 11 in wh ich Ma o said ,

...the (second) land law made in December, 1928 , was the embodiment of the experiences of the previous ye ar. Be fore that year , we had no experie nces at all ....The se two land laws are

27 Ma o Tse- tung , Rura l Surveys (Peking : New China Press , 1949) , pp . S-6. 28 Chen Po- ta , An Essay on the Lant Re nt �n. the Modern China , (Second edition; Peking : Pe ople 's Press , 1953) , p. 32. 29 Wang Ssu- che ng , Ma o Tse- tung and the Re d Te rror (Taipei: The Central Commi ttee of the Kuomintang , 1959) , pp . 150-51. 53

mentione d (in Ma o's book) simp ly because we can, from the se two laws , see the devel opment of our idea about land struggle . 30

As compare d wi th the first land law , the second one 1vas much more

de tailed and advanced. It adopted the Hs iang (district) as the single

unit for land redistribution . All land wa s nationa lized and allotted

to peasants . Afte r the redistribution , land purchase was abso lute ly

prohibited, The land tax wa s fixed at 15 per cent of the annua l product,

Under specia l conditions , such as flood or drought , the tax could be

reduced to 10 or 5 per cent . Men of the Re d Army and the Re d Gua rds also had as much right to obtain land as the common people . The Soviet

Gove rnment hired worke rs to till for them , since the y could not cultivate 31 themse lves.

This land law contained three principal de fects wh ich Ma o pointed out : (1) it confiscated all the land , not just the land of land lords ;

(2) the land be longed to the government ra ther than the tillers themselves; and (3) land purchase was prohib ited, The se de fects we re all 32 corrected later.

The third land law was made in She n- kuo where Ma o had made an intense survey. According to this law , only the land possessed by the

land lords was supposed to be confiscated. The re st of this law was 33 mode led on the first one .

30 Ma o Tse- tung , Rura l Surveys (Peking : New China Press , 1949) , p. 9. 31 Article 9 of the 1928 Land Law. See Ma o Tse- tung , Rura l Survey , �· cit. , p. 93. 32 33 Ibid . rb;d'- . , pp . 94- 95 . 54

The other three land laws we re officially promulgated by the

centra l authority of the Communist Party. The fourth one was made by

the Mi litary Commi ttee of the Communist Party in 1930 . According to the

fourth law, both the land of the landlords and gentry and the land of the

rich farme rs would be confiscated, The dependents of land lcrds , gentry ,

and rich farme rs would be allotted land if they could not make a living 34 by othe r me ans ,

The fifth law was enacted by the Na tiona l Soviet Assemb ly in 1931.

Th is law exc luded rich farme rs from among the persons whose land would be

requisitioned. The Soviet Gove rnment only confiscated the rented part

of the rich farmers ' land , This law also had a ve ry flexib le provision

concerning the me thod of land redistribution , The Sovie t Government wa s

author ized to decide whe ther it should redistribute all the land or just 35 the confiscated land.

The sixth was enacted by the First Nationa l Soviet Re pre senta tive

Conference in 1931. According to this law , the rich farme rs again lost

all of the ir land . For the first time pe op le we re allowed to rent out 36 and purchase land. Not only the land of the landlords and the g�ntry, but also the land of the warlords and the Nationalist officials would be confiscated. This provision wa s inserted simp ly because the political

34 Wan Ah-kong , The Communist Pa rty and the Peasant Prob lems , �· cit. , p. 71. 35 Ib,id., p. 70. 36 Ibid. 55

situa tion required it. In September of tha t ye ar , the Japanese

aggre ssors had occupied Ma nchuria ; \vhile the Na t iona lists we re con-

duct ing a widescale mi litary attack against the Communists .

In Decembe� 1930 , a me eting was he ld in Chi-ann . Many mis take s ma de in the land re form movement we re reported by Chen Yi and others . 37 The conspicuous mistakes we re the following :

l, The ideas of the higher leve ls of the party did not reach the

lowe r leve ls . Cadre s of different organs could not harmoniously coopera te with each other. In some districts , the re we re powe r strugg les.

2. Party members of land lord or rich farme r origin boycotted the re forms . For examp le , in Shan-yu , the re we re eighty party membe rs ,

thirty of them we re landlords and rich fa rmers . The re form plan wa s de layed for two months before it wa s put into practice .

3. In ma ny places , land redistribution could not be successfully implemented.

4. Some social re forms were inc identally carried out in the land re form moveme nt and we re opposed by the conservat ive farmers . For examp le , wome n re fused to join the movement . Rich farmers opposed free- dom of ma rriage .

5. Farme rs we re afraid of the communists. The y '\o7hispered to 38 each other: "Don't criticize , otherwise you' 11 lose your head ."

The land re form carried out in this period wa s so undiscip lined and orderless that we could hardly say it wa s successful. But Ma o said

37 . Ma o Tse-tung rec orded t h e reports and co11 ect e d it �n. h �s. b oo k Rura l Surveys , .££. · cit. , pp . 79-82 .

38Ibid, , p. 81. 56

it wa s. In 1934 , Ma o reported the success to the Second Sovie t

Re pre sentative Conference .

The living standard of the peasant is greatly improved. For Example , in 1932 , in Fuchian and Kiangsi, produc tion was increased by 15 percent , as compared wi th that of the prerevolutionary pe riod . In 1933 , produc tion increased by 25 percent . The living standard wa s twice higher than that of the Kuomintang period. 39

Was the re form as succe ssful as Ma o reported? Before judging this , we must recall the general conditions of this pe riod . From 1930 to 1933 , there we re five ma jor ba ttles be tween the Communists and the

Na tionalists . More than a mi llion persons we re mobilized to join the fighting . The battlefie ld wa s extended to eve ry Sovie t district.

Thousands we re killed and thousands became homele ss. Under the se circums tances, norma l agricultura l cultivation wa s impossible . However, several fundamental technical principles of land re form were established:

(1) the poor peasants and agrarian labore rs mus t be the vanguards in the re form movement ; (2) the vanguards mus t organize a united front with the middle peasants , in order to stre ngthen the farmer's position; (3) the rich farme rs mus t be neutra lized or limi ted to make sure that they do not side wi th the land lords ; and (4) the landlords and gentry, as the 40 enemies of the people , should be abolished.

Ironically, whe n Ma o reported the harve st to the Soviet Conference , many communist cadres still did not know how to draw the class line . It

39 Ho Hua , �History of Chine se New Democra tic Re volution (Peking : New China Press , 1950) , p. 118 . 40 Ibid. , p. 121. 57

seemed to be extreme ly difficul t to distinguish the landlords from the

rich farmers .

In April, 1927 , the Na tiona l Confe re nce of the Communist Party decided tha t peasants wh o possessed more than 500 mou of land should be 41 regarded as landlords . This standard was accepted by the central authority of the party but opposed by the local Communist leaders , such as Me o Tse- tung and Chu Chiu-pa . "To adopt such a de finition for the term 'landlord'", Ma o angrily charged, "is inc ongruous . It would not he lp the deve lopment of class struggle in the countryside , since it is 42 �n. cons�st. ent w�. t h t h e actua 1 con d�t. �on. . rr Ma o wa s fully aware of the fact that only a few peasants possessed more than 500 mou of land .

vFrom 1928 to 1933 , three sys tems we re adopted for drawing class lines : (1) Those who rented out a large part and cultivated a sma ll part of the ir land wo uld be classed as land lords . Those who re nted out a small part and cultivated a la rge r part of the ir land would be regarded as rich farmers . This system was adopted in the Hupeh-Anhui-Hunan

Soviet District. (2) F arme rs would be classified as landlords if they we re involved in three exploitive activities; that is, hiring agrarian laborers , renting out their land , and lend ing mone y. Those wh o practiced any two of the exploitive activities would be classified as rich farmers .

This sys tem wa s adop ted by the ShanKuo Sovie t Governme nt . (3) Persons

41 Wang Ssu-cheng , Ma o Tse-tung and the Re d Te rror , ££· cit. , p. 147. 42 Ibid. , p. 149. 58

who owne d land , but did not engage in cultivation or only engaged in

supplementary labor and wh o made a living by me ans of exploitation ,

we re treated as landlords. Persons who owned land and cultiva ted it

themselve s and wh o made their living s pa rtially by exploitation , we re 43 classified as rich fa rmers .

The third sys tem \vas officia lly adopted as a me ans of drawing

class lines in October, 1933 . It wa s also employe d in the land re form 44 program promulgated in 1950.

In the 1930's, China ente red a rather choatic epoch . A Sino-

Japane se war seemed to be inevitable . At that time , China was unpre -

pared and isolated. The only wa y the Chine se pe ople could save them-

se lve s was to unite and forget their political diffe rences. On November

25 , 1935 , the Politcal Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party adopted a

re solution "concerning the present situation and the current mission of

the party" in wh ich the Chine se Communist Party proposed to establish an anti-Japane se nationa l front and officia lly denounced the origina l policy 45 o f 1 an d con f�scat�. . on .

