chinese land reform in long-run

Chinese Land Reform 107

Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Henry Bernstein and Terence J. Byres 2004.

Chinese Land Reform in Long-RunPerspective and in the Wider East Asian

Context

CHRIS BRAMALL

The claims made by Grifn et al. for the impact of land reform in China areunconvincing. The land reform of 194752 did not lead to a pronouncedincrease in agricultural output. Nor was it egalitarian; indeed, but for thedeliberate preservation of the rich peasant economy, growth might have beennon-existent. The second land reform of 19813 was equally ineffectual.Agricultural growth had shifted on to a faster growth path before decol-lectivization, and the surge of 19804 was little more than a temporary responseto decent weather, procurement price rises, the abandonment of the Dazhaisystem and a reduction in output under-reporting. Rural income inequalityhas been held in check since 1984 because of local government intervention,not because family farming is intrinsically egalitarian. Chinas experience ofland reform is mirrored by those of other East Asian countries. A century ofland reform has not resolved Japans deep-seated agricultural problems, northose of Taiwan and South Korea.

Keywords: land reform, China, inequality, agriculture, East Asia

INTRODUCTION

China experienced two major land reforms during the twentieth century.1 Thereform of 194752 was implemented hard on the heels of the conquest ofterritory by the Peoples Liberation Army. Land owned by landlords, templesand lineages, and land rented out by rich peasants, was seized by newly formedvillage Peasants Associations. This conscated land was then re-distributed tomiddle and poor peasants, and to landless labourers. By 1952, the Chinese Com-munist Party had succeeded in creating a system of small-scale family farming.2

This system lasted until 19556, when it was replaced by collective farming.

Chris Bramall, School of East Asian Studies, Shefeld University, Shefeld S10 2TN, UK. e-mail:[email protected]

I am most grateful to T. J. Byres for his comments on an earlier version of this article.1 In writing of two Chinese land reforms, Grifn et al. adopt what has become the conventionaldescription of the events of 19813 as a second land reform (Kueh 1985), a second emancipation(Zhou 1996) and a second revolution (Garnaut et al. 1996).2 For general accounts of the 194752 reform, see Hinton (1966), Lippit (1974) and Bramall (2000b).For local variations, see Ash (1976), Crook and Crook (1979), Shue (1980), Endicott (1988), Potter

Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 4 Nos. 1 and 2, January and April 2004, pp. 107141.

108 Chris Bramall

The second land reform of 19813 grew out of a series of policies designedto make collective farms operate more effectively.3 These policies, which startedto be implemented in 1976, initially aimed to restore material incentives, and toreduce the size of the unit of account from production teams to work groups. In1978, reform became more radical; in a few counties, mainly in Anhui province,farmland and agricultural equipment was handed over to households, effectivelyrestoring family farming. However, this process of decollectivization proceededextremely slowly; even by the end of 1980, only 5 per cent of production teamshad adopted family farming across China. But 1980 proved to be the last year ofcollective farming as the process of decollectivization gathered momentum andChinas leaders decided to restore the small-scale farming system of the 1950s, anera widely viewed within the CCP during the early 1980s as the (Leninist) goldenage of Chinese socialism. By October 1981, 38 per cent of production teams hadintroduced the system of family farming known variously as dabaogan (bigcontracting) or baogan daohu (contracting everything to the household), and thegure had risen to 67 per cent by June 1982. During 19823, even recalcitrantprovinces such as Heilongjiang were forced to bend before the prevailing wind.By December 1983, 94 per cent of Chinas production teams had abandoned thecollective and the process was completed in 1984.

The article discusses the assessment offered by Grifn, Khan and Ickowitz(hereafter GKI) of the East Asian experience of land reform, but these Chineseland reforms are its focus. In part this is because the Chinese experience is ofsuch massive signicance. However, it is also because of the very boldness of theclaims made by GKI for the Chinese reforms. Firstly, they argue that the landreforms were highly egalitarian: Initially land was redistributed among peasanthouseholds and an egalitarian peasant farming system was created . . . (Grifn et al.(GKI) 2002, 309, emphasis added). Moreover, Collective farming did not resultin a more equal distribution of income than under the peasant farming system(GKI 2002, 311); the rural gini coefcient is said to have fallen from 0.32 in 1978to 0.22 in 1982 during the transition from collective to family farming.

The second claim made by GKI is that land reform in China, as elsewhere, ledto faster agricultural growth. For the period 19507, it is said that Radical landconscation and redistribution did not slow the pace of agricultural growth. Onthe contrary . . . (GKI 2002, 310), and after 1978, there . . . was a sharp accel-eration in the rate of growth of agricultural output . . . (GKI 2002, 311). GKI do

and Potter (1990) and Ruf (1998). The best general Chinese-language account of both Chinesereforms is Du (1996). The County Records (xian zhi) published by every Chinese county during thelate 1980s and 1990s provide the most comprehensive Chinese-language materials; these often givedata on the pattern of land ownership before and after reform.3 For details of the 19813 land reform, see Wang and Zhou (1985), Luo (1985), Ash (1988),Kelliher (1992), Zhou (1996), the various provincial histories of agricultural cooperation (such asHNH 1990) and the County Records previously mentioned. Chung (2000) is the best source for therates of decollectivization (both national and provincial) given in this paragraph. Contrasting viewsof land reforms impact are outlined in McMillan et al. (1989), Hinton (1990), Lin (1992), Liu (1994),Bramall (1993, 2000a), Putterman (1993) and Carter (1999).


not spell out the precise mechanisms at work in the Chinese case.4 However, it isclear from their theoretical and China-specic discussion that they have threechannels in mind. Firstly, the extent of urban bias is said to have declined afterMaos death as a result of improvements in the internal terms of trade (GKI2002, 311). Secondly, the 1980s and 1990s saw the . . . liberalization of outputmarkets and improved access to inputs (GKI 2002, 311), presumably bringingabout improvements in allocative efciency. Thirdly, they implicitly assume thatChinas pre-reform agriculture suffered from landlord bias in factor and prod-uct markets, leading to suboptimal total factor productivity (GKI 2002, 2847).Thus land reforms favouring small-scale family farming (as Chinas are said tohave done) raise total factor productivity. The emphasis in the GKI analysis ofChina is rmly on the third of these channels, namely the favourable outputeffects of the removal of landlord bias via land reform; market liberalization andthe reversal of urban bias is touched upon only in passing. The re-creation of thesmall-scale peasant economy in China and across East Asia was therefore desir-able on both intrinsic and instrumental grounds. Income inequality and povertywere reduced, and output growth accelerated.

Both these GKI claims are scrutinized in the discussion below using some ofthe new materials which have been released on Chinese agriculture over the lasttwo decades. The availability of new information on the local effect of landreform following the publication of xian zhi (County Records) for Chinas 2500plus counties allows us to examine the effects of the rst land reform with greaterprecision than hitherto. And the passage of time, along with the publication ofmore reliable data on agricultural value-added and patterns of land ownership,now makes it possible to assess more accurately the long-run impact of the landreform of 19813.5 The nal part of the article looks at the broader East Asiancontext.

THE FIRST CHINESE LAND REFORM, 194752

The Impact of Land Reform on Income Inequality

It is difcult to delineate the precise impact of land reform on Chinese incomedistribution because of data limitations and the role played by other factors

4 Their theoretical discussion focuses on the one-off gains to output and employment from landreform but their discussion of China places much more emphasis on the acceleration in long-runagricultural growth. It is not difcult to think of ways in which short-run changes in output couldproduce faster long-run growth via investment and technical progress, but GKI are silent on thesedynamic issues. Moreover, it is by no means certain that faster long-run growth is an inevitableconsequence of higher short-run output. Re-distribution in a poor economy raises the consumptionshare at the expense of the investment share, and the net result could easily be a fall in total invest-ment and in the pace of technical progress, precipitating a slower rate of growth.5 Time series data on provincial agricultural value-added have been published in NBS (1997, 1999).The results of the 1996 land survey have been made available on the website run by the Guojia tongjiju(this organization has recently changed the translation of its name from the State Statistical Bureau tothe National Bureau of Statistics; I call it the NBS throughout this article).

110 Chris Bramall

during the transition across the 1949 divide. Survey evidence certainly exists.The gures collected by J. Lossing Buck (1937) during 192933 in his massivesurvey of Land Utilization in China (a survey which covered 16,786 farms) yielda gini coefcient of 0.33 for per capita income (Roll 1980, 4850). By contrast,the National Land Commission survey of 1934 (which surveyed some 1.7million households) generates a gini of 0.44 for household income (Roll 1980, 467). Both these surveys suggest an unequal distribution of rural income, thoughnot perhaps the extreme inequality characteristic of much of contemporarysub-Saharan Africa and Latin America.6

However, both pre-war surveys were problematic. The National Land Com-mission did not sample the south-western provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan andGuizhou, where tenancy was widespread (NARB 1934, 62). Buck was forced torely on a small number of his students for his agricultural surveys. In consequence,his sample was biased towards relatively well-off areas (the home villages of hisstudents). He often employed averaging techniques which tended to atten outthe distribution of land ownership; according to Arrigo, Because this procedurerepeatedly averaged very large farms with relatively small ones, it effectivelysmoothed out the variation in landownership. . . . (1986, 348).7 Finally, Buckaggregated crop volume data to produce an estimate of per capita farm income byusing a collage of market prices, drawn from different locations and from differentyears (Buck 1937, 280). This procedure only makes sense in an economy whereregional price variations are small and where prices are comparatively stable fromone year to another. In the China of the 1930s, however, there was immenselocal and year-on-year variation caused by speculation and warlordism; it thereforemakes little sense to produce national estimates of farm income by aggregating acollection of necessarily unrepresentative price data. What is needed is some sortof estimate of equilibrium or normal prices.

