Chapter 66 Reclaiming Land: Three Benefits for Governments

The Communist Party appeared on the historical stage of China as a "workers' party". After the Kuomintang and the Communist Party broke up in 1927, it moved to the countryside and gradually evolved into a "peasant party".Most of its top decision-makers were born in peasant families, and they were the best among their contemporaries in grasping farmers' psychology and interest demands, and the land policy was the core.As early as the Jinggangshan period, the Red Army won support by "fighting the local tyrants and dividing the fields". The "Outline of Land Law" in 1947 played a decisive role in winning the hearts of the people.However, after the founding of New China, the Communist Party reversed its previous privatization stance in terms of land and rural policies, and launched a systematic collectivization transformation.

In September 1951, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China passed the "Resolution on Mutual Aid and Cooperation in Agricultural Production", encouraging farmers to use "land as shares" to form mutual aid cooperatives. This policy was resisted to varying degrees, and some places even violently resisted.By the end of 1952, there were more than 8.3 million agricultural mutual aid and cooperative organizations nationwide, and the participating farmers accounted for 40.% of the total number of farmers in the country. At the end of 1955, under the urgent request of Mao Zedong, primary cooperatives were upgraded to high-level cooperatives, and agricultural cooperatives were basically realized throughout the country in just one year. The number of peasant households participating in primary cooperatives accounted for 96.3% of the total number of rural households, and those participating in high-level cooperatives accounted for 96.3%. 87.8% of the total number of farmers.In 1958, the year of the “Great Leap Forward” of grain, high-level cooperatives were upgraded to higher-level people’s communes, forming a commune model of “militarization of organization, combatization of action, and collectivization of life.” By the end of the year, the original 740,000 nationwide The agricultural cooperatives became 26,500 people's communes with "one big and two public".

In other words, 11 years after the promulgation of the "Land Law Outline", the land allocated to farmers was taken back into collective ownership, and 500 million farmers were all brought into collective production and life.In a sociological sense, the clan social model based on the small peasant economy formed since the Ming and Qing Dynasties was completely destroyed. Since then, the Chinese have no "hometown".Because farmers lost the right to dispose of land transactions, they also lost ownership in essence, so the so-called collectivization is a form of nationalization.Yang Xiaokai pointed out that the people's communal land reform has fundamentally shaken Chinese people's confidence in property rights, and has also dug out the foundation of citizens' property rights, which has a fundamental impact on people's investment and business activities.

China is regarded as a classical market economy country, because of its long-term adherence to land privatization and commodity grain policies.When the government became the sole disposer of land resources, major changes occurred in the allocation of various resources. During the planned economy period, the country obtained three major benefits from land. The first benefit is to control food transactions and realize the "feedback" of agriculture to industry. In November 1953, the Government Affairs Council issued the "Order on the Implementation of Planned Grain Purchase and Planned Supply", proposing the "three determinations" policy of fixed production, ordered purchase, and fixed sales, requiring all parts of the country to use townships as units to determine the perennial The planned output and the quantity of the whole township's unified purchase and sales of grain, and the sale and purchase of grain are included in the overall plan of the state.This unified purchase and marketing policy has been implemented until 1985, which lasted for 32 years.According to calculations by Zhou Tianyong, a professor at the Central Party School, since the founding of New China, we have been providing rich primitive accumulation to cities and industries through the price difference between workers and farmers and the "scissors gap" between urban and rural areas. The accumulation provided by farmers for industrialization and urbanization is estimated to be as high as 300,000 billion.It can be seen that the funds required for industrialization are mainly generated by agricultural accumulation.

The second benefit is to promote the ticket economy and control urban prices for a long time under the condition of material shortage.The price of grain and agricultural by-products is the central axis of price fluctuations in a country. After the government controls the land, it can then control the price and supply, and finally achieve the planned goal of controlling demand. After the national unified purchase and sale of cotton yarn and cotton cloth in 1954, the policy of limited supply of cotton cloth was implemented in September with "cloth tickets", which were the first type of tickets related to industrial consumer goods. In August 1955, the rationed supply of grain by ticket was implemented. Since then, China has entered the "Era of Tickets". tickets to purchase.It is through this means that the government is able to ensure long-term super-stable prices across the country in a state of low production efficiency and material shortages.

The third benefit is to control the flow of population, and then absorb the surplus labor force in the city.The paramilitarized people's communes and the household registration system are interlinked, resulting in urban-rural divides. Peasants without tickets cannot buy necessities in the city, see a doctor or go to school, so it is impossible to enter the city at will. urban population pressure. In 1968, tens of millions of unemployed students appeared in the cities due to the "suspension of classes, suspension of work and revolution." Mao Zedong issued an instruction that "it is necessary for educated youth to go to the countryside and receive re-education from poor and lower-middle peasants". Over a period of time, more than 17 million people (accounting for about one-tenth of the country's urban population and two-fifths of the working-age population) were sent to the countryside, thereby relieving the pressure of urban employment in an extremely cruel way.

Peasants were a betrayed and dispossessed class throughout the planned economy period.They lost their land and were deprived of the right to enter the city. The wealth they created was transformed into national assets in a "scissors" way, but their quality of life did not get a corresponding improvement.Taking electricity consumption as an example, during the "First Five-Year Plan" period, more than 80% of the country's electricity was used for industry, urban household electricity accounted for 13.5%, and rural electricity accounted for only 0.6% of the country's electricity.From 1958 to 1978, the per capita income of Chinese farmers increased by less than 2.6 yuan in the 20 years.The state’s gains from land control did not end with the end of the planned economic system. After 1998, land transfer fees became an important source of income for local governments, which will be the content of the next lecture.