(LandReform)_英语六级作文

(Land Reform)

long before the land reform law was promulgated on 30 june

1950, the ccp had been experimenting with measures to return

the land to the vast numbers of peasants. these experiments,

which had taken place wherever the party had been able to

maintain a stronghold, including the jiangxi soviet and yan'an,

had known various radical aspects, but boiled down to the

abolishment of landownership by the landlord class and the

introduction of peasant landownership. a new element that was

introduced in 1950 was the provision that the development of

agricultural production resulting from this would pave the way

for the industrialization of china. as a result, many peasant

households held the deed for their piece of land for the first time

ever.

nationwide agicultural reforms took place from 1950 until

the spring of 1953. in some places, the law was executed with

more force than was called for, leading to the mistreatment of

former landlords. in all, about one million of them were executed.

although the poster above, published in 1952, boasts that land

reform basically had been completed, this was only accomplished

in 1953. in all, 700 million mu of land (1 mu is .0867 hectares) and

various means of production were redistributed among 300

million peasants who had been landless before. only the areas

inhabited by the minority nationalities had not been touched by

the law e the centrality of land reform in the party's

policies, publication data from 1949 indicate that less than two

percent of the total poster production was devoted to typical

rural topics, including methods to improve production. this

suggests even more strongly the extent to which posters were

intended to support other types of mobilizational techniques. it

may also point to important shifts that emerged in the political

agenda. shortly after the fields had been turned over to the tiller,

preparations began to familiarize the peasantry with the next

step in agricultural long, the land that had been

handed out to the peasants was slowly returned to the state. in a

process of collectivization that started in 1953, the farmers were

first organized in so-called mutual help teams. these were

gradually merged into lower agrarian cooperatives. during the

great leap forward, these lower forms of cooperatives would be

merged into huge people's communes.

as a result of the collectivization of the countryside, certain

amenities and services that had until then been reserved for city

dwellers, now came within reach of the rural population. the

"electrification of the countryside", in combination with the

mechanization of agriculture, was among these. judging by the

poster below, the availability of these amenities was apparently

used to entice the people to join such collectives.