The data on the distribution of rural income in the aftermath of the 194752reform are sparse. The only useful nationwide data are given in Li (1959). Thissource provides estimates of per capita production collected for the purpose ofsetting the agricultural tax rate in the early 1950s. However, its publication date the middle of the Great Leap Forward, when extraordinary claims for agricul-tural production were the norm must cast some doubt on its accuracy. Inaddition, Lis data refer only to crop income; additional information is needed toestimate total income. Nevertheless, if we put aside these data concerns andmake a direct comparison between rural inequality in the 1930s and in 1952, it

6 Rural gini coefcients are hard to obtain (and difcult to compare because of differing denitionsof rural) but overall gini coefcients serve as a proxy because of the large proportion of the popula-tion living in rural areas in poor and middle income countries. By the standards of contemporaryBrazil (a gini coefcient of 0.61 in 1998), Chile (0.57 in 1998) and Colombia (0.57 in 1996), orNigeria (0.51 in 1997), Zambia (0.53 in 1998) and South Africa (0.59 in 1994), Chinas interwarinequality was not acute (IBRD 2003, 2367).7 The objectivity of the analysis was further compromised when Buck threw in his lot with theKuomintang in the mid-1930s; his Department of Agricultural Economics (based in Nanjing andlater Chengdu) was even commissioned by the KMT to carry out several agricultural surveys to helpre-direct farmer support away from the Communists (Stross 1986, 182).


Table 1. The distribution of income by class and by region, 19512 (kg of grainequivalent)

Region Income per head Rich Middle Poor Landlords(all classes) peasants peasants peasants

1 900 1650 1000 750 7502 625 1150 700 500 5003 450 800 500 380 3804 350 625 385 300 3005 250 450 275 210 2106 150 270 165 125 125

Note: The regions identied here were selected for the purpose of determining therate of agricultural taxation. They comprised non-contiguous counties and districtswhich had in common only their average level of income. Region one, for example,comprised 107 counties covering six widely dispersed areas: the Yangzi delta districtaround Lake Taihu, Hunans Dongting lake region, southern Heilongjiang province,two districts in Inner Mongolia around Baotou and Hohhot, the Lijiang area ofYunnan province, and the north-western part of Xinjiang province.

Source: Li (1959, 136).

does appear that GKI are correct in claiming that land reform made the ruraldistribution more equal. According to the pioneering work of Roll (1980), theonly study to have made a direct comparison, the rural gini coefcient forper capita income declined from 0.33 in 192933 (Bucks data) to 0.22 in 19512 (Lis data).

However, this fall in inequality did not mean the creation of the egalitarianpeasant farming system claimed by GKI. In fact, Lis data on rural incomedistribution in 19512 show that Chinese land reform left in place a dominantrich peasant class (Table 1): rich peasant income was more than double that ofpoor peasants in every Chinese region. Furthermore, land reform did littleto reduce regional inequalities. For example, in the 343 (mainly mountainous)counties of region 6, average incomes were only a sixth of those in 107 countiesin the richest region.

Perhaps even more striking is the change in the income share of the variousdeciles of the population between the 1930s and the early 1950s. To be sure, thatgroup of households identied as landlord were stripped of the bulk of theirland, which was re-distributed to middle, poor and landless peasants. But richpeasants were typically deprived only of the land they rented out, and thereforeleft with considerably more land per capita than middle and poor peasants. AsRolls (1980, 76) analysis shows, the poor undoubtedly gained from the process;the share of the bottom decile rose from 2.5 to 5.1 per cent. However, the shareof the richest 10 per cent declined only slightly, falling from 24.4 per cent ofincome in the 1930s to 21.6 per cent of income in 1952. It is therefore clear thatmany of the rich peasants were barely affected hardly the sort of change one

112 Chris Bramall

might associate with an egalitarian reform.8 Indeed, there are strong parallelsbetween the rst Chinese land reform and the Japanese land reform of the earlyMeiji period. As will be discussed further below (see Chinas Experience in EastAsian Development), the latter was also a wager on the strong; it dispossessedthe absentee landlord class (the daimyo) and instead conferred ownership rightson Japans cultivating landlords. These latter have been widely portrayed as thereal agents of progress in the Meiji period (Dore 1965) and it was not until theoccupation of the late 1940s (as with China in 19556) that Japan was to experiencea more radical land reform.

The rst Chinese land reform was inegalitarian not by accident but by design.Its purpose, as set out in the 1950 Agrarian Reform Law, was to safeguard the richpeasant economy. It was feared that egalitarianism might lead the rich peasantsto side with the landlords (as they had done in parts of China before 1947) andperhaps undermine the very process of rural revolution; it would certainly havede-motivated Chinas most dynamic and entrepreneurial rural class. As import-antly, radical land reform was perceived as being likely to cause the loss ofeconomies of scale by reducing average farm size. The June 1950 pronouncementof Mao himself at the Third Plenum of the Seventh Central Committee, a state-ment echoed two weeks later in a Report on the Question of Land Reform deliveredby Liu Shaoqi, made Party policy abundantly clear on the rich peasant question:

Accordingly, there should be a change in our policy towards the richpeasants, a change from the policy of requisitioning their surplus landand property to one of maintaining the rich peasant economy in order tofacilitate the early rehabilitation of rural production and the better to isolatethe landlords and protect the middle peasants and lessors of small plots.(Mao, 6 June 1950, 29)

Thus the Chinese Communist Party saw the preservation of the rich peasanteconomy as a way to promote economic growth and ultimately poverty relief.9

A reduction in income inequality was an important policy goal, but it was to besubordinated to the need to isolate the landlord class and to promote rural growth.This policy began to change in the mid-1950s as agrarian policy became increas-ingly more radical and collectivization started to be pushed as the best solution tothe problem of how to accelerate agricultural growth. But even as late as 1954,two years after the completion of land reform and in the midst of rising hostilitytowards the rich peasant economy, Party rhetoric still envisaged that the destruc-tion of the rich peasant class would be a protracted process. According to Article

8 GKI are not unaware that the Chinese land reform of 194752 preserved the rich peasant economy;their own table shows that average rich peasant land holdings were double those of poor peasantseven after land reform. But they downplay the point, characterizing the reform as radical landconscation and redistribution when it was nothing of the kind (GKI 2002, 310).9 Buck would have approved: . . . the problem of land distribution is not one of equal division ofland among all the people, for then no family would have enough land upon which to earn a living,but rather one of the development of farms of an economic size for each family farm, so that eachmay have a satisfactory standard of living (Buck 1937, 285).


Eight of the 1954 Constitution The policy of the state toward rich-peasanteconomy is to restrict and gradually eliminate it.

The peasantry which emerged in the aftermath of Chinas rst land reformtherefore continued to be differentiated by income. Those differentials were lessthan during the pre-war period, but GKI do their cause little service indownplaying the extent of rural inequality in 1952. Mao may have exaggeratedthe pace of subsequent differentiation in order to justify collectivization in 19556; there is certainly some evidence that rural credit cooperatives and progressiveland taxation helped to hold the process in check (Shue 1980). But GKI areassuredly culpable in portraying the Chinese peasantry which emerged in thewake of the land reform era as an undifferentiated mass.

Agricultural Growth under Family Farming, 19525

We turn now to the impact of Chinas rst land reform on growth. According toGKI, the reform positively inuenced growth because post-reform small farmsgenerated higher yields than larger, pre-reform farms, an outcome that theyargue reected the existence of an inverse relationship between farm size andland productivity across the Chinese countryside.

Yet the data we have for Republican-era China are not kind to the inverserelation. Bucks (1937, 273) Land Utilization study concluded that there was norm relationship between farm size and yields:

It is sometimes assumed that yields on small farms are larger than those onlarge farms because of supposed greater intensity of culture on the smallfarms. Actually there is no signicant difference between yields on farms inthe various size-groups . . .10

The basis for this conclusion was emphasized by Arrigo in her re-working ofBucks data: Labor input is usually higher on small farms, but it cannotbe concluded from this that yields must be higher . . . (1986, 317). This wasbecause large farms were able to offset their lower labour intensity of productionby planting high-value cash crops, by hoarding crops until well after the harvestwhen market prices were closer to their peak (poorer farmers typically had littlechoice but to sell their crops immediately to pay off debts) and because their landwas more fertile. A more recent analysis of the surveys carried out by theJapanese-run South Manchurian Railway Company in northern China in the late1930s and early 1940s also concluded that there was little evidence of an inverserelation (Huang 1985).

Yet even if we accept that the inverse relation did hold in Republican China,that is no good reason for supposing that it continued to hold in the mid-1950s:

10 Note, however, that Buck (1937, 285) believed that the aim of Chinese agricultural policy shouldbe to maximize agricultural output per worker, not yields; surplus labour would be better employedin industry than in agriculture. Using this criterion, he concluded that average farm size in 192933was well below minimum efcient scale. Additional research carried out in western China in the1940s served only to reinforce his assessment; 80 per cent of farms were too small (Buck 1947, 7).

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11 Lower rents on the one hand encourage a household to switch its labour from (say) earningindustrial wages back to farming (the substitution effect), thus raising labour intensity in farming.On the other hand, lower rents allow a household to work less hard to achieve the same income level(the income effect), thus lowering labour intensity in farming.

