Page:China in Revolt (1926).pdf/61

 peasant question is bound to be closely bound up with the agrarian question, that is, the land question. The extent to which these questions are interwoven with one another, and their relations to one another, are extremely difficult to ascertain. I shall therefore draw your attention, comrades, to only one comprehensive table, thus avoiding the necessity of quoting to you the whole of the figures for the separate provinces, which I am afraid would cause you to send me to China to more exact statistical information, (Laughter).

49,5 per cent of all farming undertakings consists of plots varying from 1 to 20 Mu in area. (If I am not mistaken, 1 Mu corresponds to a sixteenth of our desjatine. The desjatine is 2,5 acres.) These diminutive farms represent 15 to 16% of the total arable land. One half of the peasant population thus cultivates only about 16% of the total land. The Chinese regard pieces of land of 20 to 40 Mu as small farms; and such farms are owned by 23% of the peasant families, their land amounting to about 22% of the total area of the country. 15% of the families possess land to the extent of 40 to 75 Mu and 25% of the total land. 11% of the families own large farms of over 75 Mu, and thus possess 35,9%, in round figures 36%, of the total area. This characterizes the differentiation in the position of the peasants. In order to complete this survey, I must state that although China, taken on the whole, is a country of small farms, still there is a considerable quantity of land in the hands of large owners; and the conditions here obtaining are characteristically those of large land ownership. Large tracts of country are in the hands of the remnants of the one-time feudal landowning official bureaucrats, or in the hands of the present Generals. There are about 200 landowners each owning an area of more than ten thousand Mu. It may be assumed that there are about 30,000 landowners each owning more than one thousand Mu. You must understand, comrades, that when