Governance, Social Organisation and Reform in Rural China

Case Studies from Anhui Province

H. He

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137484697
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica asiatica

This study focuses upon governance and social organisation within the Chinese village and explores the extent to which farmers have autonomy vis-à-vis their economic and political activities in an attempt to understand the relationship between farmers and the state in a rapidly changing China.

1

Land Reform and Its Implications

Xiaogang was the first state-sanctioned village in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to decollectivise. Data displayed in Xiaogang Village Memorial Hall shows that in 1979, one year after the introduction of the Household Responsibility System (HRS), the average annual income of its residents was 400 yuan, 18 times that of 1978. Also in 1979, the grain yield of the village, which had only 115 people, reached 66,500 kilograms, four times the average annual yield of the previous ten years (Beijing Review, 2009). In the summer of 1984, during her fieldwork in Fengyang, Perry ‘could not ... but be impressed by the frantic pace of new housing construction and the evidence of rampant consumerism in the form of new watches, bicycles, sewing machines, stereos and the like’ (Perry, 1986: 203). The success enjoyed by Xiaogang created a model for other parts of China; as a result, the HRS soon spread.

However, although Xiaogang has gained attention since 1978, few researchers subjected it to scrutiny prior to its rise to fame. I believe that a genealogical probe into Xiaogang’s history before the 1950s will provide a reference for the examination of its development.

1. Xiaogang before the 1950s

My conversations with the staff of the Fengyang Local Gazetteer Editorial Committee, who were in charge of the county annals, revealed that there was no form of agricultural cooperation in Xiaogang around the year 1949 (Ma Shulong, interview, 11 December 2008). As well as enduring poor farming conditions and severe natural disasters, the villagers experienced a devastating drought in 1932, which saw most of them leave the village, in many cases to beg for a living. They led poor lives; for most of the young farmers, a new set of clothes was a luxury. As regards food, they usually ate ‘one dry dish and two soups’ (yigan liangxi) and coarse grains: meat was also a luxury for them. In times of famine, many peasants had little grain left for the traditional Chinese New Year celebrations (Wang Ziwen, interview, 11 November 2008). Most peasants lived in rudimentary thatched cottages. Wang’s grandfather lived in a derelict house: its roof was held together with rope. Most families had a big square table, with only one towel for common use.

Land was privately owned at that time and there were frequent transactions of land. The sellers were usually poor farmers, who had no choice but to sell their land due to family mismanagement or natural disasters. The buyers were mostly landlords, merchants or rich peasants from outside the village (also called ‘absentee landlordism’). Landlords, who lived outside the village and did not think it necessary to upgrade their production technologies, merely used simple technologies and whatever rural labour was required. There was a high incidence of absentee landlordism. This social structure also promoted the conglomeration of familism in rural areas, with the rich living in the urban or town areas. As long as peasants worked hard and paid their rent on time, this relationship would not be undermined (Moore, 1993: 178–180).

The price of land during the anti-Japanese War and the ‘Liberation War’ periods was one ton of grain per mu (one mu equals approximately 0.167 acre or 0.067 hectare) for a superior piece of land, 600 to 800 kilograms of grain per mu for ordinary land, and 400 to 500 kilograms of grain per mu for inferior land. Land was also mortgaged and leased. Landlord–tenant relations included the following practices (Peng Youmeng and others, interview, 11 October 2008):

Rent in the form of grain (daozu): Rent calculated according to the area of land leased. Depending on the quality of the land as well as the irrigation facilities, most tenants paid the landlord a fixed rent (sizu) of seven to nine dou (one dou equals 7.5 kilograms) of grain for one mu of land after the autumn harvest. The grain was sent to the barn of the landlord after drying and cleaning. Some peasants paid 30 per cent of their total harvest, a system known as ‘flexible rent’ (huozu). For peasants, there were many disadvantages to fixed rent, especially in traditional farming societies such as Xiaogang. In times of famine, harvests would be extremely poor. Sometimes the peasants had to sell their sons and daughters in order to survive. Fixed rent arrangements had the potential to ruin a family and were thus more likely to be deemed exploitation by the peasants (Scott, 1976: 7).

Rent in the form of money (huobi dizu): A tenant paid the landlord money after the autumn harvest according to a price determined by the landlord before the harvest. Money rent was, to say the least, perilous for peasants and it involved the most serious level of exploitation; however, it was not a common practice in Xiaogang.

Rent in the form of labour (daigeng): Some landlords reserved tracts of land for their own use: they would ask the tenants to do the farm work as a way of paying the rent.

Long-term hired hands (changgong): Landlords hired two types of labourers to do their farm work for them: long-term hired hands and casual labourers. The former included cooks, assistants and cowherds and worked all year round for relatively good wages.