Table 2. Agricultural growth in China, 191480 (per cent per annum)

Output growth Per capita output growth Regime

1914/181931/36 landlordismRawski 1.6 0.6

Yeh 0.8 Neg19525 3.6 1.3 family farming195580 2.6 0.5 collective farming

Notes: (i) Growth rates are for real agricultural value-added, where agriculture coversforestry, farming, sheries, livestock and household sidelines; the value-added seriesexplicitly omits other types of rural industry. (ii) Pre-1936 growth at 1933 prices.Rawskis estimate of pre-war growth is more recent, but many scholars prefer theolder Yeh series. (iii) Fifty-one per cent of rural households had joined advancedcooperatives by February 1956, making that year the rst of collective farming. As wehave seen, the percentage of production teams adopting family farming rose from 5 percent in December 1980 to 38 per cent by October 1981, which suggests that we shouldtake 1980 to be the last year of collective farming. (iv) Post-1949 growth rates arederived from the latest ofcial index of real agricultural value-added (NBS 2002). Thisindex links together several constant price value-added series, which use 1952, 1957,1970 and 1980 prices, respectively. As will be discussed below, Liu and Yeh (1965)argue that the rate for 19505 exaggerates the true gure.

Sources: Yeh (1979, 126); Rawski (1989, 330); NBS (1999, 1, 2002, 53).

land reform itself might have undermined the relationship. For example, theabolition of rents could easily have reduced labour intensity (depending upon themagnitudes of the income and substitution effect);11 the reduced rate of surplusappropriation in the wake of land reform allowed Chinese farmers to achieve asubsistence income level more easily, and they may well have responded byreducing labour inputs and hence yields. From this perspective, high yields onsmall family farms in pre-war China if they existed were a symptom ofdistress rather than a sign of progress, an altogether different perspective on theworld of the peasant to that offered by GKI. The fact that land reform was sosuccessful in alleviating such distress would, in such circumstances, underminethe very basis of GKIs analysis.

The evidence needed to test directly for the existence of an inverse relation afterland reform does not exist. However, the indirect evidence the rate of agriculturalgrowth as derived from the ofcial Chinese data tends to support the claims ofGKI. Agriculture performed badly during both the pre-war period and the era ofcollective farming, with per capita output barely rising at all. By contrast, Chineseagriculture performed comparatively well between 1952 and 1955 (Table 2).


The positive assessment of Chinese land reform offered by Grifn et al. isbuttressed by evidence of sustainability. Agricultural growth may not have beenfast enough to allow industrialization on the scale desired by the planners; thisperceived failure provided one justication for collectivization in 19556.Nevertheless, the agricultural growth that occurred between 1952 and 1955 wasaccompanied by an expansion of irrigated area, boding well for the continuanceof growth. There are very considerable data discrepancies. Aggregation of thelatest National Bureau of Statistics provincial data produces an all-China gure(excluding Tibet) of 16.3 million hectares for effectively irrigated area in 1952and 23.4 million hectares for 1957, suggesting an annual growth rate of 7.5per cent (NBS 1990, 1999). By contrast, the equivalent gures released by theMinistry of Water Resources in the early 1980s are 21.1 million hectares for 1952and 27.4 million hectares for 1957, which produce a growth rate of only 5.4 percent (Nickum 1995, 87). Nevertheless, it is apparent from either measure thatirrigated area rose sharply in the 1950s. This nding is of considerable signicancebecause one of the criticisms often directed against family farming is that coor-dination problems make it difcult to carry out large-scale water conservancyprogrammes. Chinese family farming does not appear to have been aficted bythis problem in the middle of the 1950s. Indeed, the growth of irrigated areaduring the 1950s was faster from, of course, a much lower base than undercollective farming (3.3 per cent per year between 1957 and 1978).12

Nevertheless, two cautionary notes are in order about the pace of agriculturalgrowth in the mid-1950s. First, a per capita agricultural growth rate of 1.3 percent per annum was hardly spectacular. To be sure, the rate exceeded thoseachieved under collective farming and before 1949. However, one would be hardput to build any extravagant claim for Chinese land reform on so imsy a foun-dation. Given the low standard of living of the rural population at the beginningof the 1950s, growth at such a pace was not going to effect any major trans-formation in rural lifestyle for many decades to come. Furthermore, this modestperformance needs to be set against the potential of Chinese agriculture in the1950s. This potential was probably much greater than pre-war because the impactof land reform was to eliminate what was essentially a parasitic non-residentlandlord class and with it an outow from agriculture in the form of rent. As aresult, a greater proportion of the surplus (i.e. output less necessary consump-tion) was retained by the agricultural sector and could be used for investment.13

12 Though, of course, it does need to be emphasized that local government played a key role incoordinating the efforts of farm households and in mobilizing the peasant workforce. In no sense wasthe expansion of irrigated area a spontaneous product of small-scale family farming.13 It is, of course, true that part of this surplus was extracted by the Chinese state after 1949. Thecentral issue in assessing the potential of Chinese agriculture in the 1950s is therefore to determinewhether pre-war surplus extraction via rent exceeded post-1949 extraction by the state via agricul-tural taxation and the internal terms of trade. My judgement is that pre-war extraction rates weregreater, but we should note that it is exceptionally difcult to measure intersectoral resource ows inany unambiguous fashion, especially in the Chinese context. The main difculty lies in determiningwhich set of prices should be used to value agricultural inows and outows in the absence of freemarkets (grain procurement prices were xed by the Chinese state in December 1953 and other

116 Chris Bramall

Table 3. Alternative estimates of Chinese grain production in the 1950s (million tonnes;grain includes soya and tubers)

NBS 1959 Current ofcial Liu and Yeh Weather(MOA 1958)

1952 154.4 163.9 176.7 good1953 156.9 166.9 180.4 average1954 160.5 169.5 184.5 bad1955 174.8 184.0 186.4 good1956 182.5 192.8 184.3 bad1957 185.0 195.1 185.0 average

Growth, 19525 4.0 3.7 1.8(per cent per annum)

Sources: NBS (1959); MOA (1958, 1989); Liu and Yeh (1965).

The second reason for caution is that the ofcial data used in Table 2 under-state levels of production at the beginning of the 1950s, and therefore exaggeratethe growth rate for 19525. Consider the record of the grain sector, the mostimportant subsector of agriculture (Table 3).14 The currently accepted series forgrain production was rst published by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1958(MOA 1958, cited in Walker 1984), and features in all the main Chinese statisticalpublications of the 1980s and 1990s (NBS 1982, 1999, 2000a; MOA 1989; NBS1990). The series puts output in 1952 at 163.9 million tonnes and generates a 3.7per cent growth rate between 1952 and 1955. These gures are somewhat lowerthan those originally published by the NBS in Ten Great Years (NBS 1959),which have 1952 output running at 154.4 million tonnes, and growing at 4.0 percent for 19525, but the difference is not startling.15

However, the trouble with these ofcial estimates is that they both suggestan implausibly low level of production in the early 1950s.16 There are three

prices shortly thereafter). It is not merely a question of deciding which set of (distorted) Chineseprices best approximates equilibrium prices (the framework used by Ishikawa 1967). As Sheng (1993)rightly argues, the problem is that unequal exchange between agriculture and non-agriculture oc-curred throughout the entire Maoist period in the sense that the state systematically depressed agricul-tural prices and inated non-agricultural prices in order to extract resources from agriculture. Thusthe prices for 1952, 1957 and 1979 (which have been used to measure resource ows in the literature)all under-state the true scale of resource transfer out of agriculture. The literature on these matters israther uniform in concluding that net outows from agriculture peaked during the 1950s (see, forexample, Ishikawa 1967 or Sheng 1993), but there is little agreement beyond that.14 The Chinese convention is to include both potatoes and soyabeans in grain.15 The Nongcun daquan series has potatoes weighted at 25 per cent before 1962, and at 20 per centthereafter. Walker (in Ash 1998, 184) argues that the 1950s potato data should be weighted at 20 percent to ensure a consistent series. For the impact of differing conversion rates in 1952, compareWalker (1984, 202), where grain output is 163.9 million tonnes (25 per cent weighting), and Walkerin Ash (1998, 204), where output is 160.6 million tonnes (20 per cent weighting).16 By 1957, the statistical reporting system was working extremely well; output data for that yearare as reliable as anything published prior to the late 1980s. The problem lies with the data for theearly 1950s.


problems with the data for 19525. Firstly, the new statistical system was in itsinfancy in the early 1950s and therefore the NBS (itself only founded in 1952)was forced in the early years to rely on pre-war National Agricultural ResearchBureau (NARB) crop reporting system. This was problematic because we knowfrom detailed local studies that the NARBs gures for pre-war cultivated areawere gross under-estimates; land was under-reported for tax avoidance reasons.Secondly, the production gures imply an implausibly low level of food con-sumption in 1952 (Liu and Yeh 1965, 46).17 For these two reasons, Liu and Yeharrived at their own estimates of agricultural production in the early 1950s andthese produce signicantly lower growth rates for 19525. Thirdly, there aregood political reasons why the NBS both then and now should produce datathat attest to both the effectiveness of family farming in the 1950s (it is, after all,the blueprint for the current system) and to the failure of collective farming.Under-estimating production in 1952 and over-estimating it in 1956 (the startof collective farming) serves these political imperatives rather well. Politicalconsiderations may, for example, explain the apparent leap in grain productionin 1956, a year of poor weather and one in which production must have beendisrupted by the sheer pace of collectivization. Liu and Yehs series suggestinggrain output in 1956 was lower than in 1955 seems much more plausible.