At the same time , it promulgated another land law. According to

this new law, the Chine se Communist Party only confiscated the land of

43 wan Ah- kong , The Communist Party and the Peasant Problems ,££· cit. , p. 72. 44 The Gove rnment Administration Council, The Agrarian Re form Law of the Peop le 's Repub lic of China (Fourth edition ; Pe king : Fore ign Language Press , 1959) , pp . 18-21. 45 Le e T'�e n-m�n. g , ___Th e Ch�n' e se C ommun�. st P arty � d � h P easantry (Hong- Kong : Yu- liang Press , 1958) , p. 58 . 59

the land lords or the rich farme rs wh ich wa s not cultiva ted by the land-

o'vne rs themselve s, especially whe n the landlords or rich farme rs did not live in the countrys ide . Th is new law indicated that the Communist

Party wa s ready to accept reconciliation with its political enemies by

temporarily sacrificing its own land policy and accepting the mode ra te 46 one designed by Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

In July, 1937 , the Sino-Japanese war finally broke out . After a series of negotiations and under pre ssure from all the people , the second Communist-Na tionalist united front wa s organized. As a ma tter of fact, it was a Communist surre nder to the Na tionalists , at least ostensibly. In September , 1937 , the Centra l Commi ttee of the Communist

Party issued a four-point dec lara tion wh ich stated that: (1) As Dr.

Sun's Three Principles of the people answer the needs of China , the

Chinese Communist Pa rty will fight for their comple te realization . (2)

The Chine se Communist Party will abolish its policy of arme d uprisings and its sovietization movements agains t the Kuomintang , and it wi ll stop its program of disposse ssing the landlords through violence . (3) The

Chine se Communist Party will abandon its existing Soviet Government and hereafter practice democracy so as to unify the administrative powe r of the country. (4) The Chine se Communist Party wi ll stop cal ling its arme d forces the Re d Army , abolish their existing mi litary designat ions ,

46 Ib;.L d. , pp . 5 8 -5 9 . 60

integrate them into the National Re vo lutionary Forces , subject them to

the jurisdic t ion of the National Mi litary Council of the Nationa l

Governme nt and await orders to ma rch to the front to fight the 47 Japane se . Their declarat ion wa s immedia te ly accepted by the

Na tionalists .

General Chiang Ka i-shek stated :

The Chine se Communist Party's declaration is a proof tha t national consciousness has triumphed ove r all other considera.:... tions ....Sin ce the Chine se Communists have given up their preconceived ideas and recognized the importance of national independence and nationa l inte rests , we hope the y will sincere ly fulfill the ir pledges. 48

The good wi ll and the nat iona l consciousness deve loped between the Communists and the Nationa lists tha t year wa s soon ove rshadowed by the fierce powe r strugg le in the guerilla areas of North China. With the devel opme nt of the wa r, the Communists occupied seve ra l "border districts" in North China . The largest four we re Shang-Kang-Nien, Ching-

Char-Chi, Chi-Lu-Ju , and Ching-Shang . The first district was the la rgest and there the centra l organ of the Chine se Community Party was located.

The second and the fourth we re located in Inner Mongolia , while the third was at the mouth of the Ye llow River . In the communist-controlled districts a moderate rent-reduc tion program was carried out . According to the report of the chairman of the first distric t gove rnment , the

47 chiang Ka i-shek, Soviet Rus sia in China (New York : Forrar, Straus , and Cudahy, 1957) , p. 81. 48 Ibid. , pp . 81-82 . 61 policy of land confiscation was abolished in Ma rch , 1937 . Two months 49 later, the land lords regained the ir citizenship.

The same report disclosed three principles which we re adopted to improve the re lationship between the land lord class and the party.

First, the land of the land lords which had not ye t been confiscated would not be confiscated at the present time . The land still be longed to the landlords. Secondly , if the landlords whose land and house s had been confiscated before re turned to the borde r dis trict, the governme nt would give them share s of land and houses and would re store their citizenship. Third ly , the land lords would be allowed to rent out their land

. so under the condition that the re nt mus t not be too h�gh .

Since the Communist Party , during this pe riod , recognized the

Nat iona list Governme nt as the na tional government of China , all of its land legislation was based upon the Land Law promulgated by the Na tionalist Governme nt on June 30 , 1930. An ana lys is of this Nationalist Land

Law might, there fore , be useful as a basis for understanding the land re form of this period .

The Land Law of 1930 , with a total of 247 articles, was deliberately made in accordance wi th Dr. Sun Ya t-sen's doctrine . It can be characteristized as follows :

49 Lin Po-chu 's report to the first plenary session of the Council of the Shang-Kang-Nien Border District in 1942 . See Academia Sinica , the Third Departme nt of History, Collected Documents of the Shang-Kong-Nien Border Distric t (Peking : Academia Sinica , 1958) , p. 18 . 50 rbid. , p. 20 . 62

l. It established priva te owne rship as the basic sys tem of

land re lations in China . Artie le 10 recognized tha t "any part of the

land whe reof the owne rship is lawfully acquired by an individua l 51 Chine se shall be pr�va. te land."

2. In view of the misery of the tenancy sys tem in China , the

law gave the tenants a righ t to ask the gove rnment to purchase the leased land for them at its statutory va lue , if the tenants had cultivated the leased land continuous ly for eight full years and if the owne rs 52 of the said land did not intend to cultivate it themse lves. (Article 33 .)

3. This law recognized a system of perpetual lease in wh ich the leasee can cultivate the leased land pe rmanently unless the leasor take s 53 back the land for his own cultivation (Articles 109 and 114) .

4. According to Article 110 of this law , farm re nt should not exceed 8 percent of the va lue of the land . If any contractua l or customary rent exceeded 8 percent , it would be reduced to 8 percent ; if it was less 54 than 8 pe rcent, it would remain unchanged.

5. In accordance with Dr. Sun Ya t-sen1s doctrine , this law set up a land va lue sys tem . The va lue of land would be declared by its - owne r (Artie le 148) , while the value of cons true tiona 1 improvements would

51 Chen Cheng , Land Re form �n. Taiwan (Taipei: China Publishing Company , 1961) , pp . 134-35 . 52 Ib�. d. ' p. 140 . 53 Ibid. , pp . 154-55 . 54 Ibid . , p. 154. 63

be assessed by the compe tent local land office (Article 161) . Since the

unearned increment wo uld go to the public , the land owne r was required

to pay a land va lue inc reme nt tax in addition to the land va lue tax. The

basic rate of the land value tax wo uld be 1.5 pe rcent (Artic le 169) ,

wh ile the land value inc rement tax wo uld be levied on the basis of the

ne t increme nt of the va lue of the land (Artic le 176) .

6. The law gave the governme nt a right to purchase priva te land

on a compulsory basis in order to mee t the requirements of pub lic under-

takings , such as ins ta llations for na tiona l de fe nse or pub lic utility

enterprises (Article 208) . Due compensation would be paid to the land

owne r wh ose land was purchased by the gove rnme nt (Article 236) .

In the Communist-controlled areas , a series of land regulations we re enacted in res ponse to the above land law. Artic le 1 of the Shang-

kang-nien Border District Land Re gulations declared the regulations we re made in accordance with the basic principles of the 1930 Land Law and

the actua l conditions of the borde r district. Article 3 of the regula-

tions provided for priva te owne rship , and Artic le 7 attempted to place 55 some general limitations on the lease sys tem .

Pe rhaps the most de tailed law was the Te nancy Ac t passed by the -

District Counc il in November, 1944 , wh ich de fined four alterna tive kinds

of tenancy re lationship ; name ly, fixed le ases , unfixed leases , mutua l 56 cultivation , and terms of employment .

55 shang-Kang-Nien Congress , "Land Re gulations of Shang-Kang-Nien ," Collected Documents of the Shang- Ka ng-Nien Border District (Peking : Academia Sinica , 1958) , p. 59 . 56 Ibid. , p. 241. 64

1. Under the fixed lease sys tem land rent wa s to be fixed in proportion to the size of the leased land . According to Article 7 of the Te na ncy Act, the new rent should be less than 25 pe rcent of the origina l rent.

2. Unde r the unfixed re nt sys tem , the leasor only provided arable land to the leasee , and the leasee had to have his own cultivating instruments . The grain produced on the leased land was to be divided propor tiona lly be tween the le asor and the leasee . The rent , according to the Act , was to be reduced by 25 to 40 pe rcent .

3 . Under the sys tem of mutua l cultivation , the leasor provided both the land and the cul tiva ting instruments to the le asee . The Ac t fixed the maximum rent at 40 percent of the annua l product.

4. Unde r the terms of emp loyme nt the land owne r supplied farm worke rs with everything inc luding houses , instruments , land , and food .

Artic le 10 arra nged a 10 to 20 percent rent-reduction for that kind of system. The sha re of the land owne r, according to the Act, should not exceed 45 percent of the product.

Another report made by Lin Po-chu in 1946 indicated that the rent- re duction policy was universally carried out . As a result , agrarian production wa s increased and the living standard of the peasants wa s . 57 �mprove d .

Because of the lack of re liable ma terials , we do not know exactly the actual condition of the peasant movement in the Communist-contro lled

57 Ibid. , p. 280. 65 areas. Howe ver, we can make a rudimentary ana lysis by emp loying documents and re ports from various sources:

1. The wa r provided the peasant movement with an unstable situation in wh ich thousands became homeless and thousands we re killed by gunfire or famine . Unde r such conditions rent-reduction could hard ly be carried out by peace ful me ans . Few land lords we re executed afte r be ing conv icted of exploita tion , but ma ny we re killed as trai tors .

