It is generally agreed that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) experienced a rapid increase in agricultural output between 1949 and 1952. Foreign economists, however, often point out that official statistics on agriculture in the early period of the PRC are not accurate, but this argument is based on comparisons of statistical figures from the PRC with those from the Republic of China, and figures from the Republic of China are by no means reliable either. It is therefore impossible to examine the agricultural conditions of the time simply by a comparison of statistics.
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the campaign of land acreage measurement and crop yield assessment (cha tian ding chan gong zuo), which was the first agricultural statistical survey performed by the PRC, and to analyze the conditions of agricultural statistics at the time.The purpose of the campaign of the land acreage measurement and crop yield assessment was to acquire the information necessary to determine agricultural taxation. It improved the conditions for statistical surveys and revealed several pieces of hidden land, and from 1950 to1952, and especially in 1952, the figures for land acreage and crop yield increased remarkably.However, a considerable gap emerged between figures from before the campaign and after, which prompted the authorities to adjust the earlier figures and inflate them on the basis of the later figures. Although the great increase in agricultural output has been emphasized by Chinese scholars, the degree of the increase has in fact been exaggerated.
The campaign was suddenly suspended in spring 1953, even though the authorities had at first planned for it to be a long-term project. Deng Zihui, who had played a leading role in the land reform, actively pushed for the abolition of the campaign, because it seemed to deny altogether the results of a land survey conducted for the land reform; he also feared the campaign would incur dissatisfaction among farmers through an increase in agricultural taxation. In August 1953, the campaign was officially given a judgment of disapproval by the authorities, which has not been overturned until now.Termination the campaign has made people oblivious to the fact that the increase in statistics on agricultural output in the early period of the PRC was partly the result of an improvement in the accuracy of statistical surveys.

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