The Land System And The Development Of Modern China's Rural Economy

1. The purpose and significance of the dissertationAgricultural economic development is the foundation of a nation's economy development. However, it is the most complex and uneasily solved problem. In the modern Chinese history, many Chinese intellectuals seek the reasons and solutions to the Chinese countryside poorness and weakness. They found that at the back of the manifestation of Chinese falling behind the western nations in industrial fields, the Chinese agricultural or countryside backwards is a deeper reason to Chinese poorness and weakness. As for what is the real reason of China countryside poorness, there are many different viewpoints. Someone hold that Chinese agricultural production techniques level rather lower is the essential reason. Others argued that the uneven land ownership system is the root cause. And another others thought that the huge population of China result in the people's poorness. For these different viewpoints, we can classify them into two groups: technology school and institution school. As for the solutions to develop the China countryside economy, the technology school thought that China should construct the agricultural financial system, improve the peasant's production technology and so on. The institution school deemed that if not to reform the current land ownership system, the peasant's poorness would not changed. Up to now, the arguments still continue. Even someone who deemed that Chinese land system unequal raise doubt that whether it is necessary to reform the land ownership system. Because they found that there is no obvious difference between the productions of the owned land and the tenant land according to the investigating materials in 1920-1930s. This phenomenon had ever been found by John Lossing Buck in 1930s, and is put forwardas a puzzler by Philip Huang now again. Should China need not land reform? In view of above mentioned arguments and the puzzler, I make this dissertation to analyze the relationship between the land institution and agricultural economy development, and try to make an answer to the puzzler left by former scholars.2. The Dissertation's structure and main ideasIn the Chapter one, I introduced briefly the main arguments about the modern China countryside economy problem from 1920s up to date, also point out these arguments' defects. Then, I put forward the research methodology and goal of the dissertation.In the Chapter two, I give readers an overlook of the modern China countryside economy from following aspects: land ownership system, peasant's rent and tax burden, peasant's loan circumstances, peasant's living level, and means of agricultural production. Meantime, I also analyze the relation between every appearance, point out that the uneven land ownership system is the root cause of modern China countryside economy slump.The Chapter three makes an investigation on the Kuomintang(KMT) government's agricultural economy policies. These policies lay stress on technology improvement aspects, such as reducing land rent, constructing agricultural financial institutions, improving peasant's production technology etc., and do nothing to reform the land system. Thus, the peasant's economy and social status have not any improvement. They still have no rights to benefit from the agricultural loan with government subsidy. These policies inevitably have little effects. However, in the War of Resistance Against Japan, the KMT government made some land reform experiment in some areas. In these areas, the peasant's living and agricultural production have evident improvements.Chapter four makes an investigation into the Taiwan KMTgovernment's agricultural policies during 1949-1953, which characterized by land/agrarian reform. We will see that only after land reform, the peasant's social and economic status get rise, they could have rights and capabilities to consciously make use of the agricultural loans and peasants cooperative association supported by government. This chapter proves the necessity of land reform fr...