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Early Communist Land Reform and the Kiangsi Rural Economy

Mark Elvin

Modern Asian Studies / Volume 4 / Issue 02 / March 1970, pp 165 ­ 169DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X00005114, Published online: 28 November 2008

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X00005114

How to cite this article:Mark Elvin (1970). Early Communist Land Reform and the Kiangsi Rural Economy. Modern Asian Studies, 4, pp 165­169 doi:10.1017/S0026749X00005114

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Modern Asian Studies, 4, a (1970), pp. 165-169 Printed in Great Britain.

Early Communist Land Reform andthe Kiangsi Rural EconomyA REVIEW ARTICLE BY MARK ELVIN

The Land Revolution in China, 1930-1934. A Study of Documents. By T. L. HSIAO,University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1969. Pp. ix + 36i, $12.50.

What was the nature of Chinese rural society at the end of the first thirdof the present century? Was it ruled and exploited by a relatively distinctand self-perpetuating class of landowners, who derived their power pre-dominantly from their control over the means of agricultural production ?Or did it consist of a multitude of smallholders, whose relative fortuneswere constantly rising and falling; a society in which the typical landlordowned only a few acres more than his poorest neighbours, and the means ofsocial mobility were less the acquisition of land than trade, small industry,money-lending and access to managerial and local political power ?

The contrast between these views is overdrawn to some extent, but inthe main they represent the analyses given by Chinese communist materialson the one hand and by the well-known studies of John Lossing Buck andMuramatsu Yiiji (based partly on Buck and partly on the Japanese wartimesurveys) on the other. It is certainly hard to conceive what the 'rural feudalpower' spoken of by Mao Tse-tung can have meant in a world such as thatdescribed by Buck, where over one-half of the farmers were owners, less thanone-third part-owners and 17 per cent tenants. Nor is it easy to imagine'feudalism' in a countryside where the median size of farm was 3.31 acres;or a suitable motivational base for rural revolution in villages 90 per centof the population of which said (in response to Buck's questioning) that theythought that their standard of living was improving.

Whom are we to believe ? Or is the conflict of opinion an illusion whichdisappears upon closer examination?

In his new book, The Land Revolution in China, 1930-1934, Professor HsiaoTso-liang makes no attempt either to raise or to answer these or otherfundamental questions. But he has done the next best thing by presenting us,in scrupulously annotated form, with a glossary and a chronology, transla-tions and summaries of 117 documents from which we can make up ourown minds. The meticulous quality of his scholarship is as much to beadmired and appreciated as his disinclination to offer any general conclu-sions or analysis is (with all respect) to be deplored.

What sort of a picture, then, emerges from these documents, most ofthem previously unavailable in English and difficult of access even inChinese ? It is one, I think, that implicitly confirms the soundness of theBuck-Muramatsu analysis and suggests a somewhat new interpretation ofthe land reform movement in the Kiangsi period. In the remainder of thisreview I propose to sketch out, on the basis of Professor Hsiao's materials,

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the principal reasons which support this statement. The interpretationoffered here is, it should be stressed, mine and not his.

First, it is apparent on almost every page how fine the distinctions were,some of them indeed based on the percentage share of types of income,which the communists had to draw in order to define classes of 'landlords','rich peasants', 'middle peasants' and 'poor peasants'. As a result, there wereconstant revisions. Document 107 indicates for example that in Sheng-licounty there were originally 1,576 'landlord' and 'rich peasant' households;in Mao's land investigation drive of 1933 some 536 more of such householdswere discovered; but subsequently 941 of these managed to clear themselvesof 'landlord' or 'rich peasant' status. Sometimes 'rich peasants' were takenfor 'landlords' (p. 248) and the fears of'middle peasants' that they would betreated as 'rich peasants' or 'landlords' occasionally induced them to flee(p. 245). Mao complained (p. 227) that: 'The majority or the great majorityof landlords and rich peasants in many places . . . have not yet been foundout.' Such a statement (in 1933) only makes sense on the assumption of asocial continuum with a restricted overall range.