The authority of the Comm unist district in the middle of Hopei had 58 persecuted 1,937 households as traitors . According to many available sources the antilandlord campaign wa s not stopped until the end of the

1950 land re form in the borde r districts except the Shang-Kang-Nien

Border District where the central organ of the Communist Party was located and wh ich seemed to be de liberately decorated as a political sight- seeing area.

2. The peasant movement at tha t time seemed to be subordina te to mi litary mobilization . One of the official newspapers said ,

Experience of the last five months illus trate s that areas whe re land re form is successfully performe d are areas where the masses are wi lling to engage in the war.59

3 . The re nt- reduc tion policy itself was regarded as a temporary politica l mane uve r. Instruc tions issued on Ma y 28 , 1946, by the Political

Bureau of Central China said ,

58 wan Ah-kong , The Communist Pa rty and the Peasant Problems , 2£· cit. , p. 81. 59 Ibid. , p. 85 . 66

. . . the only wa y to earn the support of the pe asants is to satisy them . The land re form program , although it re sembles rent-reduction , is substantially different from traditiona l rent reduction . It is , an advanced type of rent-reduction . The land re form movement should not become stuck at the stage of traditiona l rent-reduction. It mus t be pushed forward until fe uda l exploita tion is abolished . On ly in this way can '"e fundamentally change land re lations . 60

J wh ile the Communists we re making the ir land experiments in the countryside , a Nationa list land re form prog ram wa s also being deve loped .

In 1932 , some Nationalist land experts called a me eting on land problems in Nanking City. After a three-month discussion , certain principles we re arrived at. Most of th ose princ iples 've re based on Dr . Sun Ya t- sen's doctrines. In addition , the y organized an associa tion for the study of land problems . The ne xt ye ar , the first assembly of the associa tion was he ld in Nanking City; only 26 pe rsons we re present. The association's membership , howeve r, extended to 500 in 1937. During the se ye ars , it 61 advocated a number of proposals . Unfortuna te ly , its work stopped at the stage of inte llectua l discussion. Its proposals have scarce ly been noticed.

In contrast to the Communist land policy, the Na tiona list program , ma inly des igned by Dr . Sun Ya t- sen , was much more mode ra te in character.

It was centered around a rent-reduc tion sys tem . The first rent-reduc tion was carried out in Chekiang Province . In the wake of the Chekiang

60 Ibid. , p. 79. 61 Pan Liang-fe ng , "Land Re form," Collected Historic a 1 Essays for the Fiftieth Annive rsary of the Establishme nt of the Repub lic of China (Taipei: The Wa r College , 1962) , pp . 113-24 . 67 re form, othe r provinces, such as Kwa ng tung , Kiangsu, Hunan, and Hupeh , also tried to reduce land rent. Howeve r, th is movement was de feated by 62 the landlords . In 1940 the Hupeh Provincial Government put a 20 percent rent-reduction into practice . This re form came to an end whe n the gove rnor le ft his post.

More radical experiments we re made in Lung-Yen of Fuchien and

Peh-Pa y of Ssuchuan , where the governme nt on a compulsory basis purchased all the leased land and sold it to the ex- leasees . Generally speaking , the program wa s successful . But the Na tiona list Gove rnme nt had no chance to extend the program to other areas . A 31 percent rent- reduc tion wa s also carried out in Southeast China in 1949 . However, the results are not available since the Communists took ove r the wh ole

Chinese mainland tha t yea r.

In 1949 , the Nationa lists reestablished themselves in Taiwan.

The party struc ture was thoroughly re formed . The y firmly be lieved tha t the Nat iona list failure on the Chinese ma inland was not the fai lure of

Dr . Sun Yat-sen's doc trines themselves. The Kuomintang failed simp ly because Dr . Sun's doctrines had neve r been carried out on the ma inland .

A land re form plan was , there fore , de liberate ly des igned and carried out under the auspices of Governor Chen Cheng and his associates. First of all, they put a 37.5 percent re nt-reduction into practice . Then, in the ne xt stages, the y sold the public land to the farme rs and on a compulsory basis purchased the leased land of land lords with appropriate compensation.

62 Ibid . , p. 124 . 68

An arrangement was also made for turning land lords into industrial

. 63 �nvestors .

From 1911 to 1949 , China wi tnessed ma ny politica l vissicitudes.

Ma ny doctrines we re introduced into China , from Dr. Sun's moderate democratic re form to Kong Yu-wei's cons titutiona l monarchy, from Li

Ta-chio's Ma rxism to Ma o Tse-tung 's country rebe llion , from Ts ien Sung- po 's mi litarism to Ho Shih 's libe ra lism. All of them had the ir own supporters in China , To China , this period was indeed experimental in characte r. To the Chinese peasantry, it wa s a pe riod of fighting between traditiona l and imported doctrines , be tween science and supe r- stitution, between prosperity and poverty.

63 Chen Cheng, ££· cit. , pp . 19- 93 . CHAPTER III

LAND REFOP�l IN COMMUNIST CHINA (1949- 1953)

After taking ove r the Chinese ma inland , the Chine se Communists

discove red that three principal prob lems had to be solved . First, the y

had to rebuild the political, social and economic apparatuses of the

wh ole country. Re building the se apparatuses was not only an adminis

trative problem, but also a problem of nationa l solidarity. In such a

hugh territory , it would not be easy to give mi llions of people a sing le

outlook , nor would it be easy to wipe out the potentia l influence of

the Kuomintang from Chinese minds . Secondly , afte r the Sino-Japanese

and the civil wars , the economy almos t collapsed . Agricultura l and

industrial productions deteriora ted to a critical point . The Communists

had to get agriculture and indus try back to norma l. Third , they had to

pave the way for future indus trialization .

In 1949, the Communists decided to comp le te and re form within a

pe riod of three ye ars . A series of laws , regulations , and decisions we re th us promulgated in the summe r of 1950. An ana lysis of the se docu me nts will he lp us to understand how the Comm unists tried to solve the

thre e principal prob lems involved in agrarian re form .

Article 1 of the Agrarian Re form Law promulgated in 1950 dec lared

tha t two general principles should be used to direct agrarian re form :

(1) the land owne rship sys tem of fe uda l exploitation by the land lord class should be abolished; and (2) the sys tem of peasant land owne rship

69 70 should be introduced in orde r to se t free rura l produc tive forces, to deve lop agricultura l produc tion and , thus , to pave the wa y for China 's 1 indus trialization.

The purpose of this stage of land re form seemed to be different from that of previous stages. Economic considerations played a very important role in the 1950 re form. This can be illustrated by a report made by Nan Ha n- che ng , a high official of Comm unist China , in 1951.

In the last decade , we de feated the Japane se impe rialisms and U.S. supported Chiang Ka i-shek simp ly because we had the support of the peasants in the countryside . Our military forces cons isted mainly of armed farme rs ....Now our na tion has made the trans i tion from a state of war to a state of peace . Na tiona l cons truc tion requires us , first of all, to re store and deve lop our agriculture because a res tore d and deve loped agriculture will supply us with raw ma teria ls and food , wh ich are de sperately needed in our indust ria l deve lopment. . , . Industrialization is our basic aim. An economic foundation built through indus trialization is needed for our transforma tion from a New Democratic Socie ty into a Socialist society. Only indus trialization can he lp us to build a Socialist agriculture wh ich is based upon a sys tem of collectivized farms . 2

The above report clearly shows us the formula to be employed for nationa l construc tion (in the 1950's) . Most notable is the aim of the

1950 land re form : to pave the way for a socialist agriculture based upon a sys tem of collectivized farms .

As with other land re forms carried out in previous decades , the land re form program of 1950 wa s based upon a rura l class struggle . In

1 The Governme nt Administration Council, The Agrarian Re form Law of the People 's Repub lic of China and Other Re levant Documents (Peking : Fore ign Language Press , 1959) , p. 1. 2 Nan Han-cheng , "The Signi ficance of the Financial Work in the Countrys ide and the Wa y of our Endeavors ," Collected La-.;vs and Decrees Concerning the Financial and Economic Affa irs , III (Peking : The Govern me nt Administrat ion Council, 1952) , 93 . 71

August, 1950 , the Government Administra tion Council announced ce rtain standards wh ich we re supposed to be emp loyed as criteria for drawing class line s in the countryside . The new standards contained standards established in the Kiangsi period with supplementary standards adopted by the Gove rnme nt Administration Council in 1950 .

A landlord , according to the se decisions , should be a pe rson

"wh o owns land , but does not engage in labor or only engages in supple- me ntary labor , and \vho de pends on exploitation for his means of live li- 3 hood." This de finit ion wa s given in the Kiangsi period . In 1950 , the

Communist Governme nt thought it wa s necessary to add those who rent land from land lords and sublet the land to othe rs to the land lord category.

The revolutionary army men , depe nde nts of ma rtyrs , pe dlars and othe rs , although renting out portions of their land , we re exemp t from be ing 4 classified as land lords .

