Land Reform Law of the People’s Republic of China (1950)
중화인민공화국 토지개혁법 (1950)
The basic law of land reform passed by the eighth session of the Central People’s Government Council on 28 June 1950 and promulgated on 30 June. Declaring the abolition of the landlord class’s feudal landownership and the introduction of peasant landownership, it confiscated landlords’ land, draught animals, farm tools, surplus grain and surplus houses for village peasant associations to distribute to the landless and land-poor. Unlike the civil-war Outline Land Law it preserved the rich-peasant economy and protected middle peasants’ property, and by 1953 land reform in most of the mainland had been completed under it.
In depth
The law has six chapters and forty articles. Its opening articles read:
第一條 廢除地主階級封建剝削的土地所有制，實行農民的土地所有制，藉以解放農村生產力，發展農業生產，為新中國的工業化開辟道路。
Article 1. The land ownership system of feudal exploitation by the landlord class shall be abolished and the system of peasant land ownership introduced, in order to set free the rural productive forces, develop agricultural production and open the way for the industrialisation of New China.
第二條 沒收地主的土地、耕畜、農具、多餘的糧食及其在農村中多餘的房屋。但地主的其他財產不予沒收。
Article 2. The land, draught animals, farm implements, surplus grain and surplus houses in the countryside of landlords shall be confiscated, but their other properties shall not be confiscated.
第六條 保護富農所有自耕和僱人耕種的土地及其他財產，不得侵犯。
Article 6. Land owned by rich peasants and cultivated by themselves or by hired labour, and their other properties, shall be protected from infringement.
Article 4 forbade confiscating industry and commerce run by landlords, Article 7 protected the land and property of middle peasants, including well-to-do middle peasants, and Article 10 gave landlords an equal share of land so that they could “reform themselves through labour”. Liu Shaoqi gave the land-reform report to the Third Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee and directed implementation as head of the Central Land Reform Committee.
In contrast with the law’s moderate text, practice was harsh. Work teams classified the villagers, held “speak bitterness” meetings and struggle sessions, and after the Korean War began the campaign swung left around 1951, with reports of public executions in village after village. By official count more than 300 million peasants received some 700 million mu of land, and estimates of landlord deaths range from 200,000 to five million. In 1987 the NPC Standing Committee listed the law among those no longer in force.