Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 4 Nos. 1 and 2, January and April Chinese
2004, pp. 107–141.
Land Reform
107
Chinese Land Reform in Long-Run
Perspective and in the Wider East Asian
Context
CHRIS BRAMALL
The claims made by Griffin et al. for the impact of land reform in China are
unconvincing. The land reform of 1947–52 did not lead to a pronounced
increase in agricultural output. Nor was it egalitarian; indeed, but for the
deliberate preservation of the rich peasant economy, growth might have been
non-existent. The second land reform of 1981–3 was equally ineffectual.
Agricultural growth had shifted on to a faster growth path before decollectivization, and the surge of 1980–4 was little more than a temporary response
to decent weather, procurement price rises, the abandonment of the Dazhai
system and a reduction in output under-reporting. Rural income inequality
has been held in check since 1984 because of local government intervention,
not because family farming is intrinsically egalitarian. China’s experience of
land reform is mirrored by those of other East Asian countries. A century of
land reform has not resolved Japan’s deep-seated agricultural problems, nor
those of Taiwan and South Korea.
Keywords: land reform, China, inequality, agriculture, East Asia
INTRODUCTION
China experienced two major land reforms during the twentieth century.1 The
reform of 1947–52 was implemented hard on the heels of the conquest of
territory by the People’s Liberation Army. Land owned by landlords, temples
and lineages, and land rented out by rich peasants, was seized by newly formed
village Peasants’ Associations. This confiscated land was then re-distributed to
middle and poor peasants, and to landless labourers. By 1952, the Chinese Communist Party had succeeded in creating a system of small-scale family farming.2
This system lasted until 1955–6, when it was replaced by collective farming.
Chris Bramall, School of East Asian Studies, Sheffield University, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK. e-mail:
[email protected]
I am most grateful to T. J. Byres for his comments on an earlier version of this article.
1
In writing of two Chinese land reforms, Griffin et al. adopt what has become the conventional
description of the events of 1981–3 as a ‘second land reform’ (Kueh 1985), a ‘second emancipation’
(Zhou 1996) and a ‘second revolution’ (Garnaut et al. 1996).
2
For general accounts of the 1947–52 reform, see Hinton (1966), Lippit (1974) and Bramall (2000b).
For local variations, see Ash (1976), Crook and Crook (1979), Shue (1980), Endicott (1988), Potter
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2004.
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Chris Bramall
The second land reform of 1981–3 grew out of a series of policies designed
to make collective farms operate more effectively.3 These policies, which started
to be implemented in 1976, initially aimed to restore material incentives, and to
reduce the size of the unit of account from production teams to work groups. In
1978, reform became more radical; in a few counties, mainly in Anhui province,
farmland and agricultural equipment was handed over to households, effectively
restoring family farming. However, this process of decollectivization proceeded
extremely slowly; even by the end of 1980, only 5 per cent of production teams
had adopted family farming across China. But 1980 proved to be the last year of
collective farming as the process of decollectivization gathered momentum and
China’s leaders decided to restore the small-scale farming system of the 1950s, an
era widely viewed within the CCP during the early 1980s as the (Leninist) ‘golden
age’ of Chinese socialism. By October 1981, 38 per cent of production teams had
introduced the system of family farming known variously as dabaogan (‘big
contracting’) or baogan daohu (‘contracting everything to the household’), and the
figure had risen to 67 per cent by June 1982. During 1982–3, even recalcitrant
provinces such as Heilongjiang were forced to bend before the prevailing wind.
By December 1983, 94 per cent of China’s production teams had abandoned the
collective and the process was completed in 1984.
The article discusses the assessment offered by Griffin, Khan and Ickowitz
(hereafter GKI) of the East Asian experience of land reform, but these Chinese
land reforms are its focus. In part this is because the Chinese experience is of
such massive significance. However, it is also because of the very boldness of the
claims made by GKI for the Chinese reforms. Firstly, they argue that the land
reforms were highly egalitarian: ‘Initially land was redistributed among peasant
households and an egalitarian peasant farming system was created . . .’ (Griffin et al.
(GKI) 2002, 309, emphasis added). Moreover, ‘Collective farming did not result
in a more equal distribution of income than under the peasant farming system’
(GKI 2002, 311); the rural gini coefficient is said to have fallen from 0.32 in 1978
to 0.22 in 1982 during the transition from collective to family farming.
The second claim made by GKI is that land reform in China, as elsewhere, led
to faster agricultural growth. For the period 1950–7, it is said that ‘Radical land
confiscation and redistribution did not slow the pace of agricultural growth. On
the contrary . . .’ (GKI 2002, 310), and after 1978, there ‘. . . was a sharp acceleration in the rate of growth of agricultural output . . .’ (GKI 2002, 311). GKI do
and Potter (1990) and Ruf (1998). The best general Chinese-language account of both Chinese
reforms is Du (1996). The County Records (xian zhi) published by every Chinese county during the
late 1980s and 1990s provide the most comprehensive Chinese-language materials; these often give
data on the pattern of land ownership before and after reform.
3
For details of the 1981–3 land reform, see Wang and Zhou (1985), Luo (1985), Ash (1988),
Kelliher (1992), Zhou (1996), the various provincial histories of agricultural cooperation (such as
HNH 1990) and the County Records previously mentioned. Chung (2000) is the best source for the
rates of decollectivization (both national and provincial) given in this paragraph. Contrasting views
of land reform’s impact are outlined in McMillan et al. (1989), Hinton (1990), Lin (1992), Liu (1994),
Bramall (1993, 2000a), Putterman (1993) and Carter (1999).
Chinese Land Reform
109
not spell out the precise mechanisms at work in the Chinese case.4 However, it is
clear from their theoretical and China-specific discussion that they have three
channels in mind. Firstly, the extent of ‘urban bias’ is said to have declined after
Mao’s death as a result of improvements in the internal terms of trade (GKI
2002, 311). Secondly, the 1980s and 1990s saw the ‘. . . liberalization of output
markets and improved access to inputs’ (GKI 2002, 311), presumably bringing
about improvements in allocative efficiency. Thirdly, they implicitly assume that
China’s pre-reform agriculture suffered from ‘landlord bias’ in factor and product markets, leading to suboptimal total factor productivity (GKI 2002, 284–7).
Thus land reforms favouring small-scale family farming (as China’s are said to
have done) raise total factor productivity. The emphasis in the GKI analysis of
China is firmly on the third of these channels, namely the favourable output
effects of the removal of landlord bias via land reform; market liberalization and
the reversal of urban bias is touched upon only in passing. The re-creation of the
small-scale peasant economy in China and across East Asia was therefore desirable on both intrinsic and instrumental grounds. Income inequality and poverty
were reduced, and output growth accelerated.
Both these GKI claims are scrutinized in the discussion below using some of
the new materials which have been released on Chinese agriculture over the last
two decades. The availability of new information on the local effect of land
reform following the publication of xian zhi (County Records) for China’s 2500
plus counties allows us to examine the effects of the first land reform with greater
precision than hitherto. And the passage of time, along with the publication of
more reliable data on agricultural value-added and patterns of land ownership,
now makes it possible to assess more accurately the long-run impact of the land
reform of 1981–3.5 The final part of the article looks at the broader East Asian
context.
THE FIRST CHINESE LAND REFORM, 1947–52
The Impact of Land Reform on Income Inequality
It is difficult to delineate the precise impact of land reform on Chinese income
distribution because of data limitations and the role played by other factors
4
Their theoretical discussion focuses on the one-off gains to output and employment from land
reform but their discussion of China places much more emphasis on the acceleration in long-run
agricultural growth. It is not difficult to think of ways in which short-run changes in output could
produce faster long-run growth via investment and technical progress, but GKI are silent on these
dynamic issues. Moreover, it is by no means certain that faster long-run growth is an inevitable
consequence of higher short-run output. Re-distribution in a poor economy raises the consumption
share at the expense of the investment share, and the net result could easily be a fall in total investment and in the pace of technical progress, precipitating a slower rate of growth.
5
Time series data on provincial agricultural value-added have been published in NBS (1997, 1999).
The results of the 1996 land survey have been made available on the website run by the Guojia tongjiju
(this organization has recently changed the translation of its name from the State Statistical Bureau to
the National Bureau of Statistics; I call it the NBS throughout this article).
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Chris Bramall
during the transition across the 1949 divide. Survey evidence certainly exists.
The figures collected by J. Lossing Buck (1937) during 1929–33 in his massive
survey of Land Utilization in China (a survey which covered 16,786 farms) yield
a gini coefficient of 0.33 for per capita income (Roll 1980, 48–50). By contrast,
the National Land Commission survey of 1934 (which surveyed some 1.7
million households) generates a gini of 0.44 for household income (Roll 1980, 46–
7). Both these surveys suggest an unequal distribution of rural income, though
not perhaps the extreme inequality characteristic of much of contemporary
sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.6
However, both pre-war surveys were problematic. The National Land Commission did not sample the south-western provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and
Guizhou, where tenancy was widespread (NARB 1934, 62). Buck was forced to
rely on a small number of his students for his agricultural surveys. In consequence,
his sample was biased towards relatively well-off areas (the home villages of his
students). He often employed averaging techniques which tended to flatten out
the distribution of land ownership; according to Arrigo, ‘Because this procedure
repeatedly averaged very large farms with relatively small ones, it effectively
smoothed out the variation in landownership. . . .’ (1986, 348).7 Finally, Buck
aggregated crop volume data to produce an estimate of per capita farm income by
using a collage of market prices, drawn from different locations and from different
years (Buck 1937, 280). This procedure only makes sense in an economy where
regional price variations are small and where prices are comparatively stable from
one year to another. In the China of the 1930s, however, there was immense
local and year-on-year variation caused by speculation and warlordism; it therefore
makes little sense to produce national estimates of farm income by aggregating a
collection of necessarily unrepresentative price data. What is needed is some sort
of estimate of equilibrium or ‘normal’ prices.
