A monumental transformation is underway in the heart of China. The CCP has embarked on a colossal endeavor to reshape the agricultural landscape through a mass land reform campaign. This initiative, characterized by its scale and enthusiasm, is not merely an administrative act but a calculated strategic move by the CCP. As a journalist present at this pivotal moment in history, I must dissect the motivations behind this choice and explore its implications on Chinese society.

At first glance, the decision to implement land reform as a mass campaign appears rooted in the CCP’s playbook. Mass campaigns have been a hallmark of the Chinese communist regime, with their ability to mobilize and control large populations. By turning land reform into a nationwide movement, the CCP aims to instill unity and purpose among its people. The mobilization efforts create a collective consciousness and serve as a platform for ideological indoctrination. Through vigorous campaigns, the Party propagates its core tenets of communism, emphasizing principles of joint ownership and class struggle. In doing so, the CCP garners popular support and allegiance, ensuring the success of the reform agenda.

Moreover, the mass campaign strategy allows the CCP to maintain a firm grip on the reform process. By involving the masses directly, the Party exerts control over the narrative surrounding land reform and instills a type of self-policing throughout China. This control extends beyond mere policymaking; it affects the nation’s collective consciousness, shaping public opinion and garnering legitimacy for the Party’s actions. Through widespread participation, the CCP not only furthers its political objectives but also consolidates its authority, reinforcing its central role in the lives of the Chinese people.

However, as with any sweeping social transformation, the mass land reform campaign has challenges and consequences. The immediate benefit lies in creating a more equitable land distribution, addressing long-standing land ownership disparity issues. Families that were once landless now find themselves with the means to cultivate their fields, ushering in a newfound sense of economic stability and security. The campaign also fosters a spirit of camaraderie and collective purpose, bolstering social cohesion and strengthening community bonds.

Yet, this mass mobilization has its pitfalls. The sheer scale of the campaign often leads to hasty decision-making, resulting in the misallocation of resources and, at times, inefficient land use. Moreover, the ideological fervor accompanying mass campaigns can sometimes blind the regime to the nuanced realities on the ground, leading to policies that might not be conducive to sustainable agricultural practices. These challenges, if unaddressed, could undermine the goals the CCP seeks to achieve.

Furthermore, the mass campaign strategy reveals a central danger: the potential suppression of dissenting voices. Individual opinions and concerns might be stifled in the enthusiasm of collective action, creating a monolithic narrative that silences alternative perspectives. This suppression raises concerns about the erosion of democratic values and the freedom of expression, essential components of a healthy society.

In conclusion, as I witness this historic moment, it is clear that the CCP’s choice to implement land reform as a mass campaign is a complicated and multi-stepped strategy. While it seeks to achieve commendable goals regarding equitable land distribution and social cohesion, it also raises important questions about individual freedoms and the potential pitfalls of hasty decision-making. As the campaign unfolds, the world holds its breath, recognizing the significance of this endeavor in shaping the future trajectory of the world’s most populous nation.

-Miao Bing Rong

My loyal readers,

It has been a while since I last wrote to all of you and I am sorry about that. A lot has happened since Yanan and I am excited to write about it. When I wrote last, the Chinese Communist Party was held up in Yanan creating a sanctuary for all those who supported the party. Since then the Chinese Communist Party has grabbed the reins and is in full control of China. Even though the Chinese Communist Party is now in full control of China, it did not come easy. After a long bloody war with the Nationalists, Chairman Mao and his followers came out on top. One of the first policies they implemented was the land reform which has completely reshaped rural China. This whole land reform campaign is the exact reason why I have written in a while. As you know, my family lives in a rural farming village with very little land. A couple of months ago the land reform campaign touched down in my home village and I traveled home to help my father with the whole reshaping process. 

