My dissertation "Mao's Agrarian Reforms: The Socialist Rural Transformation in an East China County, 1946-1965" focuses on the 1949 communist revolution and its impact on Chinese society. In particular, it examines a series of key stages of the socialist rural transformation from 1946-1965 in Baoying County, an area near Shanghai comprising over 1,000 villages and a population of nearly 500,000. The dissertation starts with the study of the land reform movement from 1946-1952, which introduced class struggle for the first time to the villagers of Northern Jiangsu Province, where Baoying County was located. Next it examines the agricultural collectivization movement enforced by the state from 1952-1957, followed by a chapter on the Great Leap Forward Movement in 1958-59, which ended in a great famine. The dissertation concludes by exploring the accumulated tensions between farmers and the communist officials as exposed in the Socialist Education Movement, a political campaign later became the prelude to the Cultural Revolution. Unlike previous scholarship, which has mostly relied on interviews with a limited number of participants or officially published writings that have undergone severe censorship, my research is based on more than five thousand pages of unpublished documents culled from the county archives and inner-Party publications that I managed to collect during the past years. These primary sources enable me to explore in-depth issues that have been ignored or underdeveloped in the existing literature, such as the varied responses of farmers towards the socialist agrarian reforms and the widespread corruption among the grassroots officials, which was rooted in the practices of collectivism in agriculture. Furthermore, by viewing the process from the bottom up, I hope to provide a solid foundation of facts for reassessing the intricate relations among farmers, state officials and the Communist Party in late and post-revolutionary China.

Land Wars: The Story of China's Agrarian Revolution explores how Mao's narrative of rural revolution became a reality, at great human cost.

Following the end of World War II in 1945, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spent the next three decades carrying out agrarian reform among nearly one-third of the world’s peasants. This book presents a new perspective on the first step of this reform, when the CCP helped redistribute over 40 million hectares of land to over three hundred million impoverished peasants in the nationwide land reform movement. This land reform, the founding myth of the People’s Republic of China (1949–present) and one of the largest redistributions of wealth and power in history, embodies the idea that an equal distribution of property will lead to social and political equality. Power Over Property argues that in practice, however, the opposite occurred: the redistribution of political power led to a more equal distribution of property. China’s land reform was accomplished not only through the state’s power to define the distribution of resources, but also through village communities prioritizing political entitlements above property rights. Through the systematic analysis of never-before studied micro-level data on practices of land reform in over five hundred villages, Power Over Property demonstrates how land reform primarily involved the removal of former power holders, the mobilization of mass political participation, and the creation of a new social-political hierarchy. Only after accomplishing all of this was it possible to redistribute land. This redistribution, moreover, was determined by political relations to a new structure of power, not just economic relations to the means of production. The experience of China’s land reform complicates our understanding of the relations between economic, social, and political equality. On the one hand, social equality in China was achieved through political, not economic means. On the other hand, the fundamental solution was a more effective hierarchy of fair entitlements, not equal rights. This book ultimately suggests that focusing on economic equality alone may obscure more important social and political dynamics in the development of the modern world.

The emergence of China as a global economic powerhouse, the uncertain path of Russia towards a market economy, and the integration of ten Central and Eastern European countries into the European Union (EU) have occupied the minds and agendas of many policy-makers, business leaders and scholars from around the world at the end of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Twenty years ago these developments were unimaginable. The impact of these changes is so vast that the importance of understanding the forces that unleashed this process, how these changes became possible, and what the lessons are for other developing countries, cannot be overestimated. This book is the first effort to analyze the economics and politics of agricultural reforms by comparing the reform processes, their causes and their effects across this vast region. The authors draw on a vast set of studies and new data, which compare reforms and economic impacts in more than 25 countries, to come up with a series of conclusions and implications on the role of economic reforms in growth, and the importance of initial conditions and political constraints in explaining the choices that were made and their effects. The book analyzes some of the most successful sets of agricultural policies in history that have lifted people out of poverty, raising productivity and incomes by staggering amounts. At the same time the book explains the reasons behind dramatic failures in policy processes and reforms that caused hunger, poverty and which had devastating effects on economic growth and development for millions of other people.

An updated and comprehensive history of Mao Zedong’s Land Reform Movement in China. Mao Zedong’s land reform campaigns comprise a critical moment in modern Chinese history, and were crucial to the rise of the Chinese Communist Party. In Land Wars, Brian DeMare draws on new archival research to offer an updated and comprehensive history of this attempt to fundamentally transform the countryside. Across this vast terrain loyal Maoists dispersed, intending to categorize poor farmers into prescribed social classes, and instigate a revolution that would redistribute the land. To achieve socialist utopia, the Communists imposed and performed a harsh script of peasant liberation through fierce class struggle. While many accounts of the campaigns give false credence to this narrative, DeMare argues that the reality was much more complex and brutal than is commonly understood—while many villagers prospered, there were families torn apart and countless deaths. Uniquely weaving narrative and historical accounts, DeMare powerfully highlights the often-devastating role of fiction in determining history. This corrective retelling ultimately sheds new light on the contemporary legacy of land reform, a legacy fraught with inequality and resentment, but also hope. Praise for Land Wars “Richly documented and elegantly written, Land Wars reveals the contradictions and ironies intrinsic to the Chinese Communist Party’s theory and practice of land reform. A welcome addition to the literature on the Communist revolution, it offers a counter narrative to the stories told in William Hinton’s Fanshen in many ways.” —Huaiyin Li, University of Texas at Austin “Land Wars successfully challenges still deeply entrenched Chinese Communist mythologies about the nature and dynamics of the 1945-1952 land reform. DeMare’s penetrating discussion of ferocious, ritualized class struggle campaigns skillfully demonstrates how land reform was not about economic change. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the imposition of Communist political control at the grassroots.” —Paul G. Pickowicz, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History and Chinese Studies, University of California, San Diego

Economic research monograph on land reform in China and its implications for Chinese agriculture - comments on the agrarian reform legislation, and covers the implementation of land reform, agricultural administration problems, the social implications and economic implications of income redistribution for the rural population, the formation of the early agricultural cooperatives, etc. Maps, references and statistical tables.

This book analyses the impact of the current economic reform on the income development of peasant households in the People's Republic of China. The research is based on detailed information derived from book-keeping records of the sample households of selected regions in central China, the national statistical network, local statistics and chronicles. Moreover, the basic tools of economic analysis are applied to the main problems of the Chinese rural economy in order to gain a better understanding of the current development of China.