Among the peasants in Ruijin and Yudu, some support the slogan "Divide up
green crops unconditionally" put forward at the Tingzhou Conference. Some
support the slogan "Do not divide the green sprouts" of the Pitou Conference; the
argument of the latter is: "The land law must not be violated."4
The xian of the Northern Route redistributed land in May. The original tiller
was compensated for his initial costs at a rate of 600 cash for each dan of rice. In
Futian, rich peasants received no compensation for their land. Poor peasants got
one string of cash for each dan of rice from their land.
Chunhua redistributed land in March. At that time, the rice-seedlings had not
yet been transplanted. The land had merely been plowed once, and in some cases
a small amount of fertilizer had been applied. After land redistribution, no compensation was paid for the initial investment.
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NOVEMBER 1930 687
On the Northern Route, compensation for each dan of unhusked rice was 600
cash or one string of cash. The xian set the price of rice at four strings of cash per
dan before May; the rate of compensation was one-sixth or one quarter [of the
value of the crop]. At that time no land had as yet been redistributed. It was also
a time of famine. The intention, in setting the price of rice at four strings, was to
help poor peasants to keep down rice prices. But they continued to set the price
at four strings per dan after the harvest; "This is not right."
Last year in Yongxin xian, during the fifth lunar month, the government of
the Fifth District of the Xibei Special District stipulated that when land was
redistributed at the time rice crops were about to ripen, the person who took over
the land must pay the person who gave it up one yuan in silver for two Dans of
rice (200 jin, or one dan). For large rice paddies that harvest only one crop of
rice each year, the fifth month is the month shortly after rice-seedlings are
planted but before they have developed fully; the person who gives up such land
receives one string of cash for each dan (two Dan of unhusked rice). The xian
committee's decision was that land be obtained without compensation. But the
Fifth District did not receive the instruction of the xian committee, because of
difficulties of communication; so it acted according to its own decision.
The rich peasants in Yudu, Dongxiang, and the northwestern part of Ganxian
demanded that each dan (actually eight dou) of unhusked rice be compensated
for at the rate of two small foreign dollars (worth four strings of cash). The Party
did not allow this, and the land was taken without compensation.
The proper policy should be "get land without compensation; redistribute
both land and green crops." The families of landlords receive redistributed land
all the same, in the interest of uniformity. Landlords have more money, so an
additional levy is imposed on them. Vagabonds also get redistributed land because they are toilers. It is wrong for rich peasants to oppose redistributing green
land to vagabonds. Middle peasants do not have much land that is redistributed
away, so they are not affected. Although "upper poor peasants" who farm more
land are affected, they benefit in other ways which should satisfy them. The
majority of lower poor peasants, artisans and farm laborers support this method
completely. Cases in which people do not have the ability to farm the land after
green crops are redistributed may be handled according to the method of leasing.

7. The Integrated Equal Redistribution of Land

In the past, "villages" redistributed land equally using the "family" as the unit
and the original tiller as the standard. As a result, this benefited rich peasants but
not poor peasants. The appropriate policy should be: taking the township as the
unit, divide the total amount of land originally farmed by the people of the
township by the total population of the township (the total population of the
township is calculated by adding together the numbers of those who originally
farmed in the township, and those who originally farmed in other townships);
draw on the plentiful to make up for the scarce, and draw on the fat to make up
for the lean; land that can be transferred should be transferred (villages with
more land transfer some of the land to villages with less land); when land cannot
be transferred, people are moved (when the distance is too great to transfer the
land, only people can be moved). This method is called "the redistribution of the
originally tilled total acreage."

8. The Non-Laboring Population and
New System of Land Lease

When people without labor power lease their land to those who do have labor
power for them to cultivate, the tenants pay rent in kind to the landowners. In
Chunhua, Wan'an and Xinyu, tenants pay 40 percent of the crops as rent; in
Fenyi and Ningdu, tenants pay 50 percent; in Yongxin, tenants pay one-third. In
Futian (a district in Ji'an), land is divided into the three categories of superior,
medium, and inferior; rent for superior land is 40 percent; for medium-grade
land, it is 30 percent; for inferior land, it is 20 percent. This seems fairly reasonable.

