A Historiographical Study Of The Research On Chinese Traditional Land Ownership Differentiation:1944-2022

The concept of property rights was popularized at the social level with the process of legal socialization during the period of the Republic of China.The phenomenon of traditional land right differentiation was confused with the "permanent tenancy" in the western property law system,which caused the discussion in the legal circle.Finally,the nature of property rights was recognized in the compromise between laws and regulations and folk customs.At the same time,the existence of traditional land right differentiation was also frequently seen in the rural surveys carried out during the period of the Republic of China.Among them,the investigation and analysis of the phenomenon of land right differentiation at that time by the ’Chinese rural school ’influenced by Marxist economics provided a property right analysis from the perspective of historical materialism for the phenomenon of traditional land right differentiation.All of these have laid a solid foundation for the historical research of the traditional land right differentiation phenomenon.Fu Yiling combined with the new historical materials excavated,supported his thinking on the nature of ancient Chinese feudal society with the study of land right differentiation,and finally introduced the study of land right differentiation into history,creating an important branch of China’s social and economic history.Fu Yiling ’s work laid a paradigm foundation for the historical research of traditional land ownership differentiation.Firstly,he used the historical data method of folk contract documents to prove history.Since Fu Yiling,scholars have collected and sorted out a large number of folk contract documents,providing a lot of new historical materials for historical research.Secondly,it is the determination of the nature of property rights in the traditional land right differentiation in history.In the subsequent research,the traditional land right differentiation research is no longer a historical problem in the field of production relations,but the change of property rights in the rural social and economic history.The research on the differentiation of land ownership has been neglected for a long time since the founding of New China,and it has gradually flourished after the reform and opening up.During this period,the research on the differentiation of land ownership mainly focused on two academic groups,namely,the Fu Yiling School of the History Department of Xiamen University and the Economic Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.The two have different research ideas and academic horizons on this issue,showing different characteristics of land ownership differentiation research.The fundamental reason for the revival of this kind of land ownership differentiation research in this period lies in the change of social property rights concept and land system.The changes at the national and social levels have greatly promoted the development of historical research and provided a lot of ideological origins for the innovation of this issue.Since the 21st century,the study of traditional land ownership differentiation has become a hot topic of historical research.The expansion of the research scale is based on the collection and collation of historical documents.With the unremitting efforts of senior scholars,the historical value of folk contract documents has gradually been recognized by the historians.The large-scale collection of folk contract documents across the country has provided a more extensive research sample for the study of traditional land rights differentiation,and the study of traditional land rights differentiation has thus gone deeper.The expansion of the research scale not only provides more samples for the study of traditional land ownership differentiation,but also poses an inherent challenge to the existing theoretical framework.Scholars have introduced property rights theories in economics,law and other fields to further improve and innovate the theoretical structure of traditional land ownership differentiation research.The deepening of the theory has further promoted historical research.Some scholars have begun to draw on and apply the traditional land right differentiation theory to study related fields,which also proves the historical value of traditional land right differentiation research.