After the founding of New China, according to the Common Program of China People's Political Consultative Conference, the state should "gradually change feudal and semi-feudal land ownership into farmers' land ownership". Accordingly, from the winter of 1950 to the spring of 1953, the peasants in the newly liberated areas, who accounted for more than half of the national population, completed the rural land system reform.
1950 1 the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the "instructions on establishing land reform committees in people's governments at all levels and organizing agricultural cooperatives at all levels to directly lead the land reform movement", and began preparations for implementing land reform in batches in the newly liberated areas. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly defined the general line and policy of land reform in the newly liberated areas: relying on poor peasants and farm labourers, uniting middle peasants and neutral rich peasants, gradually eliminating the feudal exploitation system and developing agricultural production. The basic content of land reform in the newly liberated areas is to confiscate the land of the landlord class and distribute it to farmers who have little land, and change the land ownership exploited by feudalism into the land ownership of farmers. For landlords, they are also given a certain amount of land to transform them into new people through labor.
The land reform began in the winter of 1950, and was carried out in stages under the leadership. In each period, it generally went through the steps of mobilizing the masses, dividing classes, confiscating and distributing landlords' land and property, reviewing and summarizing, and mobilizing production. The local government sent a land reform team to the countryside to lead the land reform movement. A large number of government officials, intellectuals (including university professors) and many members of democratic parties signed up for the land reform task force and devoted themselves to this great struggle. Local land reform teams went deep into the countryside, visited the poor and asked questions, trained activists, gradually mobilized the masses, and set up farmers' associations composed of poor peasants and farm labourers as the executive organs of land reform. Subsequently, class division was carried out, and a face-to-face struggle was launched with the landlord class to expose their sins, crush their prestige, and suppress those heinous elements and those who undermined the land reform. On the basis of victory in the struggle, the land and property of landlords were confiscated by farmers' associations and distributed to farmers with little or no land. After the distribution is completed, the people's government will issue land certificates to rectify and strengthen political power and militia organizations and guide farmers to develop production.
Under the correct leadership of the Party, by the spring of 1953, Chinese mainland had generally implemented land reform except for a few areas. The land reform completely destroyed the feudal exploitation system, so that more than 300 million farmers across the country got about 700 million mu of land and a large number of means of production free of charge, and they did not have to pay land rent of about 30 million tons of grain to landlords every year.
The land reform has truly achieved the goal of farmers getting land in China for thousands of years, and enabled farmers to truly turn over and become masters of their own economies, thus mobilizing the enthusiasm of farmers for revolution and construction in the deepest and most extensive way, and greatly liberating agricultural productivity. The land reform has also established the dominant position of poor peasants in rural areas, consolidated the alliance of workers and peasants, and created conditions for guiding hundreds of millions of peasants onto the road of collectivization.