1949-1961 Consolidation of the Chinese Communist State
1950-1952 Agrarian Land Reform Policy
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- Agrarian Land Reform Policy = ==rural== land reform
- land taken away from landlords, and given to peasants who worked the land
- about 2-3 million landlords who were found guilty of exploiting peasants were executed
- some historians keep it conservative, at half a million
- very much a populist move – made them very popular with peasants + changed the socio-economic structure of China
- 1953: peasants organised into teams wo helped each other out and shared tools and livestock
- villages were locked into cooperatives – made it easy for the state to take grain
- famine and hunger would still happen sometimes when the state took too much
- villages were locked into cooperatives – made it easy for the state to take grain
- success was questionable – increase of 3.6% from 1952-1955
- the reliability of the data is questionable
- this is a very low yield for such high effort → land reform was impressive and perhaps morally good, but definitely not very productive
- compare & contrast with Collectivisation in the USSR
- both China and USSR were still buying grain
- whose was more effective? Hard to say
- the approach taken to collectivisation was very similar – Mao modelled it off Stalin
- a populist move central to the propaganda and programme of the CCP