ABSTRACT
The public land sale programme, by converting a small fraction of the tenants to owner-farmers, served as a pilot stage before the final phase of Taiwan's land reform, the Land-to-the-Tiller Act, effective in 1953. Politically land reform, by bringing peaceful and progressive rural social changes and economic prosperity to Taiwan, was considered a powerful weapon against communist infiltration. Taiwan's model of a progressive, small-farm agriculture, in which land reform was a keystone, may be a good model for other Asian countries, more relevant than Japan's. The Taiwanese land reform, spanning the years 1958-43, is generally judged the most important in Asia after the Japanese. The flow of migrants from the mainland, however, created some prerequisites for land reform. Land reform markedly affected the economic behaviour of Taiwan landlords both in the village and nationally. Economically, the reform had both immediate and far-reaching effects.