Of course, it may be that Liu and Yeh are too pessimistic. For example, usingthe (revised) ofcial data, Piazza (1986, 92) estimated that calorie intake in 1952from all sources averaged 2083 kilocalories per capita per day, not far from anadequate level of calorie consumption. This in turn suggests that the ofcialestimate of output in 1952 is not entirely implausible. The strength of Piazzasapproach is that it was based upon the construction of a detailed food balancesheet; a more recent study arrived at a very similar gure for 1952.18 Further-more, the study of Liu and Yeh, funded as it was by the US Air Force, wasarguably subject to biases of its own. Finally, we cannot ignore the fact thatWalker (1984, 202), in his exhaustive examination of Chinese grain data for the1950s, was content to accept the ofcial 1958 MOA data. On the other side ofthe coin, however, we must note that Perkins (1969, 1909), in his massive studyof long-run Chinese agricultural development, reached the conclusion thatland reform was of marginal importance in increasing output. It led to someimprovements in incentives, but the growth of the 1950s also reected recoveryfrom wartime disruption, the extension of traditional methods and improve-ments in the statistical reporting system. For Perkins, the essential constrainton Chinese agricultural growth was diminishing returns to traditional inputs, aproblem for which land reform was no answer.

If we accept the Liu and Yeh revisions, the implications for the GKI claim aredramatic. Just as the Liu and Yeh gures reduce the rate of growth of grain

17 Liu and Yeh based their assessment on the data originally published in Ten Great Years (NBS1959). However, the revisions to the data are not large enough to affect this particular line ofcriticism.18 Wang et al. (1993) put calorie consumption at almost exactly 2000 kilocalories per day in 1952.

118 Chris Bramall

production for 19525, so they also reduce the growth rate of total agriculturalproduction: the annual growth rate of agricultural value-added between 1952 and1955 falls from the ofcial NBS (1999) estimate of 3.6 per cent to only 1.6 percent (Liu and Yeh 1965, 54, 132, 140). A comparison of this result with thegrowth rate of output under collective farming given in Table 2 leads to a strikingconclusion: Chinese agriculture grew faster during the era of collective farming(2.6 per cent per year) than it did under family farming in the 1950s. On thesedata, the superiority of small-scale family farming is anything but apparent.

The Relationship between Inequality and Agricultural Growth

Chinese agriculture, then, probably performed less well in the immediate aftermathof land reform than the conventional wisdom as embodied in the work of GKIsuggests. Equally signicantly, in so far as growth did take place in the mid-1950s, the process was driven if anything by inequality rather than by equality.

The preservation of the rich peasant economy in the land reform processprobably helps to explain why Chinese agriculture was able to generate anygrowth at all after 1952. An analysis of the data for 61 counties drawn fromacross China shows that the growth of grain production was negatively relatedto the 1952 yield, reecting the impact of diminishing returns to the existingtechnology; it was harder for counties that had already achieved high yields by1952 to raise them further given the absence of modern agricultural inputs. Moresignicantly, the sample results reveal a positive relation between growth andthe ratio of rich to poor peasant land holdings. Thus growth tended to be higherin those counties where the distribution of land was biased in favour of the richpeasantry. In those counties where land reform had been more radical, i.e. whereland had been taken from rich peasants and transferred to poor peasants, growthrates were slower (Bramall 2000b).

Admittedly, further analysis suggests that this result may not be entirelyrobust. As an additional test of the relationship, I have looked simply at the datafor Jiangsu (an approach that controls for province-specic effects). For the 21Jiangsu counties on which there are data on both yield trends and the ratio of richto poor peasant landholdings (many of the County Records did not provide thesedata), the regression results do not fully support the contention that inequalitywas a spur to growth. The Jiangsu relationship does appear to have been positive,but the coefcient on the ratio of rich to poor peasant per capita landholdings isnot signicant at the usual 5 per cent level:19

19 Here, g (GRAIN) is the growth of grain output during 19525, YIELD is the ratio of grain yieldsin 1952 and 1985 (which serves as a proxy for the level of agricultural development in any county atthe start of the 1950s) and RPR is the ratio of rich to poor peasant per capita land ownership. Figuresin parentheses are t statistics. Three counties where grain production actually fell between 1952 and1955 probably because of bad weather have been excluded from the regression. I follow the usualmethodology in interpreting these results. The value of R2 is low but that largely reects the omis-sion of variables. The t statistics are more important, and therefore the nding that the t statistic forRPR is less than 2 the usual rule of thumb for statistical signicance suggests that the greaterproportion of land in the hands of rich peasants did not tend to promote growth.


ln(gGRAIN) = 0.29 + 0.049(lnRPR) 0.086(lnYIELD)(+ 1.13) ( 3.13) Adj R2 = 0.31; n = 18

Nevertheless, there is still little comfort to Grifn et al. in these new results forJiangsu province. If there was a relationship between the distribution of land andgrowth, it seems if anything to have run from inequality to growth (because ofthe positive sign of the RPR coefcient), rather than in the reverse directionsuggested by GKI. That the relationship does not show up more strongly in theJiangsu sample may reect the distorting effect of bad weather; 1954 in particularsaw extensive ooding in many parts of the province. But it could mean that,even though elements of the rich peasant economy were preserved, land reformstill went too far by breaking up many of Jiangsus largest farms.

THE LAND REFORM OF 19813

The Growth of Agricultural Output

GKI seem to be on more solid ground in their claims for the land reform of19813. This swept away the system of collective farming and, in contrast to therst land reform, was a wager on the weak in two respects. First, the reformbegan in some of the poorest parts of China. In villages where per capita incomesaveraged 300 yuan or less, 77 per cent had introduced the new system of baogandaohu before 1982. By contrast, only about 35 per cent of villages where incomesaveraged between 651 and 900 yuan had followed suit by that time, and thegure for villages with incomes above 900 yuan was just 16 per cent (Li 1993,323). Second, the assets of collective farms were distributed in a comparativelyegalitarian way during this second reform.20 According to a survey of 272villages in 19845, land had been allocated on a per capita basis in 70 per cent ofcases and according to a combination of per capita and per worker considerationsin a further 21 per cent of villages (AS 1988, 16). Lis (1993, 334) data tell asimilar story: in 69 per cent of villages, land was distributed on a per capita basisand in a further 25 per cent it was distributed partly on a per capita basis, andpartly on a per worker basis. In the poorer villages, per capita distribution wasvery much the norm.

There is no doubt that income poverty fell across rural China in the wakeof the second land reform. In 1978, using the ofcial poverty line, about260 million (33 per cent) of Chinas rural population lived in absolute poverty.21

20 Female-headed households, however, were treated less generously ( Judd 1992, 1994) and femalelandlessness is currently a problem (Zhu 2000). In that sense, the egalitarian nature of Chinas secondland reform ought not to be exaggerated.21 The percentages here are at best approximations because of uncertainties about the true size of therural population. The Census data collected in 1982, 1990 and 2000 show that Chinas rural popula-tion hovered at around 800 million between 1982 and 2000, rising from 21 to 36 per cent of thenational total; this 800 million is the one I have used to calculate the rural poverty rate. However,Chinas growing urbanization in the 1980s and 1990s was partly due to administrative at with manycounties being redened as cities without any real justication.

120 Chris Bramall

By 1983, the gure was down to 123 million, or about 15 per cent of the ruralpopulation (IBRD 1992, 140). The most recent ofcial data show that, thoughthe rate of rural poverty reduction fell during the 1990s, the headcount wasdown to about 28 million (4 per cent) of the rural population by 2002 (NBS2003, 13). Although these data are taken from unreliable income and consump-tion surveys (discussed further below), there is no reason to doubt the sharplydownward trend. Few countries in the world have come even close to matchingthis performance.

The proximate cause of this reduction in rural poverty was rapid agriculturalgrowth during the 1980s and 1990s. To be sure, much post-1980 agriculturalgrowth reected increased output of livestock, sh, vegetables and sidelineproducts, rather than increases in the production of those crops that had been themainstay of the Maoist agricultural economy. Maddison (1998) has estimated indetail the levels of agricultural output in 1978 and 1994 using FAO data onoutput and (1987) producer prices. These calculations show that shery andsideline output grew annually by over 9 per cent during 197894. Moreover, thecombined output value of pork, eggs and chicken (the key livestock products)rose annually by 8.4 per cent between 1984 and 1999. By contrast, crop produc-tion grew slowly: my estimates for a sample of 17 farm products (valued at 1987prices) produce an annual growth rate for crop output of just 1.5 per cent for198499.22 This growth rate was signicantly slower than the growth rate of 3.3per cent achieved between 1965 and 1978, the heyday of collective farming. Eventhe growth rate of 1.5 per cent per annum achieved after 1984 was possible onlybecause of sharp increases in vegetable production; although systematic data donot exist, Maddisons estimates of production in 1975 and 1994 show vegetableoutput value as a share of cereal output rising from one-fth to almost one-third.

Still, this nding of sluggish crop sector growth does not invalidate theGKI claims for land reform. After all, it has long been argued that one of thedisadvantages of collective farming was its adverse effects on livestock and othernon-grain crops. If we are to evaluate properly the impact of the return to familyfarming, we need to look at changes in overall agricultural growth and not justcrop sector output. These changes are shown in Table 4, which uses the latestofcial data on agricultural value-added (measured on a GDP basis).

