Mao didn’t order any mass killings of landlords though. This is a common misconception. After the Agrarian Reform Law, Mao supported the rights of peasants to confront and punish their former landlords, such as the Speak Bitterness campaigns. They could then be put on trial at People’s Courts, which were set up by Red Guards. If the peasant’s grievances were severe, these landlords would then be found guilty, and either be beaten or executed.
It was also a very regionalized thing: in places where landlords lived in the same general area as their properties they tended to be put on trial and punished, but in places where they instead lived in cities and delegated management of the property to others it was their cronies who were punished while the landlords were allowed to either flee the country or cut a deal to peacefully hand over their properties and receive a job as a bureaucrat in return on account of the dire need for literate workers (a category that pre-revolution was systemically restricted to the rich and some skilled professionals).
I also thought I heard (maybe I’m getting this from Fanshen) that plenty of more-or-less OK landlords maybe had their rental properties confiscated, but were otherwise allowed to go on as before.
The landlords who received harsher penalties, including death, were acting more as feudal lords (with all the direct violence and depravity that comes with) than as some guy renting a second home at market rate. The latter is not something they should be allowed to do, but apparently Chinese peasants in the 50s weren’t calling for blood over it.
The execution of one such big landlord reverberates through a whole county and is very effective in eradicating the remaining evils of feudalism. Every county has these major tyrants, some as many as several dozen and others at least a few, and the only effective way of suppressing the reactionaries is to execute at least a few in each county who are guilty of the most heinous crimes. When the local tyrants and evil gentry were at the height of their power, they literally slaughtered peasants without batting an eyelid. Ho Maichuan, for ten years head of the defence corps in the town of Hsinkang, Changsha County, was personally responsible for killing almost a thousand poverty-stricken peasants, which he euphemistically described as “executing bandits”. In my native county of Hsiangtan, Tang Chun-yen and Lo Shu-lin who headed the defence corps in the town of Yintien have killed more than fifty people and buried four alive in the fourteen years since 1913. Of the more than fifty they murdered, the first two were perfectly innocent beggars. Tang Chunyen said, “Let me make a start by killing a couple of beggars!” and so these two lives were snuffed out. Such was the cruelty of the local tyrants and evil gentry in former days, such was the White terror they created in the countryside, and now that the peasants have risen and shot a few and created just a little terror in suppressing the counter-revolutionaries, is there any reason for saying they should not do so?
jesus. I think we forget that Mao’s landlords were feudal landlords. our landlords do their killing much less directly
Probably from section of the report I just linked.
“Crowning” the landlords and parading them through the villages. This sort of thing is very common. A tall paper-hat is stuck on the head of one of the local tyrants or evil gentry, bearing the words “Local tyrant so-and-so” or “So-and-so of the evil gentry”. He is led by a rope and escorted with big crowds in front and behind. Sometimes brass gongs are beaten and flags waved to attract people’s attention. This form of punishment more than any other makes the local tyrants and evil gentry tremble. Anyone who has once been crowned with a tall paper-hat loses face altogether and can never again hold up his head. Hence many of the rich prefer being fined to wearing the tall hat. But wear it they must, if the peasants insist.
One ingenious township peasant association arrested an obnoxious member of the gentry and announced that he was to be crowned that very day. The man turned blue with fear. Then the association decided not to crown him that day. They argued that if he were crowned right away, he would become case-hardened and no longer afraid, and that it would be better to let him go home and crown him some other day. Not knowing when he would be crowned, the man was in daily suspense, unable to sit down or sleep at ease.
“Heya, fam! So, like, I’m not going to tell you how to take care of your business but if something happens while I’m over there checking on the grain harvests… Its not like I saw anything…”
Mao didn’t order any mass killings of landlords though. This is a common misconception. After the Agrarian Reform Law, Mao supported the rights of peasants to confront and punish their former landlords, such as the Speak Bitterness campaigns. They could then be put on trial at People’s Courts, which were set up by Red Guards. If the peasant’s grievances were severe, these landlords would then be found guilty, and either be beaten or executed.
Mao was too kind
He was nicer than I would’ve been.
It was also a very regionalized thing: in places where landlords lived in the same general area as their properties they tended to be put on trial and punished, but in places where they instead lived in cities and delegated management of the property to others it was their cronies who were punished while the landlords were allowed to either flee the country or cut a deal to peacefully hand over their properties and receive a job as a bureaucrat in return on account of the dire need for literate workers (a category that pre-revolution was systemically restricted to the rich and some skilled professionals).
I also thought I heard (maybe I’m getting this from Fanshen) that plenty of more-or-less OK landlords maybe had their rental properties confiscated, but were otherwise allowed to go on as before.
The landlords who received harsher penalties, including death, were acting more as feudal lords (with all the direct violence and depravity that comes with) than as some guy renting a second home at market rate. The latter is not something they should be allowed to do, but apparently Chinese peasants in the 50s weren’t calling for blood over it.
Beaten, executed, or made to wear a silly hat around town
This is fantastic news. It’s like the Game of Thrones “shame” bit but instead of nudity it’s a dunce cap.
jesus. I think we forget that Mao’s landlords were feudal landlords. our landlords do their killing much less directly
i heard somewhere that some landlords preferred beatings to the silly hat
Probably from section of the report I just linked.