Chinese Agriculture-Institutional Changes and Performance.pdfVIP

2 Chinese Agriculture: Institutional Changes and Performance Justin Yifu Lin Chinas socialist revolution of 1949 brought dramatic changes to the countrys farming institutions. Traditional agriculture in China had been characterized by small, independent household farms with less than one hectare of fragmented landholding. As the socialists gained control over the country in the late 1940s, however, they effected a land reform program, which spread across the nation by 1952. Under this program, the government confiscated land from landlords and rich peasants without compensation and gave it to poor and landless peas- ants. Individual household farms were then collectivized under the provisions of the First Five-Year Plan in 1953. This collective farming system prevailed until the introduction of the household responsibility system in 1979. Two achievements of the collective farming system are frequently mentioned: it fed an exploding population, and it supported a dramatic structural change in Chinas economy. When the socialist government was founded in 1949, the amount of cultivated land per capita was only 0.18 hectare. By 1978 this figure had dropped to 0.1 hectare as a result of rapid population growth. 1 Nevertheless, the collective system was 1. The cultivated land and population were 97.9 million hectares and 541.7 24 Justin Yifu Lin Chinese Agriculture: Institutional Changes and Performance 25 able to keep food production ahead of population growth. Meanwhile, remarkable growth of grain output, greatly encouraged Chinas political the economy experienced a spectacular transformation, with industrial