What is land reform you may ask? Well, in short, rural China has been ruled by landlords for hundreds of years. This has left a vast majority of the country poor while very few enjoy the benefits of owning and renting the land. The land reform campaign aimed to solve this problem. The campaign empowered the poor peasant farmers to rise up and take the land to divide up amongst themselves. Through the help of work teams, which were largely comprised of intellectuals from the cities [DeMare, 6], the peasant class was completely transformed and able to acquire more land to farm which in turn created more equal living situations. What was very impressive about this whole situation was that the opportunity was seized by the peasant farmers. The government put together these work teams but it was the peasants who worked with these intellectuals and overthrew the landlords. It was by “both creating class consciousness and altering village power relations, struggle held the key to what the Communists called fanshen: the liberation of the peasantry that followed in the wake of land reform” [DeMare 147]. While attending a meeting with the work teams back home, I witnessed a female peasant “denouncing and struggling village landlords” [DeMare, 148] in front of the entire village, which was a very revolutionary sight. While berating the landlord I saw an immense amount of hatred coming from this woman. After the meeting, I spoke to some members of the work team and they discussed the importance of this hatred and how Mao intended for them to rise up out of hate [DeMare 148]. This was all very interesting to see firsthand. I have even come to hear reports of landlords being killed violently by villagers. This violent overthrow of landlords seems to be happening more and more often. Even though we are no longer at war with a foreign enemy, it now seems like we are at war with ourselves.

Like always, stay safe! 

Until next time, 

Zeng Yongzheng

Dear Readers,

It has been some time since I last wrote, and much has changed in our great nation. When I last wrote it was to discuss the success of the Chinese Communist Party’s movement in the Yenan region and why so many people were flocking to the area in order to support the movement. Since then, the revolution I discussed has come to pass! The Communist Party is now the leading group, with Chairman Mao Zedong as the head of the government, and things have already undergone drastic changes. I must mention that the war that was fought between the Communists and the defeated Nationalist forces must be acknowledged as an extremely brutal and bloody affair. I would be lying if I said that the Communists came to power unopposed and without lots of bloodshed, but they have cemented their rule in an attempt to improve China for the people.

One of the ways that the new government has attempted to improve lives for its citizens in the countryside is through a massive campaign of land reform. The Communist Party is a party of the people and at the outset of its rule over China, the vast majority of peasants in the countryside are extremely poor. Much of the countryside was controlled by landlords who had exploited the common people for centuries. Land reform is the first step in the redistribution of wealth that will help raise the standard of living for people in the countryside. Another important part of this campaign was how it involved people not just from the countryside. Work teams composed of volunteers were trained to go out into the countryside, organize middle and poor peasants, and oversee the process [Dietrich, 68]. This was only the beginning, as the landlords would suffer greatly at the hands of these organizations.

Once peasant organizations were formed, the work teams would help the peasants to find the landlords as the source of their hardships, loosely defined as “searching for bitterness” [DeMare, 63]. After whipping the peasants into a frenzy against the landlords, the “struggle” could begin as often theatrical displays of discontent were used to punish the landlords and strip them of their property.

While this policy made sense in theory, it led to an unbelievable amount of violence in the countryside. In many cases, work teams and local village cadres would attempt to squeeze every last drop of wealth out of the better-off citizens of a region, resulting in torture and murder if more wealth wasn’t produced [DeMare, 140]. The violence got so bad in some places that even some middle peasants committed suicide in order to avoid the possibility that they could become the target of a struggle [DeMare, 143].

An issue with parts of land reform that arose on many occasions was that of corruption. I spoke to a member of a work team returning from an assignment who mentioned that in one of the villages his team brought the campaign to, the peasant association was not dissatisfied with their treatment by the local landlords, but with the apparent corruption within the local village cadres and Party officials that supposedly were abusing their power [DeMare, 62.] This work team member also mentioned that in another village, cadres were using their influence to retain the most valuable items that were taken from the landlords for themselves [DeMare, 150].

The Party’s land reform campaign was an impressive movement that transformed the countryside. By allowing the people to carry out these small revolutions in each region, Chairman Mao reinforced his belief that leadership should “come from the masses and go to the masses” [Cheek, 120]. The land reform movement brought the revolution back to the countryside as it involved more citizens in the class war that the Communists wished to wage. The creation of anger against the landlord class allowed the peasants to obtain some kind of class consciousness [DeMare, 147], and therefore bound them more loyally to the party as it was seen as a liberator from the old ways. I am not unaware that I come from a better-off background when compared to many citizens. My parents have made their money through working hard their entire lives, and I am not entirely sure how I feel about this movement. While I am against exploitation, I do not think fairly achieved wealth should be able to be taken away. Because of this, I am thankful that my family lives in a city, because if we were to live in the countryside, I worry that we would have been labeled as enemies in this campaign.

Things are changing, but the danger still seems to be real.

 

Stay safe my friends,

孙诚

Dear Readers,

I apologize that it has been quite some time since my last post, I have been busy with Party activities and doing my part in building a new China. Last year I was called upon to work with the masses. I have taken leave from teaching just outside the city to join a work team, and I am now in my second village. The mass campaign to implement land reform is something that I have been working on intensely during my time in these two villages. Some may think that it might have been easier to confiscate land from the wealthy landlords and redistribute it to the peasants, but the Party believes in a different approach. 