The data on the distribution of rural income in the aftermath of the 1947–52
reform are sparse. The only useful nationwide data are given in Li (1959). This
source provides estimates of per capita production collected for the purpose of
setting the agricultural tax rate in the early 1950s. However, its publication date
– the middle of the Great Leap Forward, when extraordinary claims for agricultural production were the norm – must cast some doubt on its accuracy. In
addition, Li’s data refer only to crop income; additional information is needed to
estimate total income. Nevertheless, if we put aside these data concerns and
make a direct comparison between rural inequality in the 1930s and in 1952, it
6
Rural gini coefficients are hard to obtain (and difficult to compare because of differing definitions
of rural) but overall gini coefficients serve as a proxy because of the large proportion of the population living in rural areas in poor and middle income countries. By the standards of contemporary
Brazil (a gini coefficient of 0.61 in 1998), Chile (0.57 in 1998) and Colombia (0.57 in 1996), or
Nigeria (0.51 in 1997), Zambia (0.53 in 1998) and South Africa (0.59 in 1994), China’s interwar
inequality was not acute (IBRD 2003, 236–7).
7
The ‘objectivity’ of the analysis was further compromised when Buck threw in his lot with the
Kuomintang in the mid-1930s; his Department of Agricultural Economics (based in Nanjing and
later Chengdu) was even commissioned by the KMT to carry out several agricultural surveys to help
re-direct farmer support away from the Communists (Stross 1986, 182).
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Table 1. The distribution of income by class and by region, 1951–2 (kg of grain
equivalent)
Region
1
2
3
4
5
6
Income per head
(all classes)
Rich
peasants
Middle
peasants
Poor
peasants
Landlords
900
625
450
350
250
150
1650
1150
800
625
450
270
1000
700
500
385
275
165
750
500
380
300
210
125
750
500
380
300
210
125
Note: The ‘regions’ identified here were selected for the purpose of determining the
rate of agricultural taxation. They comprised non-contiguous counties and districts
which had in common only their average level of income. Region one, for example,
comprised 107 counties covering six widely dispersed areas: the Yangzi delta district
around Lake Taihu, Hunan’s Dongting lake region, southern Heilongjiang province,
two districts in Inner Mongolia around Baotou and Hohhot, the Lijiang area of
Yunnan province, and the north-western part of Xinjiang province.
Source: Li (1959, 136).
does appear that GKI are correct in claiming that land reform made the rural
distribution more equal. According to the pioneering work of Roll (1980), the
only study to have made a direct comparison, the rural gini coefficient for
per capita income declined from 0.33 in 1929–33 (Buck’s data) to 0.22 in 1951–
2 (Li’s data).
However, this fall in inequality did not mean the creation of the egalitarian
peasant farming system claimed by GKI. In fact, Li’s data on rural income
distribution in 1951–2 show that Chinese land reform left in place a dominant
rich peasant class (Table 1): rich peasant income was more than double that of
poor peasants in every Chinese region. Furthermore, land reform did little
to reduce regional inequalities. For example, in the 343 (mainly mountainous)
counties of region 6, average incomes were only a sixth of those in 107 counties
in the richest region.
Perhaps even more striking is the change in the income share of the various
deciles of the population between the 1930s and the early 1950s. To be sure, that
group of households identified as ‘landlord’ were stripped of the bulk of their
land, which was re-distributed to middle, poor and landless peasants. But rich
peasants were typically deprived only of the land they rented out, and therefore
left with considerably more land per capita than middle and poor peasants. As
Roll’s (1980, 76) analysis shows, the poor undoubtedly gained from the process;
the share of the bottom decile rose from 2.5 to 5.1 per cent. However, the share
of the richest 10 per cent declined only slightly, falling from 24.4 per cent of
income in the 1930s to 21.6 per cent of income in 1952. It is therefore clear that
many of the rich peasants were barely affected – hardly the sort of change one
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Chris Bramall
might associate with an ‘egalitarian’ reform.8 Indeed, there are strong parallels
between the first Chinese land reform and the Japanese land reform of the early
Meiji period. As will be discussed further below (see China’s Experience in East
Asian Development), the latter was also a ‘wager on the strong’; it dispossessed
the absentee landlord class (the daimyo) and instead conferred ownership rights
on Japan’s cultivating landlords. These latter have been widely portrayed as the
real agents of progress in the Meiji period (Dore 1965) and it was not until the
occupation of the late 1940s (as with China in 1955–6) that Japan was to experience
a more radical land reform.
The first Chinese land reform was inegalitarian not by accident but by design.
Its purpose, as set out in the 1950 Agrarian Reform Law, was to safeguard the rich
peasant economy. It was feared that egalitarianism might lead the rich peasants
to side with the landlords (as they had done in parts of China before 1947) and
perhaps undermine the very process of rural revolution; it would certainly have
de-motivated China’s most dynamic and entrepreneurial rural class. As importantly, radical land reform was perceived as being likely to cause the loss of
economies of scale by reducing average farm size. The June 1950 pronouncement
of Mao himself at the Third Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee, a statement echoed two weeks later in a Report on the Question of Land Reform delivered
by Liu Shaoqi, made Party policy abundantly clear on the rich peasant question:
Accordingly, there should be a change in our policy towards the rich
peasants, a change from the policy of requisitioning their surplus land
and property to one of maintaining the rich peasant economy in order to
facilitate the early rehabilitation of rural production and the better to isolate
the landlords and protect the middle peasants and lessors of small plots.
(Mao, 6 June 1950, 29)
Thus the Chinese Communist Party saw the preservation of the rich peasant
economy as a way to promote economic growth and ultimately poverty relief.9
A reduction in income inequality was an important policy goal, but it was to be
subordinated to the need to isolate the landlord class and to promote rural growth.
This policy began to change in the mid-1950s as agrarian policy became increasingly more radical and collectivization started to be pushed as the best solution to
the problem of how to accelerate agricultural growth. But even as late as 1954,
two years after the completion of land reform and in the midst of rising hostility
towards the rich peasant economy, Party rhetoric still envisaged that the destruction of the rich peasant class would be a protracted process. According to Article
8
GKI are not unaware that the Chinese land reform of 1947–52 preserved the rich peasant economy;
their own table shows that average rich peasant land holdings were double those of poor peasants
even after land reform. But they downplay the point, characterizing the reform as ‘radical land
confiscation and redistribution’ when it was nothing of the kind (GKI 2002, 310).
9
Buck would have approved: ‘. . . the problem of land distribution is not one of equal division of
land among all the people, for then no family would have enough land upon which to earn a living,
but rather one of the development of farms of an economic size for each family farm, so that each
may have a satisfactory standard of living’ (Buck 1937, 285).
Chinese Land Reform
113
Eight of the 1954 Constitution ‘The policy of the state toward rich-peasant
economy is to restrict and gradually eliminate it’.
The peasantry which emerged in the aftermath of China’s first land reform
therefore continued to be differentiated by income. Those differentials were less
than during the pre-war period, but GKI do their cause little service in
downplaying the extent of rural inequality in 1952. Mao may have exaggerated
the pace of subsequent differentiation in order to justify collectivization in 1955–
6; there is certainly some evidence that rural credit cooperatives and progressive
land taxation helped to hold the process in check (Shue 1980). But GKI are
assuredly culpable in portraying the Chinese peasantry which emerged in the
wake of the land reform era as an undifferentiated mass.
Agricultural Growth under Family Farming, 1952–5
We turn now to the impact of China’s first land reform on growth. According to
GKI, the reform positively influenced growth because post-reform small farms
generated higher yields than larger, pre-reform farms, an outcome that – they
argue – reflected the existence of an inverse relationship between farm size and
land productivity across the Chinese countryside.
Yet the data we have for Republican-era China are not kind to the inverse
relation. Buck’s (1937, 273) Land Utilization study concluded that there was no
firm relationship between farm size and yields:
It is sometimes assumed that yields on small farms are larger than those on
large farms because of supposed greater intensity of culture on the small
farms. Actually there is no significant difference between yields on farms in
the various size-groups . . .10
The basis for this conclusion was emphasized by Arrigo in her re-working of
Buck’s data: ‘Labor input is usually higher on small farms, but it cannot
be concluded from this that yields must be higher . . .’ (1986, 317). This was
because large farms were able to offset their lower labour intensity of production
by planting high-value cash crops, by hoarding crops until well after the harvest
when market prices were closer to their peak (poorer farmers typically had little
choice but to sell their crops immediately to pay off debts) and because their land
was more fertile. A more recent analysis of the surveys carried out by the
Japanese-run South Manchurian Railway Company in northern China in the late
1930s and early 1940s also concluded that there was little evidence of an inverse
relation (Huang 1985).
Yet even if we accept that the inverse relation did hold in Republican China,
that is no good reason for supposing that it continued to hold in the mid-1950s:
10
Note, however, that Buck (1937, 285) believed that the aim of Chinese agricultural policy should
be to maximize agricultural output per worker, not yields; surplus labour would be better employed
in industry than in agriculture. Using this criterion, he concluded that average farm size in 1929–33
was well below minimum efficient scale. Additional research carried out in western China in the
1940s served only to reinforce his assessment; 80 per cent of farms were too small (Buck 1947, 7).
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Chris Bramall
Table 2. Agricultural growth in China, 1914–80 (per cent per annum)
1914/18–1931/36
Rawski
Yeh
1952–5
1955–80
Output growth
Per capita output growth
1.6
0.8
3.6
2.6
0.6
Neg
1.3
0.5
Regime
landlordism
family farming
collective farming
Notes: (i) Growth rates are for real agricultural value-added, where agriculture covers
forestry, farming, fisheries, livestock and household sidelines; the value-added series
explicitly omits other types of rural industry. (ii) Pre-1936 growth at 1933 prices.
Rawski’s estimate of pre-war growth is more recent, but many scholars prefer the
older Yeh series. (iii) Fifty-one per cent of rural households had joined advanced
cooperatives by February 1956, making that year the first of collective farming. As we
have seen, the percentage of production teams adopting family farming rose from 5 per
cent in December 1980 to 38 per cent by October 1981, which suggests that we should
take 1980 to be the last year of collective farming. (iv) Post-1949 growth rates are
derived from the latest official index of real agricultural value-added (NBS 2002). This
index links together several constant price value-added series, which use 1952, 1957,
1970 and 1980 prices, respectively. As will be discussed below, Liu and Yeh (1965)
argue that the rate for 1950–5 exaggerates the true figure.