Secondly, there is ample evidence of the rapid mobility of peasants fromone class to another. It took only three years to establish 'landlord' or 'richpeasant' status (pp. 261, 265), and there are references to the problems ofdealing with those who had been 'landlords' for only a short time (p. m )and of categorizing characters like a certain Chou Tsung-jen who had risenin the space of twenty years from a hired labourer to being a landlord andmoney-lender (pp. 106-7). Document 21 on the 'rich peasant problem'observes of 'rich peasants of an initial stage character' that, 'Though theydo not collect land rent nor exploit hired labour, yet they make loans atusury and, in addition, sell their surplus foodstuffs whenever an opportunityoffers. . . . This category of rich peasants, by virture of the above-mentionedtwo forms of exploitation, gradually accumulates its capital and moves inthe direction of joining the ranks of the rich peasants of a capitalistic and asemilandlord character.' Other documents refer to the intermittent hiringof labour, i.e. 'exploitation', and to peasants who had 'good luck' a year ortwo before the communist take over and became 'landlords' (pp. 248, 262).

Thirdly, the mechanisms of social mobility are described or at least hintedat. One of the most important sources of wealth was the management (notownership) of collective lands belonging to clans, temples and associations.According to a decree issued by Mao and others (p. 280): 'There is no doubtthat the management of landholdings of public bodies is a sort of exploita-tion. Above all, it has become one of the principal forms of exploitationwhen the landlord class and rich peasants have concentrated large amountsof land and other properties through the medium of this system. As themanagement of landholdings of public bodies has been monopolized by ahandful of people and has accordingly become the source of a large amountof income through exploitation for these people, the act of such managementconstitutes, of course, one of the factors for the determination of classstatus. . . . However . . . some of the smaller public bodies are managedby turns by the masses of workers, peasants and poor people and accordinglymake for very little exploitation. . . .' Loans and commerce were otherimportant sources of exploiting class income. According to Document 21,

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which is none the less illuminating for the fact that it was inspired by theSoviet Russian drive against the kulaks: 'All kinds of rich peasants have incommon two ways of exploiting the poor and miserable masses, namely,loans at usurious rates of interest (interest on loans of money, grains, pigs,oxen and vegetable oils), and the sale of foodstuffs and like commodities. . . .Besides, many of the rich peasants are concurrently engaged in commerce—running small stores and peddling farm produce—thus exploiting the poorand miserable masses.' 'Buying when prices are low and selling when pricesare high, and running small stores' were the 'principal forms' of rich peasantexploitation (p. 166). Usurers were defined as 'landlords' in class status(p. 281). Perhaps significantly, it was asserted that 'small landlords' and'rich peasants' exploited more ruthlessly than large landlords (pp. 255, 153).

Fourthly, the pattern of land tenure described by the communist docu-ments of the Kiangsi period fits quite well with the figure of 42 per cent ofthe farm area rented which Buck gives for the rice-tea area. Document 12alleges that 'landlords' had 30 per cent of the land, 'rich peasants' 20 percent, public bodies 20 per cent, 'middle peasants' 15 per cent and the 'poorpeasants' 10 to 15 percent. It was accepted (p. 263) that'well-to-do middlepeasants constitute a considerable proportion of the population in the ruraldistricts', and there was some embarrassment over the high percentage ofcomfortably off peasants in some places:

Some people assert that there are provinces in South China where therich peasants or owner-peasants constitute also the majority or quite alarge number. (They assert, for example: 'The majority of the peasantsin Kiangsi province are owner-peasants'; . . . 'The rich peasants con-stitute 40 per cent of the rural population in Ch'ang-t'ing and Chien-ningin Fukien province', and so forth.) Those people are obviously exaggerat-ing the numerical strength of the rich peasant class. (Pp. 155-6).

Units of operation were fragmented and there was no 'corporation agricul-ture' (p. 162).

