Wk. 9 The Land System of the Heavenly Kingdom (1853)

Question 1

The Land System of the Heavenly Kingdom (1853)

Answer 1

The Land System of the Heavenly Kingdom (1853) – This document represents some of the fundamental ideas and organizing principles of the Taiping Rebellion, which swept China between 1851 and 1864. It was the largest and most serious of several revolts that occurred in China in the middle of the nineteenth century in response to the humiliation of the Opium War. The leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Hung Xiuquan, was the son of a peasant. Christian missionaries introduced him to the basics of that religion and Hung, who came to believe he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, sent by God to establish the Heavenly Kingdom on earth.

Why might other peasants have joined Hung’s movement on the basis of this document?

• Peasants found Hung’s movement appealing because they had everything to gain and nothing to lose from embracing Hung’s ideas. They would all be net receivers of land, food, and resources.

How would it address the problems facing China?

• Spreading out the land to the growing population accomplished several goals:
  
  1. Dispursed the population across the land, avoiding over-densely populated areas and the problems they cause.
  2. Inhibited unrest from a frustrated or hungry population.
  3. Allocating the land made it more likely that the natural resources of the nation would be more efficiently used. More land could be cultivated. More food could be produced.
  4. Spread wealth throughout the land, possibly inhibiting unrest among the peasants.

Would you say these ideas were an attempt to restore Chinese traditions or create a new China?

• Create a new China based on Equality of economics and resources, though not of individual freedoms.
• The entire document attempts to distribute all the land to all the people, a COLLECTIVIST attempt at socialism.
  
  • “All the fields in the empire are to be cultivated by all the people alike”
  • “There being fields, let all cultivate them; there being food, let all eat; there being clothes, let all be dressed; there being money, let all use it, so that nowhere does inequality exist, and no man is not well fed and clothed.”
• The nation of China is to be looked at as a WHOLE community rather than a collection of individuals.
  
  • “All the fields throughout the empire, whether of abundant or deficient harvest, shall be taken as a whole”
  • “thus, all the people in the empire may together enjoy the abundant happiness of the Heavenly Father”
• There were social services for those who suffered.
  
  • “each individual has a sufficient supply of food, and aside from the new grain each may receive, the remainder must be deposited in the public granary.”
  • “With regard to the others, the widowers, widows, orphaned, and childless, the disabled and sick, they shall all be exempted from military service and issued provisions from the public granaries for their sustenance.”
• There was total focus on a utilitarian life, using only what was needed and no more.
  
  • “but a limit must be observed, and not a cash be used beyond what is necessary.”
• But he also wanted to establish a NEW China.
  
  • Forbidding prior religion and accepting only Christianity. “offer a Eucharistic sacrifice to our Heavenly Father, the Supreme Lord and Great God; all corrupt ceremonies of former times are abolished.”