Sources: Yeh (1979, 126); Rawski (1989, 330); NBS (1999, 1, 2002, 53).
land reform itself might have undermined the relationship. For example, the
abolition of rents could easily have reduced labour intensity (depending upon the
magnitudes of the income and substitution effect);11 the reduced rate of surplus
appropriation in the wake of land reform allowed Chinese farmers to achieve a
subsistence income level more easily, and they may well have responded by
reducing labour inputs and hence yields. From this perspective, high yields on
small family farms in pre-war China – if they existed – were a symptom of
distress rather than a sign of progress, an altogether different perspective on the
world of the peasant to that offered by GKI. The fact that land reform was so
successful in alleviating such distress would, in such circumstances, undermine
the very basis of GKI’s analysis.
The evidence needed to test directly for the existence of an inverse relation after
land reform does not exist. However, the indirect evidence – the rate of agricultural
growth as derived from the official Chinese data – tends to support the claims of
GKI. Agriculture performed badly during both the pre-war period and the era of
collective farming, with per capita output barely rising at all. By contrast, Chinese
agriculture performed comparatively well between 1952 and 1955 (Table 2).
11
Lower rents on the one hand encourage a household to switch its labour from (say) earning
industrial wages back to farming (the substitution effect), thus raising labour intensity in farming.
On the other hand, lower rents allow a household to work less hard to achieve the same income level
(the income effect), thus lowering labour intensity in farming.
Chinese Land Reform
115
The positive assessment of Chinese land reform offered by Griffin et al. is
buttressed by evidence of sustainability. Agricultural growth may not have been
fast enough to allow industrialization on the scale desired by the planners; this
perceived ‘failure’ provided one justification for collectivization in 1955–6.
Nevertheless, the agricultural growth that occurred between 1952 and 1955 was
accompanied by an expansion of irrigated area, boding well for the continuance
of growth. There are very considerable data discrepancies. Aggregation of the
latest National Bureau of Statistics provincial data produces an all-China figure
(excluding Tibet) of 16.3 million hectares for effectively irrigated area in 1952
and 23.4 million hectares for 1957, suggesting an annual growth rate of 7.5
per cent (NBS 1990, 1999). By contrast, the equivalent figures released by the
Ministry of Water Resources in the early 1980s are 21.1 million hectares for 1952
and 27.4 million hectares for 1957, which produce a growth rate of only 5.4 per
cent (Nickum 1995, 87). Nevertheless, it is apparent from either measure that
irrigated area rose sharply in the 1950s. This finding is of considerable significance
because one of the criticisms often directed against family farming is that coordination problems make it difficult to carry out large-scale water conservancy
programmes. Chinese family farming does not appear to have been afflicted by
this problem in the middle of the 1950s. Indeed, the growth of irrigated area
during the 1950s was faster – from, of course, a much lower base – than under
collective farming (3.3 per cent per year between 1957 and 1978).12
Nevertheless, two cautionary notes are in order about the pace of agricultural
growth in the mid-1950s. First, a per capita agricultural growth rate of 1.3 per
cent per annum was hardly spectacular. To be sure, the rate exceeded those
achieved under collective farming and before 1949. However, one would be hard
put to build any extravagant claim for Chinese land reform on so flimsy a foundation. Given the low standard of living of the rural population at the beginning
of the 1950s, growth at such a pace was not going to effect any major transformation in rural lifestyle for many decades to come. Furthermore, this modest
performance needs to be set against the potential of Chinese agriculture in the
1950s. This potential was probably much greater than pre-war because the impact
of land reform was to eliminate what was essentially a parasitic non-resident
landlord class and with it an outflow from agriculture in the form of rent. As a
result, a greater proportion of the surplus (i.e. output less ‘necessary’ consumption) was retained by the agricultural sector and could be used for investment.13
12
Though, of course, it does need to be emphasized that local government played a key role in
coordinating the efforts of farm households and in mobilizing the peasant workforce. In no sense was
the expansion of irrigated area a ‘spontaneous’ product of small-scale family farming.
13
It is, of course, true that part of this surplus was extracted by the Chinese state after 1949. The
central issue in assessing the potential of Chinese agriculture in the 1950s is therefore to determine
whether pre-war surplus extraction via rent exceeded post-1949 extraction by the state via agricultural taxation and the internal terms of trade. My judgement is that pre-war extraction rates were
greater, but we should note that it is exceptionally difficult to measure intersectoral resource flows in
any unambiguous fashion, especially in the Chinese context. The main difficulty lies in determining
which set of prices should be used to value agricultural inflows and outflows in the absence of free
markets (grain procurement prices were fixed by the Chinese state in December 1953 and other
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Chris Bramall
Table 3. Alternative estimates of Chinese grain production in the 1950s (million tonnes;
grain includes soya and tubers)
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
Growth, 1952–5
(per cent per annum)
NBS 1959
Current official
(MOA 1958)
Liu and Yeh
Weather
154.4
156.9
160.5
174.8
182.5
185.0
163.9
166.9
169.5
184.0
192.8
195.1
176.7
180.4
184.5
186.4
184.3
185.0
good
average
bad
good
bad
average
4.0
3.7
1.8
Sources: NBS (1959); MOA (1958, 1989); Liu and Yeh (1965).
The second reason for caution is that the official data used in Table 2 understate levels of production at the beginning of the 1950s, and therefore exaggerate
the growth rate for 1952–5. Consider the record of the grain sector, the most
important subsector of agriculture (Table 3).14 The currently accepted series for
grain production was first published by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1958
(MOA 1958, cited in Walker 1984), and features in all the main Chinese statistical
publications of the 1980s and 1990s (NBS 1982, 1999, 2000a; MOA 1989; NBS
1990). The series puts output in 1952 at 163.9 million tonnes and generates a 3.7
per cent growth rate between 1952 and 1955. These figures are somewhat lower
than those originally published by the NBS in Ten Great Years (NBS 1959),
which have 1952 output running at 154.4 million tonnes, and growing at 4.0 per
cent for 1952–5, but the difference is not startling.15
However, the trouble with these official estimates is that they both suggest
an implausibly low level of production in the early 1950s.16 There are three
prices shortly thereafter). It is not merely a question of deciding which set of (distorted) Chinese
prices best approximates equilibrium prices (the framework used by Ishikawa 1967). As Sheng (1993)
rightly argues, the problem is that unequal exchange between agriculture and non-agriculture occurred throughout the entire Maoist period in the sense that the state systematically depressed agricultural prices and inflated non-agricultural prices in order to extract resources from agriculture. Thus
the prices for 1952, 1957 and 1979 (which have been used to measure resource flows in the literature)
all under-state the true scale of resource transfer out of agriculture. The literature on these matters is
rather uniform in concluding that net outflows from agriculture peaked during the 1950s (see, for
example, Ishikawa 1967 or Sheng 1993), but there is little agreement beyond that.
14
The Chinese convention is to include both potatoes and soyabeans in grain.
15
The Nongcun daquan series has potatoes weighted at 25 per cent before 1962, and at 20 per cent
thereafter. Walker (in Ash 1998, 184) argues that the 1950s potato data should be weighted at 20 per
cent to ensure a consistent series. For the impact of differing conversion rates in 1952, compare
Walker (1984, 202), where grain output is 163.9 million tonnes (25 per cent weighting), and Walker
in Ash (1998, 204), where output is 160.6 million tonnes (20 per cent weighting).
16
By 1957, the statistical reporting system was working extremely well; output data for that year
are as reliable as anything published prior to the late 1980s. The problem lies with the data for the
early 1950s.
Chinese Land Reform
117
problems with the data for 1952–5. Firstly, the new statistical system was in its
infancy in the early 1950s and therefore the NBS (itself only founded in 1952)
was forced in the early years to rely on pre-war National Agricultural Research
Bureau (NARB) crop reporting system. This was problematic because we know
from detailed local studies that the NARB’s figures for pre-war cultivated area
were gross under-estimates; land was under-reported for tax avoidance reasons.
Secondly, the production figures imply an implausibly low level of food consumption in 1952 (Liu and Yeh 1965, 46).17 For these two reasons, Liu and Yeh
arrived at their own estimates of agricultural production in the early 1950s and
these produce significantly lower growth rates for 1952–5. Thirdly, there are
good political reasons why the NBS – both then and now – should produce data
that attest to both the effectiveness of family farming in the 1950s (it is, after all,
the blueprint for the current system) and to the failure of collective farming.
Under-estimating production in 1952 and over-estimating it in 1956 (the start
of collective farming) serves these political imperatives rather well. Political
considerations may, for example, explain the apparent leap in grain production
in 1956, a year of poor weather and one in which production must have been
disrupted by the sheer pace of collectivization. Liu and Yeh’s series – suggesting
grain output in 1956 was lower than in 1955 – seems much more plausible.
Of course, it may be that Liu and Yeh are too pessimistic. For example, using
the (revised) official data, Piazza (1986, 92) estimated that calorie intake in 1952
from all sources averaged 2083 kilocalories per capita per day, not far from an
adequate level of calorie consumption. This in turn suggests that the official
estimate of output in 1952 is not entirely implausible. The strength of Piazza’s
approach is that it was based upon the construction of a detailed food balance
sheet; a more recent study arrived at a very similar figure for 1952.18 Furthermore, the study of Liu and Yeh, funded as it was by the US Air Force, was
arguably subject to biases of its own. Finally, we cannot ignore the fact that
Walker (1984, 202), in his exhaustive examination of Chinese grain data for the
1950s, was content to accept the official 1958 MOA data. On the other side of
the coin, however, we must note that Perkins (1969, 190–9), in his massive study
of long-run Chinese agricultural development, reached the conclusion that
land reform was of marginal importance in increasing output. It led to ‘some
improvements in incentives’, but the growth of the 1950s also reflected recovery
from wartime disruption, the ‘extension of traditional methods’ and ‘improvements in the statistical reporting system’. For Perkins, the essential constraint
on Chinese agricultural growth was diminishing returns to traditional inputs, a
problem for which land reform was no answer.
If we accept the Liu and Yeh revisions, the implications for the GKI claim are
dramatic. Just as the Liu and Yeh figures reduce the rate of growth of grain
17
Liu and Yeh based their assessment on the data originally published in Ten Great Years (NBS
1959). However, the revisions to the data are not large enough to affect this particular line of
criticism.
18
Wang et al. (1993) put calorie consumption at almost exactly 2000 kilocalories per day in 1952.