Casual labourers (duangong): These workers were hired in the busy seasons, mainly to do farm work such as ploughing, sowing and harvesting.

Usury (gaolidai): Exploiters charged monthly interest at the rate of one dou of grain for one picul (≈ 6.6 dou) of grain. One peasant in Xiaogang told me that another had to seek the guarantee of a rich household before he could draw on usury for emergency use (Wang Youxing, interview, 11 October 2008). Many peasants sold their land and houses to pay the interest accrued via usury. Some eventually became homeless.

Deposit (ya zhuangfei): Peasants had to pay a certain amount of money as a deposit in order to lease land from the landlords.

Meals (chi zufan): A tenant treated the landlord to two meals every year in addition to paying rent, one before the tenancy and the other on payment of the rent.

Pawning (kaiyadang): Peasants received cash by pawning anything valuable at the pawnshop of the landlord, and had to pay the interest when retrieving the article.

Gifts for festivals (songjie): There were three festivals a year: the Dragon Boat Festival (or the Summer Solstice), the Mid-Autumn Festival and the Spring Festival. Peasants donated food, grain, tea and sugar on these festive occasions.

Fresh grain (changxin): The tenants sent grain or wheat to the landlords immediately after the harvest so that they could be the first to taste it.

Free labour service (wuchang fu laoyi): Tenants needed to do some work free of charge for their landlords, including husking, milling and helping with the landlords’ wedding ceremonies and funerals.

Buying green crops (mai qingmiao): The landlords lent money to the peasants to buy grain before the harvest. Growing grain before the harvest time is called ‘green crops’ as they are young green shoots of grain. Green crops are cheaper before they are ripened. By merely paying the price of green crops, the landlords obtained the benefit of the whole ripe crops.

Re-lending (fangdao): After taking rent from the peasants, the landlords lent the rent (in the form of grain) back to the peasants, for example; lending 100 dou in spring and another five dou in autumn, and later charging their rent plus interest after the autumn harvest.

Fei and Zhang argue that the real reason for land concentration was not the fact that peasants paid others to fund their illnesses, deaths, weddings, funerals, clothes and military service; rather, it was the fact that most families were poor. Underdeveloped agricultural productivity gave them little power to accumulate wealth. They had to sell their land and houses if they suffered a heavy blow (Fei and Zhang, 2006: 519). In Xiaogang, the peasants’ poverty could also be attributed to the landlords’ harsh means of exploitation.

Xiaogang villagers led an even worse life after Japan invaded China. On 1 February 1938, the Japanese army invaded Fengyang and occupied 30 per cent of the villages and towns within the county. Chen Chong, the county’s head commissioner, abandoned the county and fled with the Kuomintang (KMT, Chinese Nationalist Party) soldiers, who were bent upon saving their own lives. On 3 February, during the mop-up by the Japanese army, 100 civilians were slaughtered on the north side of Xushan Mountain: another 350 were killed in Shanma Village; all their houses were burnt to the ground. The people of Fengyang fought against the Japanese army, forming the ‘Hongqianghui Association’ and the ‘Fengyang Anti-Japanese Guerrillas’. During the ‘Liberation War’, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and KMT fought pitched battles in Fengyang, bringing considerable hardship to the local people (Han Yang, interview, 3 April 2010). People became homeless, if not hopeless. Due to the difficult circumstances, peasants at that time behaved like amoral familists, who, whenever possible, sought quick self-satisfaction and instant benefit for their nuclear families, believing that others were doing the same.

Everyone felt insecure during the war period. A peasant from Xiaogang told me that while the Spring Festival was actually ‘a happy festival for the rich, it was a hard day for the poor’ (Han Yang, interview, 3 April 2010). Many peasants did not dare to go home until the Chinese New Year’s Eve as they had no money to pay their rent or debts. These people gained nothing from the festival: three meals a day would have been satisfactory. A poem which read ‘on hearing the festival sound of firecrackers from next door, I can do nothing but whisper to my wife that tomorrow will be an ordinary day for us, and do not tell our son that it is the Chinese New Year’ best portrayed the situation of the Xiaogang villagers during the Spring Festival. Landlord–tenant relations systemised the social classification and material division. Irrespective of the form of rent, as long as the tenancy system remained unchanged, most of the villagers could only lead miserable lives. They barely had enough to eat, let alone opportunities to enhance cooperation and mutual assistance.

Following the founding of the PRC, as the next section demonstrates, a tremendous change took place, as a result of which villagers were channelled into a state system. In response to this, villagers often engaged in resistance and opposition. From the perspective of state policies, there was a profound change in peasant cooperation in Xiaogang after China implemented Land Reform from 1949 to 1952: from collectivised forms of cooperation between 1952 and 1978 to non-collectivised form of cooperation since the 1990s. This chapter will discuss the Land Reform and collectivised cooperation.

