Rural Land Ownership Study: 1949 To 1983

Land is an important kind of means of agricultural production. The land ownership is the highly concentrated expression of all social relations, it in essence reflects the relationship of mankind. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, the relationship of agricultural production changed frequently and every change involved the alteration of land ownership which would involve the inquiry and selection of a series of great theory and policy. All these not only changed the peasants' mode of production and life, but affected the change of psychology of society and the transformation of social structure. Then, the change of land ownership is an unavoidable issue while studying the history of the People's Republic of China.This doctoral dissertation selects Xinzhou County laid in the eastern part of Hubei Province as an example, tries to make a detailed study on the change of land ownership in this county from 1949 to 1983. It has six parts: the introduction, four chapters and the conclusion.Chapter one mainly elaborates a series of social movements happened in Xinzhou from 1949 to 1952. They include the Land Reform, the movement of examining land distribution and evaluating land yield, and the re-examining of land reform. Then it analyzes the social influence brought by land reform in several aspects. Xinzhou was delimited as a county in 1951, belonged to new liberated area. At first, it launched the movement of reduction of rent and interest, then pursued an overall movement of land reform from the winter of 1951 to May 1952. Meanwhile, the movement of examining land distribution and evaluating land yield was carried out by three stages, ie the stage combined with the movement of reduction of rent, the stage combined with land reform and the stage of the large-scale movement brought out from September to November in 1952. Land reform gave peasants land, the check-up on land distribution and production quota made the government gam the bases to levy agricultural tax. Land reform re-distributed the agricultural resources among different classes, this influenced Xinzhou's economy greatly. The economic status of poor peasants developed while the middle peasants hesitated and the sideline production declined. Furthermore, the agricultural tax took a high proportion hi the total yield.Chapter two expounds the issues about the setting up of land collective ownership, the organizing mode of collective production labor, and the distribution mode of cooperative. In Xinzhou, the peasants' land was admitted into the cooperative by three ways, ie evaluating land yield, converting different land to standard mu andconverting land to stock. In elementary agricultural producers' cooperative, major of the fund was apportioned according to land area, minor to hands, while fund of advanced agricultural producers' cooperative was mainly apportioned according to hands. In advanced agricultural producers' cooperative, as the peasants' ownership of the means of production such as land, farm cattle and farm tools was transferred to the cooperative, the land collective ownership had been established. In the aspect of labor organization during the period of cooperative, the peasants were organized in several ways by which the day-to-day relationship between peasants and land was set up. But, as the production quota was defined and revised by the cooperative, the production teams could only carry out these quotas, it not only added up the production cost, but did harm to peasants' initiative. Since the cooperative brought "collective" into the rural social relationship, the dual relationship between the state and the peasants was replaced by triple relationship among the state, the collective and the peasants. Then, the output would be shared by the state, the collective and the cooperative members. The modes of production and distribution made equalitarianism and the phenomenon of concealing the output to contribute in private an inextricable trouble.Chapter three expounds the changes of land ownership and their conseque...