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Chris Bramall
production for 1952–5, so they also reduce the growth rate of total agricultural
production: the annual growth rate of agricultural value-added between 1952 and
1955 falls from the official NBS (1999) estimate of 3.6 per cent to only 1.6 per
cent (Liu and Yeh 1965, 54, 132, 140). A comparison of this result with the
growth rate of output under collective farming given in Table 2 leads to a striking
conclusion: Chinese agriculture grew faster during the era of collective farming
(2.6 per cent per year) than it did under family farming in the 1950s. On these
data, the ‘superiority’ of small-scale family farming is anything but apparent.
The Relationship between Inequality and Agricultural Growth
Chinese agriculture, then, probably performed less well in the immediate aftermath
of land reform than the conventional wisdom as embodied in the work of GKI
suggests. Equally significantly, in so far as growth did take place in the mid1950s, the process was driven if anything by inequality rather than by equality.
The preservation of the rich peasant economy in the land reform process
probably helps to explain why Chinese agriculture was able to generate any
growth at all after 1952. An analysis of the data for 61 counties drawn from
across China shows that the growth of grain production was negatively related
to the 1952 yield, reflecting the impact of diminishing returns to the existing
technology; it was harder for counties that had already achieved high yields by
1952 to raise them further given the absence of modern agricultural inputs. More
significantly, the sample results reveal a positive relation between growth and
the ratio of rich to poor peasant land holdings. Thus growth tended to be higher
in those counties where the distribution of land was biased in favour of the rich
peasantry. In those counties where land reform had been more radical, i.e. where
land had been taken from rich peasants and transferred to poor peasants, growth
rates were slower (Bramall 2000b).
Admittedly, further analysis suggests that this result may not be entirely
robust. As an additional test of the relationship, I have looked simply at the data
for Jiangsu (an approach that controls for province-specific effects). For the 21
Jiangsu counties on which there are data on both yield trends and the ratio of rich
to poor peasant landholdings (many of the County Records did not provide these
data), the regression results do not fully support the contention that inequality
was a spur to growth. The Jiangsu relationship does appear to have been positive,
but the coefficient on the ratio of rich to poor peasant per capita landholdings is
not significant at the usual 5 per cent level:19
19
Here, g (GRAIN) is the growth of grain output during 1952–5, YIELD is the ratio of grain yields
in 1952 and 1985 (which serves as a proxy for the level of agricultural development in any county at
the start of the 1950s) and RPR is the ratio of rich to poor peasant per capita land ownership. Figures
in parentheses are t statistics. Three counties where grain production actually fell between 1952 and
1955 – probably because of bad weather – have been excluded from the regression. I follow the usual
methodology in interpreting these results. The value of R2 is low but that largely reflects the omission of variables. The t statistics are more important, and therefore the finding that the t statistic for
RPR is less than 2 – the usual rule of thumb for statistical significance – suggests that the greater
proportion of land in the hands of rich peasants did not tend to promote growth.
Chinese Land Reform
119
ln(gGRAIN) = − 0.29 + 0.049(lnRPR) − 0.086(lnYIELD)
(+ 1.13)
(− 3.13)
Adj R2 = 0.31; n = 18
Nevertheless, there is still little comfort to Griffin et al. in these new results for
Jiangsu province. If there was a relationship between the distribution of land and
growth, it seems if anything to have run from inequality to growth (because of
the positive sign of the RPR coefficient), rather than in the reverse direction
suggested by GKI. That the relationship does not show up more strongly in the
Jiangsu sample may reflect the distorting effect of bad weather; 1954 in particular
saw extensive flooding in many parts of the province. But it could mean that,
even though elements of the rich peasant economy were preserved, land reform
still went too far by breaking up many of Jiangsu’s largest farms.
THE LAND REFORM OF 1981–3
The Growth of Agricultural Output
GKI seem to be on more solid ground in their claims for the land reform of
1981–3. This swept away the system of collective farming and, in contrast to the
first land reform, was a ‘wager on the weak’ in two respects. First, the reform
began in some of the poorest parts of China. In villages where per capita incomes
averaged 300 yuan or less, 77 per cent had introduced the new system of baogan
daohu before 1982. By contrast, only about 35 per cent of villages where incomes
averaged between 651 and 900 yuan had followed suit by that time, and the
figure for villages with incomes above 900 yuan was just 16 per cent (Li 1993,
32–3). Second, the assets of collective farms were distributed in a comparatively
egalitarian way during this second reform.20 According to a survey of 272
villages in 1984–5, land had been allocated on a per capita basis in 70 per cent of
cases and according to a combination of per capita and per worker considerations
in a further 21 per cent of villages (AS 1988, 16). Li’s (1993, 33–4) data tell a
similar story: in 69 per cent of villages, land was distributed on a per capita basis
and in a further 25 per cent it was distributed partly on a per capita basis, and
partly on a per worker basis. In the poorer villages, per capita distribution was
very much the norm.
There is no doubt that income poverty fell across rural China in the wake
of the second land reform. In 1978, using the official poverty line, about
260 million (33 per cent) of China’s rural population lived in absolute poverty.21
20
Female-headed households, however, were treated less generously ( Judd 1992, 1994) and female
landlessness is currently a problem (Zhu 2000). In that sense, the egalitarian nature of China’s second
land reform ought not to be exaggerated.
21
The percentages here are at best approximations because of uncertainties about the true size of the
rural population. The Census data collected in 1982, 1990 and 2000 show that China’s rural population hovered at around 800 million between 1982 and 2000, rising from 21 to 36 per cent of the
national total; this 800 million is the one I have used to calculate the rural poverty rate. However,
China’s growing urbanization in the 1980s and 1990s was partly due to administrative fiat with many
counties being redefined as cities without any real justification.
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Chris Bramall
By 1983, the figure was down to 123 million, or about 15 per cent of the rural
population (IBRD 1992, 140). The most recent official data show that, though
the rate of rural poverty reduction fell during the 1990s, the headcount was
down to about 28 million (4 per cent) of the rural population by 2002 (NBS
2003, 13). Although these data are taken from unreliable income and consumption surveys (discussed further below), there is no reason to doubt the sharply
downward trend. Few countries in the world have come even close to matching
this performance.
The proximate cause of this reduction in rural poverty was rapid agricultural
growth during the 1980s and 1990s. To be sure, much post-1980 agricultural
growth reflected increased output of livestock, fish, vegetables and sideline
products, rather than increases in the production of those crops that had been the
mainstay of the Maoist agricultural economy. Maddison (1998) has estimated in
detail the levels of agricultural output in 1978 and 1994 using FAO data on
output and (1987) producer prices. These calculations show that fishery and
sideline output grew annually by over 9 per cent during 1978–94. Moreover, the
combined output value of pork, eggs and chicken (the key livestock products)
rose annually by 8.4 per cent between 1984 and 1999. By contrast, crop production grew slowly: my estimates for a sample of 17 farm products (valued at 1987
prices) produce an annual growth rate for crop output of just 1.5 per cent for
1984–99.22 This growth rate was significantly slower than the growth rate of 3.3
per cent achieved between 1965 and 1978, the heyday of collective farming. Even
the growth rate of 1.5 per cent per annum achieved after 1984 was possible only
because of sharp increases in vegetable production; although systematic data do
not exist, Maddison’s estimates of production in 1975 and 1994 show vegetable
output value as a share of cereal output rising from one-fifth to almost one-third.
Still, this finding of sluggish crop sector growth does not invalidate the
GKI claims for land reform. After all, it has long been argued that one of the
disadvantages of collective farming was its adverse effects on livestock and other
non-grain crops. If we are to evaluate properly the impact of the return to family
farming, we need to look at changes in overall agricultural growth and not just
crop sector output. These changes are shown in Table 4, which uses the latest
official data on agricultural value-added (measured on a GDP basis).
Table 4 places collective farming in a favourable light by excluding the years
of the Great Famine (when output collapsed).23 Even so, it is evident that the
Chinese agricultural sector performed much better after the family farm became
22
The 17 crops examined (using volume data from NBS 2000a and MOA 1989) were rice, wheat,
corn, gaoliang (sorghum), coarse grains, tubers, soyabeans, peanuts, rapeseed, sesame, cotton, hemp
crops, sugar cane and beet, tobacco, tea and fruit. Together these account for around two-thirds of
total crop value.
23
It is interesting that a weather-based trough-to-trough comparison – 1980 compared with 1960 –
produces a growth rate for collectivized agriculture of 3.7 per cent per year, a rate faster than that for
1952–5 (even accepting the official data for the latter). However, this biases the comparison too
much; collective farming was abandoned for a short period in many parts of China in the early 1960s.
It was restored only during the Four Cleanups campaign of the mid-1960s, and therefore 1965–80
offers a better delineation of the period of mature collective farming.
Chinese Land Reform
121
Table 4. The growth of agricultural value-added, 1965–2001 (real growth rates;
per cent per annum)
Agricultural
output
Agricultural output
per capita
Agricultural system
2.4
9.9
4.0
0.3
8.4
2.8
collective farming
decollectivization
family farming
1965–80
1980–4
1984–2001
Notes: (i) I have experimented using 1978, 1987 and 1995 prices in conjunction with
volume data for a sample of 17 key farm products, plus eggs, chicken meat and pork,
to produce a genuine constant price series. These experiments show that 1987 prices are
most favourable to the post-1983 era and 1995 prices are least favourable, but the
difference between the various results is slight. I have therefore relied upon the official
comparable price series for the analysis which follows. (ii) 1980–4 is best viewed as a
transition period. 1980 was the last year of the collective and 1984 the first full year of
family farming.
Sources: as for Table 2.
the dominant system of production in the mid-1980s. The growth path of the
late 1960s and 1970s saw output growing at around 2.4 per cent per year. During
the transitional years of 1980–4, a combination of factors (discussed more fully
below) enabled the growth rate to leap to a remarkable 10 per cent per year.
Thereafter output growth stabilized, with production increasing annually by
about 4 per cent during the late 1980s and across the 1990s. Evidently, therefore,
Chinese agriculture was able to shift on to a higher growth path in the mid1980s. The issue, however, is whether we can infer a causal role for land reform
in the process.
