Chapter 105 Land reform involved the struggle and elimination of landlords

Journalist: “You are promoting land reform to ensure that farmers had their own land and have the opportunity to become prosperous, right?”

Mao: “Not quite. I am carrying out land reform to overthrow the landlord class and distribute land to farmers. It is to mobilize the farmers to struggle against the landloards. The land distributed to farmers is temporary, as I have planned. Sonn, we will collectivize the land through cooperative methods and manage it under the party’s control. I will now allow farmers to freely become prosperous. At the end of 1949, an agricultural expert name Dong Shijin wrote to me, advising me to stop land reform. He argued that the agricultural land was acquired by landloards through their hard-earned savings, not through exploitation. Even tricycle drivers and maids had savings to buy land. He claimed that land confiscation would be diimental to production development.”

Journalist: “Why didn’t you listen to the advice of agricultural experts?”

Mao: “I do not care whether it is good for production or not, I create the theory of exploitation, in order to make the peasants hate the landlords, to defeat the landlords gentry, so that the poor peasants who listen to me in power, rogues and yakuza do not matter, so that I can rule. In a few years, the cooperative, communalization, the peasants themselves have no land, so they have to listen to the party, like slaves to work and remember the work points, in order to have food, is what I call communism.”

Journalist: “Was the killing of landlords during the land reform struggle very common and serious?”

Mao: “Yes, I have read many briefings, some places put everyone with red cloth strips poor peasants (poor class peasants), yellow cloth strips middle peasants (middle peasants), white cloth strips landlords rich peasants (rich class peasants), private torture halls, people’s courts, severe torture, arbitrary killing. An old man in Guangdong who had 6 acres of his ancestors’ farmland was classified as a landlord and asked to hand over gold and silver, but he could not. Guangdong Enping County, overseas Chinese couple, relying on their son’s money sent back from working abroad, bought a few acres of land to live, classified as landlords, the fields and houses confiscated, but also forced him to write to his son to send back 3,000 U.S. dollars, the old couple was desperate, hanged themselves together.”

Journalist: “This is too inhumane to force the elderly to die, right?”

Mao: “There are many such examples. There was an old man in Jiangxi who worked as a tailor in Shanghai all his life, saved some money to buy a little land to live on, and did some good deeds in his hometown, but he was also classified as a landlord and was shot with other landlords.”

Journalist: “How many landlords were killed throughout the country?”

Mao: “According to incomplete statistics, about 4.7 million landlords and gentry were killed, together with their children’s families who were fought and liquidated, about 20 million victims.”

Journalist: “Such large-scale criticism and killings have aroused domestic and foreign opposition, right?”

Mao: “Yes, the American Chinese leader Situ Meitang, who joined the CPPCC, wrote to me in 1951, asking for an investigation into the indiscriminate beatings and killings, and I instructed Guangdong to organize a demonstration of several thousand people in the hotel where he was staying, chanting down the landlords, and also publicly shooting more than 100 landlord bullies in the vicinity. Situ Meitang felt helpless, only said ‘you do not scare me.’”

Journalist: “I heard that Guangdong Ye Jianying at first to engage in peaceful land reform?”

Mao: “Yes, Ye Jianying and Guangdong Governor Fang Fang, only to share the land, not to fight and not to kill landlords, I pointed to Fang Fang and said: you land reform right-leaning, demote you a level. I replaced Ye Jianying, sent Tao Zhu to go, Tao Zhu kill open, he went to the previous right-leaning county public security chief, the vice president of the court, etc. were shot, Guangdong immediately opened up the situation, a killing spree. 1951 democrats Zhang Naiqi, Liang Shuming went to Sichuan to investigate land reform, back to Beijing said to me that a lot of indiscriminate killing, I said land reform is a revolution, even if a little too much, there is nothing.”

Journalist: “Landlords do a lot of good deeds. Peasants say that the current cadres, than the past landlords, bailiffs are still fierce, in the past a village a bailiff, now many bailiffs.”

Mao: “Yes, it is true, the country squire in the past has the education and quality, now the cadres can not compare. It is my sin to knock down the landlords.”

Journalist: “You sent Tao Zhu to Guangdong to go on a killing spree?

Mao: “Yes, there are more than 6 million Chinese families in Guangdong, owning 1/5 of the land, the provincial party secretary Fang Fang is kind-hearted, can not lay hands on the landlords, in 1952 I sent Tao Zhu to replace Fang Fang, Ye Jianying also transferred to Beijing, Tao Zhu nicknamed ‘tank,’ he also listened to my words, a killing spree, ‘village bloodshed He also listened to me and went on a killing spree,’ ‘bleeding in every village and struggling in every household,’ torture and torture, more than 4,000 people died in 3 months, and more than 700 people committed suicide in Chaozhou. Fang Fang was transferred to Beijing, where I denounced him as a ‘localist’ and then made him disappear.