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After the Republic of China's central government fled to Taiwan in 1949, the government enacted a series of land reforms on the island throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The reforms occurred in three main successive stages. First, in 1949, farm rents were capped at 37.5% of yields through the 37.5% Arable Rent Reduction Act. Second, starting in 1951, public land was sold to tenant farmers. Third, starting in 1953, large landholdings were broken up and redistributed to tenant farmers in what is dubbed as the "Land to the Tiller" reform.[1][2]
The Taiwanese government found land reform highly attractive due to the government's ideological origin: the founding father of the Republic of China Sun Yat-sen, who was influenced by Georgism, had proclaimed Equalization of Land Rights to be foundational to his political platform.[2] The course of action was further made attractive by Taiwan's reversion from Japanese rule in 1945: many of the Japanese large landowners had fled, and the non-Japanese large landowners could be compensated with Japanese commercial and industrial properties the government seized. The land program succeeded also because the Kuomintang were mostly from Mainland China and so had few ties to the remaining indigenous landowners.[3] The success of the reforms was also highly dependent on the Sino-American Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction or JCRR, an organization created by the U.S.'s China Aid Act of 1948.[4] The JCRR channeled a vast amount of American aid into agriculture, coordinated with the Taiwan government to pass land reform acts, and designated programs that contributed directly to agriculture.[5]
The Taiwanese land reform is largely considered to be successful; it yielded strong results in the improvement of life quality in rural Taiwan and facilitated Taiwan's transition from sharecropping based agriculture to landowner-farmer based agriculture.[2]
- ^ Koo, Anthony Y. C. (1966-03-01). "Economic Consequences of Land Reform in Taiwan". Asian Survey. 6 (3): 150–157. doi:10.2307/2642219. ISSN 0004-4687. JSTOR 2642219.
- ^ a b c BOWDEN, THOMAS R. (1961). "Land Reform and Rural Development on Taiwan". University College Review. 1 (1): 34–40. ISSN 2310-3973. JSTOR 41965668.
- ^ 土地改革紀念館 [Land Reform Museum] (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2011-07-25.
- ^ "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, The Far East: China, Volume VIII - Office of the Historian". history.state.gov. Retrieved 2023-02-20.
- ^ 國家發展委員會：三七五減租 (Farmland Rent Reduction) Archived 2014-11-29 at the Wayback Machine