Introduction
The formation of the People’s Republic of China by Mao Zedong and his CCP party heralded a new phase of the revolution that started in the early 1950's up to the time Chairman Mao stepped down from as the leader of CCP. The main feature that characterized the revolution was that the rural sector had been placed under collectivization and its ultimate de-collectivization for agricultural production. China experienced two fundamental reforms concerning land in the half period of the twentieth century, where each part of the agrarian reform had two phases in them. The first stage of the first reform began between 1947 and 1952 which saw land ownership removed from the hands of a few wealthy landlords and gave up to the majority poor peasant farmers who had been paying rent to the owners of these lands. The second phase took place between 1955 and 1956 where the system of individual farming was replaced by a system of collective farming. The second reform happened much later after the death of Mao between the years 1981 and 1983 and was necessitated as a result of a series of policies that were planned to make efficient the collective land ownership program. The policies later restored the individual farming practice that had been the norm before the advent of the reforms, albeit also retaining the collective land use policy. As much as there was some success in these two land reform policies as well as failures that were experienced, the key element in these reforms is the purpose and the intent into which the CCP and more so the Chinese People's President, Chairman Mao had in place to initiate such reforms.
The Agrarian Land Reform Law
The Agrarian law that was introduced in 1950 was designed to eliminate the feudal system that had characterized land ownership and the exploitation that accompanied the system of land ownership. The term feudal was used in the description of the law not as a particular term of describing the system, but more of an abusive form. The Law had the following provisions as summarized below:
There shall be a confiscation of the lands, animals, farm tools or implements and the surplus farm produce from the landlords as well as other houses that they own in the countryside, but the rest of the property shall remain untouched.
A requisitioning of rural lands belonging to temples, churches, monasteries, schools and other institutions.
The lands that are owned by rich peasants and cultivated either by them or by hired farm helps shall not be confiscated. The small bits of land that is rented out by these rich peasants shall remain under protection; but under certain areas where these lands are rented, a portion or the whole land shall be requisitioned.
All the acquired land from confiscation is to be controlled by the local association of peasant farmers for a further redistribution in an equitable, unified and a manner that is rational to the farmers who have little or no land at all.
The Landlords shall be redistributed an equal share of land where they may use their labor to earn a living and re-educate themselves through labor.
No land shall be redistributed to traitors, collaborators, criminals and those against the revolution.
The main objectives if these laws were to encapsulate the powers that the landlords and land owners had over the poor peasants, and liquidate their mandate over the renting of such lands. The laws were further aimed at neutralizing the powers of the rich peasant, and offer protection to the middle and lower cadre of peasants. The vision that these laws had was to eliminate poor peasants and farm laborers through land redistribution.
Elimination of Inequality among the People
The first purpose that the party and the government under the leadership of Chairman Mao had initiating land reforms in China, mostly the rural parts, was to alienate vast gaps of inequality that was present in the Republic before the revolution. Even long before these land reforms were initiated in the early 1950's, the CPP had been secretly experimenting with the possibility to return the vast swaths of land that were in the hands of a few landlords and rich people back to the peasant, poor farmer. The experiments had achieved various radical aspects in the few areas that they were carried out by the party in rural areas like Yan’an and Jiangxi Soviet. The eventual conclusion by the party that there has to be an abolishment of land ownership by the landlords and instead introduce the ownership of land by the majority of the people who were peasants. When the CCP finally took over the leadership of the country, they eventually promulgated the Land Reform Law on 30 June 1950 and introduced individual land ownership where land was shared equally among all people. As a result, thousands of small-scale peasant farmers were given title deeds to their pieces of land for the first time of their lives ever by the CCP. This was done with the expectation that when land is distributed equally among the farmers, industrial growth would be spurred in the country, and the overall income of the country would grow to over double digits.
Although the first Chinese land reforms were made by design to appear as if it was the poor peasant who was to benefit from it, its primary purpose as set out in the Agrarian Reform Law, was established to protect and safeguard those peasants who were rich but at the same time had no land ownership titles to their names. The fear of the CCP party was that egalitarianism might cause these wealthy peasant farmers to connive with those who had title to the lands and possibly stand against the process of revolution that was sweeping throughout rural China. The effect of these rich peasants going against the wind of revolution meant that most of the entrepreneurial class in the countryside would have been demotivated to engage in supporting the revolution. Mao himself had pronounced that there was a need for the preservation of the rich peasants from the radical act of acquiring their surplus lands and property but instead isolates the landlords. Thus, the CCP had the intention to preserve the rich peasants to promote their policies of economic growth and reduction of poverty among the lower cadre of farmers (Nguyen & Wu, 2014).
The main purpose of the land reforms was the reduction income inequality which as much as it was important, was relegated and instead the isolation of the landlords and their eventual public humiliation and execution took the center stage. However, in the mid-1950's, the individual ownership of land policy took a radical turn and instead, collectivization of land gained traction as the best solution to the myriad of problems that had stagnated the growth of agriculture and industrialization in the rural areas.
