ABSTRACT
FOR purposes of analysis, the households of the village have been grouped into four classes: rich, middle, poor, and landless. This classification is made on the basis of the variation in income derived from the land, since, with only a few exceptions, land-ownership determines not only social position but income as well. Those who are able to live on the proceeds from their land in the form of rent we have classified as “rich”; those who can live on the income from their land but only by managing their property themselves, as “middle”; those who cannot maintain themselves merely by working on their own land, as “poor”; and, finally, those who have no land and must always work for others rather than for themselves, the “landless.” As a basis for comparison we had to set up a normal standard of living for an average household of five, which is equivalent in consumption to 3.7 adults. Every year such a household will require about 2,000 pounds of husked rice—worth, in 1940, $1,665. All other expenses will amount to one and one-half times the expenditure for rice; this is the usual allowance for rice in relation to other expenses in an ordinary Chinese household. Thus, each household needs approximately an income of $2,600 (on 1940 level) in order to maintain the standard of living of the ordinary Chinese peasant. Following this system of classification, we can proceed to see how the land in the village is distributed, who rents out land to whom, and what the sizes of the farms are in the various classes. We shall discuss these problems in the following section.
