Land Reform in Fujian during the 1950s and Corporate Lands

This article is a preliminary attempt to explore the relationship between the land reform and corporate lands in newly liberated areas, especially those in Fujian. After the Land Reform Law was promulgated in June 1950, implementation of land reform was in full swing by December 1950 in Fujian and essentially completed by June 1952. Early implementation of land reform, which had originally been scheduled to commence in the autumn of 1951 at the earliest, was due to the emergency directive of Mao Zedong, who was alarmed by the Korean War and the possibility of a counterattack on the mainland China by Jiang Jieshi. Mao Zedong ordered the Fujian government to complete land reform as quickly as possible. In the face of this pressure, the Fujian government had no other choice but to hasten land reform at the expense of accuracy and thoroughness. The characteristics of land ownership in Fujian before land reform was as follows : the percentage of corporate lands was much higher than in other areas of East China ; it reached 40 to 50 per cent in some mountainous regions in Fujian. In contrast, the percentage of land owned by landlords and rich peasants was extremely low. The percentage of land owned by middle peasants was relatively high as in other areas of East China. Since the land owned by the middle peasants was to be untouched, it was impossible to allot reasonably sized parcels of land to the poor peasants and the hired hands in order to establish "peasant land ownership, " unless corporate lands as well as the land owned by the landlords were to be expropriated. Article 3 of the Land Reform Law stipulates that the corporate land such as that owned by ancestral shrines should be "collected" (zhengshou 徴收), not "expropriated" (moshou 沒收). The choice of the word "collect" indicates that close attention was paid to the difference between the corporate lands and the land owned by landlords. According to the regulations of the Measures for Implementation of Land Reform in East China, when collecting and re-allotting the land owned by clans, special attention should be paid to the sense of ownership held by clan members, and reservation and continuation of small parcels of land for ancestral worship were permitted if the clan's members so desired. In contrast, in Fujian, the corporate lands were considered to be the material basis of the exploitation of peasants by landlords. This outdated conception caused the issue of how to deal with the land for ancestral worship to go unaddressed. However, a survey of rural Fujian during the land reform era shows that there existed different perspectives on the land owned by clans, which consisted mostly of the corporate lands. While some thought the lands owned by landlords and the despotic gentry and had become tools of control and exploitation of the peasants, others understood them to be owned by clan members, poor and rich alike, and still others recognized them as shared exclusively by poor peasants. Given the unique situation in Fujian, it can be said that the issue of the reservation and continuation of small parcels of land for ancestral worship was one that undoubtedly had real consequences