Promotion of the growth of peasant Farming
The other main purpose as to why the CCP party and Mao made it necessary to push Land reform policies was to accelerate growth in the peasant farms model. The impact that the reforms had on the growth of land use was great. The reforms had some positive influence on agricultural growth since the peasant farmers had each duty together with the family to utilize the pieces of land that they had acquired in more productive units. Farm yields were higher than the earlier larger, pre-reform farms. The communist party argued that the resultant high yields and output from the smaller farms was as a result of the relation between the size of the farm and the progressive land laws by the state. The reforms that later merged these smaller lands to a more standard system went on to utilize irrigation over a large scale pattern which in turn spurred the growth of agriculture in the rural countryside. This growth was also later used to advance the prospect of industrialization through the use of small-scale peasant farmers. Irrigation rose sharply of the family owned farms and scholars like Griffin et al, argue that the introduction of irrigation to the family owned farms buttresses the fact that the land reform as a channel for the growth of peasant farming was a manifestation of a failure on the part of the planners to acknowledge the possibility of failure on the whole land reforms law as a channel for rural industrialization.
A collection of provincial data that date back to the period of land reform in the late 1940's through to the early 1960's indicates that there was an annual growth rate of approximately 8 percent during the period in which small-scale farming took the center stage in the country . By contrast, data from the ministry of water resources reveal that there was a growth rate of approximately 5.6 percent but a tremendous rise in the use of irrigation by the small-scale farmers. The ultimate gain for the family-owned agricultural policy was that the peasant farmers were allowed to receive the shares from the sale of their produce which in essence liberated the household from the mercies of begging from their previous land owners. The potential that the Chinese agriculture had in the households was so mulch profound and was much greater than the pre-revolution since the introduction of the land reforms was to wipe out the parasitic landlords who only came to seek rent while most of the time they were away far from the lands. As a result of this elimination of the landlords, the peasant farmer had a greater proportion of the surplus of his produce that was retained and later employed in investing in other sectors of the economy by the individual or the government at large.
Land Reforms as a tool of political Patronage
Another significant element in the introduction of the Land Reform Laws by the CCP and government leader Mao was to retain political patronage and advance the party's ideas across China. Dissidents were treated with contempt and those that opposed the reforms introduced were either sent to concentration camps as prisoners or were executed. Case in point is the execution of close to ten million Landowners across the rural countryside of China with various reasons that up to date, cannot be out rightly explained. When Mao secured his position as the ultimate leader of government and the party Chairman of CCP, he started attacking the land owners who initially had been taking rent from the peasant farmers, sometimes at exorbitant rates beyond the reach of those farmers.
The CCP party under the leadership of Chairman Mao believed that landlordism was so much deeply rooted in the Chinese agricultural system and was the main breaking point for the majority of peasant farmers who had offered him support for a long time during the struggle. To reward these peasant farmers, he forcibly took land from the owners irrespective of how one treated their tenants and handed it to the peasants. Moreover, no account of the size or value of the land holding of an individual landlord was made. Mao wanted to stamp his authority and make a political statement both to his admirers and his adversaries. He also wanted the farmers who had supported him to be aware that all these reforms on land were made in their interests and that the winds of real change were sweeping across the land. Therefore, these land reforms had to be implemented.
Once the Landlords were eliminated, the farmers who had rented out these lands were given title deeds, and those who initially had been landless were given smaller plots. These lands were then divided to the peasants under the strict supervision of surveyors who were mainly officials from the CCP party. As a tool for political patronage, the effect that the subdivision of these lands to the peasant farmers had was that for the first time they felt that they had a stake in their country, and this tied them too to the party and the new government. The effect of the land reforms made them more loyal to the party Chairman Mao, and only that little did they know that the long-term skims of things was not in their favor.
Mao's ultimate aim was about land collectivization. Even though his party's initial aim was to carry out extensive land reforms to eliminate the existence of landlords in the country, the intention was not that of allowing the peasant farmers have the ultimate control over the land. Mao believed that the only available long-term solution to the predicament affecting the supply of sufficient food that could sustain the huge population that was choking China's population was to repossess back the land to the central government and away from the hands of the peasant farmers.
Conclusion
Although there are varied reasons that scholars put forth as to why Mao and his CCP party advanced the land reforms Laws in China in the 1950s and the early 1940's, its impact is still evident in today's China. The current government has initiated some reforms that have ultimately redefined land ownership and its use in post-Mao China, but still the structures are anchored on the initial draft of 1950 (Karl, 2010). To the peasant farmer, the liberation that the laws created still echo’s in their hearts even after three generations down the line. The land reforms laws liberated them and to this, the great leader Mao Zedong takes the credit.
Biliography
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