When I was in university, we read Mao’s 1927 “Report on the Peasant Movement in Hunan”. I believe that much of the Party’s policies on land reform and mass campaigns extend from this movement. After discovering that “almost half the peasants in Hunan [were] now organized” and the same was occurring in other counties, Mao believed that “it was on the strength of their extensive organization that the peasants went into action and within four months brought about a great revolution in the countryside, a revolution without parallel in history”. After the peasants organized, we watched “the privileges the feudal landlords have enjoyed for thousands of years” be “shattered to pieces. Their dignity and prestige… completely swept away”. Peasant associations gained power over their oppressors through organization and the willingness to fight for their cause. Mao and the Party watched these peasant revolutionaries take the countryside with force. Peasants were mobilized to right the wrongs that have occurred for generations, and showed that violence may be necessary for revolution. 

After noticing the success in a peasant uprising, it was clear that land reform needed to be a mass campaign, rather than the confiscation and redistribution of land, because power is in the hands of the people, the masses, and the way to harness that power is to remind the people of the cause they are fighting for. 

I remember nearly a decade ago, we took part in a mass study campaign to understand the struggles of the proletariat and the stance of the party. But theory can only take one so far, so I agreed to aid the peasants and put policy into practice. Prior to traveling to my first village, I attended training and educated myself on working with peasants and how best to communicate party ideals to them. One professor I spoke to, Yang Rengeng, told me of his experiences working in land reform and made it clear “that peasants are waiting for [my] help”. Thus, I set off to educate local leaders. 

I found this task more difficult than the professors and party members had led us to believe. In my first village it was extremely hard to relate to the villagers, and they did not seem to understand why we were there and what our mission was. One approach that we were told worked best was finding “bitterness” in their life stories. I was inspired to do this when I read The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River. When speaking to a poor peasant named Liu Man, Yang Liang “learned the man had once been a village cadre until he was pushed out of the local party branch by hooligans seeking to protect the scheming landlord Qian Wengui”. He and his fellow work team members then assembled the peasants and enough collective rage was incited to go after the landlord. Helping peasants find their “bitterness” worked in the first village I traveled to. After my conversations with individual families I helped lead struggle meetings to share their grievances with the rest of the village. 

My second village was where I began to see the darker side of land reform. Namely, the lack of a fight for women’s rights. During struggle sessions with groups of women, or in the workplace when they were creating textiles, I heard of their plights. Their plights were not just with the landlords, but with their husbands and the patriarchy. When coming into villages to assist peasants in coming together to create our new China, we promised women “a ‘double fanshen’: one as a peasant and one as a woman”. I read in the newspaper about Guo Shuuzen, who in a 1947 land reform campaign “received land, two horses, a mule, and a cart”. Once her life had changed as a peasant, she could now become a feminist. “Politically awakened during land reform, she joined her local party branch, headed her local women’s association, organized literacy classes, and took a leading role in organizing production”. Her story was extremely inspiring to me, and I hoped to be able to help other peasant women in the same way. 

As land deeds were handed out, I noticed that only divorced or widowed women received their own land, as married women were property of their husbands. The women who did receive their own land often did not know how to farm it. Myself and other female party members plead with the party “to provide peasant women with adequate agricultural training”, yet no one listened. Some nuns were even forced to take husbands! A few women opened up to me and other female party members about the oppression they face in the household. They are forced into submission, beaten, and constantly disrespected. How are these women supposed to help with land reform and class struggle when their main struggle is within their homes? I confess that it is hard for me to leave this village feeling that women had achieved fanshen. For a number of years now I have followed party doctrine, but after my experience in the villages I’m not sure if party policy is working. 

 

Until next time,

Miao Kuo shuo

Dear Readers: 

 

How times have changed in China since I started keeping my blog! I never thought such drastic changes would occur in my own lifetime for me to witness and, as my job requires, record. In the spirit of keeping everyone educated on the things going on in this country, I have traveled around the country to report on the key points of China’s political upheaval; the story of Communist China and its ongoing revolution would not be complete without the inclusion of the CCP’s ambitious campaign of land reform in the countryside. As you may remember, I spent quite some time in the countryside in Yan’an in the CCP’s satellite but returned to Beijing with other intellectuals after the PRC was officially established to finish my education. However, I have been called back to the countryside to continue my reporting for the Party as a guest of one of the work teams being sent to educate the peasants and guide them through agrarian revolution. 

