ABSTRACT
The land reform legislation of 1950 made farmers the basic units of village production during the interim period of political transition, and by the beginning of 1952 they had become the predominant form of organization in village production. After three years of satisfactory practice with the permanent mutual aid teams and steadily rising output the Chinese leadership felt safe in proceeding to the merger of the mutual aid teams usually three to eight - into larger cooperatives of twenty to fifty households. According to ILO estimates based on Chinese publications, the economically active population in agriculture in 1950 had amounted to 183 million people, 128 million male and 55 million female. They provided the livelihood for a rural population of 456 million persons. By 1958, employment in the nonagricultural sectors has risen by about 12 " or 3.5 million persons per annum, of whom the industries absorbed annually a little more than one million persons.