Since "exploitation" \va s one of the ma in criteria for classifying the land lords , it was ne cessary to give the term "e xploita tion" a precise de finition . "Exploitation by the land lord ," said the same dec ision ,

is chie fly in the form of land re nt , plus money lending , hiring of labor , or the simultaneous carrying on of industrial or commercial enterprise s. But the ma jor form of exploitation of the peasants by the land lords is the exact ing of land rent from the peasants. 5

3 The Gove rnme nt Administration Council, The Agrarian Re form Law and Othe r Re levant Documents , pp . 18- 19. 4 rbid . , pp . 19-20. 5 rbid . , p. 18 . 72

Anothe r criterion adopted to classify the landlord concerned

wh ether he engaged in labor or not and if he did , how long eve ry year.

According to the Decision Conce rning Some Prob lems Arising from Agrarian

Re form, "a fami ly is considered as being engaged in labor , if one member 6 of the fami ly is engaged in essentia 1 labor for one- third of a year."

The basic principle for deferentiating the land lord from the

rich peasant was tha t the forme r did not engage in labor , wh ile the 7 latter did. The rich peasant wa s exemp t from land confiscation in the

land re form of 1950 , because the Communists thought the rich peasant

shou ld be pre served as a me ans of increasing agricultura l production .

In June , 1950 , Le iu Shao-chi made a report to the second session of the

Nat iona l Committee of the Chine se Pe op le 's Political Consulta tive Con-

fe rence elucidating the policy of pre serving the rich peasant . In it, he said ,

Why now do we advocate the preservation of the rich peasant economy in the coming agrarian re form? It is ma inly because the present political and mi litary situation is basically different. In the past to strive for victory in the war was in the greatest interest of the Chinese pe ople and eve rything had to be subordina ted to this need. , , . We allowe d the pe asants to requisition the surplus land and property of the rich pe asants , . . so as to satisfy to a greater extent the demands of the impove rished peasants . The pre sent situation is already essentially different from that of the past. The present basic task for the peop le throughout the coun try is to unde rtake economic construction on a na tion-wide scale . 8

6 Ibid . ,p. 24 . 7 Ibid. , pp . 20-21. 8 Liu Shao-chi , "Report on the Question of grarian Re form , 11 The Agrarian Re form Law and Oth e r Re levent Documents , .2E· cit. , pp . 71-73. 73

The peasants ' associations we re set up to replace the land lord- gentry class as the ruling apparatus in the countryside , A peasants ' association was a five- leve l organ. The organization of the association wa s based on the Hsiang association , The other four leve ls we re chu , 9 county , special administrative region , and province .

Poor and middle class peasants we re encouraged to join the association , The revolutiona ry inte llectuals who had been regarded by

Le nin as the te achers of peasant class consciousness , could also become members . The ir membership '"as subject to the consent of the commi ttee of

1 • • 10 t h e 1 oca 1 peasants assoc�at�on . To rich farmers , the associa tions did not close their doors . Rich farme rs could become members only afte r the land re form, and , just like the revolutionary func tionaries , the ir membership was subject to the "approva l of a Hsiang peasant ma ss meeting 11 or a Hsiang peasant congress ."

The nationwide land re form started in July 1950 . The process of land re f orm can be roughly divide d into three stages . First, the working teams for land re form we re organized . The se teams we re made up of inte llectua ls wh o we re sent to deve lop the class struggle in the countryside . The ir work inc luded loca l surve y, deve lopme nt of Communist ce lls , debate with landlords and organization of antiland lord ma ss me etings .

The y we re not ne cessarily Communists . Some of them we re teachers and students .

9 The Gove rnme nt Administra tion Council , The Agrarian Re form Law , p. 53. 10 . Ib�d . ' p. 52 . 74

When the teams arrived at the villages , they chose one district for experiment . The experiences ob tained in the experiment we re adopted as the guiding principles for land re form in tha t area . At the same time , they tried to stir up hatred between classes by disc losing the misbehavior of the land lord-gentry class . Wh en the atmosphere of hatred was created, they launched an antiland lord movement in wh ich the poor pe asants we re encouraged to ask for re nt-reduction and a purge of the land lord class .

In the anti-land lord movement , active poor and middle-class peasants we re selected to organize the peasants ' associations through wh ich the local political apparatus was basically altered. The last work of the first stage was land surve y which would provide the ne cessary informa tions for the next stage--land redistribution .

The principa l work of the second stage was the differentiation of class status . Because of the difficulty of this work , the comm unists adopted a quite comp le x procedure . First , they set up commi ssions of land re form which consisted of both the working teams and the peasants ' associations . The func tion of the commi ssions was to classify the peasantry . The result of the classification wa s subject to the consent of the peasant assembly. If the assembly agreed wi th the result of the classification , it made the first declaration of social sta tus . The gove rnment , after the firs t dec laration , legalized the classification by making a second declaration. The land lords , although they had no right to do anything during the proced ure , we re allowe d to appeal to the courts if they thought the classification wa s unfair. IS

In order to mi tigate re sis tance in the countryside , the decision ma kers of the Communist Party orde red the ir fol lowe rs to attack only

3 to 4 pe rcent of the rura l population. An investigation in Shangsi 12 Province shows tha t at least 10 pe rcent of the peasantry was attacked.

This was regarded as a ma jor error by the Communist Party.

The end of the classification ma rked the beginning of land re distribution . The peasants ' associations played a very active role in this period . All the population wa s mobilized to me asure , and ma rk the land . The inte llectua ls fr an cities served as advisors to the poor peasants when they we re struggling \vi th land lords . The members of the pe asants' associations \ve re arme d in order to coerce the land lords . A land re form agent , a profes sor of Pe king University, said:

Our director wanted us to stand guard around the peasant mass me eting. Our work was to he lp the poor peasants to debate with tough landlords . . Our departme nt had thre e rifles which we re used to coerce the landlords to join the ma ss me eting and to guard the meeting. . . . When the day came to confiscate th� land lords' agricultura l instruments , the arme d commun ist agents we nt to the landlords ' houses , taking away all of the ir agricultura l instru

ments ... ;· Since · resistance of the land lords was impossible , the rifles only served as a symbol rather than an instrument of violence . The fact tha t the Commun ist Party armed the farme rs was a basic eleme nt of the Chinese Re volution . 13

During this stage the landlords lost all their land , draught anima ls , farm imp lements , and surp lus grain, and extra houses in the

12 Wan Ah-kong , Th ree Ye ars under the Rule of the Communist Party (Hong Kong : Ta-Tao Press , 1954) , p. 82 . 13 Ib�. d. , p. 85, 76

. 14 countrys�de . However , their indus trial and comme rcia l ente rprises

. . 15 we re exempt f rom con f�sca t�on.

In China a large proportion of the rura l land be longed to ancestra l shrines , temples , monasteries , churches , and schools , because

the contributors regarded land offering s as the best way of supporting

those organizations . Th is kind of land , the Agrarian Re form Law declared , would be requisitione d with appropriate compensation, if the local

. 16 gove rnme nt t h oug h t it wa s ne cessary to rep 1 ace 1 ost �ncome .

Unde r the policy aime d at preserving the rich peasant economy ,

land be longing to rich farme rs wa s protected from confisca tion on the condition tha t the portion of land rented out by them did not exceed in 17 size the land tilled by themse lve s and by the ir hired labor.

The land re form wa s supposed to be finished within three years .

In the firs t ye ar, it concentrated on the important agricultura l are as , ma inly in the coastal provinces and the southe rn part of China . About 18 128 mi llion rura l Chinese we re involved in this re form. In the second ye ar , the northern and we stern parts of China we re dealt with . By July,

1952 , on ly a few portions of Sinkiang , Ka ngsu, and Chinghai Provinces had not ye t imp lemented the re form . According to a report made by a

14 The Government Administration Council , The Agrarian Re form Law , p. 1.

15 . 16 Ib�d. , p . 2. Ibid . , pp . 1-2 . 17 Ibid. , p. 3. 18 . Ch�n-po Daily News (Tientsin) , June 29 , 1951. 77

high Communist official, by the midd le of the ye ar 1952 , the land

re form was generally finished. Only an area \.Jith 30 million rural 19 inhabitants was left. The total rura l population involved in land 20 re form had increased to 290 mi llions . Before the spring cultivation

of 1953 , land re form had been imp lemented throughout the wh ole cou�try ,

except in some areas where minori ty peop le s lived such as Sinkiang and

Tibet. About 700 million mou of rural land we re redistributed; 300

21 mi llion peasants ob tained their share s of land . The land re form wa s

finished almost one ye ar earlier than orig inally planned. It was

obvious ly the Korean War that caused the rush .

Because of the different rates of land concentration in various

are as , the farms peasants obtaine d varied in size . For examp le , a

peasant living in the northe rn basin of the We i River could ob tain four mou of land , wh ile a pers on living in the southern basin of the same 22 rive r was alloted only 1.5--2 mou of land . Farmers living in the

suburbs of large cities such as Nanking only obtained 0.7 mou for each 23 person.

19 Jen-Min Jih-Pao (Peop le 's Daily News) , July 4, 1952. 20 Liao Lu-yen, "Great Victory of the Land Re form in Three Ye ars ," Chine se Economic Achieveme nts in Three Years (Pe king : Pe ople 's Press , 1953) ' p. 111 21 . The People 's Daily News , Ma rch 14 , 1951. 22 . Chin Po Da ily News , June 29, 1951. 23 Wan Ah-kong , Three Ye ars Under the Ru le of the Communist Pa rty, £.12.· cit . ' p. 88. 78

Whe n the land redistribution >vas completed , the >vhole countrys ide was pushed into the third stage , a stage of education and solidarity.