Identifying the Impact of Land Reform
Part of the answer to the question of causality is to be found in provincial
patterns of growth. Table 5 brings together newly released provincial data on the
growth of agricultural value-added. Four distinct phases of growth are identified: the Dazhai years (1965–76); the era of readjustment and limited experimentation with alternative forms of collective farming (1976–80); the years of
decollectivization (1980–4); and, finally, almost two decades during which the
restored system of family farming has operated (1984–2001).
The first cycle was that of 1965–76. In this phase, the system of remuneration
pioneered by the famous Dazhai production brigade was propagated across rural
China under the slogan nongye xue Dazhai (‘In agriculture study Dazhai’).
Workpoints were awarded on the basis of public appraisal of work; over time
this system resulted in a narrowing of differentials because commune members
were increasingly unwilling (mainly for social reasons) to voice peer criticism in
public meetings. The Dazhai system also saw the suppression of almost all forms
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Chris Bramall
Table 5. Growth rates of agricultural value-added in China’s provinces, 1965–2001
(per cent per annum)
Province
Anhui
Fujian
Gansu
Guangdong
Guangxi
Guizhou
Hebei
Heilongjiang
Henan
Hubei
Hunan
Jiangsu
Jiangxi
Jilin
Liaoning
Nei Menggu
Ningxia
Shaanxi
Shandong
Shanxi
Sichuan
Xinjiang
Yunnan
Zhejiang
Median
1965–76
1976–80
1980 –4
1984 –2001
4.2
2.8
5.3
0.7
4.9
1.0
0.7
2.4
3.9
2.1
3.0
3.4
1.9
1.5
3.3
3.8
1.0
2.1
3.3
2.1
2.0
–1.1
3.1
3.3
–0.7
7.2(+)
–1.2
6.2(+)
5.1(+)
4.0(+)
4.9(+)
3.9(+)
3.8
3.3(+)
5.5(+)
9.9(+)
5.8(+)
5.9(+)
1.3
–3.1
3.5(+)
4.2(+)
5.3(+)
–3.5
13.5(+)
8.6(+)
2.4
7.8(+)
9.3(+)
7.1
9.3(+)
8.1(+)
5.1
11.6(+)
14.1(+)
10.3(+)
12.0(+)
9.9(+)
7.7(+)
12.0(+)
7.5(+)
20.0(+)
10.5(+)
17.5(+)
13.3(+)
7.5(+)
12.9(+)
15.7(+)
4.1
12.8(+)
9.6(+)
7.4
4.1
7.3(+)
5.0
5.2
7.0(+)
3.5
4.5
5.2
5.4
4.0
4.2
3.9
4.6
5.8
5.6
6.4
4.1
4.4
4.8
2.8
4.0
6.9
4.2
3.6
10.1
4.5
2.5
4.6
Notes: (i) Growth rates calculated from official comparable price indices. The provinces
listed are China’s main agricultural producers. (ii) The period 1980–4 saw the process
of decollectivization started and finished in most of China’s provinces (even in Anhui,
only 21 per cent of teams had introduced family farming by December 1980. That
province is therefore best regarded as still collectivized in 1980). Guizhou – China’s
poorest province – was the exception. There, decollectivization was already well
advanced by the middle of 1980; 1979 was the last year of collective farming.
To ensure a comparison of like with like, the 1980–4 period is extended to 1979–84
for Guizhou, and the earlier phase becomes 1976–9. (iii) ‘+’ indicates a rise in the
growth rate compared with the previous period.
Source: NBS (1999, 2002).
of private sector activity. It remains unclear just how far this egalitarianism was
responsible (the pattern of intersectoral flows was hardly favourable to farming),
but there is little doubt that the agricultural growth rate was very slow, averaging less than 2.5 per cent per annum.
Chinese Land Reform
123
Agricultural growth rates began to accelerate during 1976–80, the second
phase identified in Table 5. Even though the weather was poor – Kueh’s (1995,
299) index shows that the weather was about 29 per cent worse than the post1949 average during 1976–80 – agricultural growth rates doubled during 1976–
80. No less than 17 of the 24 provinces recorded an acceleration in growth. Most
interestingly of all, the median growth rate for these provinces was remarkably
similar to the long-run median growth rate achieved after 1984. In other words,
Chinese agriculture moved on to a higher growth path during the late 1970s.
Why did growth accelerate between 1976 and 1980? Of one thing we can be
sure: it was not due to the restoration of family farming; agricultural production
remained collectivized to all intents and purposes except in a few counties in
Anhui during the late 1970s. In fact, of China’s provinces, Guizhou was the only
one where over 50 per cent of production teams had adopted the baogan system
before 1981, and even there decollectivization had barely begun before early 1980
(Chung 2000, 64–5).
In some cases, more limited institutional reform helps to explain accelerating
growth. Sichuan province provides the best illustration. It did pioneer agricultural reform, but not in the sense that family farming was restored. Rather, the
aim was to make the system of collective farming function more effectively. To
that end, most aspects of the Dazhai system were abandoned, piece rates were
re-introduced, private markets began to reappear, procurement quotas were
reduced in poor and mountainous areas under the slogan of tiyang shengxi (‘recuperate and multiply’), and attempts to promote the double-cropping of rice in
locations where the growing season was too short were abandoned by 1978
(Bramall 1995). These changes go far towards explaining why Sichuan was able
to achieve an agricultural growth rate of over 13 per cent per year in the late
1970s. Nevertheless, this offers an inadequate general explanation of accelerating
growth across China. Sichuan was the exception; elsewhere, little institutional
change occurred before the Third Plenum in December 1978. The period is often
characterized as one in which the ‘Extension of Left Errors’ occurred (Zhu 1992),
and this is reflected in the data; only 14 per cent of teams had adopted the baochan
system (itself well short of being a return to family farming) by the end of 1980.
By way of offering a general explanation of accelerating growth, we must
look to the relaxation of a series of supply side constraints during the late 1970s.
Firstly, the supply of chemical fertilizer markedly increased; the amount used
grew by 21.5 per cent per annum between 1976 and 1980, compared to 8.5 per
cent per year between 1970 and 1976 (NBS 1999, 32). New high-yielding
varieties of hybrid grain and cotton began to be planted after 1976 (Stone 1988).
Thirdly, many of the large-scale irrigation networks begun in the 1960s were
completed; irrigated area leapt by 25 per cent between 1970 and 1979 (NBS 1999,
32). In short, the prospects for Chinese agriculture were utterly transformed by
the arrival of (indigenously developed) Green Revolution technology in the 1970s.
More than anything else, this new technological package made possible the
transition to a new, faster, growth path – before the re-introduction of family
farming.
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Chris Bramall
To be sure, the era of decollectivization (1980–4), the third phase identified in
Table 5, heralded a quickening in the pace of agricultural growth. The provincial
median rose to a heady 10 per cent, more than double the rate recorded during
1976–80; in only four of the main 24 producing provinces did the growth rate
slow. By any standard, the growth rates achieved during 1980–4 were incredibly
high. No less than 13 provinces achieved double digit real growth rates; gross
farm production in 1983 leapt by 27 per cent in Liaoning and by 37 per cent in
Jilin (NBS 1999). This was an unprecedented performance for an agricultural
economy. Even during the early 1960s, in the wake of the collapse of production
during the Great Famine, China’s agricultural production grew no more quickly
than this (output grew by 11.4 per cent per year between 1962 and 1965).
Superficially at least, the growth spurt of 1980–4 offers overwhelming
support for the GKI hypothesis. The reality, however, was rather different. The
output surge was brief; the suggestion that land reform caused the surge is
doubtful; and provinces which decollectivized early appear to have grown no
more quickly than those which decollectivized late. Let us discuss each of these
in turn.
Firstly, the surge in output was very short-lived. The long-run growth rates
recorded after 1984 were much slower than those for 1980–4, and were in any
case no higher than those attained during the late 1970s.
Secondly, and most importantly, the causal relationship between land reform
and the growth surge is doubtful. For one thing, state-set procurement prices
rose by over 20 per cent in 1979 (Sicular 1989; Han and Feng 1992). As the
internal terms of trade were biased against agriculture throughout the Maoist era
(Sheng 1993), this increase in procurement prices generated positive income and
substitution effects, encouraging the take-up of Green Revolution technology by
collective farms. For another thing, the weather was kind; good weather in 1982,
1983 and 1984 helped to make the output surge of those years appear as if it were
due to the restoration of family farming. Still, we should not exaggerate its
impact; Kueh’s (1995) index shows that the weather during these years was by
no means exceptional by post-1949 standards. Additionally, the abandonment of
the Dazhai system, and the implementation of the other reforms pioneered in
Sichuan, no doubt contributed significantly to the growth spurt. Nevertheless,
there is no question that decollectivization had a purely statistical effect: the
restoration of private farming led to a vast reduction in output under-reporting
of the sort identified by Oi (1989).24 The outputs of private plots no longer had to
be hidden, and the products of ‘black land’ (increases in sown and even cultivated
area achieved during the 1960s and 1970s suppressed by production teams) began
to show up in the official data as the land was transferred to household use.
Thirdly, the causal role of family farming is undermined by the fact that those
provinces that decollectivized early experienced a ‘growth bonus’ during 1980–4
24
Growth rates were also boosted by widespread deforestation as property management was
transferred to households; for example, the output of the forestry sub-sector rose by 34 per cent in
Heilongjiang in 1983 (NBS 1999).
Chinese Land Reform
125
that was no larger than that enjoyed by provinces that decollectivized late. One
would have expected the reverse. A province decollectivizing early ought to
have out-performed a late decollectivizer during 1980–4 because, although both
would have enjoyed the (alleged) one-off gains from decollectivization, the early
province would have gained from being on its higher growth path at an earlier
date. For example, Anhui ought to have done better than Heilongjiang during
1980–4 because Anhui would have been on its new growth path by 1982 (90 per
cent of Anhui production teams had adopted baogan by February 1982), whereas
Heilongjiang was at a comparable stage only in late 1983. However, if we look at
cases of late and early decollectivization, there is no evidence that the second
group did better than the first. The early group (Anhui, Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhou
and Ningxia) saw their median agricultural growth rate rise from 3.5 per cent
during 1976–80 to 9.3 per cent during 1980–4, a ratio (the growth bonus) of
2.7.25 However, the late group (Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces) did
equally well; their median growth rate rose from 3.9 to 10.5 per cent.
