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Land Reform in Kwangtung 1951–1953: Central Control and Localism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Ezra Vogel
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Extract

The building of harmonious relationships between the capital and the regions is always a critical task confronting a new regime in any country. In traditional China, the founder of each new dynasty, by virtue of his military conquests, was able to establish fairly firm control over his former enemies in the various regions. But to rise to power in a country of such enormous size, the dynastic founders were forced to form alliances with various local leaders who had assisted them in their conquest. After they achieved victory the conquerors no longer had to subdue enemies but they had to find a way of working smoothly with the regional leaders who had assisted them in their rise to power.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 38 , June 1969 , pp. 27 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1969

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References

1 Kai-fu Tsao, “The Rebellion of the Three Feudatories Against the Manchu Throne in China, 1673–1681,” Ph.D. thesis (Columbia, 1965).

2 Nan-fang jih-pao (NF) (Canton), 18 December 1950.

3 For information on other provinces, see Current Background (CB) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate-General), No. 142; CB, No. 143; CB, No. 146; Survey of the China Mainland Press (SCMP) (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate-General), No. 299.

4 Deliusin, L. P., Bor'ba Kompartii Kitaia za Razreshenie Agrarnogo Voprosa (The struggle of the Chinese Communist Party for the solution of the agrarian problem) (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo “Nauka,” 1964).Google Scholar Apparently there were not so many cadres working at any one time. In early 1952, for example, Fang Fang said that the 30,000 workers on land reform teams at the time were adequate. CB, No. 211, p. 28.

5 NF (1 July 1950). Reprinted in CB, No. 42. Many of the major documents on Kwangtung land reform are reprinted in CB, issues Nos. 47, 51, 129, 165, 184, 211, 226. Nos. 250 and 253 concern Chu Kuang. The pre-land reform decree of February 1950 is printed in Complete and Consolidate the Victory (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1950), pp. 23–30. National directives on land reform and co-operatives are contained in Blaustein, Albert P., Fundamental Legal Documents of Communist China (New York: Rothman, 1962).Google Scholar

6 NF, 1 July 1950.

7 NF, 8 August 1950.

8 NF, 11 December 1950.

9 NF, 12 September 1950.

10 NF, 24 October 1950.

11 NF, 6 November 1950.

12 Fang Fang's name does not appear in the lists of any of the five classes of students published at the time (Chung-kuo nung-min (Chinese Peasant), No. 2 (1 February 1926)), although it is possible he was then using another name. But regardless of the actual facts of the matter, it is accepted in Kwangtung Party circles that he had attended these lectures and this enhanced his status as an old revolutionary.

13 In the early years following Liberation, there was officially no Kwangtung Party Committee, but only a South China Sub-Bureau of the Party, which included Kwangtung and Kwangsi. For all practical purposes, however, Kwangtung and Kwangsi operated as separate Party committees.

14 NF, 6 November 1950.

15 Ibid.

16 NF, 8 April 1951; see also Governor, Ch'en's speech, NF, 7 December 1957.Google Scholar

17 NF, 9 November 1950.

18 Ojha, Ellen F., “The Background of the Chinese Agrarian Reform Law,” Papers on China; Harvard, East Asia Research Center (forthcoming).Google Scholar

19 NF, 10 December 1950; 12 December 1950.

20 NF, 10 December 1950.

21 NF, 10 December 1950; 15 December 1950; 22 December 1950; SCMP, No. 9.

22 CB, No. 227 (8 January 1951).

23 NF, 27 February 1952.

24 NF, 4 January 1951.

25 NF, 2 December 1950.

26 For example, NF, 4 March 1952. For an anthropologist's observations of the early stages of land reform in one village on the outskirts of Canton, see Yang, C. K., Chinese Society: The Family and the Village (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966)Google Scholar: For an account of land reform in early liberated areas see William, Hinton, Fanshen (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966).Google Scholar

27 Buck, John L., Land Utilization in China (Nanking: University of Nanking Press, 1937).Google Scholar

28 Deliusin, , Bor'ba Kompartii Kitaia, p. 144.Google Scholar

29 NF, 14 March 1951, in SCMP, No. 83, p. 15.

30 See NF, 17 January 1951.

31 Maurice, Freedman, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: Athlone Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Maurice, Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London: Athlone Press, 1966).Google Scholar

32 NF, 3 February 1952.

33 NF, 15 January 1951; 16 January 1951; 6 February 1952.

34 NF, 8 May 1951.

35 NF, 9 July 1951. For a well-known case between a rich and poor clan, the Chung Tsai Ling Incident, see CB, No. 204.

36 CB, No. 184, p. 55.

37 NF, 22 January 1951.

38 See the Hong Kong Chung-sheng jih-pao (Daily Sentinel), 22 July 1951; NF, 28 July 1952.

39 In one early report on land reform it was estimated that about one-half of the land reform cadres were working in their native counties. NF, 9 March 1952. But even if not in their own, they were often working in a nearby one.

