Agrarian Reform in China

By: EconomyWatch   Date: 21 April 2010

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Agrarian Reform in the People Republic Of China was started after 1949 with the aim of increasing productivity of the agricultural sector. The government wanted to demolish the feudal landownership system that was dominating the Chinese rural economy for a long time.

Reasons of the Reform:

Agricultural Sector of China was dominated by feudalism for several years. In this feudal system, the ownership of land was captured by some big landowners and rich farmers. They were giving their land in lease to the landless farmers for more earnings and by this way of land leasing they were exploiting the poor peasants.

So to stop this exploitation and to redistribute the ownership of agricultural land to the poor farmers China adopted agrarian reform.

Stages of Agrarian Reform in China:

In the People Republic of China, agrarian reform had gone through several stages. The Stages are the following:

1. Reduction of rent but no expropriation (1927 – 31): The land rent rent was reduced but land was not seized from the big landowners.

2. Rent Curtailment and expropriation of the landholders' land (1931 – 34): Land Rent was further reduced and agricultural land were confiscated from the feudal landlords for the purpose of redistribution among the poor landless farmers.

3. Reallocation of landownership in unequal shares (1946 – 47): In China, agrarian reform went one step further by reallocating the ownership of land to the poor farmers to ensure the country's agricultural growth. This redistribution of land was done in unequal shares.

4. Equal rearrangement of land based on household (1947): In this stage agricultural land was redistributed on the basis of farmer's household in an equal manner.

Effects of Agrarian Reform:

(1) Through agrarian reform China had increased agricultural productivity which accelerated the economic growth in the rural areas.

(2) The revenue from agriculture increased by 48.5% in the year of 1952 and the net grain output was 163.9 million tons in that year.

(3) In addition to that, the exploitation of the farmers by the feudal landlords had been stopped completely after implementation of agrarian reform programs.

(4) Moreover, the agricultural growth of the People Republic of China had got the right pace through agrarian reform.


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