Mao has adamantly pushed for the participation of the masses in the revolution in general, noting in his 1927 Hunan Report how the “strength” and “extensive organization” of the peasants in the countryside demonstrated their capability of “action.” The power of the masses has long been heralded by the CCP as the driving force behind the revolution in China, so it makes sense that the Party would funnel the unstoppable force of the people into achieving their agenda. It seems that the societal roles have been flipped, with work teams of intellectuals being sent to learn from these unstoppable peasants rather than the other way around. Learning from books just doesn’t cut it anymore in the PRC, and understanding the state of the country as well as its possibility for reform cannot be accomplished “without social practice” obtained from living and working amongst the masses. With so many people working toward land reform, especially those as passionate about the revolution as the oppressed peasants, an immense amount of progress can potentially be made in a shorter amount of time and, since it’s coming from the ground up, changes would actually be happening rather than just being decreed and never enforced. 

I can’t help but be excited about the idea of a government that actually wants its people to do rather than just sit back and have things done to them. The peasants I’ve met with the work team seem to be enthusiastic about this as well. I recently met a woman in the countryside named Ge Yang who joined the Party because of this powerful message; communism meant that “the people would be masters of the country,” and it was being realized by the people, “a mighty storm,” themselves. This, however, means that the Party has to educate every intellectual in the work teams who then have to educate every peasant that they’re responsible for. It’s quite an intense process and the intellectuals in my team have had a hard time letting go of their biases toward the peasants as well as using language that they would understand. Although getting off to a shaky, unconvincing start, peasants began to respond to the work teams, vocalizing “bitterness” and realizing how they had been exploited for years by their landlords.

I am happy to report that land reform has done its job. There is surely a more equal distribution of land amongst the peasants in the countryside (even for women and children) as well as tools which has made production more efficient and plentiful all around from what I’ve seen. However, the methods of obtaining this land and wealth have left a pit in my stomach. The violence I have witnessed in the countryside in the name of land reform has completely unsettled me. I have seen peasants pull the limbs off of landlords and heard the screams of those accused of secretly harboring more wealth being buried alive. These people have taken the work teams’ proclamations of exploitation and suffering to heart and, while there is obviously truth to these condemnations of landlords, I can’t help but think the Party has taken all of this much too far. Peasants are encouraged to be violent and there are no repercussions for the killing or torturing of landlords or richer individuals who are accused of hiding wealth but in reality have nothing more to give. And, seeing as how this revolution has been put into the hands of the masses rather than a few elites, this means that land reform has perpetuated extreme amounts of violence and death. I have heard people whispering about there already being over one million people dead as a result of land reform and I can’t say that I don’t believe it. Not to mention those being taken advantage of or sexually assaulted by the corrupt cadres, or even the peasants themselves who have taken the wives and daughters of struggled landlords for themselves! With there also not being enough land to go around for everyone in China, I’m worried about what will happen when some peasants don’t get what they were promised.

I can’t help but think of my own family, more well off than the others in our village. I can only hope that they have been assigned as “middle peasants” through their work teams’ arbitrary systems and will only have to redistribute some of their belongings rather than lose their lives. I am almost scared to go back home, in case I come back to find crude graves where my home is supposed to be. I avoid speaking about my family now so that nobody interprets my fear as sympathy for the landlord class. I am glad that less people are suffering in poverty now, I am, but I’m not sure I can accept the idea that all of this violence was the only way for China to reach this achievement.

That’s all for now.

Dear Readers,

I now well understand that there is indeed strength in numbers. We have seen from the CCP’s recent successes in forcing the Nationalists to Taiwan and gaining significantly more control. Although Mao was at the helm of this movement, and remains in charge, it was the millions of people backing him that also made it possible. Its because of this that we have routinely seen groups becoming more powerful than any given individual. However, if the masses are not together and unorganized around their specific mission, they are not a group, rather they merely are a mass of individuals. And that is what they have unfortunetly been. Although yes, there is general strength in numbers, but if these numbers of people are divided between each other over uniting with a common cause, then this exposes their fragility and underlining weakness. To get rid of any weakness and gain strength, we must unite with a purpose, understand the potential problems and setbacks of our specific plan, enabling us to become an impactful group instead of individuals by the masses. This should have been the way of ensuring successful land reform.