Education and solidarity we re necessary because :

1. The Communist cadres illegally got more and be tter land ,

2. The peasantry , after the re form, turned from mi litanc y to moderation ,

3, Land redis tribution divided the rura l land into nume rous sma ll units , Such a division deeply harme d agricultura l production,

4. The peasantry ignore d agricultura l collectivization .

The land re form of th is period wa s deroga ted by human we aknesses like selfishness and ignorance , Since a lot of Communist cadres illegally obtained more and be tter land , some Commun ist radica ls advocated a new

movement to purge the newly-arisen "land lords . 11 Po Yi-po, a Communist official in charge of economic affairs once told his followe rs how to 24 handle the se kinds of cases. First, he recognized the fact tha t the re we re some local cadres wh o occupied better and more agricultura l land .

Such an usurpa tion , he indicated , deeply influenced the live lihood of the poor peasants . Howeve r, Po Yi-po we nt on to say tha t those cadres served as a link between the party and the ma ss . Wi thout them the party could not govern the ma ss , The ir misbehavior was inevitable since traditiona l thought and the fami ly burdens still dominated their minds . The party, the re fore , had to fact this fact and solve the prob lem by some appropriate

24 �.rb · , pp . 89- 8 9. 79 me thod . The appropriate me thod , Po cone luded , was not a purge of the newly- arisen land lords . It wa s ideological education by wh ich the deviation could be corrected .

The farmers , as Professor Hugh Seton-Wa tson pointed out , are more ind ividua listic and more conscious of traditions than the worker.25

After acce pting their shares of rura l land , the Chine se peasants rapidly turned from mi litancy modera tion . The y ignored future agricultural collectivization on the one hand , and fe ll in love with meaning le ss title deeds on the other. The y wa nted to re st and to live peace fully in their villages . Such an attitude wa s obvious ly inconsistent with the

Communist blueprint. Socia list cons truction, according to the Communist , dema nded an ac tive pe asantry to supply wh at the country ne eded for industrialization .

As early as September , 1951, the Communists discovered tha t it wa s extreme ly ne cessary to fight agains t the we aknesses of the peasantry.

For the purpose of education , every area began to se lect individua ls wh o could be transformed into symbols of wrong doing . For example , Honan

Province chose La y Yu and launched a movement against Lay Yu 's thought.

La y Yu was a poor peasant and had been a tenant for twenty ye ars before 1949 . During the land re form, he was elected as the chairman of the village pe asants ' association and joine d the Communist Party in

. 25Hu gh Seton-Watson , Ne �ther War nor Pe ace (New Yo rk and London : Frederick A. Praeger, 1962) , p. 103. 80

June , 1951. He was allotted five mou of land and a house , After the

allotment , he gradua lly altered his atti tude toward the Communist cause 26 and d es�r. e d to re s�. gn f rom h�s. post.

Kiang si Province chose Wang Shui-sheng , who was a poor peasant and had fought for the Communist cause be fore 1949. Land re form brought him

twenty mou of land and a buffa lo. He wa s appointed a communist cadre , director of his vil lage , mode l laborer, and secre tary of a unit of the

Communist Youth Le ague . In 1950 , he ma rrie d a widow . From that time

on , he gradually changed his attitude toward Communism. When he was kicked out of the Party and the Youth Le ague , he proud ly declared ,

"I can earn 45 chin (unit of we ight) of rice every day by pushing a wagon .

Working for three day� , I can earn more money than the director of the 27 village can earn in a whole month . 11

The symbol selected in Hunan Prov ince repre sents anothe r att itude of the pe asantry. Li Ssu-si was origina lly a rural laborer,

He was recruited as a Communist cadre in the land re form of 1950 and worke d hard during the re form. When land redistribution wa s imp lemented , he thought the revolution was ove r and de s ired to run away from political work. A convention he ld in that province showe d that 120 out of 126

. 28 C ommun�st. cad res f avore d t h e �.d eas o f L�. s su-s�.

26 Lee T�e. n-m�n. g , Th e Ch�n. ese C ommun�st . P arty�� d h P easantry (Hong Kong : Yu-Liang Pre ss , 1958) , p. 97 . 27 Ibid . , p. 98 , 28 New Hunan Daily News , Oc tober 23 , 1951. 81

Those who failed to be loya l Communists should be criticized ,

those who cons tantly worked hard for the Communist cause should be

admired . Th is seems to be the unive rsal formula for mass education in

Communist China . In 1951, ma ny mode l labore rs we re selected both for

the ir hard work and their skill in hand ling the problems arising from

the sys tem of the small land unit wh ich not only harmed the production

but also ,,7a sted manpower. Wang Chen- tang , director of a small village ,

was selected as mode l labore r by a province of Ma nchuria . From 1948 to

1950 , the produc tion of the village directed by Wang incre ased from 470

to 510 teng (unit of grain) . The mos t admirab le part of Wang 's work was

his or&anization of the households into teamwork groups according to the

. . ' 29 prLnC Lp 1 e 0 f dLVLS. LOn. 0 f 1 a b or ,

Han Ann , anothe r director of a village , was se le cted by Hopei

Province for his bril liant skill in organi zing work teams . The deve lopme nt of the cul tiva ting team was slow because of the lack of incentive .

Unde r the orig ina l system , no distinction wa s made between strong and we ak , be tween old and young , or between ma le and fema le . Han instituted

a score sys tem under wh ich those wh o worked harder and better got highe r 30 scores , while the lazy and we ak got lowe r scores .

The peasant cultivating team ma rked a new system of agricultural

collectivization , too revolutionary to be understood by the Chinese

29 Hsin Hua News Series, Interview with Mode l Laborers (Hanka o: People 's Press , 1951) , pp. 63- 64 . 30 Ibi d. , p. 58. 82

farmers. As I have said be fore , one of the basic purposes. of la nd

re form was to pave the way for agricultura l collectivization wh ich wa s

a prerequisite of large-scale indus trialization. All of this seeme d

to be beyond the unders tanding of the peasantry. Thus , education wa s of

prima ry importance .

Land re form of this period (1950- 1953) wa s by no me ans a isolated

phenomena . It was one of the re forms carried out in the early ye ars of

Communist China . Those reforms we re inte rc onnected. The ir ma in pur pose was to solidify the Communist regime .

After the 1949 revolution , the first law promulgated by the

Communist Governme nt was the New Ma rriage Law wh ich was made for the purpose of re leasing Chine se wome n from traditiona l ethical and social bandages . Parents could no longe r arrange their children's marriages.

The sys tem of concubine s and prostitution wa s abolished. Divorce was no

longer dependent upon a comp lex lega l procedure .

On May l, 1950 , when the New Ma rriage Law came into effect, the

Communists launched a marriage re form moveme nt and enc ouraged all of the

Chine se people to treat this movement as "a part of the revolutionary mission." This moveme nt was undoub tedly a seve re challenge to the basic elements of traditiona l Chinese Society. In the past, the fami ly had been regarde d as the mos t important social unit. According to the

Confucianists , a perfect na tion mus t be based upon perfect families .

Statesme n \ve re enc ouraged to order the ir families first before ordering the country. Pe op le we re urged to re spect pate rna lism. As a re sult , the fami ly became the basic social unit which , in the eyes of traditional 83

Chinese People , wa s an important as the na tion . In the fami ly , wome n

we re the slave s of the ir husbands and the ir parents-in- law. Th is

fami ly sys tem was undoub tedly inconsistent with Communism.

The mixture of ma rriage re form with land re form in the country-

side marked a radical change of social ethics in the most stubhnrn

portion of the nation . By studying this movement , one can see how dif-

ficult it is to alter standards of mora lity in the countrys ide . A

report made by Chou En- lai disclosed the cruel fact that many wome n corn-

rnitted suicide . The moveme nt me t strong re sistance and could not be 31 fulfilled completely.

Howeve r, mos t of the Chine se wome n like d the marriage re form . The

new ma rriage system seemed to increase the ir prestige . Statistics forrnu-

la ted by the judicial organs of Commun ist China show that 70 percent of

the divorce cases we re initiated by females. The divorce cases increased

from 93 ,000 in 1950 to 204 ,000 in 1951. In the first six months of 1952 , 32 the courts hand led 198 ,000 divorce cases.

Anothe r moveme nt involving the wh ole country wa s the suppre ssion

of anti-revolutionaries. It is obvious that the aim of this moveme nt was

to eradicate Nat iona lists inf lue nce . On February 21, 1951, the Communist

Government promulgated an anti-anti-revolutiona ry law. All persons

opposed to Communist policy we re subjected to this law. It is difficult

31 Chou En-lai's report made in the Gove rnme nt Administration Coun- cil on Septembe r 26, 1951. See Wang Ssu-cheng , Ma o Tse- tang and the Re d Terror, �· cit. , p. 436. 32 Ibid. , pp . 436-37 . 84

to say how many anti-revolutiona ries we re ki lled. According to a

report made by a Communist cadre wh o fled from Communist China to Taiwan ,

more than 10 mi llion persons we re slain in three days (Hay 15 , 16 , and 33 17 , 1951) . On Ha y 22 , 1951, 505 persons we re tried in Peking . Two 34 hundred and twenty-one of them we re sente nced to death . In July of

the same yea r, one of the largest ma ss executions in Peking wa s reported 35 by the Peop le 's Daily. Two hundred and seventy- seven we re killed. A

report made by the New China News Agency disclosed tha t the Communists

of Shang lai arrested 220 ,000 anti-revolutarie s in the first four months

of 1951. In the first we ek of Ma y, 1951, another 24 ,000 we re arrested in 3 6 t h e same c�ty.. The Free Trade Union Commi ttee of the American Fede ra-

tion of Labor estimated in October, 1952 , that the Communis t reg ime had been re sponsible for the deaths of more than 14 ,000 ,000 people ove r the

previous five ye ars . Among those executed , 5,000 ,000 we re killed in 37 rura 1 areas .

