Land Reform Movement
The Land Reform Movement, also known by the Chinese abbreviation Tǔgǎi, was a mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War during and after the Second Sino-Japanese War and in the early People's Republic of China, which achieved land redistribution to the peasantry. Landlordswhose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to laborhad their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants, with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions. The campaign resulted in hundreds of millions of peasants receiving a plot of land for the first time.
By 1953, land reform had been completed in mainland China with the exception of Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, and Sichuan. From 1953 onwards, the CCP began to implement the collective ownership of expropriated land through the creation of Agricultural Production Cooperatives, transferring property rights of the seized land to the Chinese state. Farmers were compelled to join collective farms, which were grouped into people's communes with centrally controlled property rights.
Background
Ideological basis
As early as 1927, Mao Zedong believed that the countryside would be the basis of revolution. Land reform was key for the CCP both to carry out its program of social equality and to extend its control to the countryside. Unlike in Russia before the revolution, peasants in imperial China were not in feudal bondage to large estates; they either owned their land or rented it. They marketed their crops for cash in village markets, but local elites used their connections with officialdom to dominate local society. When the central government began to lose control in the late 19th century and then disintegrated after 1911, the local gentry and clan organizations became even more powerful. In addition to breaking the political control of traditional rural elites and pursuing Communist views of justice through land redistribution to the peasantry, the Communist Party's motivations also included an expectation that land reform would liberate the productive forces by channeling peasant labor into greater agricultural production and put surpluses to better use than rural elites' wasteful consumption.Mao's 1927 Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan advocated a strategy of mobilizing poor peasants to carry out struggle ; a position which differed from the classical Marxist focus on the urban proletariat as the revolutionary class. Mao from that point on rejected the idea of peaceful land reform, arguing that peasants could not achieve true liberation unless they participated in the violent overthrow of the landlords. In Mao's view, peasant uprisings were organic events, and as a revolutionary party, the Communists should choose to lead them rather than stand in their way or to trail behind them and criticize. He concluded that "ithout using the greatest force, the peasants cannot possibly overthrow the deep-rooted authority of the landlords, which has lasted for thousands of years."
In a speech at the Second National Congress in 1934, Mao addressed the significance of land reform in the context of the struggle against the civil war against the Nationalists:
Mao's analysis divided rural society into five classes: landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants, and farm laborers. This analysis was based on a person's relationship to the means of production. Landlords and rich peasants were defined as those who derived income from the exploitation of others' labor and had income exceeding their needs. Landlords owned land but did not work it themselves. Rich peasants rented out land or hired laborers but did also work the land themselves. Middle peasants were those who owned their own land, earned income from their own labor, and were neither in debt nor had significant surplus. Poor peasants were defined as those who owned some land but had to also work for landlords or rich peasants in order to survive. Laborers owned no land at all.
Prior Communist Party campaigns
In the 1920s, the Communist Party began experimenting with land reform. The CCP launched various rural campaigns as precursors to the land reform movement. These mass campaigns adjusted rent and interest to be more favorable to tenants, returned excessive deposits to renters, and overall served to weaken the traditional rural elites.In Minxi
In 1928, Deng Zihui began land reform experiments in Minxi. Deng's efforts included a bottom-up method of policy development through consultation with locals and adopting their practical suggestions while reserving broader policy questions and expansion for Communist Party evaluation. Some scholars view Deng as the first to experiment with land reform through establishing model villages and disseminating model experiences.By 1930, the experiments with land reform in Minxi had been widely disseminated in Communist Party publications and became an important point of reference for the Jiangxi Soviet's land policies from 1931 to 1934.
In the Chinese Soviet Republic
In the Chinese Soviet Republic, the CCP issued the 1931 Land Law of the Chinese Soviet Republic. It required:The property of rich peasants was also confiscated, although rich peasants were entitled to receive land of lesser quality if they farmed it themselves. By 1932, the CCP had equalized landholding and eliminated debt within the CSR.
Although the 1931 Land Law remained the official policy in the CSR's territory until the Nationalists' defeat of the CSR in 1934, the CCP was more radical in its class analysis after 1932, resulting in formerly middle peasants being viewed as rich peasants.
In the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region
During the Second Sino-Japanese War, the CCP built a broader class coalition in the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Border Region. Its land policies were more moderate than during other periods, focusing on rent and interest rate deductions. Implementation of these reforms accelerated following 1943.Process of land reform
China's land reform was not only an economic or administrative process of taking and redistributing deeds or legal ownership of land. It was a party-led mass movement which turned peasants into active participants and which pushed for political and ideological change beyond the immediate economic question of land ownership. Land reform issues were also a matter of debate within the CCP, and leaders disagreed over such questions as the level of violence which was to be used; whether to woo or target middle peasants, who farmed most of the land; or to redistribute all of the land to poor peasants. The process of land reform varied based on the Communist officials implementing it in a given area and which other local groups needed to be accommodated.Land reform progressed unevenly by region and in different time periods. In northern China, which had been governed by Communists since 1935, the peasants were more radical. CCP cadre in these regions often tried to restrain excessive violence from peasants. Land reform was undertaken more quickly and more violently in the north. In the south, land reform proceeded more slowly and less violently. There, land was owned by extended clans rather than individual landlords and poor peasants were sometimes part of the same kinship networks. In the south cadre sometimes had difficulty convincing poorer peasants that land should be expropriated at all.
Landlords were subjected to public struggle sessions organized by the CCP where they were accused of crimes against the peasants and sometimes sentenced to death, including being killed in public by peasants at these mass meetings. Struggle was confrontational by design, consistent with Mao's view that the masses had to actively take part in avenging past injustices. Speaking bitterness, defined as "articulating one's history of being oppressed and exploited by class enemies and thus stimulating others' class hatred, and in the meantime consolidating one's own class standpoint", was employed to focus of peasant resentment towards landlords. While violence was not necessarily involved, Mao's position that the masses had to be given free rein in confronting their class enemies meant that peasant violence against those deemed landlords was common.
Rural women had a significant impact on the movement, with the Communist Party making specific efforts to mobilize them. Party activists observed that because peasant women were less tied to old power structures, that they more readily opposed those identified as class enemies. In 1947, Deng Yingchao emphasized at a land reform policy meeting that "women function as great mobilizers when they speak bitterness." The All-China Women's Federation called for Party activists to encourage peasant women to understand their "special bitterness" from a class perspective. Women activists helped peasant women prepare to speak in public, including by roleplaying as landlords to help such women practice. Because land reform resulted in allocations of land titles on the basis of adult household members, rather than on the basis of households, the economic independence of peasant women increased.
From 1950 to 1952, the land reform movement was extended to all Han agricultural areas and some of the ethnic minority areas which had intensive agricultural production or had land ownership practices similar that of Han areas. By 1952, land redistribution was generally completed. Most landlords had been permitted to retain plots of land after admitting to historical crimes, although many had been killed. The amount of cultivated land had grown, along with related infrastructure projects and availability of fertilizers and insecticides. By 1952, rural agriculture had become hugely more productive in China.
In certain minority group areas of China's Central Asian and Zomian territories, traditional landholding systems were left in place until the 1956 Democratic Reforms and in some instances even later.