Chapter 26 land reform

The more direct conflict is on the issue of land reform. Since the establishment of the Guangdong Land Reform Commission in October 1950, one-third of the cadres in Guangdong Province and nearly one-quarter of the cadres in the Central South Bureau have directly participated in the large-scale land reform movement that began in Guangdong in 1950. Before the end of the land reform movement, The Land Reform Task Force has about 123,000 members. “Municipal officials were directly involved in the land reform movement, partly because Guangzhou City was still governing a fairly large rural area consisting of 73 villages, and also because a large part of the landowners in the Pearl River Delta had commercial interests in Guangzhou.” Yang Yingbin Recalling that the complexity of land reform in Guangzhou lies in the fact that it is not only a rural issue, but also highly intersects with the urban economy.

The promotion of the land reform depends on the local cadres in Guangzhou to implement the land reform. The pilot land reform is selected from Xingning, Longchuan and Jieyang, the three counties with the deepest revolutionary foundation. "These three counties were used as pilot sites before the full launch of Guangzhou's land reform, because these three counties were once the bases of the guerrillas, and there were strong local Communist Party organizations. They are generally regarded as the best experimental fields for the introduction of new plans in Guangdong. "Yang Yingbin was the deputy head of the Longchuan Land Reform Subgroup at the time. He recalled that the slogan back then was "focus on the whole province and work on the three counties", but the land reform plan was based on the unified plan made by the Central South Bureau. After a rough survey of land property rights in each province, a detailed land reform plan was deployed.The Central South Bureau estimates that about 3.5% of the rural population should be classified as landlords, and that these landlords control about 30% to 50% of the arable land.

However, the urban-rural structure of Guangzhou is fundamentally different from that of other parts of the country, which makes it more difficult to draw clear boundaries in the social structure here than in northern cities. "Guangzhou's economy is highly commoditized, and its land holdings are obviously much smaller than those in the north. The typical landlords are small landowners, and it is usually difficult to strictly distinguish them from non-landowners, because many people who own more land than they can cultivate It is not easy to equate patriarchs with landlords.” Pu Xiangmin said, “In addition, should landlords engaged in commerce be classified as landlords or capitalists? In order to restore urban commerce, the government at that time The bourgeoisie is still a moderate policy of 'benefits to both labor and capital', which is in stark contrast to the harsh policy on landlords, and in Guangzhou, these two classes are likely to be the same people."

It seems too harsh to carry out land reform in Guangzhou with the unified standards of the Central South Bureau, and the local cadres in Guangzhou are unwilling to harm the commercial order that the city urgently needs to restore because of the land reform. In Guangzhou, there are indeed many industrial and commercial landlords who cannot hide their property. In Hong Kong, the store in Guangzhou was closed. What disappointed the Central South Bureau even more was that the three pilot counties of land reform not only failed to become "vanguards", but became the places where the land reform progressed the slowest.Objectively speaking, these guerrilla cadres who rose from the local area were supported by the gentry and overseas Chinese in the past, so it is difficult to really tear the face of the landlords in Guangdong and forcibly take back their property from them.Even many cadres' families are overseas Chinese themselves, and they are also land owners. "Many of our cadres above the regiment were born in the hometown of overseas Chinese. Xie Chuang, the deputy political commissar of the Guangdong Central Column, is from Kaiping. He himself worked in the United States before and joined the Communist Party in the United States. Later, he transferred his relationship through the Third International. Ou Chu recalled that overseas Chinese in Guangdong usually bought land and built houses in their hometown when they returned to China for the first time. Overseas Chinese in Kaiping also built famous watchtowers to protect local interests. Advanced weapons such as carbines purchased from the United States are also stored. "During the War of Liberation, we received a lot of help from overseas Chinese in terms of funds and weapons." Ou Chu said. Therefore, it is also one of the traditions of the southern game team to pay attention to protecting the interests of overseas Chinese. However, during the land reform period, Guangdong cadres generally felt that embarrassment.

On the other hand, dealing with the land occupied by overseas Chinese was a more difficult issue for the Land Reform Commission than dealing with industrial and commercial owners and landlords.At that time, it was conservatively estimated that nearly one-third of the families in Guangdong had various overseas ties, and they occupied one-fifth of the province's land. "How to distinguish whether overseas Chinese are laborers or capitalists? How to establish overseas Chinese family members who benefit from overseas properties?" Yang Yingbin recalled his experience of land reform in Longchuan and said: "Because we think this is a pilot project, it is relatively stable and has not expanded. On the offensive side, some people later criticized the land reform in the three counties as a 'peaceful land reform', and Li Jianzhen, the head of the delegation, was very unconvinced after hearing this."

But from the perspective of the central government, local cadres were obviously too tolerant of the landlords and rich peasants, and they did not resolutely implement the central government's land reform policy.They were severely criticized by the central government. The Changjiang Daily, the official newspaper of the Central South Bureau, published an editorial titled "Re-discussing the Peasant Movement in Guangdong," arguing that Guangdong's land reform was right-leaning. "The central government criticized Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian as the three 'turtles', the slowest in land reform. In 1952, the other two had already climbed up, but Guangdong fell behind." Yang Yingbin recalled.

Fang Fang, who was then the third secretary of the South China Branch and the first vice chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Government, had to take responsibility for Guangdong’s mistakes in land reform. Yang Yingbin, who served as Fang Fang’s political secretary, recalled: “In April 1952, Fang Fang and the Central Committee Tao Zhu, who was transferred from Guangxi to Guangdong, went to Beijing to attend the meeting. I went with him, but did not attend. We stayed at Ye Shuai’s home on North Chang’an Street. After the meeting on the first day, Fang Fang told me that the meeting was presided over by Chairman Mao himself , Chairman Mao criticized by name at the beginning of the meeting: Fang Fang, you have made two mistakes, one is the rightist movement of the peasant movement, and the other is localism in cadre policy.”

The rectification of the wrong line of Guangdong's land reform began to be intertwined with the rectification of Guangdong's "localism".As a result, about 1,630 northern army cadres received training in 8 counties in Guangdong to replace local cadres in Guangdong to participate in the next step of land reform. "When the land reform finally ended in Guangdong, about 6,000 northern cadres replaced the local cadres, sweeping away the compromising sentiment in the first phase of the land reform." Pu Xiangmin said, "Has the tough land reform hurt the commercial system under the old urban-rural relationship in Guangdong? , this may be a potential impact; more directly, it has brought about profound changes in the local party organization in Guangzhou.” Beginning in 1952, Guangdong was re-divided into five major regions, and the new organizational structure—provinces and districts—was more than before. The administrative structure of the government—the area should be larger, making it easier for Tao Zhu, the new secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, to give unified command to all cities and counties in Guangdong, including Guangzhou.