Land Reform Movement | |||||||||||||||||||
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![]() The land reform staff publicizing the Land Reform Law to peasants in 1950 | |||||||||||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 土地改革运动 | ||||||||||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 土地改革運動 | ||||||||||||||||||
Literal meaning | Land Reform Movement | ||||||||||||||||||
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History of the People's Republic of China |
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The Land Reform Movement, also known by the Chinese abbreviation Tǔgǎi (土改), was a mass movement led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Mao Zedong during the late phase of the Chinese Civil War after the Second Sino-Japanese War ended in 1945 and in the early People's Republic of China,[1] which achieved land redistribution to the peasantry. Landlords – whose status was theoretically defined through the percentage of income derived from exploitation as opposed to labor[2] – had their land confiscated and they were subjected to mass killing by the CCP and former tenants,[3] with the estimated death toll ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions.[4][5] The campaign resulted in hundreds of millions of peasants receiving a plot of land for the first time.[3]
By 1953, land reform had been completed in mainland China with the exception of Xinjiang, Tibet, Qinghai, and Sichuan. From 1953 onwards, the CCP began to implement the collective ownership of expropriated land through the creation of Agricultural Production Cooperatives, transferring property rights of the seized land to the Chinese state. Farmers were compelled to join collective farms, which were grouped into people's communes with centrally controlled property rights.[6]
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