戦後中共土地改革の急進化 : 一九四七年「土地法大綱」について

抄録

After the wer against Japan, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) gradually turned its moderate rent reduction policy back to one of land reform. The 1947 General Rules of Land Law marked the height of radicalism in the Party's postwar agrarian policy with the principles of equal distribution of land and power among the poor peasants. The General Rules provided for a takeover of all land in the village by the peasants' association and its equal per capita distribution to all the villagers regardless of age, sex and former land-ownership. The peasants' association led by the poop peasants' league was to carry out land reform. The peasants were to exercise the "democratic right and powers" to criticize, impeach, dismiss and elect cadres of all the organizations at all levels. The principles derived from CCP leaders' evaluation of the preceding land reform. They regarded it as a failure on the ground that many poor peasants still remained poor, having gained little from the two-year reform. Cadres of many villages reported completion of land reform, as they recognized that the landlord class had been wiped out and there was no more land to distribute. Preoccupied with meeting every poor peasant's demand for land in order to win his active support for war effort, CCP leaders and higher officials intended to prevent village cadres from conspiring with landlords and rich peasants to hinder further reform by hiding their property. The General Rules of Land Law was designed to smash their conspiracy by absolute equalization of land holdings and depriving village cadres of power to carry out land reform. In reality, however, the fundamental reason for many poor peasants remaining poor even after the land reform was the low landpopulation ratio in North China where the Communist base areas were concentrated. Equal per capita distribution of land was to make every peasant a poor peasant having no surplus to invest for production increase, which would ruin the Communist economy. Moreover, total reshuffle of land-ownership was to result in a work stoppage, as few villagers wanted to invest time, labour or fertilizer in a plot which was soon to be taken away. Peasants' "democratic rights and powers" reduced village cadres' authority and loosened discipline among the villagers who tended to refuse to respond the Party's call for mobilization for war service. The radical policy proved disastrous, ruining the economic and political bases of CCP power, and was destined to be short-lived.