Table 4 places collective farming in a favourable light by excluding the yearsof the Great Famine (when output collapsed).23 Even so, it is evident that theChinese agricultural sector performed much better after the family farm became

22 The 17 crops examined (using volume data from NBS 2000a and MOA 1989) were rice, wheat,corn, gaoliang (sorghum), coarse grains, tubers, soyabeans, peanuts, rapeseed, sesame, cotton, hempcrops, sugar cane and beet, tobacco, tea and fruit. Together these account for around two-thirds oftotal crop value.23 It is interesting that a weather-based trough-to-trough comparison 1980 compared with 1960 produces a growth rate for collectivized agriculture of 3.7 per cent per year, a rate faster than that for19525 (even accepting the ofcial data for the latter). However, this biases the comparison toomuch; collective farming was abandoned for a short period in many parts of China in the early 1960s.It was restored only during the Four Cleanups campaign of the mid-1960s, and therefore 196580offers a better delineation of the period of mature collective farming.


Table 4. The growth of agricultural value-added, 19652001 (real growth rates;per cent per annum)

Agricultural Agricultural output Agricultural systemoutput per capita

196580 2.4 0.3 collective farming19804 9.9 8.4 decollectivization19842001 4.0 2.8 family farming

Notes: (i) I have experimented using 1978, 1987 and 1995 prices in conjunction withvolume data for a sample of 17 key farm products, plus eggs, chicken meat and pork,to produce a genuine constant price series. These experiments show that 1987 prices aremost favourable to the post-1983 era and 1995 prices are least favourable, but thedifference between the various results is slight. I have therefore relied upon the ofcialcomparable price series for the analysis which follows. (ii) 19804 is best viewed as atransition period. 1980 was the last year of the collective and 1984 the rst full year offamily farming.

Sources: as for Table 2.

the dominant system of production in the mid-1980s. The growth path of thelate 1960s and 1970s saw output growing at around 2.4 per cent per year. Duringthe transitional years of 19804, a combination of factors (discussed more fullybelow) enabled the growth rate to leap to a remarkable 10 per cent per year.Thereafter output growth stabilized, with production increasing annually byabout 4 per cent during the late 1980s and across the 1990s. Evidently, therefore,Chinese agriculture was able to shift on to a higher growth path in the mid-1980s. The issue, however, is whether we can infer a causal role for land reformin the process.

Identifying the Impact of Land Reform

Part of the answer to the question of causality is to be found in provincialpatterns of growth. Table 5 brings together newly released provincial data on thegrowth of agricultural value-added. Four distinct phases of growth are identi-ed: the Dazhai years (196576); the era of readjustment and limited experi-mentation with alternative forms of collective farming (197680); the years ofdecollectivization (19804); and, nally, almost two decades during which therestored system of family farming has operated (19842001).

The rst cycle was that of 196576. In this phase, the system of remunerationpioneered by the famous Dazhai production brigade was propagated across ruralChina under the slogan nongye xue Dazhai (In agriculture study Dazhai).Workpoints were awarded on the basis of public appraisal of work; over timethis system resulted in a narrowing of differentials because commune memberswere increasingly unwilling (mainly for social reasons) to voice peer criticism inpublic meetings. The Dazhai system also saw the suppression of almost all forms

122 Chris Bramall

Table 5. Growth rates of agricultural value-added in Chinas provinces, 19652001(per cent per annum)

Province 196576 197680 19804 19842001

Anhui 4.2 0.7 9.3(+) 4.1Fujian 2.8 7.2(+) 7.1 7.3(+)Gansu 5.3 1.2 9.3(+) 5.0Guangdong 0.7 6.2(+) 8.1(+) 5.2Guangxi 4.9 5.1(+) 5.1 7.0(+)Guizhou 1.0 4.0(+) 11.6(+) 3.5Hebei 0.7 4.9(+) 14.1(+) 4.5Heilongjiang 2.4 3.9(+) 10.3(+) 5.2Henan 3.9 3.8 12.0(+) 5.4Hubei 2.1 3.3(+) 9.9(+) 4.0Hunan 3.0 5.5(+) 7.7(+) 4.2Jiangsu 3.4 9.9(+) 12.0(+) 3.9Jiangxi 1.9 5.8(+) 7.5(+) 4.6Jilin 1.5 5.9(+) 20.0(+) 5.8Liaoning 3.3 1.3 10.5(+) 5.6Nei Menggu 3.8 3.1 17.5(+) 6.4Ningxia 1.0 3.5(+) 13.3(+) 4.1Shaanxi 2.1 4.2(+) 7.5(+) 4.4Shandong 3.3 5.3(+) 12.9(+) 4.8Shanxi 2.1 3.5 15.7(+) 2.8Sichuan 2.0 13.5(+) 4.1 4.0Xinjiang 1.1 8.6(+) 12.8(+) 6.9Yunnan 3.1 2.4 9.6(+) 4.2Zhejiang 3.3 7.8(+) 7.4 3.6

Median 2.5 4.6 10.1 4.5

Notes: (i) Growth rates calculated from ofcial comparable price indices. The provinceslisted are Chinas main agricultural producers. (ii) The period 19804 saw the processof decollectivization started and nished in most of Chinas provinces (even in Anhui,only 21 per cent of teams had introduced family farming by December 1980. Thatprovince is therefore best regarded as still collectivized in 1980). Guizhou Chinaspoorest province was the exception. There, decollectivization was already welladvanced by the middle of 1980; 1979 was the last year of collective farming.To ensure a comparison of like with like, the 19804 period is extended to 197984for Guizhou, and the earlier phase becomes 19769. (iii) + indicates a rise in thegrowth rate compared with the previous period.

Source: NBS (1999, 2002).

of private sector activity. It remains unclear just how far this egalitarianism wasresponsible (the pattern of intersectoral ows was hardly favourable to farming),but there is little doubt that the agricultural growth rate was very slow, averag-ing less than 2.5 per cent per annum.


Agricultural growth rates began to accelerate during 197680, the secondphase identied in Table 5. Even though the weather was poor Kuehs (1995,299) index shows that the weather was about 29 per cent worse than the post-1949 average during 197680 agricultural growth rates doubled during 197680. No less than 17 of the 24 provinces recorded an acceleration in growth. Mostinterestingly of all, the median growth rate for these provinces was remarkablysimilar to the long-run median growth rate achieved after 1984. In other words,Chinese agriculture moved on to a higher growth path during the late 1970s.

Why did growth accelerate between 1976 and 1980? Of one thing we can besure: it was not due to the restoration of family farming; agricultural productionremained collectivized to all intents and purposes except in a few counties inAnhui during the late 1970s. In fact, of Chinas provinces, Guizhou was the onlyone where over 50 per cent of production teams had adopted the baogan systembefore 1981, and even there decollectivization had barely begun before early 1980(Chung 2000, 645).

In some cases, more limited institutional reform helps to explain acceleratinggrowth. Sichuan province provides the best illustration. It did pioneer agricul-tural reform, but not in the sense that family farming was restored. Rather, theaim was to make the system of collective farming function more effectively. Tothat end, most aspects of the Dazhai system were abandoned, piece rates werere-introduced, private markets began to reappear, procurement quotas werereduced in poor and mountainous areas under the slogan of tiyang shengxi (recu-perate and multiply), and attempts to promote the double-cropping of rice inlocations where the growing season was too short were abandoned by 1978(Bramall 1995). These changes go far towards explaining why Sichuan was ableto achieve an agricultural growth rate of over 13 per cent per year in the late1970s. Nevertheless, this offers an inadequate general explanation of acceleratinggrowth across China. Sichuan was the exception; elsewhere, little institutionalchange occurred before the Third Plenum in December 1978. The period is oftencharacterized as one in which the Extension of Left Errors occurred (Zhu 1992),and this is reected in the data; only 14 per cent of teams had adopted the baochansystem (itself well short of being a return to family farming) by the end of 1980.

By way of offering a general explanation of accelerating growth, we mustlook to the relaxation of a series of supply side constraints during the late 1970s.Firstly, the supply of chemical fertilizer markedly increased; the amount usedgrew by 21.5 per cent per annum between 1976 and 1980, compared to 8.5 percent per year between 1970 and 1976 (NBS 1999, 32). New high-yieldingvarieties of hybrid grain and cotton began to be planted after 1976 (Stone 1988).Thirdly, many of the large-scale irrigation networks begun in the 1960s werecompleted; irrigated area leapt by 25 per cent between 1970 and 1979 (NBS 1999,32). In short, the prospects for Chinese agriculture were utterly transformed bythe arrival of (indigenously developed) Green Revolution technology in the 1970s.More than anything else, this new technological package made possible thetransition to a new, faster, growth path before the re-introduction of familyfarming.

124 Chris Bramall

To be sure, the era of decollectivization (19804), the third phase identied inTable 5, heralded a quickening in the pace of agricultural growth. The provincialmedian rose to a heady 10 per cent, more than double the rate recorded during197680; in only four of the main 24 producing provinces did the growth rateslow. By any standard, the growth rates achieved during 19804 were incrediblyhigh. No less than 13 provinces achieved double digit real growth rates; grossfarm production in 1983 leapt by 27 per cent in Liaoning and by 37 per cent inJilin (NBS 1999). This was an unprecedented performance for an agriculturaleconomy. Even during the early 1960s, in the wake of the collapse of productionduring the Great Famine, Chinas agricultural production grew no more quicklythan this (output grew by 11.4 per cent per year between 1962 and 1965).