I was fortunate enough to interview Cheng Houzhi, a recent graduate of Qinghua’s Politics Department, thus argued that before land reform, peasants were bereft of political awareness and “lack organization, lack strength, and do not dare to consider landlords as enemies.” It was because of this need to organize and rally behind a agreed mission that served as the primary reason to develop this mass campaign instead of simply ordering the immediate confiscation and redistribution of land.

Another reason for our more strategical approach to accomplishing land reform, was that the peasants, specifically poor and middle peasants were unprepared. I spoke with Yang Rengeng, a Peking University professor, who said: “ I emphasize[d] that peasants are waiting for their help… the party published a flood of materials on the campaigns, ensuring that the final and largest rounds of land reform were carried out by teams well versed in the narrative of peasant emancipation through fierce class struggle.” Everyone needed to be on the same page for nearly every step! The process should have begun from the groups thoughts to communication, to strategic plan, to action, to backup plan. It is this level of ill preparedness that cost us capable of achieving great success.

Many benefits however, have emerged from this strategic decision. Our peasant groups were far more organized than previously, and nearly all were motivated and organized from the material benefits which greatly incentivized them and gave them a specific purpose. Specifically, “for liberated peasants, [it was] the first time they labor on their own land, their desire to produce increases dramatically. They work from morning till night, forgetting their pain, and create their own happy life.” In the general sense, and writing as a middle peasant member, I see there are now far less blood sucking landlords, allowing the most of the middle and lower classes to now gain the feeling of progress.

That progress was trimmed since these benefits were coupled with immense problems. A report found, “the party faced an intractable problem in regard to giving the peasant masses true economic liberation: there was not enough land and property to go around. This issue plagued the entire land reform effort.”

The negatives are summed up in this PRC study’s findings: “While “land investigation” campaigns did mobilize the masses and attack some forms of feudal power, they also “severely encroached on the interests of the middle peasants, excessively attacked landlords and rich peasants, injured a good number of cadres, and ruined agriculture production.” More specifically, women’s problems were far from solved. A study found: “Many women did not actively participate in land reform. This proved to be an enduring problem.” My heart goes out to all women and we should not lose all hope. I do also want to share that this hope has extended to my families luck. My parents have a very small amount of land that they labor themselves, and it has only been minimally damaged, and all crops and father and mother are safe. My family and I, are extremely blessed, however many other middle peasants I know are severely suffering.  Even for the lucky ones that attained more land, or protected and preserved their minimal portion of land,  I predict future problems to emerge: such as their inability to operate and manage the land. Being a peasant is much different than being a landlord, I know from being a peasant. It is from this story of land reform, that serves as a great lesson for us to unite as a group, and comprehend and solve the challenges and expected problems with the mission before going all out.

Stay safe out there!

-No Pah King

Hello, intellectuals. I am currently living in one of the many small villages undergoing land reform, reporting on the Communist Party’s strategies for redistributing land more equitably. The simple and fast approach of taking and redistributing the land by force seems appealing. However, I believe the Communist Party has decided to implement land reform as a mass campaign for significant long-term benefits. The involvement of peasants in land reform mobilizes the peasants and fosters a revolutionary spirit and cohesion among rural populations. This involvement aligns with the Communist Party’s goal of obtaining the widespread support of the people.

After arriving at the village, the work team would organize and explain the land reform campaign, instilling communist ideas about class, oppression, and the proletariat and bourgeoisie among the villagers. To establish a connection with the villagers, the members of these work teams would try to cultivate relationships with villagers, encouraging them to “speak bitterness”. A key part of the Communist Party’s land reform strategy is giving historically oppressed peasants a way to express their anger and frustrations. These stories exposed the landlords’ abuses and built solidarity among the peasants suffering under the landlord. Small group meetings are organized to mobilize villagers to voice their issues with their powerful landlords who are afraid to do so publicly. After categorizing the people of the village into classes, struggle sessions would be held against those deemed as the ruling class. Led by community members oppressed by the landlords, struggle sessions teach peasants that they were not born to be oppressed and they can stand up against their oppressors. By centering land reform around the poor peasants, who now have been given power for the first time, the Communist Party is sending a powerful message that they will listen to those oppressed. 