33 Wang Sze-cheng , Ma o Tze-tung and the Re d Te rror, �· cit. , p. 412 . 34 wan Ah-kong , Three Ye ars Under the Ru le of the Communist Party, ..QE' cit. ' p' 406 . 35 Richard Wa lker, China Unde r Communism (New Haven: Ya le University Press , 1955) , p. 217 . 3 6 wan Ah-kong , Three Ye ars Under the Ru le of the Communist Party, _Q£. cit. , p. 407 . 37 Richard Wa lker,�· cit. , p. 219. 85

It is obvious that the ma ss executions we re rushed by the Korean

War . Peng Chen, forme r Peking mayor , ma de the following sta tement in

order to justify the mass executions .

At that time , the counte rrevolutiona ry remnant led by U.S. supported Ch iang Ka i-shek took advantage of that critical time and began to attack the pe ople . The y thought tha t a third World War had alre ady begun and tha t it wa s time to re store the ir rule . The y des troyed rai lroads , factories and bridges , and ki lled Communist cadres . In the newly- libe ra ted areas , the landlords began to thre aten th� poor peasants , to violate the land re form program , and to prepare for Chiang 's re turn . Even in the old libe ra ted areas whe re land re form was already completed , some land lords attacked the peasants . Commun ist cadres and their fami lies we re ki lled in many places .. , . For example , in Kwangsi Province , more than three thousand Communist cadres we re slain. 38

The Korean War not only lead to an inc rease in terror throughout

the wh ole country , but also provide d political impetus for the various

reforms . Once again the Communists me rged their re form movement wi th

Nationa lism. A na tionwide propaganda machine was established , with

three mil lion persons employed to run it. Mi llions of pe ople we re

encouraged or forced to sign a patriotic compact, to contribute to the

war , and to work hard on the ir posts . Chou En- lai , in a report to the

Political Consultative Conference , indicated:

These achievements we re secured in the process of the Re sist America-Aid Korea Campaign . This great campaign served as a political impe tus for the re form and re s tora tion of this nat ion . 39

It is beyond doubt that land re form carried out in this period

(1950- 1953) was successful on its own terms . The political and social

38 Wan Ah-kong , Three Ye ars Under the Ru le of the Communist Party, ££· cit. , pp . 401-02 . 39 Ibid. , pp . 62-63. 86 powe rs of the landlord-gentry class '\.ve re abolished ; the Communist Party and its peasants ' associations began to control the who le countryside ; the Kuomintang elements we re eradicated; and tradition was attacked.

Howeve r, the Communists we re fully aware that hatred could stir up a moveme nt but could not bring it to a successful conclusion , The y had to re c onc ile dissident elements of various classes so as to produce na tional solidarity. Violence wa s , thus , reduced in 1953.

The last step of land re form wa s to issue title deeds which symbolized the right of all the landowne rs to manage , buy , sell or rent 40 out land freely. This step seems to have had no real significance , since agricultura l collectivization was to be carried out in the following ye ars , The end of land re form brought the farmers worry ra the r than cheer. With fear the Chine se farme rs greeted a new epoch in wh ich they wou ld lose wh at they had gained,

40 The Government Administration Council, The Agrarian Re form Law , p. 12 . CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

Land re forms in China we re comp lex at best. They involved not

only land distribution but also re forms of the socio-political sys tem

which had endured in China for thousands of years until 1949 , whe n the

Communists put forward a series of re forms . The se re forms undoubtedly

brought about many profound effects. First , in the early ye ars of the

1950's, we saw the collapse of the land lord-gentry class , and the establ ishme nt of the peasants ' associations . It was not the first time

that the Chine se peasants tried to seize power, but it was the first

time that the farme rs legally administered the ir own affairs .

Second , as I have pointed out in the previous chapters , land

re form programs we re in conflict wi th the traditiona l values and be liefs

of rura l China . For examp le , the strict and drastic measures taken in the class struggle against the land lords we re regarded by many farme rs

as inconsistent wi th the Confucian ethical norm of mode ration and the golden me an. Howeve r, the collapse of the landlord-gentry class did

undermine the prestiege of the Confucian doctrine .

Third , the abolition of the me diatory rent-receivers produced the most profound effect. The peasants no longer lived at the me rcy of the

land lords . The y could control the ir own destiny.

Although , after almos t two decades , the effects of land re form we re recognized as satisfactory , the re are certain questions wh ich

87 88 still rema in as the topics of debate . Among those questions , the mos t important are the following .

First, the necessity of land re form is a question tha t has been doub ted by the Nat iona lists . The Nationalists based the ir argument on the ir rura l surveys wh ich indicated that the concentration of land owne rship was not so serious in China .

Second , the Communists asserted that China wa s domina ted by a feudalistic land lord-gentry cla ss. The re fore , the socio-politica l system should be completely changed. Th is assertion wa s re jected by the nationalists .

Third , the nationalists stated that the communist re form moveme nt was not made for the we lfare of the peasantry, but for the benefit of the

Communist party. This assertion wa s na turally denied by the Communists .

Fourth , there are different opinion on the reasons wh y the peasantry supported the Communists rathe r than the Nationalists . This question is particularly worthy of study , whe n many areas of the world are threatened by na tional liberation wa rs .

In the basis of the ob serva tions in the previous chapters , the author intends to eva lua te the above questions , and tries to find out certain characteristics of the Chine se land re form , wh ich might be he lp ful to the assessment of the lanf re forms , as we 11 as the Communist movements , in . other underdeve loped countries.

Liu Shao-chi , in exp laining why land re form was necessary in

China , said : 89

The essential content of agrarian re form is the confiscation of the land of the land lord class for dis tribution to the landless or land-poor peasants . Th us the land lords as a class in society are abolished and the land owne rship sys tem of feuda l exploita tion is trans formed into a sys tem of peasant land o'¥ne rship. This is indeed the greatest the most thorough re form in thous ands of ye ars of Chine se history .

Why should such a re form be made ? In a nutshe ll, it is because the original land owne rship system in China is extreme ly irra tiona l. In gene ra l, the land situation in old China is roughly as follows : La nd lords and rich peasants , wh o constitute le ss than 10 percent of the rura l popula tion , possess approximate ly from 70-80 percent of the land and brutally exploit the peasants by me ans of their land . Poor peasants , farm labourers , middle peasants and othe rs , howeve r, wh o make up 90 pe rcent of the rura l population , possess in all only 20 to 30 pe rcent of the land , l

According to Richard L. Wa lker , the typical Communist ana lysis quoted above contains three basic distortions . First , Mr . Wa lke r contends tha t "There has been no feuda lism, by Communist or othe r de finition , in China since the forma tion of the first Empire some two centuries be fore the birth of 2 Christ." This assertion ma y be a distortion itse lf. Be fore we discuss the feudal characteristics of Chine se society , it is ne cessary to know wh at fe uda lism is .

Feudalism , according to S. Andreski ,

...denote s a socio-political sys tem based upon a rural economy , characterized by dispersal of powe r in a variety of semi-independent domains ; the doma ins being style d in fiefs he ld on condition of pe rformance of service . 3

1 Liu Shao-chi , "Report on the Question of Agrarian Re form," The Agrarian Re form Law 2f the People 's Repub lic of China and .O ther Re levant Docume nts (Peking : Fore ign Language Press , 1959) , p. 63. 2 Richard L. Wa lker, China Unde r Communism (New Haven: Ya le Unive rsity Press , 1955) , p. 129. 3 s. Andreski , "Feudalism ," A Dictionary of Social Sciences (Ne\v York : Free Press , 1964) , p. 268 . 90

On the basis of this de finition we might say tha t fe udalism possessed

three characteri stics : (1) politically, it was decentra lized; (2)

economically , it wa s an institution based on land and mutua l service ,

and (3) socially, it was charac te rized by a fixed socia l status .

It is true that in 221 B.c., when China was unified by Chin and

free purchase of land became legal, fe uda lism was abolished. However,

Mr. Wa lker neglects to point out the fact that a new aristocratic class arose wh en a new dynasty wa s estab lished . Aristocrats have had their own fiefs within wh ich they have been privileged just like the lords of the me dieval Europe . This system wa s called Chuang-yuan. Chou King- shen, in his work The Economic Hi story of China , ma de the following sta tement :

Derived from a feuda l economy , the Chuang-yuan sys tem could be traced back to the Tang Dynasty ....Unde r that sys tem , princes , princesses , re lative s of the empe rors , high officials , eunuches , and monasterie s we re allotted large estates of land . Within their estates , the owne rs appointed officials , exp loited the tillers , and even expanded their estates by anne xing the land be longing to the common folk .. , . The aristocra tic owne rs of the estates collected land rent wi thin the ir estates . They had no ob ligation to pay the government . In other words , they we re independent from the taxation 4 · sys tem of the na tion .

