In The Modern View Of The Land Revolution(1947-1953)

Except for some minority areas, the majority of universal rural area in China experienceda revolutionary movement named “land reform” from Oct.10th,1947to the spring of1953,with the promulgation of Outline Land Law of China as the starting point. This movement hasplayed a profound role in the economic development, social and political structures of ruralareas. However, different from some previous land reforms under the leadership of CPC, thisland reform taking place around the time of the founding of PRC has been marked as amodern movement because its development was depended on the enactment of a national lawand the widely establishment of people’s courts. On the basis of such land reform data from1947to1953, this paper will discuss the positive effects of land reform during the process ofnational concept popularization and national power penetration in rural areas from thetransitional perspective from traditional empire to modern national state.Three parts will be introduced in this paper in addition to introduction and conclusion:In the first part, analysis of political structure in traditional rural areas with the vacancyof nation will be explored that the gentry class plays an important role as an intermediary ofcommunication in the public area of the nation and rural areas under the country-socialdualism mode; However, with the invasion of Western powers, China was forced into themodernization process. Despite overthrow of the Qing dynasty government thanks to theRevolution of1911, China hadn’t become a modern national state when the Republic ofChina was founded. But the traditional political and moral order were seriously weakened,and the authoritative gentry class suffered shocks from many aspects. The Republic of Chinagovernment tried to achieve the rural governance by means of a series of county governmentreform and reestablishment of Bao-jia system (a neighborhood administrative systemorganized on the basis of households by which the KMT regime enforced its rule at theprimary level). However，such Bao-jia system with brokerage model as its operationalcharacteristic failed to realize the integration of rural areas, on the contrary, it weakened theauthority of the state in the rural areas and induced the country falling into a dilemma of“involution of political power expansion ".In the second part, revolutionary roads and skills of CPC will be further explored. The prior task for various political powers at that time was to save the nation by politics and founda modern national state. The revolutionary task for CPC was to liberate peasants from feudal,clan and other kinds of shackles, and which is destined to overthrow the traditional politicalpattern of villages. Therefore, the revolutionary skills employed by CPC, such as launching“air one’s grievance movement”, sending work teams to roots level and adoptingcampaign-style governance model, are crucial to the development of land reform, throughwhich not only the peasants were mobilized and united but also the national concept wasdisseminated effectively. The basis of the authority were established in the new China due toeffective combination of revolutionary justice and peasants’simple morality by CPC and therealization of “conspiracy” between the country and peasants with the help of CPC viaharmonious consolidation of great tradition and little traditional depending on the land reformdeveloped in every village,In the third part, a proposal that the essence of peasant education is to transmit a modernnational concept will be introduced regarding to the issue of “it is important to educatepeasants”. First, with the illumination of the Marxist class theory, CPC adopted an ingeniousway to disseminate the national concept through introducing ideology of class struggle invillages successfully and making the majority of peasants feel the presence of the statethrough class division. Second, CPC operates law to mobilize people to carry out land reformand encourages people’s courts to function actively and politically. The court trial becomes thebest place to rehearse the state power, since it not only demonstrates the mandatory of stateviolence, but also declares the rationality and legitimacy of the country’s existence. Third,CPC further disseminate the state power and the national concept by improving peasantorganizations, cultivating loyal cadres and establishing power culture network symbolizedwith grassroots authorities and party organizations.In conclusion, this paper proposes that it is reasonable to look at the land revolution ledby CPC from the perspective of the historical mission of building the modern nation state.The primary problem faced by China in the20th century is that political, economic, social,and cultural systems were collapsed completely, as a result, it is impossible to finish thetransformation of China via improvement because such transformation depending on theadvancement by the state is lack of a stable political system and a governing authorityacknowledged by the public. Countries in the modern sense shall unite all citizens relying onabstract legal mechanism, and the premise of that is to which can be achieved with the premise of liberating people from various past “shackles” such as region,family, culturaltradition etc. This paper confirms the contribution of land reform in the popularization of statepower and the introduction of national concept through a deep analysis on land reform fromthe aspect of “sending national concept to rural areas”.