The fact is, Matthew shows, from his study what this process is highly uneven
and actually only really happened, especially in what would, specific model
villages, which were. that used to, as examples for the other
villages. Some of who followed only parts of the
five campaign model. Matthew documents both how this is a top
down political process, where campaigns were directed from above.
And passed through a traditional bureaucratic structure county leaders
received directives ,attended meetings at the provisional level issued directives
and call meetings for district leaders ,who then issued directives and called
meetings for village leaders. Where this is factorly from the province
to the county to the village and then these campaigns were carried out first in
these experimental model villages before being promulgated to the rest of the
district and county. as a result he shows in fact the actual
documentation of land reform only really exists as an entirely for those
experimental villages. That is about 10% of all villages as a
whole. In fact, for the other 90% of the
villages, we only have summaries of the outcomes.
We do not have documentation at the village level or at the county level of
the actual process and timing of the events.
the mop-up campaign, of course, was the first real grass roots campaign to
mobilize large inter-village groups of poor peasants.
There was indeed an inter-village struggle to wipe out the more powerful
landlords by confiscating all personal wealth.
The draw class lines, determine class status, and equally divide up the land
campaigns, were also extremely important. And, creating a new village political
hierarchy that was registered based on class and moral character rankings.
And land, indeed this map shows, ultimately was divided equally per
capita. What course different quality plots and
where as how unequally allocated by class and rank.
that study is based on a large number of work reports which are shown here by the
red circles for Shuangcheng county. and by summary statistics of the other
various campaigns. these summary statistics come from the
Shuangcheng County archives and include first the confiscation records of
landlords and rich peasants. And little peasants, ten record registers
and nearly 6,000 individual landlords, and approximately 400 natural villages,
recording over 133,000 shang of land that was confiscated from the 175,000 shang of
total registered land. It also comes from two what's called
[FOREIGN] that is the 300 individuals and approximately 100 natural villages were
actually executed or died during the struggle.
It also includes, two, ah, [FOREIGN] that has two registers that are over 600
individuals, again, in over 100 natural villages, were struggled against, but
were neither killed nor had their property confiscated.
And it includes registers of 800 individuals who escaped, between 1945 and
1947. And then the final, summary registers the
[FOREIGN] for the county as a whole summarizing the end results for all
83,000 households, 400,000 some odd people in Shuangcheng County, including a
total of 559 natural villages. Out of perhaps 740 existing villages.
In other words the data are extremely detailed providing you week window about
the process, and the results of land reform.
In fact, even here do not actually include every village, because it is not
clear. They are saying no records.
That these campaigns actually happen in all villages through out this area ,we
only have documents from 560 of the 740 natural villages.
Now Mathew shows first of all is that we look at the distribution of individuals
who were struggled against of the individuals who escaped, of the
individuals who were executed, and of the individuals who have property confiscated
from them, what we see is that the distribution of these individuals in fact
is not uniform throughout Shuangcheng. Moreover, in other words.
You cannot find areas where, sort of people were equally executed, struggled
against, confiscated, and escaped. Or perhaps because some of them are
mutually exclusive. Since presumably if you escaped you're
not there to be executed. At the same time, what it does show is,
is that there's a distinct pattern of variation.
