Hello readers, it has been a while since I last wrote but so much has happened since then. The Chinese Communist Party has not only survived but it has established itself as the core leadership group leading the newly founded People’s Republic of China. They have risen to this power by defeating the invading Japanese forces, expelled the Nationalists to Taiwan, and now lead the fight against the invading Americans in Korea. However, I will focus on reporting about the major domestic event taking place which is the mass land reform campaign. I have joined a work team and we traveled to a local village in the countryside to carry out the smooth implementation of the land reform campaign. I do believe that the work I am doing is spreading the message of the great chairman and we have redistributed land, but I have also seen sights and heard stories that I fear will not be shared that I feel must be reported.
I signed up to be a part of a work team because I wanted to travel to the countryside and help carry out the land reform campaign. I knew that my background of growing up in the countryside could help in understanding the dynamics of the countryside as I knew that it was much different than the big cities. I believe this reform is being carried out as a mass campaign because the peasants need to know who in their village to take land from for redistribution. I read an article that was specifically for teaching the peasants how to differentiate the classes in the rural areas and I think it was very helpful, although I could think of a few people and families from my own village that may not fit exactly into one of the classes. Also, carrying out the reform in a mass campaign makes it easier for the peasants to understand the objectives of the reform easier as slogans can be used that help simplify the goals of the campaign. These slogans can be used to unite the peasants so that they feel as though they are all striving for the same goals and to ignite the peasants to overthrow the enemy classes that are exploiting them. I have seen the benefits of this class division but I have also seen some negative aspects in dividing the peasants in such a manner.
One of the benefits for dividing the peasants into the different classes is it clearly identifies which people are in the landlord class so that work party members like myself can confiscate their excess land that they were using to exploit the poor and middle peasant classes for redistribution. The village my work party was sent to is an example of this benefit. When we arrived, we held a mass meeting in the makeshift town square asking the peasants to speak bitterness and identify who the landlords in the area were. No one stepped forward to speak but when we traveled to individual family homes, they were eager to speak bitterness and help us identify the landlord who was exploiting all the villagers. We quickly apprehended the landlord, staged a public trial where he was punished for his past crimes and his excess land was redistributed among the peasants. This event makes me proud to recollect and I imagine if I had been sent to my village and I could personally give my father his own land.
One negative aspect of the mass land reform campaign is the fact that in some scenarios, some people do not fit into a particular class or they do not fit the description of that class. In these cases, I have seen people that may not be in the landlord class still tried and struggled against. In the village my work team is in, after we got rid of the exploitative landlord, there was still not enough land for everyone so we needed to find more to distribute. However, even after the personal meeting in family homes, no one could identify a landlord or wealthy peasant. Unfortunately, a middle peasant that quite a few villagers disliked was dragged out and struggled against. Speaking individually with some villagers, they were very concerned to see the middle peasant struggled against as he was always helpful and lenient to the poor peasants and workers. I can remember a middle peasant like this in my own village. He had some extra land that he would rent out but he was a hard working man and was always lenient when rent could not be paid. I wonder what happened to him, I hope he is alright, he has helped and continues to help my family so much.