Draft Resolution on
Solving the Land Question
(April 1927)1

I. Principles:

(1) In the course of the national revolution, the land problem must be solved.
This means the redistribution of the land of large landlords, government land,
public land, and abandoned land to landless peasants and peasants with not
enough land to make a living. The national government should protect the land
of small landlords and the land of the fighting men who have worked hard for the
revolution.

(2) In order to solve the land problem, we must see to it that the peasants
have enough strength to gain and safeguard political power. Consequently, the
national government should aid the peasants in the countryside in their struggle
against the big landlords and all the other feudal forces.

II. Methods of implementation:

(3) The national government should immediately issue organizational regulations for organs of self-government in townships, districts, and xian, and also
select and dispatch personnel specializing in peasant affairs to individual townships, districts, and xian to guide and support them in organizing.

(4) The national government should urge individual provincial governments
to implement concretely all of our party's resolutions on the peasant issue, particularly the resolutions of the Joint Session of the center and the provinces, and
those of the third plenum of the Central Executive Committee.

(5) Party organizations in all provinces should quickly work with the peasant
This resolution has been translated from the text in Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 9, pp.
225-26, which reproduces the version given in Jiang Yongjing, Baoluoting yu Wuhan
zhengquan.

1. The available versions of this resolution are dated simply April 1927. It is probably
a text drawn up in late April, adopted at the Sixth Enlarged Meeting of the Land Committee on May 6, and submitted by the Land Committee to the Central Executive Committee
with their Report of May 9, translated above. As explained in the Introduction to this
volume, none of these resolutions were in fact put into force, because the top leaders in
Wuhan regarded them as too radical.
associations in their provinces to formulate, on the basis of the above principles
and according to the practical conditions in their provinces, concrete methods of
implementation for solving the land problem, and report them to the central party
organization for approval before the national government orders provincial governments to implement them.

(6) In order to root out the feudal forces in the countryside and prevent
reactionary forces from attacking the peasants, all provincial party organizations,
governments, peasant associations, and the civic groups designated by provincial
party organizations must organize popular tribunals to punish severely local
bullies, bad gentry, and all the reactionary elements who harm the interests of the
people.

(7) Agencies manufacturing weapons that are under the jurisdiction of the
national government should set aside between 5 and 10 percent of their products
to be supplied to peasants for them to form peasant self-defense forces; matters
related to the maintenance and distribution of weapons are to be dealt with by the
"People's Armed Forces Committee" to be organized by the Central Party Bureau.

(8) The national government should quickly survey the climate, water and
land resources, and amounts of harvest in all the areas, and fix the criterion for
small landlords as having no more than roughly 50 mu of fertile land per person
and no more than 100 mu of poor-quality land per person. Land ownership rights
may be enjoyed within such limits.

(9) The national government should immediately issue laws protecting tenants.

(10) The land currently owned by the officers and soldiers of the National
Revolutionary Army should be protected by the national government; those
without land should be given land to till by the national government after the end
of the revolutionary war. The details are to be spelt out by laws.

(11) The propaganda program for the land problem should be determined by
the Land Committee and approved by the Central Party Bureau.

III. Appendix:

The land to which this resolution refers is farming land. Such land as is used for
cattle raising, forests, mines, houses, and workshops does not come within the
scope of this resolution.