Supercially at least, the growth spurt of 19804 offers overwhelmingsupport for the GKI hypothesis. The reality, however, was rather different. Theoutput surge was brief; the suggestion that land reform caused the surge isdoubtful; and provinces which decollectivized early appear to have grown nomore quickly than those which decollectivized late. Let us discuss each of thesein turn.

Firstly, the surge in output was very short-lived. The long-run growth ratesrecorded after 1984 were much slower than those for 19804, and were in anycase no higher than those attained during the late 1970s.

Secondly, and most importantly, the causal relationship between land reformand the growth surge is doubtful. For one thing, state-set procurement pricesrose by over 20 per cent in 1979 (Sicular 1989; Han and Feng 1992). As theinternal terms of trade were biased against agriculture throughout the Maoist era(Sheng 1993), this increase in procurement prices generated positive income andsubstitution effects, encouraging the take-up of Green Revolution technology bycollective farms. For another thing, the weather was kind; good weather in 1982,1983 and 1984 helped to make the output surge of those years appear as if it weredue to the restoration of family farming. Still, we should not exaggerate itsimpact; Kuehs (1995) index shows that the weather during these years was byno means exceptional by post-1949 standards. Additionally, the abandonment ofthe Dazhai system, and the implementation of the other reforms pioneered inSichuan, no doubt contributed signicantly to the growth spurt. Nevertheless,there is no question that decollectivization had a purely statistical effect: therestoration of private farming led to a vast reduction in output under-reportingof the sort identied by Oi (1989).24 The outputs of private plots no longer had tobe hidden, and the products of black land (increases in sown and even cultivatedarea achieved during the 1960s and 1970s suppressed by production teams) beganto show up in the ofcial data as the land was transferred to household use.

Thirdly, the causal role of family farming is undermined by the fact that thoseprovinces that decollectivized early experienced a growth bonus during 19804

24 Growth rates were also boosted by widespread deforestation as property management wastransferred to households; for example, the output of the forestry sub-sector rose by 34 per cent inHeilongjiang in 1983 (NBS 1999).


that was no larger than that enjoyed by provinces that decollectivized late. Onewould have expected the reverse. A province decollectivizing early ought tohave out-performed a late decollectivizer during 19804 because, although bothwould have enjoyed the (alleged) one-off gains from decollectivization, the earlyprovince would have gained from being on its higher growth path at an earlierdate. For example, Anhui ought to have done better than Heilongjiang during19804 because Anhui would have been on its new growth path by 1982 (90 percent of Anhui production teams had adopted baogan by February 1982), whereasHeilongjiang was at a comparable stage only in late 1983. However, if we look atcases of late and early decollectivization, there is no evidence that the secondgroup did better than the rst. The early group (Anhui, Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhouand Ningxia) saw their median agricultural growth rate rise from 3.5 per centduring 197680 to 9.3 per cent during 19804, a ratio (the growth bonus) of2.7.25 However, the late group (Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces) didequally well; their median growth rate rose from 3.9 to 10.5 per cent.

To be sure, this type of evidence cannot be regarded as a decisive refutation ofthe decollectivization hypothesis. The weather may have been relatively better inthe three north-eastern provinces, such that late decollectivization mattered less.Alternatively, it may be that output under-reporting was greater there than inthe provinces that restored family farming earlier. A third possibility is thatfamily farming was more potent in the afuent late decollectivizers than in thepoorer early decollectivizers (but if it was the case that family farming suited theafuent much more than it suited the poor farmer, this result hardly providesmuch comfort for GKI). Nevertheless, there is little in this evidence to indicatethat land reform played the crucial role in raising output growth in the late 1970sand 1980s. GKI are hardly alone in making expansive claims for Chinesedecollectivization, but the fact remains that the evidence is equivocal.

The Costs of Decollectivization: Chinese Agriculture since 1984

In fact, the abandonment of large-scale farming probably did more harmthan good in the Chinese context. This outcome is not surprising: the primarymotivation behind the imposition of decollectivization in 19823 was undoubt-edly political. Dengs new regime was eager to build support in the countryside,and decollectivization served that purpose by creating a new class of cultivatorswho had a large stake in the new system. After 1983 there was no going back tocollective farming; the decollectivization settlement had made certain of that.

The problems left in the wake of this settlement were several. The mostobvious was the small size of the holdings created, which led to a large propor-tion of land being lost to paths and boundaries, conict over access to irrigationsystems, and which made even small-scale mechanization extremely difcult. Alarge 1990 survey covering 5389 villages (cun) found that 51 per cent of holdings

25 Data on the progress of decollectivization by province are to be found in Chung (2000, 645).

126 Chris Bramall

were of less than 5 mu (about 0.3 hectares) in size in 1986 and that, by 1990, thepercentage had risen to 54. The problem was (not surprisingly) particularlysevere in densely populated eastern China, where the gure was 66 per cent(MOA 1991, 37). More recent data from Chinas massive 1997 land survey(which collected data for 1996) show that 79 per cent of household holdings wereof 1 hectare or less in size.26 This gure is even higher than the gures recordedfor Japan 73 per cent in 1955 and 71 per cent in 1986 where successivepost-war governments have made enormous (but largely unavailing) efforts toincrease farm size (Kojima 1988, 7334).27

The problem of small farm size was compounded by parcellization. Bucks(1937, 181) survey found that the average pre-war Chinese farm was divided into5.6 parcels and that 11 per cent of farms were divided into more than ten plots.The same problem re-emerged in the aftermath of the second land reform. Drivenby equity considerations, farmers were assigned land of equivalent quality dur-ing land reform, i.e. they were given plots of good, medium and poor-qualityland scattered across the village. As a result, land holdings averaged 8.4 mu perhousehold in 19845, typically divided into 9.7 parcels. The size of parcels seemsto be have been relatively similar across much of China (outside Manchuria): 0.8mu on the outskirts of Shanghai and 0.74 mu in Anhui, for example. Of the 946mu cultivated in one village in Yu xian (Henan province), the average householdfarmed 11.8 parcels and no parcel exceeded 3.5 mu (AS 1988, 17, 173, 207, 281).This 19845 survey may well have exaggerated the extent of parcellization.The bigger 1990 survey (mentioned above) found that the average householdmanaged 5.9 parcels in 1986 and 5.5 parcels by 1990 (MOA 1991, 36). But eventhese gures strikingly similar to Bucks pre-war estimate suggest extensiveparcellization. This, and the return of other pre-war phenomena (such as thelocation of graves in the middle of elds because of feng shui considerations) didlittle to promote efcient farming.

In addition, there is little evidence of an inverse relation between size andyields in post-decollectivization China. One study of 800 rural households foundthat yields tended to increase with farm size; farms of over 30 mu produced yieldsof 508 yuan, compared with a yield of 403 yuan per mu on farms of up to 2.5 muin scale. However, the relationship was not monotonic the lowest yield wasregistered for farms of between 5 and 20 mu and therefore the regressioncoefcient was not signicant (Li 1993, 13841). Another study of grain farmingin Wuxi found that yields were highest on farms of between 8 and 10 mu andlower on farms that were both smaller and larger than this (Wuxi xian zhi 1994,202). Some recent research has looked at the impact of collective-era farmland

26 These data for 1996 exclude areas of grassland and woodland managed by households. If thesetwo categories are included, 30 per cent of holdings in 1996 were of less than 0.2 hectares in size, anda further 53 per cent of between 0.2 and 0.6 hectares. It is unclear whether the gures in the 1990survey include grassland or woodland but, if so, they appear very consistent with the 1996 results.27 The Chinese leadership has increasingly recognized the need for consolidation. The SixteenthParty Congress (November 2002) agreed to permit the sale of agricultural land, ostensibly in order topromote this very goal.


consolidation schemes in Jiangsu province and the CAD (comprehensive agricul-tural development) programmes introduced after 1988 (Liu et al. 1998). Theseprogrammes focused primarily on consolidation and defragmentation, and onimproving the efciency of irrigation and drainage. The creation of larger farmsreduced land loss to paths, boundaries and irrigation systems, reduced conictsbetween households over access rights (particularly to water) and made irrigationeasier. More importantly, their effect was to raise both labour productivity andyields (the latter primarily because of the greater degree of multiple croppingmade possible by improved irrigation). All of this strikes at the heart of GKIsassumption of an inverse relation between yields and farm size in peasant agricul-ture. And, whilst one might argue that consolidation schemes have allowed peasantagriculture to perform better without changing its underlying structures, it needsto be pointed out that farmland consolidation has proved extremely expensive.As a vehicle for farmland consolidation, collective farms are hard to beat.

Finally, a number of scholars have pointed to the problems caused by theinsecurity of property rights in Chinas villages, one of the abiding legacies ofthe decollectivization settlement (Zhu and Jiang 1993; Nyberg and Rozelle 1999;OECD 1997). One problem, at least from an orthodox property rights perspect-ive, is the re-allocation of land by village governments. Although this does nothappen very often (except in response to demographic change), a number oftensions have arisen. When, for example, central government decided to replacethe 15-year contracts awarded at the time of decollectivization by 30-year con-tracts in the late 1990s, many village governments refused to comply; contractsof 510 years in length were the norm instead. Other problems arise because ofdisputes between the village (the old production brigade) and work groups (theold production team). It is hard to be sure whether these problems have signic-antly affected production; some scholars think not (Kung 1995). But it is clearthat Chinese rural realities were far removed from the picture painted by GKI inwhich usufruct rights were permanent and heritable.