40 CB, No. 194, p. 9; see also NF, 26 February 1952.

41 Although official figures show only some 28,000 executed during land reform and the campaign against counter-revolutionaries, some estimates run as high as hundreds of thousands.

42 See, e.g., NF, 7 January 1951; 22 January 1951; 5 March 1951.

43 NF, 18 September 1952.

44 SCMP, No. 299, pp. 10–14.

45 NF, 29 December 1950.

46 NF, 27 January 1951.

47 NF, 23 January 1951–31 January 1951.

48 NF, 27 January 1951; 24 February 1951.

49 Nan-fang chou-pao (Southern Weekly) (Canton), Vol. I, No. 8 (14 February 1951; 17 February 1951).

50 NF, 26 February 1951.

51 NF, 5 June 1951.

52 NF, 13 July 1951.

53 NF, 8 May 1951.

54 NF, 9 May 1951.

55 NF, 21 April 1951.

56 NF, 11 May 1951.

57 NF, 11 May 1951; 13 May 1951.

58 NF, 18 May 1951.

59 NF, 11 May 1951.

60 NF, 28 May 1951; 29 May 1951; 5 June 1951.

61 NF, 28 May 1951. For further indications of the unpopularity of the new policy see NF, 9 May 1951; 13 July 1951; 21 July 1951.

62 NF, 13 July 1951; 21 July 1951.

63 NF, 5 September 1951.

64 Chao was ardently leftist and, since 6 May 1951, assistant head of the Land Reform Committee as well as Secretary-General of the Party Sub-Bureau, just as Tu was leftist, assistant head of the Central-South Land Reform Committee and Secretary-General of the Central-South Party Bureau.

65 NF, 5 September 1951.

66 NF, 5 September 1951; 9 December 1951.

67 NF, 3 October 1951.

68 Ibid.

69 NF, 28 November 1951.

70 NF, 3 October 1951.

71 NF, 20 November 1951.

72 See, e.g., NF, 16 September 1951.

73 NF, 3 October 1951.

74 NF, 18 November 1951.

75 NF, 20 November 1951.

76 CB, No. 142; Hsin na-han chan-pao (New Triumphant Shout Combat Paper: Red Guard newspaper, Canton: Wuhan Ta-chuan yuan-hsiao (Universities and speciality schools), No. 2, 20 January 1967).

77 NF, 13 July 1952.

78 NF, 5 February 1952; 10 February 1952.

79 NF, 10 January 1952.

80 NF, 9 March 1952.

81 CB, No. 226, p. 5.

82 NF, 7 February 1952.

83 NF, 29 May 1953.

84 NF, 7 February 1952.

85 NF, 29 April 1952.

86 NF, 13 February 1952; 15 February 1952.

87 Hong Kong Hua-ch'iao jih-pao (Overseas Chinese Daily), 4 March 1952.

88 NF, 18 April 1952.

89 NF, 22 April 1952.

90 CB, No. 184.

91 NF, 17 May 1952.

92 NF, 12 July 1952; CB, No. 211.

93 NF, 24 July 1952; CB, No. 211.

94 CB, No. 211.

95 NF, 11 December 1957; see also Extracts from China Mainland Magazines (ECMM), No. 129, and Union Research Service, Vol. 10, No. 7.

96 NF, 17 May 1953.

97 CB, No. 226.

98 CB, No. 211.

99 CB, No. 250; CB, No. 253.

100 CB, No. 253.

101 NF, 16 February 1952; 1 March 1952.

102 NF, 28 October 1952.

103 NF, 29 May 1953.

104 NF, 14 February 1954.

105 New China News Agency (Peking), 1 November 1954.

106 NF, 9 December 1957.

107 NF, 1 October 1952; 28 October 1952.

108 CB, No. 226 (28 October 1952).

109 NF, 12 May 1953.

110 NF, 10 March 1953; 27 May 1953.

111 NF, 6 June 1953.

112 NF, 10 March 1953.

113 See NF, 17 May 1952.

114 Hsin-hua pan-yueh-k'an (New China Semi-Monthly) (Peking), No. 19 (1958), p. 44.

115 NF, 31 December 1952; 16 May 1963; in CB, No. 250; CB, No. 253.

116 NF, 2 August 1952.

117 NF, 17 May 1952; 20 May 1952.

118 See NF, 20 October 1952; 21 October 1952; 3 January 1953; 27 May 1953. For an account of the Party-building programme, see Fang, Shu, Campaign of Party-Expansion of the Chinese Communist Party in 1952 (Union Research Institute, Hong Kong, November 1953).Google Scholar

119 People's Daily, 14 December 1957, in SCMP, No. 676, pp. 31–35.