This kind of estate , according to the same wr iter, occupied a large portion of the rura l land . Statistics show that in the 15th century the re we re 46 ,000 ching of rural land be longing to Chuang-yuan (large 5 estates) in the suburbs of the capital. In the 17th century, half of

4 chou King-shen , The Economic History of China (Ta ipei : Sheng-sen Book Company , 1959) , pp . 884-87 . 5 .Ib id ., p. 886 . 91

6 the rural land in Honan Province belonged to large estates . With the

fall of the Ming Dynasty, those estates were taken by the newly ar isen 7 Manchu ar istocrats . From the above citations , we can see that the

Chuang-yuan system was feudal in char acter . It existed along with a

system of free land purchase . People \vh o cultivated the land of the

great estates were subject to feudal exploitation .

Because of the existence of the feudal Chuang-yuan system, we can

hardly agree with Mr . Wa lker 's as sertion that there has been no feudalism

since the establ ishment of the first Chinese Empire . Now the question

that remains to be settled is wh ether or not feudalism continued to

exist in China after the revolution of 1911.

During the Repub lic Period (1911- 1949) , China was politically

decentralized , and economically localized . Although the Chuang-yuan

system was legally denounced , some feudal characteristics still rema ined

in Chinese Soc iety, especially in the countrys ide . The system was

8 called by Mao Tze-tung "semi-feudal ."

Chinese soc iety, in the Repub lic Period , was said by the Chinese wr iters to preserve five feudal characteristics : (1) Land ownership

marked a kind of soc ial pr ivilege . The size of one 's holdings served as

a measure of social power . (2) In addition to land rent , labor services

and tributes were paid to the land lords. (3) Land lords and officials

6 l Ib id ., p. 885 . Ib id ., p. 1065 . 8 Mao Tze-tung, "On New Democracy," Selected Works of Mao Tze-tung, II (Peking : Fore ign Language Press, 1965), 341 . 92 were immune from ob ligations of cit izenship or other kinds of tribute to

the nation . (4) Landless or poor peasants alone were obl iged to perform military and labor services for the nation . (5) Rascals, as the teeth

and paws of the landlords, made their livings by suppressing the poor 9 peasants. Villages, therefore , were in a state of instability . These characteristics were the remains of the abolished imperial institutions

and were employed by the Communists to justify the class struggle in the countryside . But such a justification should not be regarded as a pro- jection of the Marxist "feudal stage of society" onto the Chinese scene , 10 as Mr.Wa lker charged . It has its factual basis.

The second basic distortion in Liu's statement concerned , according to Mr . Walker , the class divisions in rural China. He cited a few wr iters to demonstrate that the class conflict theory was inapplicab le to China. One wr iter , S. T. Tung, even arb itrar ily declared : "China 11 has no landlord class."

The meaning of the term "landlord" is itself obscure . The term has been given a dozen definitions . As I have pointed out in previous chapters, even the Communists themselves could not agree upon unified definition in the early years of the Communist land reform movement.

The term also possesses different meanings in different countries . For

9 Wang Ah-nang, A Study on the Thoughts of Socio-economic Reform (Shanghai : Chung-hua Press, 19 50):-p . 88 . 10 Richard Walker , op . cit., p. 130 . 11 Ib id . 9 3

example , in Bolivia, eight land lords owned, in 1939 , an area equal to . 12 one-tenth of the total national terr�tory .

"Land lord ," according to the Chinese Communists , shou ld have a

different meaning in countries with a high population density . Landlords

should not be identified on the basis of the amount of land , but rather

by the criteria of exploitation and labor engagement. So, we can safely

say that the rural population was classified into var ious categor ies on

the bas is of Commun ists ' own terms .

The third distortion , Walker po inted out, concerned the data

about land distribution provided by Liu in his statement . In order to

prove the inaccuracy of Liu's data, Walker provides us with two other

sets of stat istics . One of them was formulated by the Nationalist Land

Commiss ion before the second Wor ld War . The other was produced by an

ind ividual scholar , J. L. Buck, who has taught in Kingling University, 13 Nank�ng. .

So far as land distribution is concerned , we can find a half- dozen different sets of statistics, each of them based upon a local survey . A comparative study of those statistics may help us to gain a concrete impression of the problem of land distribution in China .

First, we discover that var ious Nationalist surveys are different from each other . The earliest Nationalist survey was made in 1934 by

12 w. S. Stokes, "National Revolution and the MNR in Bolivia," Inter-Amer ican Economic Affairs, XII (Spring, 1959) , 34 . 13 Walker , op. cit., p. 131. 94

the Nat ionalist Commiss ion for Agr icultural Restoration in four

provinces . The survey--maker recognized the existence of high land con-

centrat ion . However , the rates of concentration were quite different in

various places . In some counties of Chekiang Pr ovince, they discovered

that 7 percent of the rural populat ion possessed 72 percent of the land ,

wh ile 56 percent of the rural populat ion only possessed 6 percent of the 14 land . These percentages are similar to those of the Communist survey

in the Kiangsi period .

According to the China Handbook published in 1950 in New York,

67 percent of the rural popu lation was classified as middle or rich

farmers who owned land and cultivated it themselves. This figure was

adopted from the official report of the Nat ionalist Government . The

Nationalist statistics provided by Walker 's book shows that

near ly 80 percent of the land was shown to be in the hands of owners of less than 100 mou . Almost 99 percent of the families were such small owner s, wh ile 1.34 percent of the families owned 100 mou or more, and only 18 .32 percent of the land belonged to such owners . l5

Buck 's report maintained that 54 percent of the rural popu lation were 16 self-tillers who owned 71 percent of land .

One might be justifiab ly confused by these divergent sets of

figure s, each of them claiming to be reliable. Perhaps the safest way

14 The Corr�iss ion for Agr icultural Re storation , � Survey of the Chekiang Villages (Shanghai : Commercial Press, 1935), p. 7. 15 Walker , op . cit., p. 131 . 16 Ib id . 95

to select one set from them is to compare them with the figures con-

tained in the survey made after the 1949 revolution. On September 6,

1949, the People 's Daily (Jen-min Jih-pao) disclosed that a survey made

in twenty-one villages of Hupeh Pr ovince showed that 8 percent of the rural population were landlords, while 92 percent were middle and poor peasants and agrarian laborers . The former possessed 30 percent of the land , wh ile the latter possessed 60 percent . On September 9, 1949, another Communist newspaper, the Changkiang Daily News , declared that in

Kuoyang Hs iang of Kiangs i Pr ovince, middle and poor peasants owned 73.6 percent of land . The results of these two surveys are similar to the

Nationalist rather than the Commun ist figures. Therefore, we may agree with Mr . Walker 's assertion that "the Communist figures were doctored to 17 support the applicat ion of Marxist dogma to China ." Perhaps the best attitude toward this question is proposed by a correspondent of the

Economist: "Whatever evidence is accepted , the misdistr ibution is 18 evident ."

In the eyes of Marx and Engals, the peasantry was the conservative 19 and react lon . ary e 1 ement o f t h e popu 1 atlon . . Although the peasants played an important role in the Russian Revolution, some Russian revolutionaries still doubted the possibility of organizing "united will" 20 between the proletariat and the peasantry .

17 . Ibld ., p. 132 . 18 "Land Reform in China," The Economist, v. 160, p. 1514 . 19 D. Ryazanoff (ed.), The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Fr iedrich Engels (New York : Russell and Rus sell, Inc .-, - 1963) ,�3� 20 v. I. Lenin, "Two Tactics of Social Democracy," Selected Works of V. I. Lenin, III (New York : International Pub lishers, 1943) , p ,--gs:- 96

Lenin, in his ar ticle "Two Tactics of Social Democracy," asserted that such a united will is possible, simply because

. . . will may be united in one respect and not united in another . The absence of unity on the question of soc ialism and the struggle for socialism does not prevent unity of will on questions of democracy and the struggle for a republic . 21

In answering the questions put forward by a Mo scow comrade , Lenin discussed the theoretical attitude that should be adopted toward the peasant movement . First of all, he asserted that the Communist Par ty should "suppor t the peasant movement insofar as it is revolutionary and democratic , They (the Communists) are making ready to fight it insofar . 22 as it becomes reactionary and ant�-. proletar�an ." It is certain that there will always be some reactionar ies in the peasant movement . Lenin encouraged his comrades to declare war on these reac t ionar ies in advance.

Since class antagonism between the rural proletariat and the peasant bourgeoisie is inevitable , Lenin urged the Communists to fight "on a new 2 3 field and with other allies ." In other words, the proletariat mu st organize a united front with the peasantry on the one hand , and fight against the peasants ' reactionary characteristics on the other .

Lenin 's assertion about the "united will" between the proletariat and the peasantry was , according to Ar thur A. Cohen, transferred to

2 1 Ibid . , p. 99.