The Impact of Land Reform on Poverty and the Distribution of Income

What of the effects of the second Chinese land reform on the distribution ofincome? The rst GKI claim is that rural income inequality declined during thetransition from collective to family farming; the evidence cited is a fall in the ruralgini coefcient from 0.32 in 1978 to 0.22 in 1982. The second claim is that thesubsequent rise in the rural gini during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990sreected growing inequalities in non-farm income not rising inequality of cropincome.28 Family farming, it is alleged, held in check the rise in rural inequality.

The rst claim is the least plausible of all the GKI statements about Chineseland reform. The gini coefcient of 0.32 given for 1978 is unsourced, but it

28 GKI (2002, 311) give a rural gini of 0.42 for 1995. This is taken from Khan and Riskin (1998) andis based upon a re-analysis of ofcial data. These ofcial NBS (2000b, 18) estimates for the late 1990sshow the gini stabilizing at between 0.33 and 0.34 in the late 1990s.

128 Chris Bramall

Table 6. Estimates of income inequality in rural China, 197884 (gini coefcients)

IBRD (unpublished) IBRD (1985) IBRD (1992) NBS

1978 0.32 n/a 0.21 0.2121979 0.28 0.257 n/a n/a1980 0.26 0.237 n/a 0.2411981 0.23 0.231 0.24 0.2411982 0.22 0.225 n/a 0.2321983 0.25 n/a n/a 0.2461984 0.27 n/a 0.26 0.244

Note: Ahmad and Wang (1991) cite the estimates of a World Bank Working Groupon Poverty in Developing Countries. These estimates cover the period 197886 andare re-produced in the rst column of this table. The gures for the late 1970s rstappeared in World Bank publications of the early 1980s; an early estimate for the ruralgini for 1979 was 0.315 (IBRD 1983, 313) and this gure is presumably the basis forthe 1978 (sic) gure used by the working group referred to by Ahmad and Wang.

Sources: Ahmad and Wang (1991, 46); NBS gures from NBS (2000b, 18).Other data from IBRD (1992, 23) and IBRD (1985, 2930).

presumably comes from the book edited by Grifn and Zhao (1993); page 61 ofthis book gives a time series for the rural gini and the gure of 0.32 appears for1978. The reference given there is to a paper by Ahmad and Wang (1991, 46),who in turn cite a World Bank working group. However, as Table 6 demon-strates, the World Bank has progressively revised downwards its estimate of theChinese rural gini for the late 1970s. By 1992, the original gure of 0.32 hadlong been abandoned and superseded with the ofcial Chinese estimate of 0.21shown in the table; this and other ofcial data are cited in the Banks most recentwork (IBRD 1997, 17). Right from the start, therefore, GKI are on very shakyground in attempting to substantiate a claim of falling inequality by citing aWorld Bank study long since discarded by the Bank itself.

The ofcial Chinese data now accepted by the World Bank provide somesupport for the GKI view that Chinese land reform was equalizing: the rural ginidips from 0.241 in 1981 to 0.232 in 1982, before beginning a steady rise to reach0.342 in 1995 (NBS 2000b, 18). But to base a general conclusion on a fall in thegini coefcient of 0.009 is not very wise. By this token, if a fall of 0.009 is to bemade the basis of a general theory, the fall of 0.015 between 1986 and 1987 long after decollectivization ought also to be thoroughly discussed.29 Further-more, the inherent fragility of the NBS data needs to be accorded much moreweight than it receives from Grifn et al. The best that can be said about the

29 The position taken by GKI that inequality in China in the late 1970s was not especially low ismarkedly at variance with the pro-collective view expressed in Grifn (1982). There the claims ofKhan that the degree of income inequality in rural China [at the end of the 1970s] is remarkably lowwere vigorously defended, not least by the proposition that the distribution of income from privateplots was an equalizing force under collective farming.


surveys that provide the data for ofcial estimates of the rural gini is that theywere thoroughly unreliable during 197885, and are still not to be trusted.Sample size was small; the surveys were carried out in areas that were richer thanthe average; (afuent) rural households whose main source of income was ruralindustry or commerce were simply excluded; and illiterate households were alsoeither excluded or under-sampled (Matsuda 1990; Bramall and Jones 1993; Bramall2001). It is true that we have no proper time series alternative to these ofcialdata.30 But that is hardly a good reason to accept them as uncritically as GKI do.

The second point made by GKI about the post-1981 income distribution ismarginally more persuasive. As a number of studies have established, includingwork by Grifn and Khan themselves, the income derived from the farm sectorhas partly offset the disequalizing effects of income earned in the non-farm sector(Grifn and Zhao 1993; Khan and Riskin 1998, 2001; Riskin et al. 2001). Richhouseholds receive the bulk of their income from the non-farm sector and with-out their (relatively greater) landholdings, poor households would be still moredisadvantaged. As household surveys carried out by the NBS (2000b, 456, 66)show, poor households those with an average income per head of between 100and 200 yuan in 1999 managed 3.1 mu of land per capita in 1999. This was wellabove the average per capita holding of 2.1 mu, and households in the top incomebracket (over 5000 yuan) managed barely 1.9 mu per capita. Access to land, inother words, was not the basis for prosperity in the Chinese countryside, butit helped to offset the disequalizing effect of income earned in rural industry andcommerce. Nevertheless, a cautionary note is very much in order here. Access toland for poor households in China serves to mitigate rural inequality, but theonly reason that land is such a valuable asset is price support for agriculturerather than the greater efciency of small-scale farms. It is the favourable move-ment in the internal terms of trade after 1979 that has been primarily responsiblefor holding in check the wage differential between farm and non-farm employ-ment in the Chinese countryside.

However, the main problem with the GKI claim is that the pro-poor distri-bution of arable land in the 1980s and 1990s was a product of local state inter-vention, not the operation of family farming. The most common system ofland management is the liangtianzhi (two-eld system).31 This involves house-holds being allocated two types of land in addition to private plots (MOA 1991;Zhu and Jiang 1993; OECD 1997).32 Firstly, households received kouliangtian

30 An alternative Chinese survey (AS 1988) shows a sharp increase in the rural gini between 1978and 1984 but collected no data for the intervening years.31 The liangtianzhi covered about 550 million mu in 1990, or about 38 per cent of arable area. It wastherefore only one of many land management systems in operation (MOA 1991, 33). The system didnot work in many poor areas because they simply did not have enough land to provide more thankouliang land.32 Private plots were under household control throughout the collective era and have remained sosince 1981; though ownership of this land is still formally vested in local government, it is to allintents and purposes privately managed land. In mid-1980s Shanghai, the average private plot was about0.7 mu in size, very similar to the average (0.8 mu) for a parcel of village-owned land (AS 1988, 173).The NBS (2000b, 5466) survey for 1999 found that private plots averaged 0.38 mu per household.

130 Chris Bramall

(grain ration land) as part of the decollectivization settlement. This land was usu-ally allocated on a per capita basis, the aim being to ensure that each house-hold managed enough land to meet its subsistence requirements. Secondly,households could usually sign a contract with the village to manage additionalland (responsibility land or zerentian) in return for agreeing to meet a part of theprocurement quota imposed by central government. In 1990, zerentian land ac-counted for 360 million mu in those parts of China using the liangtianzhi system;kouliangtian accounted for a further 180 million mu (MOA 1991, 33). In addition,Chinese villages retained a reserve of land. Some of this was used to provide feedfor pigs,33 or rented out (chengbaotian) in return for a fee and an undertaking fromthe household involved to meet an additional part of the villages procurementquota.34

However, the key point about land management was that the allocation ofland was not set in stone at the time of decollectivization. As households died outor migrated, kouliang land would revert to the land reserve controlled by thevillage government. Conversely, the village could allocate more kouliang land tohouseholds that were growing in size. Here decision-making seems to have beenmuch more inuenced by considerations of equity than growth; even in easternChina, where income levels were much higher, 61 per cent of zeren land wascontracted out by the village on a per capita basis in 1990 rather than concen-trated in the hands of a small number of entrepreneurial farmers; in westernChina, the gure was 91 per cent (MOA 1991, 34). Local governments have alsocontinued to exercise tight control over secondary land markets. As a result, themarket for land in rural China is far removed from that found in most othercountries, whether developed or under-developed. Usufruct rights are to someextent permanent and heritable, but the system is altogether less market-driventhan GKI imply; insecurity of tenure would be a better way to characterize thesystem, as we have noted earlier. Ultimately, it is local government that is thesource of this insecurity. But equally, it is village government that ensures thatincome from farming has an equalizing effect on the rural income distribution not the operation of family farming per se. In saying that . . . land reform,by providing remarkably equal access to land, helped to contain the forcesgenerating inequality, GKI (2002, 312) neglect the decisive role played by localgovernment.

CHINAS EXPERIENCE IN EAST ASIAN PERSPECTIVE

GKI claim that there are strong parallels between the experience of China andother East Asian countries. They are right: land reform was as unsuccessfulacross East Asia as it was in China, and for much the same reasons.

33 As it operated in Suzhou in the mid-1980s, the system rather logically was called the santianzhi,or three-eld system (Wang 1986, 21).34 Chinese terminology is confusing here because chengbaotian is often used to refer to all privatelymanaged land except private plots; see NBS (2000b, 66).


