ABSTRACT
What has been decided now is political confiscation of land owned, for example, by local bullies, bad gentry, warlords, and so on. This is the first step. The next step is the confiscation of all land that the owners do not till but rent out to others; this is economic confiscation. Economic confiscation is no longer a problem in Hunan. There the peasants themselves have already divided up the land. Fiscally speaking, there is no solution or way out if the land problem is not solved. The warlords in Hunan exploit the peasants. The national government, after establishing itself in Hunan, has also been unable to eliminate this exploitation completely. Because of the war, the old fiscal policy has to be continued. This situation is in contradiction with today’s revolution. If no way out can be found, the revolution will certainly end in defeat. If under the present fiscal régime even the registration tax cannot be collected, and there are many cases in which land tax goes unpaid, the various sorts of exorbitant taxes and levies are even more impossible to collect. It is in the interest of the revolution as a whole to solve the land problem. If the current fiscal policy is continued in Hunan, annual revenue will amount to only slightly more than 10 million. (In 1925 it was between 15 and 20 million.) If the land problem were solved, a rate of 10 percent would bring in 56 million, and moreover, the rate could even be increased to 15 percent. Thus the financial difficulties could be immediately 491solved. Therefore, without making a decision on the land problem, there is no way out of the financial difficulties. The land of owner-peasants and middle peasants is not subject to confiscation; the land of rich peasants is. For example, if five out of ten households are rich peasants, we must redistribute the land of the rich peasants to the other five households. The peasants in Hunan are now redistributing the land themselves. They have meetings to redistribute the land. Therefore, with special reference to the situation in Hunan, it is not enough to rely on the mode of political confiscation. But generally speaking, only political confiscation can be used. That is why the national government should explicitly promulgate such regulations (generic types), while at the same time issuing specific ones (such as those applying to Hunan). Hubei cannot be compared to Hunan; Henan cannot be compared to Hubei, either. The solution [of the land problem there] is, of course, different. Therefore, to complete economic confiscation in one step is often incompatible with objective conditions. … 2 You may read the Survey of Land Distribution in China; 3 this table is relatively accurate and may be used for reference.