The mass land reform campaign has revealed serious dangers. Violence, brutality, and sexual assault are rampant. Land investigation campaigns were often violent. Justice seems nonexistent, overrun by the peasant mob. In some regions, land equalization led to brutal retaliation by Nationalists, thus creating a cycle of violence where Nationalists and the Communist Party would retaliate against the village, seeking to obtain authority and removing perceived threats. This unrelenting violence and chaos during land reform will leave deep wounds of instability. Mao’s broad and strict characterization of landlords as universally oppressive failed to capture the nuanced reality. This oversimplification results in the suffering of the innocent. 

Work teams also face many challenges. Tensions and confusion fill the air during meetings, hindering progress. Language barriers impede communication, and resistance from villages, including poor peasants, created an atmosphere of mistrust and division. Cadres’ corruption further complicated the situation, eroding the goodwill of the people they aimed to liberate. As class labels were introduced, anxiety spread, weakening the bonds that held communities together. Conflicting views within the party on how to treat rich and middle peasants added to the confusion, the constant changing of policy left many unsure of the right path forward.

The legacy of land reform will be mixed, marked by the successful redistribution of land along with the deep wounds of violence, injustice, and the continued peasant poverty. Proving the difficulty of widespread social change.

 

I have been fortunate enough to make the return to my small town in Hunan for the New Year. I arrive on a brisk February morning. I had lost the only winter hat I had during a previous reporting trip and the cold wind could certainly be felt rushing through the village where no building stands tall. I am one of the very lucky people able to make the trip back home. Though middle peasants here in our village, we are lucky. After witnessing life in the big city, the margin between my family and many others is quite slim in comparison. In the village, we are better off than many, but compared to those in the city, we are rather poor. 

 

One morning, my father told me to come with him and the rest of our family as a village meeting had been called at the communal area near the well where we would source the little water we had growing up. We arrived at the little square by the well to a murmur of people all gathered, waiting for someone to speak. This was unusual, rarely, if ever were large gatherings called in the village. I noticed a small group of what looked to be fit and capable civilians dressed in plain clothes huddled in a circle off to the side of the few hundred that had gathered [DeMare 44]. There was a special kind of murmur in the crowd, one of excitement but also curiosity [DeMare 61]. What seemed to be the group’s leader began to drone on and on about Mao’s ideologies and plans. Mao had said in prior years that, “If a school of one hundred persons does not have among its teachers, experts and students a leading nucleus of a few or a few dozen individuals which is formed naturally and not by compulsion) by those who are comparatively the most active, orthodox, and intelligent, the school will be difficult to manage” [Mao Talks at Yan’an and Methods of Leadership 120]. Many in the crowd, however, did not take to this well, and over the course of the hours-long speech, lost all interest [DeMare 61]. 

 

The day following the boring speech, we heard a knock on our front door, I recognized the man at the door as one from the meeting the prior day. My father explained to the man that we were middle peasants, who, did not live an easy life especially due to my 2 brothers being unable to work but were not starving. The man asked my father to share his thoughts on the village higher-ups like landlords, seemingly waiting for my father to speak negatively about the wealthy peasants [DeMare 24]. The man left about an hour of trying to dig up any sort of story that could be used against the landlords and wealthy peasants in the village. Our family stands to gain something from the poor peasants however we also stand to lose the little extra land we have should the large swaths of poor peasants gain more power. 

 

It is becoming more and more clear to me as to why Mao Zedong chose to have poor peasants speak bitterness and turn receive land in this way. Mao Zedong knows that power lies in the hands of the masses, in the case of China, the millions of poor peasants across the countryside. Land reform is far more than just turning land over. Were land reform solely about turning land over, Mao would have done this without any theatrics. However, the goal is to have our peasant population turn their backs on the wealthy peasants and landlords. Mao Zedong himself has said that an extra landlord is an extra enemy [DeMare 106]. By vilifying the landlords, Mao aimed to put the power in the hands of the peasants who would see land reform as far more than just receiving their share of the land. 

 

However, there are issues with the distribution of land here in the countryside. One of the most obvious problems and sources of tension is that there simply is not enough land to go around [DeMare 169]. The reality, dear readers, is that land reform can do a lot to give power to populations such as the peasants, but it cannot solve many of the problems facing China today. In many ways, land reform has been a greater source of problems than it has been of success in terms of moving China forward. 

