Land Reform Movement

Land Reform Movement
The land reform staff publicizing the Land Reform Law to peasants in 1950
Simplified Chinese土地改革运动
Traditional Chinese土地改革運動
Literal meaningLand Reform Movement
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinTǔdì gǎigé yùndòng
Bopomofoㄊㄨˇ ㄉㄧˋ ㄍㄞˇ ㄍㄜˊ ㄩㄣˋ ㄉㄨㄥˋ
Wade–GilesTu3 ti4 kai3 ko2 yun4 tong4
Yale RomanizationTu3di4 gai3ge2 yun4dung4
Yue: Cantonese
Yale Romanizationtóu deih gói gaak wahn duhng
Jyutpingtou2 dei6 goi2 gaak3 wan6 dung6

The Land Reform Movement, also known by the Chinese abbreviation Tǔgǎi (土改), was a mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Mao Zedong during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War after the Second Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945 and in the early People's Republic of China,[1] which achieved land redistribution to the peasantry. Landlords – whose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to labor[2] – had their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants,[3] with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions.[4][5] The campaign resulted in hundreds of millions of peasants receiving a plot of land for the first time.[3]

By 1953, land reform had been completed in mainland China with the exception of Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, and Sichuan. From 1953 onwards, the CCP began to implement the collective ownership of expropriated land through the creation of Agricultural Production Cooperatives, transferring property rights of the seized land to the Chinese state. Farmers were compelled to join collective farms, which were grouped into people's communes with centrally controlled property rights.[6]

  1. ^ Short (2001), pp. 436–437.
  2. ^ DeMare (2019), p. 93.
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Scheidel226 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Teiwes was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Rummel, Rudolph J. (2007). China's bloody century: genocide and mass murder since 1900. Transaction Publishers. p. 223. ISBN 978-1-4128-0670-1. Archived from the original on 2016-11-09. Retrieved 2016-11-02.
  6. ^ ChenDavis (1998).