Outline Land Law of China (1947)
중국토지법대강 (1947)
The Communist land-reform programme adopted at the National Land Conference held at Xibaipo, Hebei, in July–September 1947 and promulgated on 10 October. It declared the abolition of the land system of feudal and semi-feudal exploitation and land to the cultivator, and had village peasant associations take over landlords’ land and public land and distribute it equally among the whole village population. By codifying the confiscation of rich peasants’ land it went further than the May Fourth Directive of 1946.
In depth
The National Land Conference met at Xibaipo from 17 July 1947 under Liu Shaoqi, secretary of the Central Committee’s Working Committee, and passed the draft on 13 September. Its core, Article 6, reads:
第六条 乡村中一切地主的土地及公地，由乡村农会接收，连同乡村中其他一切土地，按乡村全部人口，不分男女老幼，统一平均分配，在土地数量上抽多补少，质量上抽肥补瘦，使全乡村人民均获得同等的土地。
Article 6. All landlords’ land and public land in the village shall be taken over by the village peasant association and, together with all other land in the village, distributed uniformly and equally according to the whole population of the village, regardless of sex or age; in quantity, land shall be taken from those with more to make up for those with less, and in quality, fertile land shall be taken to make up for poor, so that all the people of the village obtain equal land.
The Outline condemned the “rightist” error of failing to mobilise the masses boldly and protecting the interests of landlords and rich peasants, and slogans such as “all power to the poor peasants’ league congress” and “poor peasants and hired hands win the country and rule it” were raised. William Hinton, who witnessed the process, judged that it played as important a role as the Emancipation Proclamation in the American Civil War.
Under the Outline the movement spread in many villages to the beating and killing of those labelled landlords. In January 1948 Ren Bishi and Xi Zhongxun criticised the excesses and Mao’s directive took a less radical turn, stressing the protection of middle peasants and restraint of violence; in June land reform was wound up across most of north China. By the Communist victory more than half the population of the Communist areas had gone through land reform and over 25 million hectares had been redistributed.