 

Until next time,

 

Gao An Zhi

Dear Readers, 

It would be an understatement to say that the Chinese countryside has experienced a whirlwind of changes since I wrote my last piece about the CCP’s presence in Yenan. I apologize sincerely to my readers for letting so many years pass in between my dispatches, but during these years, I have been busy on the ground as a member of a work team in a remote village in the North, implementing the land reform campaign in my assigned village, trying to bring what the Party calls fanshen to the poor peasants who live there, while also seeking to experience this fanshen for myself by experiencing the revolution directly. I felt ready to finally “[wake] up from a dream,” as one young intellectual from a landlord family told me would happen to me if I participated directly in land reform [DeMare, 163]. Chairman Mao and the Communist Party have reported consistently that members of the peasant class nationwide have been rising “like a fierce wind or tempest” to “break through all the trammels which bind them and rush forward along the road to liberation,” casting aside the bloodsucking tyrants, just as Chairman Mao predicted would happen all the way back in 1927 [Mao, “Peasant Movement in Hunan,” 42]. In the eyes of the Party, the mass campaign is integral to fundamentally turning the long-established world order and the entrenched peasant mentality upside down. Today, I am seeking to determine whether this grand narrative aligns with the realities which all work teams were met with across the country. 

 

I first arrived in the countryside singing the songs of the revolution and donning a Russian-style jacket as if I were from the opening scene of Love in Redland [DeMare, 40]. During the early days, I met a lot of middle peasants who reminded me of “Old Gu” from Ding Ling’s novel The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River [DeMare, 38]. They were generally “insular and fearful of outsiders” because they owned the land that they worked, and were hesitant to engage in the process of land reform, worried that us work teams might one day turn against them [Mao, “How to Differentiate Classes,” 138 ; DeMare, 38]. I realized that I had quite the daunting task ahead of me to encourage the poor and middle peasants to speak their bitterness. 

Upon arrival, I moved in with a widow and her children, poor peasants who paid rent on the land they worked and cultivated [Mao, “How to Differentiate Classes,” 139]. The widow told me initially that her landlord was a nice enough man, but I saw right through her attempt at old-fashioned, feudal politeness. She took quite some time to open up to me, but eventually, as I taught her about the economic exploitation that she had undoubtedly been subjected to at the landlord’s hand, and about all the struggle fruits that would be hers as soon as she opened up to me, she finally broke down. She confided that she had been sexually assaulted by her landlord, and she even had suspicions that he had somehow been behind her late husband’s death! For months afterward, my eyes would well up with tears just thinking about all that she told me she’d been through. I convinced her to speak out against her landlord at the village’s next struggle session, which quickly became a rather violent affair as a crowd of villagers spat on him, ridiculed him, placed a dunce cap on his head, and proceeded to beat him [DeMare, 119]. At the time, I felt so proud of these villagers for standing up on behalf of this poor, innocent woman, who received that evil landlord’s best farming equipment as a result of having been brave enough to speak out against him [DeMare, 66].

 

I was optimistic once my village’s campaign wrapped up, and I have since traveled to other villages and received similar glowing reports. I even had the chance to speak with William Hinton, a work team member from Long Bow, about the immense changes that land reform had brought to the countryside through fanshen, not merely economic changes, but political and cultural ones as well. Hinton recounted to me that fanshen meant “to throw off superstition and study science, to abolish ‘word blindness’ and learn to read, to cease considering women as chattels and establish equality between the sexes, to do away with appointed village magistrates and replace them with elected councils. It meant to enter a new world” [DeMare, 152]. Personally, I am most entranced by Hinton’s claim that fanshen can bring gender equality to our society, and I know other women feel the same way. I spoke with a woman named Li Xiuying who told me, “before liberation, women had to do whatever they were told. They had no rights. The government’s first major legislation made women legally equal to men” [A Century of Revolution, the Mao Years, 4:52]. As Li Xiuying said, the Marriage Law promises the abolishment of “the supremacy of man over woman” and the advent of “free choice of both partners,” and “equal rights for both sexes” [the 1950 Marriage Law, 235]. The Party promises a double fanshen for women, claiming that they will finally be freed from both economic and gender based oppression [DeMare, 159].

 

However, I also encountered people who did not have such positive things to say about the implementation of land reform. Some married peasant women reported to me that while they legally received a land deed of their very own, their husband assumed full control over it, so they did not feel as though much had changed for them after all [DeMare, 161]. A female party leader explained sadly to me that many women were “limited by patriarchal norms, few child care alternatives, and inexperience in agricultural production” [DeMare, 162]. Such accounts make me worry that the promise of double fanshen for women has been a mere façade. 