22 · v . I . Len� n, "A tt�. tu d e T owar d P easant M ovement, " S e 1 ecte d W or k s of V. �· Lenin, III, op. cit., p. 144 . 2 3 Ib id , , p. 145 . 97 24 China through the channel of Comintern . However , the Russian ideological influence was denied by the Chinese Communist theoretic ians , wh o insisted on stressing the independence of Mao 's thought in the early years of the Chinese land reform movement . It is beyond doubt that the

Comintern 's directives somet ime s dominated the po licy-making of the

Chinese Communist Party. But in the early years of the land reform movement, it is the trad itional Chinese idea of peasant upr ising rather than

Lenin's or Stalin's ideas that dominated Chinese Communist minds . This can be illustrated by the early works of Mao Tze-tung. In the Human

Report, which I discus sed in Chapter II, Mao "gives the poor peasants 25 the exc lusive cred it for the revolut1on. ."

In Chinese history, over a thou sand peasant revolts can be 26 counted . A dozen of them could be described as nation-wide ones wh ich 27 overthrew or weakened the ruling dynasties . Perhaps the peasant revolts that remained most vivid in the memory of the Chinese people of the 1920's were the Taiping and Nien rebellions wh ich taught the Chinese

Communists much in terms of revolutionary tac tics. For example, these rebellions gave Mao and his associates hints about rural base areas and guerrilla warfare .

24 Arthur A. Cohen, The Communism of Mao Tze-tung, first Phoenix edition (Chicago and Londo;:-The University of Chicago Pre ss, 1966) , p. 51. 25 Stuart R. Schram, The Po litical Thought of Mao Tze-tung (New --- York and Lqndon : Frederick �Praeger , 1963) , p. 168 . 26 Chien Po-tsan, Collected Discussions on Historical Prob lems (Peking: People 's Press, 1962), p. 110 . 27 James Harrison, "Commun ist Interpretation of the Chinese Peasant War ," The China Quarterly , XXIV (October-December , 1965) , 96. 98

In the Kiangsi period , the Chinese Communists gradually accepted

Russian ideological influence and theoretically recognized sole leadership of the workers in the revolution . However , the gap between theory and practice did disturb the Chinese Communist historians, who

wished to stress the revo lutionary qualities of the Chinese peasantry, but were constrained by Marxist theory from giving the pre-modern peasantry the charac teristics of the modern proletariat . 28

The Chinese Co�nun ists have never given up their original idea concerning the importance of the part played by peasantry in the revolution , although the national structure is theoretically based upon a worker-peasant alliance, an alliance solely commanded by workers. Such an implicit contrad iction between Marx ism-Leninism and Chinese Communism seems to be inevitable . Perhaps Pr ofes sor Schram gave us the best interpretation on this matter . He believed that the trad itions and historical situations in the mind of Mao produced his ideas . In other words, the trad ition-bound side of Mao 's personality produced certain ideas wh ich 29 ex�ste. d s�"d e b y s�"d e w�t. h L en�n�s . . m .

Although the Chinese Communists emphasized the importance of the peasantry in the revolution, their peasant po licies were subordinated to the devel opment of their own party . As many Communist leaders indicated in the last decades, they launched the peasant movement in the

28 Ning Ko , "The Question of Spontaneity and Consciousness in the Chinese Peasant Wars," extrac ts from China Mainland Magazine (Hong Kong: U. S. Consulate-General) , No . 311, p.� 29 Schram, op . cit., pp . 3 and 169. 99 countryside only for the purpose of gaining the suppor t of the peasants for the Communist cause . Land reform, in the eyes of the Communists , was transitory in charac ter . Private land ownership was regarded as a temporary system . In the long run , the land should belong to the nat ion rather than the peasants themselves. This marks the basic difference between the Communist and non-Communist land reforms .

Dur ing the first Nationalist-Communist united front, the Commun ist

Party was in its first stage of development. It wanted to organize the poor peasants and those who were exc luded from society into a mass move ment . Its ac tions were radical and ruthless. Its purpose was to build a mass basis. The militancy of land reform in this stage can be illus trated by the early works of Mao .

In the Kiangsi period , the purpose of land reform was to eradic ate the trad itional gentry class and build Communist apparatuses in the

Soviet Distr icts . In order to resist the military invasion of the Kuomin tang, they had to mob ilize and arm the peasants . By looking at the var ious land reform laws promulgated in this period, we can discover that the Communist theory of land reform was gradually altered to support military mob ilization .

In 1937 , in order to build an anti- Japanese united front , the

Chinese Communists even gave up all of their ideals about land reform and accepted the Ku omintang' s rent-reduc tion pol icy . This basic change fully illustrated what Professor Seton-Watson once pointed out, that the 100

Chinese peasant movement was a movement by the peasant, not for the 30 peasant .

After 1949, the Chinese Communist Party was secure . The

Communists, at that time , made it very clear that land would not belong to the peasants. Land Reform only marked the first step in a process of institutional change . The final aim was to nationalize all the rural land and make the peasants rural laborers rather than land owners. The peasants ' welfare would be sacrif iced for industrialization, just as it was sacrificed for the Party's deve lopment and survival before. Perhaps we can use Lenin's mvn words to elucidate this realistic attitude toward the peasant prob lems : "Concrete political tasks must be presented in concrete circumstances. All things are relative , all things flow and 31 are subject to change ."

Although the welfare of the peasantry has been constantly sacrificed to various goals, the Chinese Commun ists have successfully built support for themselves in the countryside . The interesting question is why did the farmers support the Communist Party at the expense of their own welfare? Their support can be attributed to three factors. First, the Communist Party served as the only voice of the peasantry . The miserab le farmers had no choice, since the Kuomintang neglected them; the Kuomintant was proved to be the sounding board of the big cities and nonrural populat ion .

30 Hugh Seton-Watson, From Lenin to Khrushchev (New York and Lon- don: Frederick A. Praeger , 1964) ,�345 , 337- 339 . 31 v. I. Lenin , "Two Tactics of the Social Democracy," Selected Works, III, op . cit., p. 100 . 101

Second , the Chinese Communists have frequently tried to merge

the slogan of land reform with nationalism. They successfully took

advantage of the antiwar lord movement, the Sino-Japanese War , and the

Korean War to rush their reforms . It is , ironically , the Nationalists who first stirred up a nation-wide feeling of nationalism by spending

three decades teaching the Chinese people what nationalism is , and

reminding them of the hundred year nat ional humiliation; but it is the

Communists who really enjoyed the fruit of the three-decade indoc tr ina-

tion .

Third , the skillfulness of the classification of the rural population has helped gain the peasants ' support. Only a small port ion of the rural population was attacked . Most of the farmers were organized

into an antilandlord united front. The middle farmers, as rebels without a cause, were strong suppor ters of the land reform movement, wh ich was

supposed to be initiated and carried on mainly by the poor peasants under the direct ion of the intelligentsia. From 1 927 to 1 9 53, the middle peasants were never the target of Communist attack. On the contrary , they were regarded as allies of the proletariat . They were given an equal opportunity to join the peasants ' assoc iations . Their properties were protected from confiscation . In case of necessity, the Communists even treated rich farmers as associates of the rural proletariat , as they did in the ear ly years of the 1 950's, so as to isolate the land

lords . Such tactics gave most of the peasants a feeling of safety and indirectly helped the Commun ists gain peasant support. 102

As a movement involved various classes of the society, the

Chinese land reform possessed the following charac teristics : First,

although the peasants ' support was very important in the land reform movement , land reform was launched , directed, and carried out by the

intelligentsia . Peng Pai 's experience in Ha ilufeng shows the inability

of the peasants to take the initiative in land reform . The intelligent

sia had to go to the villages to encourage them, to help them , and some

times to do the works for them. In the early years of the 1950's, thou

sands of land reform teams consisting of the intelligentsia were sent to

the countryside to implement land reform. Th is fact once again illus trates the importance of the intelligentsia in land reform. So, the peasant's support might be identified as pass ive nonresis tance rather

than positive partic ipat ion .

Second , the Chinese land reform shows that , when the landlord class coincided with the ruling class , land reform could hardly be carried out . It seems to be impossible for the landlords to give up what they own , if they still hold the political power . This can be

illustrated by the failure of the rent-reduct ion pol icy put forward by the nationalists in the period of the Republic . In the ear ly years of the 1950's, the Communists had to promulgate the Anti-revo lutionary Law

in order to provide the legal weapon by wh ich the landlords were forced to give up their land . The land reform carried out in Taiwan gave another evidence. Taiwan was ruled by Japan for almost a half century .

In 1945 , when China regained Taiwan , there had been no assoc iation between the Taiwanese landlords and the ruling class from the mainland . 103

So the reform program which failed in the ma inland was successfully

carried out in Taiwan .

Third , the armed peasants played an important role in land reform.

They provided the necessary protection and security through wh ich the

peasants, with the support of the intellectuals, were ab le to complete

the reform program without fear ing the organized resis tance of the land

lords . Th is can be proved by the fact that the armament of the farmers was one of the important works of the working teams which were sent to

the countryside to implement land reform.

The land reform program was completed in 1953. From 1953 to the present time , Communist China has made a great progress in its national construc tion . Undoubtedly , the successful land reform has been the basis of all its achievements , for , in a country like China which is

still mainly agrarian , agr iculture must be the basis for all economic development . Although the Chinese people can hardly forget the terrib le and bloody days of land reform, they have already seen the growing trees

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