To be sure, this type of evidence cannot be regarded as a decisive refutation of
the decollectivization hypothesis. The weather may have been relatively better in
the three north-eastern provinces, such that late decollectivization mattered less.
Alternatively, it may be that output under-reporting was greater there than in
the provinces that restored family farming earlier. A third possibility is that
family farming was more potent in the affluent late decollectivizers than in the
poorer early decollectivizers (but if it was the case that family farming suited the
affluent much more than it suited the poor farmer, this result hardly provides
much comfort for GKI). Nevertheless, there is little in this evidence to indicate
that land reform played the crucial role in raising output growth in the late 1970s
and 1980s. GKI are hardly alone in making expansive claims for Chinese
decollectivization, but the fact remains that the evidence is equivocal.
The Costs of Decollectivization: Chinese Agriculture since 1984
In fact, the abandonment of large-scale farming probably did more harm
than good in the Chinese context. This outcome is not surprising: the primary
motivation behind the imposition of decollectivization in 1982–3 was undoubtedly political. Deng’s new regime was eager to build support in the countryside,
and decollectivization served that purpose by creating a new class of cultivators
who had a large stake in the new system. After 1983 there was no going back to
collective farming; the decollectivization settlement had made certain of that.
The problems left in the wake of this settlement were several. The most
obvious was the small size of the holdings created, which led to a large proportion of land being lost to paths and boundaries, conflict over access to irrigation
systems, and which made even small-scale mechanization extremely difficult. A
large 1990 survey covering 5389 villages (cun) found that 51 per cent of holdings
25
Data on the progress of decollectivization by province are to be found in Chung (2000, 64–5).
126
Chris Bramall
were of less than 5 mu (about 0.3 hectares) in size in 1986 and that, by 1990, the
percentage had risen to 54. The problem was (not surprisingly) particularly
severe in densely populated eastern China, where the figure was 66 per cent
(MOA 1991, 37). More recent data from China’s massive 1997 land survey
(which collected data for 1996) show that 79 per cent of household holdings were
of 1 hectare or less in size.26 This figure is even higher than the figures recorded
for Japan – 73 per cent in 1955 and 71 per cent in 1986 – where successive
post-war governments have made enormous (but largely unavailing) efforts to
increase farm size (Kojima 1988, 733–4).27
The problem of small farm size was compounded by parcellization. Buck’s
(1937, 181) survey found that the average pre-war Chinese farm was divided into
5.6 parcels and that 11 per cent of farms were divided into more than ten plots.
The same problem re-emerged in the aftermath of the second land reform. Driven
by equity considerations, farmers were assigned land of equivalent quality during land reform, i.e. they were given plots of good, medium and poor-quality
land scattered across the village. As a result, land holdings averaged 8.4 mu per
household in 1984–5, typically divided into 9.7 parcels. The size of parcels seems
to be have been relatively similar across much of China (outside Manchuria): 0.8
mu on the outskirts of Shanghai and 0.74 mu in Anhui, for example. Of the 946
mu cultivated in one village in Yu xian (Henan province), the average household
farmed 11.8 parcels and no parcel exceeded 3.5 mu (AS 1988, 17, 173, 207, 281).
This 1984–5 survey may well have exaggerated the extent of parcellization.
The bigger 1990 survey (mentioned above) found that the average household
managed 5.9 parcels in 1986 and 5.5 parcels by 1990 (MOA 1991, 36). But even
these figures – strikingly similar to Buck’s pre-war estimate – suggest extensive
parcellization. This, and the return of other pre-war phenomena (such as the
location of graves in the middle of fields because of feng shui considerations) did
little to promote efficient farming.
In addition, there is little evidence of an inverse relation between size and
yields in post-decollectivization China. One study of 800 rural households found
that yields tended to increase with farm size; farms of over 30 mu produced yields
of 508 yuan, compared with a yield of 403 yuan per mu on farms of up to 2.5 mu
in scale. However, the relationship was not monotonic – the lowest yield was
registered for farms of between 5 and 20 mu – and therefore the regression
coefficient was not significant (Li 1993, 138–41). Another study of grain farming
in Wuxi found that yields were highest on farms of between 8 and 10 mu – and
lower on farms that were both smaller and larger than this (Wuxi xian zhi 1994,
202). Some recent research has looked at the impact of collective-era farmland
26
These data for 1996 exclude areas of grassland and woodland managed by households. If these
two categories are included, 30 per cent of holdings in 1996 were of less than 0.2 hectares in size, and
a further 53 per cent of between 0.2 and 0.6 hectares. It is unclear whether the figures in the 1990
survey include grassland or woodland but, if so, they appear very consistent with the 1996 results.
27
The Chinese leadership has increasingly recognized the need for consolidation. The Sixteenth
Party Congress (November 2002) agreed to permit the sale of agricultural land, ostensibly in order to
promote this very goal.
Chinese Land Reform
127
consolidation schemes in Jiangsu province and the CAD (comprehensive agricultural development) programmes introduced after 1988 (Liu et al. 1998). These
programmes focused primarily on consolidation and defragmentation, and on
improving the efficiency of irrigation and drainage. The creation of larger farms
reduced land loss to paths, boundaries and irrigation systems, reduced conflicts
between households over access rights (particularly to water) and made irrigation
easier. More importantly, their effect was to raise both labour productivity and
yields (the latter primarily because of the greater degree of multiple cropping
made possible by improved irrigation). All of this strikes at the heart of GKI’s
assumption of an inverse relation between yields and farm size in peasant agriculture. And, whilst one might argue that consolidation schemes have allowed peasant
agriculture to perform better without changing its underlying structures, it needs
to be pointed out that farmland consolidation has proved extremely expensive.
As a vehicle for farmland consolidation, collective farms are hard to beat.
Finally, a number of scholars have pointed to the problems caused by the
insecurity of property rights in China’s villages, one of the abiding legacies of
the decollectivization settlement (Zhu and Jiang 1993; Nyberg and Rozelle 1999;
OECD 1997). One problem, at least from an orthodox property rights perspective, is the re-allocation of land by village governments. Although this does not
happen very often (except in response to demographic change), a number of
tensions have arisen. When, for example, central government decided to replace
the 15-year contracts awarded at the time of decollectivization by 30-year contracts in the late 1990s, many village governments refused to comply; contracts
of 5–10 years in length were the norm instead. Other problems arise because of
disputes between the village (the old production brigade) and work groups (the
old production team). It is hard to be sure whether these problems have significantly affected production; some scholars think not (Kung 1995). But it is clear
that Chinese rural realities were far removed from the picture painted by GKI in
which usufruct rights were ‘permanent and heritable’.
The Impact of Land Reform on Poverty and the Distribution of Income
What of the effects of the second Chinese land reform on the distribution of
income? The first GKI claim is that rural income inequality declined during the
transition from collective to family farming; the evidence cited is a fall in the rural
gini coefficient from 0.32 in 1978 to 0.22 in 1982. The second claim is that the
subsequent rise in the rural gini during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s
reflected growing inequalities in non-farm income – not rising inequality of crop
income.28 Family farming, it is alleged, held in check the rise in rural inequality.
The first claim is the least plausible of all the GKI statements about Chinese
land reform. The gini coefficient of 0.32 given for 1978 is unsourced, but it
28
GKI (2002, 311) give a rural gini of 0.42 for 1995. This is taken from Khan and Riskin (1998) and
is based upon a re-analysis of official data. These official NBS (2000b, 18) estimates for the late 1990s
show the gini stabilizing at between 0.33 and 0.34 in the late 1990s.
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Chris Bramall
Table 6. Estimates of income inequality in rural China, 1978–84 (gini coefficients)
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
IBRD (unpublished)
IBRD (1985)
IBRD (1992)
NBS
0.32
0.28
0.26
0.23
0.22
0.25
0.27
n/a
0.257
0.237
0.231
0.225
n/a
n/a
0.21
n/a
n/a
0.24
n/a
n/a
0.26
0.212
n/a
0.241
0.241
0.232
0.246
0.244
Note: Ahmad and Wang (1991) cite the estimates of a ‘World Bank Working Group
on Poverty in Developing Countries’. These estimates cover the period 1978–86 and
are re-produced in the first column of this table. The figures for the late 1970s first
appeared in World Bank publications of the early 1980s; an early estimate for the rural
gini for 1979 was 0.315 (IBRD 1983, 313) and this figure is presumably the basis for
the 1978 (sic) figure used by the working group referred to by Ahmad and Wang.
Sources: Ahmad and Wang (1991, 46); NBS figures from NBS (2000b, 18).
Other data from IBRD (1992, 23) and IBRD (1985, 29–30).
presumably comes from the book edited by Griffin and Zhao (1993); page 61 of
this book gives a time series for the rural gini and the figure of 0.32 appears for
1978. The reference given there is to a paper by Ahmad and Wang (1991, 46),
who in turn cite a ‘World Bank working group’. However, as Table 6 demonstrates, the World Bank has progressively revised downwards its estimate of the
Chinese rural gini for the late 1970s. By 1992, the original figure of 0.32 had
long been abandoned and superseded with the official Chinese estimate of 0.21
shown in the table; this and other official data are cited in the Bank’s most recent
work (IBRD 1997, 17). Right from the start, therefore, GKI are on very shaky
ground in attempting to substantiate a claim of falling inequality by citing a
World Bank study long since discarded by the Bank itself.
The official Chinese data now accepted by the World Bank provide some
support for the GKI view that Chinese land reform was equalizing: the rural gini
dips from 0.241 in 1981 to 0.232 in 1982, before beginning a steady rise to reach
0.342 in 1995 (NBS 2000b, 18). But to base a general conclusion on a fall in the
gini coefficient of 0.009 is not very wise. By this token, if a fall of 0.009 is to be
made the basis of a general theory, the fall of 0.015 between 1986 and 1987 –
long after decollectivization – ought also to be thoroughly discussed.29 Furthermore, the inherent fragility of the NBS data needs to be accorded much more
weight than it receives from Griffin et al. The best that can be said about the
29
The position taken by GKI that inequality in China in the late 1970s was not especially low is
markedly at variance with the pro-collective view expressed in Griffin (1982). There the claims of
Khan that ‘the degree of income inequality in rural China [at the end of the 1970s] is remarkably low’
were vigorously defended, not least by the proposition that the distribution of income from private
plots was an equalizing force under collective farming.
