Fanshen "Turning Over"

Question 1

When was the Agrarian Reform Law passed?

Answer 1

June 1950

Question 2

What did the Agrarian Reform Law entail?

Answer 2

Party cadres being sent to the countryside to organise a nationwide campaign to redistribute land and denounce landlords

Question 3

What was a ‘speak bitterness meeting’?

Answer 3

Everyone in the village gathered and subjected landlords or wealthy peasants to public denunciations. A People’s Tribunal would decide whether the accused is a local despot and should have their land tallied, if they should be beaten, or if they should be executed

Question 4

What was the ability to express indignation seen as by peasants?

Answer 4

An opportunity to stand up against years of exploitation and mistreatment

Question 5

How were nice landlords treated? (2 pt)

Answer 5

Leniently, often given enough land to support themselves and their families.

Could also hold rented land as long as this amounted to more than half their holdings

Question 6

Why did the land reform (fanshen) intensify so drastically? (3 pt)

Answer 6

• The class struggle and passions of the rural people were unleashed and hard to contain
• Many People’s Tribunals did not take into account the Agrarian Reform Law’s intention to protect the most productive farms, thus leading to excess
• Fear of counter-revolutionary influences made the attitude toward landlords less restrained, leading to a wave of mass executions

Question 7

How many people are estimated to have been killed during Fanshen?

Answer 7

1 million

Question 8

What was Mao’s aim with Fanshen?

Answer 8

To destroy the traditional rural order (dominated by social and political standing of landlords) to replace it with a socialist one

Question 9

What did Philip Short argue was the significance of having the peasants carry out the land reform themselves?

Answer 9

“peasants who killed with their bare hands the landlords who oppressed them were wedded into the new revolutionary order in a way that passive spectators could never be”

Question 10

What does Tom Ryan argue is the significance of Fanshen?

Answer 10

“They were now complicit in making the new society- including its expressions of revolutionary violence”

Question 11

How did Mao justify Fanshen?

Answer 11

“The peasants are clear sighted”