ABSTRACT

Land was at the center of the Communist Revolution. Land reform, the process of redistributing land to poor peasants, was a key method of winning support and building up state power both before and immediately after 1949. Collectivizing land after 1949 was a central part of creating a new socialist society in China. Recent work on the land question has clarified how land reform worked as both a national political issue and as part of village level social transformation.