Chinese Land Reform
129
surveys that provide the data for official estimates of the rural gini is that they
were thoroughly unreliable during 1978–85, and are still not to be trusted.
Sample size was small; the surveys were carried out in areas that were richer than
the average; (affluent) rural households whose main source of income was rural
industry or commerce were simply excluded; and illiterate households were also
either excluded or under-sampled (Matsuda 1990; Bramall and Jones 1993; Bramall
2001). It is true that we have no proper time series alternative to these official
data.30 But that is hardly a good reason to accept them as uncritically as GKI do.
The second point made by GKI about the post-1981 income distribution is
marginally more persuasive. As a number of studies have established, including
work by Griffin and Khan themselves, the income derived from the farm sector
has partly offset the disequalizing effects of income earned in the non-farm sector
(Griffin and Zhao 1993; Khan and Riskin 1998, 2001; Riskin et al. 2001). Rich
households receive the bulk of their income from the non-farm sector and without their (relatively greater) landholdings, poor households would be still more
disadvantaged. As household surveys carried out by the NBS (2000b, 45–6, 66)
show, poor households – those with an average income per head of between 100
and 200 yuan in 1999 – managed 3.1 mu of land per capita in 1999. This was well
above the average per capita holding of 2.1 mu, and households in the top income
bracket (over 5000 yuan) managed barely 1.9 mu per capita. Access to land, in
other words, was not the basis for prosperity in the Chinese countryside, but
it helped to offset the disequalizing effect of income earned in rural industry and
commerce. Nevertheless, a cautionary note is very much in order here. Access to
land for poor households in China serves to mitigate rural inequality, but the
only reason that land is such a valuable asset is price support for agriculture
rather than the greater efficiency of small-scale farms. It is the favourable movement in the internal terms of trade after 1979 that has been primarily responsible
for holding in check the wage differential between farm and non-farm employment in the Chinese countryside.
However, the main problem with the GKI claim is that the pro-poor distribution of arable land in the 1980s and 1990s was a product of local state intervention, not the operation of family farming. The most common system of
land management is the liangtianzhi (two-field system).31 This involves households being allocated two types of land in addition to private plots (MOA 1991;
Zhu and Jiang 1993; OECD 1997).32 Firstly, households received kouliangtian
30
An alternative Chinese survey (AS 1988) shows a sharp increase in the rural gini between 1978
and 1984 but collected no data for the intervening years.
31
The liangtianzhi covered about 550 million mu in 1990, or about 38 per cent of arable area. It was
therefore only one of many land management systems in operation (MOA 1991, 33). The system did
not work in many poor areas because they simply did not have enough land to provide more than
kouliang land.
32
Private plots were under household control throughout the collective era and have remained so
since 1981; though ownership of this land is still formally vested in local government, it is to all
intents and purposes privately managed land. In mid-1980s Shanghai, the average private plot was about
0.7 mu in size, very similar to the average (0.8 mu) for a parcel of village-owned land (AS 1988, 173).
The NBS (2000b, 54–66) survey for 1999 found that private plots averaged 0.38 mu per household.
130
Chris Bramall
(grain ration land) as part of the decollectivization settlement. This land was usually allocated on a per capita basis, the aim being to ensure that each household managed enough land to meet its subsistence requirements. Secondly,
households could usually sign a contract with the village to manage additional
land (responsibility land or zerentian) in return for agreeing to meet a part of the
procurement quota imposed by central government. In 1990, zerentian land accounted for 360 million mu in those parts of China using the liangtianzhi system;
kouliangtian accounted for a further 180 million mu (MOA 1991, 33). In addition,
Chinese villages retained a reserve of land. Some of this was used to provide feed
for pigs,33 or rented out (chengbaotian) in return for a fee and an undertaking from
the household involved to meet an additional part of the village’s procurement
quota.34
However, the key point about land management was that the allocation of
land was not set in stone at the time of decollectivization. As households died out
or migrated, kouliang land would revert to the land reserve controlled by the
village government. Conversely, the village could allocate more kouliang land to
households that were growing in size. Here decision-making seems to have been
much more influenced by considerations of equity than growth; even in eastern
China, where income levels were much higher, 61 per cent of zeren land was
contracted out by the village on a per capita basis in 1990 rather than concentrated in the hands of a small number of entrepreneurial farmers; in western
China, the figure was 91 per cent (MOA 1991, 34). Local governments have also
continued to exercise tight control over secondary land markets. As a result, the
market for land in rural China is far removed from that found in most other
countries, whether developed or under-developed. Usufruct rights are to some
extent permanent and heritable, but the system is altogether less market-driven
than GKI imply; insecurity of tenure would be a better way to characterize the
system, as we have noted earlier. Ultimately, it is local government that is the
source of this insecurity. But equally, it is village government that ensures that
income from farming has an equalizing effect on the rural income distribution –
not the operation of family farming per se. In saying that ‘. . . land reform,
by providing remarkably equal access to land, helped to contain the forces
generating inequality’, GKI (2002, 312) neglect the decisive role played by local
government.
CHINA’S EXPERIENCE IN EAST ASIAN PERSPECTIVE
GKI claim that there are strong parallels between the experience of China and
other East Asian countries. They are right: land reform was as unsuccessful
across East Asia as it was in China, and for much the same reasons.
33
As it operated in Suzhou in the mid-1980s, the system – rather logically – was called the santianzhi,
or three-field system (Wang 1986, 21).
34
Chinese terminology is confusing here because chengbaotian is often used to refer to all privately
managed land except private plots; see NBS (2000b, 66).
Chinese Land Reform
131
Japan
The Chinese case is mirrored by that of Japan, which also experienced two land
reforms in the modern era. The first, which occurred at the start of the Meiji era,
is ignored by GKI. Yet there are clear parallels between it and the Chinese land
reform of the early 1950s. Between 1868 and the completion of revisions to the
new Land Tax law in the middle of the 1870s, Japan transferred formal ownership rights from absentee landlords to the relatively well-to-do peasant farmers
who actually cultivated the land. Dore (1965) described this process as a Stage
One land reform during which ‘feudal landlords’ were displaced by ‘cultivating
landlords’. However, the farmers who were the main beneficiaries are arguably
better described as rich peasants than as landlords because they had no formal land
ownership (as opposed to use) rights prior to the reform. This re-distribution
aside, there was no attempt to eliminate tenancy, and feudal landowners even
received compensation in the form of government bonds; thus Japan’s early
Meiji reform was not especially ‘radical’. Dore did not discuss China explicitly.
However, he did discuss the Soviet land reform in the immediate aftermath of
the 1917 Revolution, categorizing that as a Stage One reform, and collectivization as a Stage Two reform (Dore 1965, 488–9). It is therefore to be inferred that
China’s land reform of the early 1950s was also a Stage One reform – and thus
equivalent to the Meiji land reform. Of course, we should not push the parallel
too far: China’s land reform was altogether more bloody – Japanese landlords
received compensatory bonds, whereas 800,000 of China’s were executed – and
much more of an effort was made to eliminate tenancy altogether. Nevertheless,
Dore’s typology does make some sense: China’s rich peasants had much in
common with the relatively well-to-do peasants of the late Tokugawa era in
Japan and both were the principal beneficiaries of land reform.
Opinion is divided on the impact of the first Japanese land reform. Dore
points to the favourable growth effects presided over by the new class of
‘paternalistic’ landlords. This assessment is supported by (revised) official data
that show agricultural output growing at around 1.7 per cent per year in the half
century after the Meiji restoration (Ohkawa et al. 1974). It may also be fairly
observed that growth would have been faster still but for the high rate of land
taxation, and that many Meiji landlords saw themselves as the vanguard of rural
modernization. Moore (1967) is much more sceptical of the contribution of
Japan’s ‘progressive’ new landlord class, arguing that it did little to promote
agricultural modernization or even an expansion of rural cultural horizons.
Noting, too, its ‘pious protofascist sentiments’, Moore even saw Japan’s
cultivating landlords as a threat to Japanese modernization. For him, ‘A class that
talks a great deal about its contribution to society is often well along the road to
becoming a menace to civilization’ (Moore 1967, 287).
Moore’s strictures are echoed in the writings of those who have examined
closely the Japanese output data. Nakamura (1966, 12) challenged the official data,
arguing that they greatly exaggerated Meiji growth rates by under-estimating
yields at the beginning of the Meiji era. His revisions reduced measured output
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Chris Bramall
growth from 2.4 per cent per annum between 1878 and 1917 to only 1 per cent
per annum, suggesting that later Meiji agricultural performance was decidedly
unimpressive. Now Nakamura arguably over-stated his case, but his critique did
lead to a downward revision of Meiji growth rates; the modern consensus is that
growth averaged around 1.7 per cent per year (Ohkawa et al. 1974; Hayami and
Yamada 1991, 245; Francks 1999, 115). Perhaps more importantly, even insofar
as Meiji growth was respectable, it owed much less to the new cultivating
landlords than it did to the diffusion of technology pioneered during the Tokugawa
era. There was little by way of invention or innovation and – in sharp contrast to
collective-era China – the proportion of land irrigated did not increase until the
1920s. As a result growth slowed after 1910, and per capita output actually
declined (Ohkawa et al. 1974). The real measure of the weakness of the agricultural
sector was Japan’s increasing reliance on imports from its colonies during the
interwar period (Hayami and Yamada 1991).
As for inequality, the debate continues on the extent and pace of the differentiation of the Japanese peasantry in the aftermath of the early Meiji land reform.
There is no doubt that the rate of tenancy increased; about 30 per cent of land
was cultivated by tenants in the early 1870s, rising to 40 per cent in 1892, 46 per
cent in 1910 and peaking at close to 50 per cent in 1930 (Ryo 1978, 97; Hayami
and Yamada 1991, 65). Much of the increase reflected the interaction of the Land
Tax (a lump sum tax payable in cash) and falling prices during the Matsukata
deflation of the early 1880s. Some, such as Norman (1940), argued that this
process of peasant expropriation led to rising poverty. Others have been less
pessimistic, arguing that rising off-farm income offset lower profits from
farming (Smethurst 1986). However, there is no doubt that inequality in rural
Japan was very high, and trending upwards. Using pre-war Japanese tax records,
new estimates made by Minami and others put the rural gini coefficient at around
0.43 in 1891–1900; this subsequently rose to around 0.54, where it remained
during the 1920s and 1930s (Minami et al. 1993, 361, 1998, 45). In other words,
the trajectory of the gini coefficient for income inequality seems to track that of
the tenancy rate rather closely. The Meiji land reform, as well as doing little to
accelerate output growth, thus served to usher in half a century of rising inequality.