Those who have no labor power and must lease out their land amount to 20
percent of the population throughout Chunhua, Anfu, Taihe, Xinyu, Fenyi, and
Xiajiang. They make up more than 20 percent of the population in Ningdu; this
is because more of the women there have bound feet. They account for only 5
percent of the population in Yongxin, since all the women there have normal
feet. Those leasing out land are mostly orphans, widows, cripples, old people,
and young children, as well as those who are engaged in revolutionary work.
What has just been said refers exclusively to the population of those who have
no one at all in the family with labor power, and must lease out their land. Those
who have no labor power themselves, but have someone in their families who
does engage in cultivation, so that they do not need to lease out their land, make
up a large proportion of the population. Generally speaking, those without labor
power account for 75 percent of the population, which is to say that only one out
of four people is an able-bodied person with ample strength to do farm work.
This is a big problem in China. It must be added, however, that what we have
called absence of labor power refers to the inability to do farm work in the full
sense. Half of the people just mentioned have some capacity for physical labor,
such as herding cattle, chopping fire-wood, cooking rice, doing laundry, and
cooking meals. Statistically:

25 percent have full labor power;
37.5 percent have half or some labor power;
37.5 percent have no labor power at all.

Everywhere the "leasing of land and payment in unhusked rice" described
above is the so-called "system of dividing the rice." Only in Chunhua is the
"system of collecting rent" employed. The defect of the system of dividing the
rice is that when the tenants farm the land, they give primary attention to their
own land, while treating carelessly or failing to use enough fertilizer on the land
belonging to the landowner. When the crops ripen, they divide up the harvested
rice equally, or split it 40-60 or according to other ratios. This system is not
advantageous to the landowner. The system of collecting rent sets the amount of
rent irrespective of the size of the harvest. As a result, the tenant will take care to
make an effort, and to use enough fertilizer. That is beneficial, not only to
output, but to the landowner.

The defects of the system of collecting rent are: (1) the rent is fixed; this is not
advantageous to the tenants when natural disaster strikes; (2) if the Red Guards
go out on sorties frequently, and thus reduce the number of days they spend
working in the fields, this also hurts the tenants.

In sum, the system of dividing the rice benefits the rich peasants; the system
of collecting rent benefits the poor peasants.

The appropriate policy should be as follows:

(1) After the poor peasants, farm laborers, and unemployed persons receive
redistributed land, the government should confiscate the surplus draft animals
and farm implements of the rich peasants and landlords, and distribute them
among the farm laborers, poor peasants, and unemployed persons who lack draft
animals, farm implements, and capital, for their private use. At the same time,
the collective use of these implements should be encouraged by handing over to
the cooperatives the possessions confiscated from the rich peasants and the landlords. There is another method, which is to allow individuals to borrow from rich
peasants draft animals and farming tools temporarily, as a form of assistance.
The government penalizes those rich peasants who deliberately refuse to lend
these things; this is to provide assistance for poor peasants, farm laborers, and
unemployed persons.

(2) As for those who are totally incapable of farming, they should be allowed,
under the following conditions, to rent their land to rich peasants and middle
peasants for farming:

(a) Abolish the system of dividing the rice; set a fixed rate of rent, which
will not be reduced because of natural or man-made disasters.

(b) Set a minimum rate of rent (50 percent), so that the "exploitation" of
the poor peasants and farm laborers by the rich peasants will not be
excessive.

--- Notes

3. This sentence appears to refer to the vagabonds just mentioned, and to imply that
they received land because they were assumed to be able-bodied, but would be helped in
this way if they could not or would not work.

4. I.e., the land law of the Southwest Jiangxi Soviet, discussed in a note to the previous
text.

5. In this text, we distinguish as usual between the character dan which is a unit of
weight, and the character dan (stone), also read shi, which is a unit of volume, by capitalizing the first of these. As will be seen yet again from the examples in this text, the
meaning of these terms, and the relation between them, were extremely elastic.