 

I have begun to worry that in many villages, possibly including the very village which I toiled in with my fellow work team members, land reform did not accomplish all that it was intended to accomplish. I have heard reports from many villages that rural poverty still abounds, sometimes even after two or three rounds of land reform [DeMare, 170]. I spoke to many “Old Gu” figures, middle peasants who had worried since the beginning that they would become the next targets of struggle, and I learned that their fears were not always unfounded [DeMare, 38]. Sometimes they were mislabeled as rich peasants or landlords and wrongfully rendered destitute or even executed, as happened to Tang Zhankui in Zhang Ailing’s novel Love in Redland [DeMare, 151]. Poor peasants who still had very little land to call their own sometimes turned their jealousy and bitterness upon middle peasants [DeMare, 169]. 

 

I also learned of accounts that desires for material wealth have plagued the land reform process. A work team member from a village that neighbors my assigned village recounted the cadre corruption that had plagued any attempts at land reform, as the cadre saved the best struggle fruits for himself [DeMare, 171]. Even poor peasants have sometimes gotten carried away, marching into urban spaces in search of absentee landlords and their relatives, imposing “exploitation bills” upon them [DeMare, 170].

 

I have even begun to doubt the validity of the story of the widow whose home I moved into; this weighs heavily on my heart. Anecdote after anecdote about peasants spinning tall tales about all of the oppression they’d been subjected to has awakened me to the fact that “as land reform unfolded, the ability to speak bitterness during struggle meetings often resulted in direct economic benefit. Peasants who claimed to have suffered the most feudal exploitation stood to receive a greater share of the fruits of struggle” [DeMare, 66]. Was this widow a mere opportunist?

 

During the process of land reform, I was only able to see my tiny piece of the puzzle. Based on the experiences that I had as a part of a work team, I believed that the grand Maoist narrative was coming true: the peasants were awakening, the bloodsucking tyrants were being immobilized, and the women were no longer prisoners in their own homes. However, reading revolutionary novels and hearing other accounts from people on the ground have opened my eyes to the possibility that land reform is not all that it has promised to be. 

 

Stay safe, my loyal readers. Until next time, Lei Ju.

My loyal readers,

 

Over the past few weeks, I have been praying that you are all alive and well. China has been attacked by the ruthless Japanese and after seeing the aftermath of what they did to Nanjing, my heart broke. I fear for my life as well as the people of China. Despite my fear, I have taken a huge risk. My publisher assigned me the task to “investigate and try to determine why so many people from all over China and from many different backgrounds are flocking to Yenan to live in that desolate, poor corner of China.  What is it about life in Yenan/Yan’an that so many find so appealing?” At first, I thought she was crazy and that there was no way I would travel all the way to Yenan, especially during times like this. I then began to think about my readers as well as the promise I made to myself to report on what is going on in our country. So…against my best judgment, I traveled to Yanan.

 

On my way to Yenan, I was able to get my hands on an interview with Mao done by an American journalist by the name of Edgar Snow. Snow’s interview with Mao has given me greater insight into who exactly Chairman Mao was and why so many people followed him across the country to Yanan. After his interview, Snow said that “the influence of Mao Zedong throughout the Communist world of China was probably greater than that of anyone else” [Cheek, 185]. Snow believed that it was Mao’s personality that played a role in his rise to great influence in Communist China. Snow said that “the role of his personality in the movement was clearly immense” [Cheek, 186]. It was who Mao was that attracted people and not just what he stood for. But was Mao just another pretty face that could attract people to his cause because of his personality or was he attuned with what was needed to prevail? In the words of Thucydides, “the society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools,” but as it turns out Mao is driven to succeed and help the people of China. Snow commented that he is an “accomplished scholar of classical Chinese, an omnivorous reader, a deep student of philosophy and history, a good speaker, […] a man of tireless energy, and a military and political strategist of considerable genius” [Cheek, 185]. So after reading this interview and learning about Chairman Mao, I can begin to understand why people are flocking to Yanan to be around this great man. When I arrived in Yenan I was surprised to see what it was really like. Rich and poor alike live in the same conditions. Wealth and status have been washed away. Although I didn’t see Mao when I was there I heard that he lives in a cave with a paper wall, the same as everyone else. Despite the “poor” conditions, the people are all in high spirits and do what they can to help each other out.

 

In Yenan wealth, status, and where you are from don’t matter. Everyone is treated the same from the top down. And with the leadership of Chairman Mao, everyone is happy to be in Yenan.

 

Until next time,

ZENG YONGZHENG