The second Japanese land reform was carried out by the Allied forces of
occupation between 1945 and 1950, and was subsequently ratified by the new
Japanese government in 1952. The reform encountered little opposition. The
power of the landlord class had been weakened by the direct procurement of rice
by the Japanese government from tenant farmers after 1941, and there was much
support for the reform within Japan itself. Nevertheless, the reform was only
pushed through because it received the whole-hearted backing of MacArthur,
the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces. MacArthur’s central objective
was to put an end to the tenant unrest of the pre-war era, and thereby eliminate
both the social basis for Japanese militarism and the possibility of a successful
Communist revolution. The main pre-occupation of Allied opinion was with
the former; the Manchester Guardian undoubtedly expressed the view of many in
arguing that
Chinese Land Reform
133
The reform of agriculture is the first step in the reform of Japan. Raising
the standards of living of the peasantry will cut off Japanese industry’s
supply of cheap labour and will also result in a reduction of Japan’s military
manpower potential. . . . (Manchester Guardian 26 September 1945, 5)
But a conservative land reform also served to undercut popular support
for Communism, and therein lay its principal attraction for many in the US
administration.
As GKI (2002, 307) rightly observe, this second Japanese land reform
produced a more equal rural income distribution in the short run. However, the
long-term evolution of rural inequality in Japan is much less clear. Minami
(1998, 53) concludes that the rural gini had fallen to 0.348 by the late 1950s.
However, the data he uses seem to imply growing differentiation of the
peasantry in the aftermath of land reform; the rural gini rose from 0.316 in 1956
to 0.348 in 1959. Furthermore, a number of scholars have concluded that the
official Japanese data – all of which show a low level of inequality, independently
of the trend – are extremely unreliable (Bauer and Mason 1992). These doubts
were sufficient to persuade Atkinson et al. (1995) to exclude Japan entirely from
his officially backed comparison of post-war inequality in OECD countries.
It may be that off-farm earnings continued to offset inequalities in income from
farm production (as many scholars claim), but the data remain far too uncertain
for us to be sure. In any case, even if we accept the validity of the income data,
it is far from difficult to argue that the main reason for narrowing rural income
inequality was not the supposed efficiency of family farmers but massive government subsidies in the form of price support to rice farmers. In this respect, the
writings of Ann Waswo are representative of the literature in the weight they
give to ‘[t]he closing of a sizable income gap between the typical residents of
both countryside and city by means of price supports’; for the growing cadre of
part-time farmers, ‘Rice became a useful little earner’ (1996, 138, 140).
GKI are entirely silent on the impact of Japan’s second land reform on output
growth, and for reasons that become readily apparent. To be sure, agricultural
output rose significantly in the immediate post-war era, and some writers have
taken a positive view of the role played by land reform in the process (Dore
1959). However, Dore has often been accused of being over-optimistic, and of
having accepted uncritically the crude reductionist analysis offered by modernization theorists such as Rostow, whereby externally imposed land reform was
both a necessary and sufficient condition for agricultural development (Shimazaki
1966). More significantly, there is direct and indirect evidence suggesting that
land reform had little effect. The indirect evidence includes the finding for prewar Japan that there was little difference in yields between owner-occupied and
tenant farm (Kawagoe 1993). The more direct evidence suggests that land reform
stimulated consumption and demand growth, but that there was little effect on
farm investment (Kawano 1965; Kawagoe 1993). Furthermore, the evidence also
suggests that growth accelerated in the late 1940s at about the same pace in those
prefectures where land reform occurred late as it did in prefectures where land
134
Chris Bramall
Table 7. Growth rates of real agricultural output (per cent per year)
1960–70
1970–80
1980–90
1990–99
Japan
Taiwan
South Korea
4.0
–0.2
1.3
–1.6
5.2
2.3
2.0
–0.4
4.5
2.7
2.8
2.1
Sources: IBRD (various years); IBRD (2001, 194–5); State Statistics (Taiwan).
reform was early (Kaneda 1980). This last finding echoes our findings on China’s
provinces between 1980 and 1984.
The main reason for rising Japanese agricultural output in the immediate
post-war era was a combination of growing use of chemical fertilizer (Ohkawa
et al. 1970) and the effective use of the irrigation infrastructure created during the
1930s (Kawagoe 1993); across much of Asia, indeed, the release of the irrigation
constraint was the key to growth (Kikuchi and Hayami 1985). The growing
intensity of chemical fertilizer use in Japan in turn owed much to a massive
transfer of capital into the farm sector. As many economists have noted, the scale
of price support and protection was unprecedented; by the early 1980s, valueadded in rice production measured at world prices was actually negative (Van der
Meer and Yamada 1990). These intersectoral resource flows allowed an expansion
of farm sector production during the 1950s and 1960s (Table 7). By the end of
the 1960s, however, the scope for further growth was increasingly circumscribed
by the small scale of Japanese ‘family’ farming (Ouchi 1966). Hayami and Yamada,
two of the leading specialists on Japanese agriculture, put the problem bluntly:
‘The basic factor limiting Japanese agricultural productivity is the small farm
size’ (1991, 97). This analysis, echoed in the work of almost all who have looked
at the Japanese agricultural sector, underpins the repeated attempts at the promotion of farmland consolidation programmes by the Japanese state and testifies to
the long-run failure of the post-war land reform. Green Revolution technology
and intersectoral transfers helped to make Japan ‘safe’ from Communism, not
land reform.
Taiwan and South Korea
In the cases of Taiwan and South Korea, too, there is little doubt that agricultural
output growth shows clear trend deceleration in the aftermath of post-war land
reform (Table 7).
The literature on these two countries follows that on Japan in attributing
much of this slow growth to the inefficiencies generated by small-scale family
farming. It is true that slow agricultural growth in the 1960s was a consequence
of a wide range of inter-dependent influences. Few of the farmers surveyed by
Bain (1993, ch. 2) saw size as the main obstacle to modernization and, as shown
Chinese Land Reform
135
by the pioneering work of Lee (1971), there was a net outflow of resources from
Taiwanese agriculture in the post-war era. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s planners blamed
the post-war reform for many of the country’s subsequent agricultural problems,
mainly because it led to a proliferation of small farms operating non-contiguous
plots. In response, the government has pursued programmes of farmland consolidation ever since 1958–9, resulting in the Second Agricultural Land Reform
(SALR) of 1982 and the consolidation of some 377,000 hectares by 1995. These
programmes have undoubtedly promoted the substitution of capital for labour
via mechanization. However, they have also raised output, partly because consolidation increased arable area, but primarily because farmland consolidation
allowed more direct and efficient irrigation, which in turn has made possible
significant increases in the multiple cropping index (Liu et al. 1998). Nevertheless, it is widely acknowledged that a far more thorough-going reform designed
to increase farm size and reduce fragmentation is needed to raise land and labour
productivity.
As for the trajectory of rural income inequality in Taiwan and South Korea,
we can be certain of very little. The view expressed by GKI – that land reform
led to a comparatively equitable distribution of land and rural income – is widely
held. According to Rodrik (1996, 20), for example, the rural gini coefficients for
income were 0.34 and 0.31 in South Korea and Taiwan, respectively, in the early
1960s. However, it is rarely pointed out that these data are remarkably fragile.
In South Korea’s case, we do not have any data at all that pre-date the Farm
Household Economy Surveys (FHES) first conducted in 1961 and therefore
inferences as to the impact of land reform are little more than guesswork.
Secondly, the FHES is spectacularly unreliable because it excludes single-person
households and non-farm households resident in rural areas, the impact of which
is to both under-estimate true inequality and to distort the trend (Hart-Landsberg
1993, 200; Ahn 1999). The same problems afflict South Korean surveys of
urban income, and these have not been corrected even in the more recent Social
Statistical Surveys carried out by the National Statistical Office. Attempts to
correct these rural and urban biases produce considerably higher gini coefficients.
Unofficial estimates put South Korea’s overall gini for income inequality at around
0.40 in 1990 compared to the official figure of 0.32; a key factor in driving
inequality appears to have been growing inequality in land ownership (Ahn
1999, 71–3). In Taiwan’s case, the data are scarcely more reliable; as Simon
Kuznets pointed out some time ago ‘. . . we have to accept . . . the possibility of
wider inequalities in the conventional size distribution of income among households than are now indicated by the family survey reports’ (1979, 106).
CONCLUSION
GKI claim far too much for the impact of China’s land reforms of 1947–52 and
1981–3. Their analysis exaggerates the output gains of the 1950s, and over-states
the role played by family farming in accelerating agricultural growth in the
1980s and 1990s. It overstates the degree of equality in the countryside in the
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Chris Bramall
mid-1950s, and wrongly argues for a causal link from equality to growth. And
the analysis of GKI both mis-represents the path of income equality in the early
1980s, and ignores the critical role played by village governments across China
in re-allocating crop land on a regular basis to ensure that subsistence needs were
met. China’s experience parallels that of the other East Asian countries. Land
reform brought about a short-term improvement in the distribution of rural
income, but analysis of long-term inequality trends is bedevilled by data problems. Nor did East Asian land reform provide the foundation for sustained longterm growth. Only by means of a massive injection of resources into the farm
sector were East Asian governments able to maintain production and keep imports within politically acceptable limits. The East Asian economies have not
‘solved’ their agricultural problems. Rather, the problem has been by-passed:
industrial goods have been exported, and farm products imported in return.
It may be that the system of farming put in place in China in the early 1950s
and restored after 1981 is preferable to collective farming. And GKI are surely
right in their criticism of landlordism as practised in China before 1949. But the
superiority of family farming is far less marked than GKI claim and, in so far as
it has succeeded in raising output and checking the growth of income inequality,
the system has worked only because of extensive intervention by local government. If there are lessons from the Chinese experience, they are that peasant
farming works only when implemented and overseen by pro-active local government, and that technological modernization – based around HYVs (high yielding
varieties), chemical fertilizers and improvements in irrigation – is at least as
important as systemic reform in generating sustained increases in agricultural
production.
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