The General Line of the Land Reform

The general line of the Communist Party of China on reforming China's land system during the new-democratic revolution.

In the middle and late period of the War of Liberation, Mao Zedong summed up the past experience of the Party in leading the land revolution and the reform of the land system in both positive and negative aspects, and concentrated on the correct views of the whole Party, and in his “Speech at a Conference of Cadres in the Shanxi-Suiyuan Liberated Area” on April 1, 1948, Mao Zedong summed up the general line of the land revolution (land reform) as follows: to rely on the poor peasants, unite with the middle peasants, abolish the system of feudal exploitation step by step and in a discriminating way, and develop agricultural production. Mao Zedong made an in-depth exposition on how to understand this general line of land reform. Its main contents were as follows:

(1) The basic force to be relied upon in the land reform could only be and must have been poor peasants. Together with farm laborers, they made up about 70 percent of China's rural population. The main and immediate task of the land reform was to satisfy the demands of the masses of poor peasants and farm laborers.

(2) In the land reform it was necessary to unite with middle peasants; poor peasants and farm laborers must have formed a solid united front with middle peasants, who accounted for about 20 percent of the rural population. Otherwise, poor peasants and farm laborers would find themselves isolated and the land reform would fail. One of the tasks in the land reform was to satisfy the demands of certain middle peasants, and a section of the middle peasants must have been allowed to keep some land over and above the average obtained by the poor peasants.

(3) The target of the land reform was only and must have been the system of feudal exploitation by the landlord class and by the old-type rich peasants, and there should have been no encroachment either upon the national bourgeoisie or upon the industrial and commercial enterprises run by the landlords and rich peasants. In particular, care must have been taken not to encroach upon the interests of middle peasants, independent craftsmen, professionals and new rich peasants, all of whom engage in little or no exploitation.

(4) The aim of the land reform was to abolish the system of feudal exploitation, that is, to eliminate the feudal landlords as a class, not as individuals. Therefore, a landlord must have received the same allotment of land and property as did a peasant and must have been made to learn productive labour and join the ranks of the nation's economic life. Except for the most heinous counterrevolutionaries and local tyrants, who had incurred the bitter hatred of the broad masses, who had been proved guilty and who therefore might and ought to be punished, a policy of leniency must have been applied to all, and any beating or killing without discrimination must have been forbidden.

(5) The system of feudal exploitation should have been abolished step by step, that is, in a tactical way. In launching the struggle, we must have determined our tactics according to the circumstances and the degree to which the peasant masses were awakened and organized. We must have not attempted to wipe out overnight the whole system of feudal exploitation.

(6) By abolishing feudalism in a discriminating way it was meant that we should have distinguished between landlords and rich peasants, among big, middle and small landlords and between those landlords and rich peasants who were local tyrants and those who were not, and that, subject to the major premise of the equal distribution of land and the abolition of the feudal system, we should have not decided on and give the same treatment to them all, but should have differentiated and vary the treatment according to varying conditions.

(7) The development of agricultural production was the immediate aim of the land reform. The abolition of the feudal system and the development of agricultural production would lay the foundation for the development of industrial production and the transformation of an agricultural country into an industrial one.

Under the guidance of this general line of land reform, the land reform movement in the Liberated Areas won a great victory, and the vast number of peasants were liberated politically and economically, which promoted the development of agricultural production in the Liberated Areas, thus supporting and ensuring the victory of the War of Liberation.

After the founding of New China, the general line of land reform was embodied again in documents such as the “Land Reform Law of the People's Republic of China”.