Japan

The Chinese case is mirrored by that of Japan, which also experienced two landreforms in the modern era. The rst, which occurred at the start of the Meiji era,is ignored by GKI. Yet there are clear parallels between it and the Chinese landreform of the early 1950s. Between 1868 and the completion of revisions to thenew Land Tax law in the middle of the 1870s, Japan transferred formal owner-ship rights from absentee landlords to the relatively well-to-do peasant farmerswho actually cultivated the land. Dore (1965) described this process as a StageOne land reform during which feudal landlords were displaced by cultivatinglandlords. However, the farmers who were the main beneciaries are arguablybetter described as rich peasants than as landlords because they had no formal landownership (as opposed to use) rights prior to the reform. This re-distributionaside, there was no attempt to eliminate tenancy, and feudal landowners evenreceived compensation in the form of government bonds; thus Japans earlyMeiji reform was not especially radical. Dore did not discuss China explicitly.However, he did discuss the Soviet land reform in the immediate aftermath ofthe 1917 Revolution, categorizing that as a Stage One reform, and collectiviza-tion as a Stage Two reform (Dore 1965, 4889). It is therefore to be inferred thatChinas land reform of the early 1950s was also a Stage One reform and thusequivalent to the Meiji land reform. Of course, we should not push the paralleltoo far: Chinas land reform was altogether more bloody Japanese landlordsreceived compensatory bonds, whereas 800,000 of Chinas were executed andmuch more of an effort was made to eliminate tenancy altogether. Nevertheless,Dores typology does make some sense: Chinas rich peasants had much incommon with the relatively well-to-do peasants of the late Tokugawa era inJapan and both were the principal beneciaries of land reform.

Opinion is divided on the impact of the rst Japanese land reform. Dorepoints to the favourable growth effects presided over by the new class ofpaternalistic landlords. This assessment is supported by (revised) ofcial datathat show agricultural output growing at around 1.7 per cent per year in the halfcentury after the Meiji restoration (Ohkawa et al. 1974). It may also be fairlyobserved that growth would have been faster still but for the high rate of landtaxation, and that many Meiji landlords saw themselves as the vanguard of ruralmodernization. Moore (1967) is much more sceptical of the contribution ofJapans progressive new landlord class, arguing that it did little to promoteagricultural modernization or even an expansion of rural cultural horizons.Noting, too, its pious protofascist sentiments, Moore even saw Japanscultivating landlords as a threat to Japanese modernization. For him, A class thattalks a great deal about its contribution to society is often well along the road tobecoming a menace to civilization (Moore 1967, 287).

Moores strictures are echoed in the writings of those who have examinedclosely the Japanese output data. Nakamura (1966, 12) challenged the ofcial data,arguing that they greatly exaggerated Meiji growth rates by under-estimatingyields at the beginning of the Meiji era. His revisions reduced measured output

132 Chris Bramall

growth from 2.4 per cent per annum between 1878 and 1917 to only 1 per centper annum, suggesting that later Meiji agricultural performance was decidedlyunimpressive. Now Nakamura arguably over-stated his case, but his critique didlead to a downward revision of Meiji growth rates; the modern consensus is thatgrowth averaged around 1.7 per cent per year (Ohkawa et al. 1974; Hayami andYamada 1991, 245; Francks 1999, 115). Perhaps more importantly, even insofaras Meiji growth was respectable, it owed much less to the new cultivatinglandlords than it did to the diffusion of technology pioneered during the Tokugawaera. There was little by way of invention or innovation and in sharp contrast tocollective-era China the proportion of land irrigated did not increase until the1920s. As a result growth slowed after 1910, and per capita output actuallydeclined (Ohkawa et al. 1974). The real measure of the weakness of the agriculturalsector was Japans increasing reliance on imports from its colonies during theinterwar period (Hayami and Yamada 1991).

As for inequality, the debate continues on the extent and pace of the differen-tiation of the Japanese peasantry in the aftermath of the early Meiji land reform.There is no doubt that the rate of tenancy increased; about 30 per cent of landwas cultivated by tenants in the early 1870s, rising to 40 per cent in 1892, 46 percent in 1910 and peaking at close to 50 per cent in 1930 (Ryo 1978, 97; Hayamiand Yamada 1991, 65). Much of the increase reected the interaction of the LandTax (a lump sum tax payable in cash) and falling prices during the Matsukatadeation of the early 1880s. Some, such as Norman (1940), argued that thisprocess of peasant expropriation led to rising poverty. Others have been lesspessimistic, arguing that rising off-farm income offset lower prots fromfarming (Smethurst 1986). However, there is no doubt that inequality in ruralJapan was very high, and trending upwards. Using pre-war Japanese tax records,new estimates made by Minami and others put the rural gini coefcient at around0.43 in 18911900; this subsequently rose to around 0.54, where it remainedduring the 1920s and 1930s (Minami et al. 1993, 361, 1998, 45). In other words,the trajectory of the gini coefcient for income inequality seems to track that ofthe tenancy rate rather closely. The Meiji land reform, as well as doing little toaccelerate output growth, thus served to usher in half a century of rising inequality.

The second Japanese land reform was carried out by the Allied forces ofoccupation between 1945 and 1950, and was subsequently ratied by the newJapanese government in 1952. The reform encountered little opposition. Thepower of the landlord class had been weakened by the direct procurement of riceby the Japanese government from tenant farmers after 1941, and there was muchsupport for the reform within Japan itself. Nevertheless, the reform was onlypushed through because it received the whole-hearted backing of MacArthur,the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces. MacArthurs central objectivewas to put an end to the tenant unrest of the pre-war era, and thereby eliminateboth the social basis for Japanese militarism and the possibility of a successfulCommunist revolution. The main pre-occupation of Allied opinion was withthe former; the Manchester Guardian undoubtedly expressed the view of many inarguing that


The reform of agriculture is the rst step in the reform of Japan. Raisingthe standards of living of the peasantry will cut off Japanese industryssupply of cheap labour and will also result in a reduction of Japans militarymanpower potential. . . . (Manchester Guardian 26 September 1945, 5)

But a conservative land reform also served to undercut popular supportfor Communism, and therein lay its principal attraction for many in the USadministration.

As GKI (2002, 307) rightly observe, this second Japanese land reformproduced a more equal rural income distribution in the short run. However, thelong-term evolution of rural inequality in Japan is much less clear. Minami(1998, 53) concludes that the rural gini had fallen to 0.348 by the late 1950s.However, the data he uses seem to imply growing differentiation of thepeasantry in the aftermath of land reform; the rural gini rose from 0.316 in 1956to 0.348 in 1959. Furthermore, a number of scholars have concluded that theofcial Japanese data all of which show a low level of inequality, independentlyof the trend are extremely unreliable (Bauer and Mason 1992). These doubtswere sufcient to persuade Atkinson et al. (1995) to exclude Japan entirely fromhis ofcially backed comparison of post-war inequality in OECD countries.It may be that off-farm earnings continued to offset inequalities in income fromfarm production (as many scholars claim), but the data remain far too uncertainfor us to be sure. In any case, even if we accept the validity of the income data,it is far from difcult to argue that the main reason for narrowing rural incomeinequality was not the supposed efciency of family farmers but massive govern-ment subsidies in the form of price support to rice farmers. In this respect, thewritings of Ann Waswo are representative of the literature in the weight theygive to [t]he closing of a sizable income gap between the typical residents ofboth countryside and city by means of price supports; for the growing cadre ofpart-time farmers, Rice became a useful little earner (1996, 138, 140).

GKI are entirely silent on the impact of Japans second land reform on outputgrowth, and for reasons that become readily apparent. To be sure, agriculturaloutput rose signicantly in the immediate post-war era, and some writers havetaken a positive view of the role played by land reform in the process (Dore1959). However, Dore has often been accused of being over-optimistic, and ofhaving accepted uncritically the crude reductionist analysis offered by modern-ization theorists such as Rostow, whereby externally imposed land reform wasboth a necessary and sufcient condition for agricultural development (Shimazaki1966). More signicantly, there is direct and indirect evidence suggesting thatland reform had little effect. The indirect evidence includes the nding for pre-war Japan that there was little difference in yields between owner-occupied andtenant farm (Kawagoe 1993). The more direct evidence suggests that land reformstimulated consumption and demand growth, but that there was little effect onfarm investment (Kawano 1965; Kawagoe 1993). Furthermore, the evidence alsosuggests that growth accelerated in the late 1940s at about the same pace in thoseprefectures where land reform occurred late as it did in prefectures where land

134 Chris Bramall

Table 7. Growth rates of real agricultural output (per cent per year)

Japan Taiwan South Korea

196070 4.0 5.2 4.5197080 0.2 2.3 2.7198090 1.3 2.0 2.8199099 1.6 0.4 2.1

Sources: IBRD (various years); IBRD (2001, 1945); State Statistics (Taiwan).

reform was early (Kaneda 1980). This last nding echoes our ndings on Chinasprovinces between 1980 and 1984.

The main reason for rising Japanese agricultural output in the immediatepost-war era was a combination of growing use of chemical fertilizer (Ohkawaet al. 1970) and the effective use of the irrigation infrastructure created during the1930s (Kawagoe 1993); across much of Asia, indeed, the release of the irrigationconstraint was the key to growth (Kikuchi and Hayami 1985). The growingintensity of chemical fertilizer use in Japan in turn owed much to a massivetransfer of capital into the farm sector. As many economists have noted, the scaleof price support and protection was unprecedented; by the early 1980s, value-added in rice production measured at world prices was actually negative (Van derMeer and Yamada 1990). These intersectoral resource ows allowed an expansionof farm sector production during the 1950s and 1960s (Table 7). By the end ofthe 1960s, however, the scope for further growth was increasingly circumscribedby the small scale of Japanese family farming (Ouchi 1966). Hayami and Yamada,two of the leading specialists on Japanese agricultu

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