| dc.description.abstract | Land is a fundamental and essential element of human existence. Land problems arise from an imbalance in the relationship between people and land. In order to adjust the people/land relationship, so as to be able to make the best use of land and share in its profits, plans or programs must be formulated to address the land problem; that is, there must be a land policy. Because the Chinese for thousands of years suffered from a land imbalance, causing the concentration of land in a few hands, the rallying cry of solving the problem of the imbalance between the land and the masses became Mao Zedong’s most important weapon in the mobilization of large numbers of rural peasants.
In 1927 Mao Zedong went to Jinggangshan, where he set up peasant associations in order to mobilize the masses, suppressed landlords and local tyrants, and redistributed wealth. He also established a base for peasants and armed forces, established Soviet power, and during the Jinggangshan period accumulated experience in agricultural reform in the Hunan-Jiangxi border area. The December 1928 promulgation of “Jinggangshan Land Law” established provisions of land policy, as “the confiscation of all land” was deemed incorrect. There soon followed in April 1929 Mao Zedong’s reformulation of the “Xingguo Land Law” to “Confiscation of all public land and all land of the landlord class.” And in order to meet the requirements of and increase support from peasants, the policy was changed from one of national ownership to one of peasant ownership.
In 1936, in order to win the goodwill of the middle class, the Chinese Communist Party proposed the establishment of a large-scale, anti-Japanese national united front, and the ending of the policy of confiscating landlords’ land, instead adopting a basic policy of reducing rents and interest. The Chinese Communist Party earned sympathy from all sides, overwhelmed all resistance on the way to victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949, and smoothly implemented the “land to the tiller policy” in communized mainland China.
Establishment of a socialist society was the ultimate goal of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. In 1953, Mao set forth the general line of the socialist transition period, and rural land policy changed accordingly: from ownership of land by individual peasants who could farm it as they saw fit, to the early stages of collective labor, then further to advanced cooperatives, and finally to people’s communes under collective ownership of land. China’s land policy was ultimately to achieve Mao Zedong’s aim of a system of state-owned land. Although the collective agriculture system was maintained, the cost was the sacrifice of Mao Zedong’s most enthusiastic agricultural supporters: there was a large reduction in enthusiasm among a wide range of peasants, as they did not receive any tangible benefits from agricultural production, and poverty and suffering became widespread in the countryside.
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