Study On The Evolution Of Chinese Communist Party's Land Policies In The First Half Of 20th Century

Patterns of social evolution overtime depend on institutional changes, which played the key role on understanding the history evolving process. Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led institutional changes of Chinese rural land system in the first half of 20th century, which not only converted their own historical fate, but also produced significant influence on the social evolution of China. Therefore, it became the key point to understanding this historical process.There are plenty of research works focused on the institution changes of Chinese rural land system in the second half of 20th century led by CCP, which applied theoretical contributions of Neo-Institutional Economics (NIEs). However, there are few research works for the one in the period of the first half of 20th century, which received close attentions within the fields both of history and of CCP research. Hence, our study is the innovative effort to integrating institutional economics and economic historical reseach of China.In our study, recent researches from NIEs such as North's works are applied to consider the evolving process of CCP land policies as a learning process, and conducted empirical analyses on the compulsive institutional changes of Chinese land system carried by CCP and their performance. During the analyses on these policy performances, we built the incentive model of land policies to explain their mechanism. Based on the integration of these new theories and viewpoints, we conduct related innovations on research methods.The evolving process of CCP land policies in the first half of 20th century could be explained as a cycling story of"Perceived reality→Belief→Policy→Altered perceived reality". The key point to read this story well is of the following contents: The reconstruction process of the given (alien) belief systems, Marxism, within the CCP leaders'mental models, that is, the belief revising process based on the feedback from altered perceived reality caused by former policy implements, which includes the learning process to Marxism contents and complicated social reality, and the more important part, the revision of learning pattern caused by trail and error process to the initial belief system. Fundamentally, the evolution of CCP land policy in the first half of 20th century supposed to be treated as the function of the evolving process of the CCP learning pattern. This is the overall conclusion of our study.The specific conclusions and innovations of this dissertation are as follows:First, the decision-making procedure of CCP is composed of following steps: applying their own belief system to read the perceived reality, drawing the land policy based on the premier trail and error experiences to match maximum principle of their party interests. And the land policy is the function of CCP revolution goals.Second, such learning pattern and its changes conducted the vital influences on policy-making and its performances. Within the evolving process of the CCP learning pattern, they experienced the series conversions from"Only followed what be taught by Communism International", to"Sample Paramountcy", and then to"Followed a realistic and pragmatic approach"driven by the recycling trial and error process, which ruled policy selections and their consequences.Third, adjustments on perceived policy failures were highly constrained by decision-making structures and the rigidity of ideology. Because there existed decision-making structure of dominant belief paramountcy and strong persistence on public ownership, the peasant land ownership could not ever be established during the whole period of Agrarian Revolution. Similarly, the errors and their revision of land policies were closely related to CCP decision-making structures during War of Liberation period as well.Fourth, there existed the"Violence Paradox"within the process of revolutionary institutional changes, which originated from believes and experiences of competitive institutions suppliers. As if these competitors were seriously lack of related experiences, the class tendency under the belief system would motivate their indignation of belief, and cause extreme activities, which received undesirable performances and was well proved by consequences of violent activities from the period of Agrarian Revolution; even equipped with the trial and error experiences, the guide of policy frameworks composed of dominant believes and specific policies would also impelled their participators to commit extreme violent methods, in order to maximize the benefit of CCP, which emerged in the War of Liberation period.Fifth, informal institutions such as cultural traditions could form certain constraints on institutional changes, which are well presented as the dual constraints both on their dominators and on participators. Within the evolving process of CCP land policies, Chinese cultural traditions could make very important influences on peasants, the major participators of such institutional changes, which became the sound proof that cultural inheritances supposed to build rigid constraints on our capability to conduct institutional changes in any time. Similarly, CCP widely applied Chinese cultural traditions for their ideological investments during all the four historic periods, which well proved the above conclusion though.Sixth, options holding by peasants, the passive participators of this institutional change, are composed various factors such as economic and ideological ones, rational and irrational ones etc; especially, after firing the motivation of wealth pursuing, it is vital for the next round decision-making that the perceived reality and their predictable consequences would be altered by their own activities, which exposed the complexity of agents'decision-makings. Particularly, under the collective behaviors of peasants, it clearly illustrated that interacted agents would conduct mutual selections and form the corresponding relationship as well.Seventh, the economic performance of land policies depends on the policy matrix composed by policies themselves and their implement methods. Both the public ownership operation in the Agrarian Revolution period and the equalization of land ownership in the War of Liberation period failed to reach the"satisfied"economic performance, however, the agricultural development of Shan-Gan-Ning Area in the Anti-Japanese War period provided the remarkable proof for our conclusion, even their developments were on the relatively lower level. Specifically, there are several key points for our issue such as the content of policies, their stability, ideological attitudes to the private property right and to personal rights of individuals, and ideological recognition to laws of economics etc. Ultimately, their economic performance depends on whether policy suppliers could provide the"correct understanding"on this non-ergodic world. In the context of our study, such"correct understanding"refers to CCP correctly understood rural land systems of China, even more general range such as China, integrated them into the CCP belief system, and then altered related policies. Only in this way, their aspirations could be consistent with corresponding consequences.In sum, based on the combinations of new theories & new viewpoints, and logics & history, our study provided a general economic analysis on the historic evolving process of CCP land policies in the first half of 20th century, and opened a new window to understand institutional changes of Chinese rural land system, even to read the changing process of Chinese society in the first half of 20th century.