2. Land Reform

The Land Reform mainly involved the confiscation of land from landlords and its re-distribution among the peasants according to largely egalitarian principles. Mao Zedong had understood from the guiding principles and slogans of the peasant wars – from the Huangchao Uprising in the 9th century to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement in the 19th – the peasants’ urgent need of land. After the release of Instructions on Land Problems on 4 May 1946, Liu Shaoqi had delivered a summary of the proposed execution of Land Reform at the National Land Conference held in Xibaipo Village convened by the CCP Central Committee in 1947. The Leading Principles of China’s Land Law, which came into effect during the conference, stipulated that confiscating land from landlords and distributing land to each family according to the number of its members was the guiding principle for eliminating ‘feudalism’ in China. This conference marked a turning point in Chinese history: it fundamentally changed the structure of Chinese society. Mao Zedong further argued that while peasants made up 80 per cent of the population in China, they owned only 30 per cent of the land. This was the main reason why China suffered from others’ aggression and oppression as well as from its own poverty and backwardness (Mao, 1991: 37). The Land Reform, which was introduced just before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, provided abundant armed forces for the Liberation Army. Peasants who had acquired land frequently sent their sons to war and donated grain for public use (Fengyang Local Gazetteer Editorial Committee, 1999: 148). Fengyang County was ‘liberated’ in January 1949. When the Huaihai War broke out during the same year, various programmes were initiated within the county, including reducing rent and interest, enhancing production to cope with natural disasters, and fighting against bandits and local tyrants, as well as ‘counter-revolutionaries’. Under the leadership of the CCP, the peasants’ urgent need of land was satisfied and they became a major force in the establishment of a new nation.

In accordance with various edicts, including the Land Reform Law of the People’s Republic of China, General Rules for the Organisation of Peasants’ Associations, General Rules for the Organisation of People’s Courts, Decisions on Certain Questions Involved in Land Reform and Decisions on Class Divisions in Rural Areas, the Land Reform commenced in Fengyang County in January 1951. There were three steps involved, the first of which was to set up organisations to hold peasants together for the later class designation and land redistribution. In June of the same year, a Land Reform work team consisting of over 500 cadres went into the rural areas to train active peasants and to hold meetings for the purpose of setting up peasants’ associations as well as many other organisations for women and the militia. Members of the team also educated peasants by sharing with them their experiences of enduring hardships; in addition, they mobilised them to fight against the local landlords. Poor peasants were encouraged to denounce local tyrants and bad landlords. Then the people’s court would persecute or arrest them (Fengyang Local Gazetteer Editorial Committee, 1999: 147–148).

The second step was to designate classes in Fengyang. The purpose of this classification paved the way for the further land confiscation and redistribution. Rich peasants were first identified by applying relevant definitions to them after the peasants’ association held a meeting. Designation of middle-income peasants, poor peasants and farm labourers was conducted according to principles peculiar to each village. The preliminary designation was submitted to Fengyang county for approval; later, the results were announced to the public. The detailed definitions of the class categories were as follows (Fengyang Local Gazetteer Editorial Committee, 1999: 147–149):

Landlords (dizhu): those who owned large tracts of land, did not work themselves, had some subordinate labourers, and lived mainly by charging rent, exploiting farm labourers and charging interest.

Landlords with other chengfen (class status) (qita chengfen dizhu): identified according to their degree of exploitation.

Rich peasants together with chengfen of a landlord (ban dizhu shi funong): those who leased over two-thirds of the land they owned and worked themselves on the remaining one-third of their land. Rich peasants lived predominantly by the land they leased to others rather than doing their own farming.

Rich peasants and middle-income peasants (funong he zhongnong): those who worked themselves, leased no land or only a small portion of their land, together with abundant capital goods (e.g. oxen and tools). Their main means of exploitation was to hire labourers at a low cost and charge interest by loaning. After offsetting the exploiting amount as well as the amount exploited by others, those whose net exploitation income exceeded 25 per cent of all of the income they received from doing their own farming, were deemed rich peasants; otherwise, they were middle-income or middle rich peasants.

Small land lessors (xiao dizhu chuzuzhe): those who let most of their land due to inability or unwillingness to farm or because they worked in other occupations (e.g. doctors and teachers). They were treated as middle-income peasants.

Poor peasants (pinnong): those who leased land and only worked in agriculture.

Farm labourers (gunong): those who did not have land and did not lease land: labourers who were hired to work on others’ land.

The third step was to redistribute property such as land. Confiscated land was distributed (with the exception of that set asid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Land Reform and Its Implications
• 2  Collectivisation and Village Reconstruction
• 3  Village Reform and Its Aftermath
• 4  Cooperation, Industrialisation and Power Relations
• 5  Village Spatial Order and Its Implications for Cooperation
• Conclusion
• Notes on Conversion of Measures
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index