Strong clan and locality sentiment provided a complicating factor.The full range of classes often existed within a single clan, and it was pre-sumably for this reason that Mao defined 'clan relations' as 'feudal relations'(p. 204) and argued that: 'It would be an important tactic in the land in-vestigation drive to mobilize the poor and miserable masses bearing ocommon family surname in a village to search out the landlords and richpeasants with the same family surname in the same village' (p. 219).

The reason why the communist land reform campaign was able to finda substantial measure of support in this sort of rural society—except wherethwarted by clan feeling (p. 243)—was that it exploited the competitiveness,and accompanying interpersonal rivalries and resentments, which inspiredso much of its day-to-day existence. The economic closeness of exploiterand exploited, and the lack of any ideologically sanctioned inevitability inthe social differences between them, probably made hostility easier ratherthan harder to arouse among those who were losing out in the struggle.The strength of mutual peasant jealousies comes through in the documentsfrom time to time. Thus Mao was at pains to stress (p. 274) that, 'It is not

l68 MARK ELVIN

correct to regard intellectuals as a separate class. It is all the more incorrectto regard those children of the peasants who have studied in schools (theso-called "graduates") as undesirable elements.' The relish with which poorpeasants swopped houses and clothing with rich peasants is further evidenceof this pervasive envy (p. 271) and the tendency of those of them who weredoing well both politically and economically out of land reform to excludeother poor persons from enjoying the benefits is also symptomatic. Accordingto Mao:

The Conference of Delegates of the Eight-County Poor-Peasant Corps hasalready pointed out that the tendency of the poor-peasant corps to closeits doors in the past was mistaken, that the system of introduction of newmembers should be abolished, that the door should be wide open to poorpeasants and workers, and that all poor peasants and workers . . . shouldhave the right to register their names and become members.But people in many places still follow the old method. . . . What isworse, when nonmember poor-peasant masses in T'a-ching district ofJui-chin went to attend the meetings of the poor-peasant corps, the respon-sible officials of the corps had the audacity to reject their attendance. . . .In all districts and townships where the land investigation has achievedgood results, the poor-peasant corps have been greatly developed. But indistricts and townships where the land investigation has achieved little orno results, the one distinguishing feature there is the closed-door policy ofthe poor-peasant corps.

Finally the land reform movement degenerated into something of a RedTerror, with 'landlords' and 'rich peasants' being herded into labour-camps,and numerous excesses being committed by the Youth Vanguard, the Poor-peasant Corps and the Children's Corps, an interesting precursor of theRed Guards of the 1960s.

Land reform in the Kiangsi Soviet area was thus not the abolition of amanorial or 'feudal' order. It was the economic and sometimes physicaldestruction of the class of better-off smallholders, many of whom were alsoengaged in trade or money-lending, to the benefit of the less well-off small-holders and hired labourers, while those in an intermediate position (the'middle peasants') were largely left alone. Seen in these terms, the conflictbetween the pictures of the Chinese countryside in the 1930s given by Buckand Muramatsu, and by the communists, to a great extent disappears. It isthe same place after all.

The immediate objective of the land reform movement was to establisha firm political hold on the countryside and to mobilize the people forrevolutionary war. 'Once this work [land reform] is abandoned', warnedone important resolution (p. 156), 'it will no longer be possible to win overthe broad masses of poor peasants and . . . head for the stage of a socialistrevolution', and (p. 159), 'If we fail to put forth the slogans against the richpeasants . . . the poor peasants will feel disappointed.' Mao was evenblunter (p. 202): 'Only through the correct solution of the land problemand only through the fanning to the highest degree the flames of class strugglein the rural districts under the resolute class slogan can the broad peasantmasses be mobilized . . . to take part in the revolutionary war, . . . and

EARLY COMMUNIST LAND REFORM 169

build up a strong revolutionary base, so that the Soviet movement may . . .achieve a greater development and success.' It was, avowedly, a means to anend and not an end in itself.

It is apparent from the foregoing reflections, prompted by some of thefascinating materials made available by Professor Hsiao, that his book,though focused on a brief span of time, has far-ranging implications for ourunderstanding both of the Chinese communist movement and of the policiesof the communist Chinese government. We are very much in his debt.

The University of Glasgow