Land is the most important resource for the ancient people in China. Lv Simian believed that in primitive times, everything, including land, was owned by clans, and people "only united against things and never fought for them".
After the emergence of the state, the clan land public ownership in primitive society gradually evolved into land state ownership, or "king ownership", and the well field system is one of the typical examples. It is a state-owned land system (in fact, the land in the week is private), which stipulates that all the land belongs to all; It shall be enjoyed by Tian chieftain from generation to generation and shall not be transferred for sale; Pay tribute to the king of Zhou; Slaves working collectively in mining areas. On the one hand, the well-field system originated from the clan's public ownership of land and has the characteristics of state-owned land, which is highlighted by the fact that the king owns land nationwide, while other nobles and slave owners at all levels only have the right to use the land without ownership, and cannot transfer or buy or sell it at will. On the other hand, the well field system has the characteristics of transition from public ownership of land to private ownership of land. In the mid-Western Zhou Dynasty, there was a land transaction between nobles, which meant that nobles had a certain degree of land ownership.
During the Spring and Autumn Period, Qi's "decreasing land expropriation" was based on the quantity and quality of land, while Lu's "initial tax mu" was based on mu. They no longer distinguish between public land and private land, which promotes the transformation of land from state-owned to private. During the Spring and Autumn Period, with the use of ironware and the promotion of Niu Geng, the importance of joint or collective labor was not as good as before, and individual independent operation began to appear and develop.
During the Warring States Period, Qin Xiaogong, the state of Qin, used Shang Yang for development and implemented Shang Yang's reform of "abandoning mineral fields, building and granting land to the people", which marked the complete collapse of the well field system and the legal establishment of private ownership of feudal landlords' land. From then on, China ushered in a feudal society and began the periodic turmoil and rise and fall of the dynasty.
1. Landlord land ownership from Qin and Han Dynasties to the Middle Tang Dynasty. The Qin dynasty implemented private ownership of land and paid taxes by mu; At that time, land annexation was serious, and farmers were burdened with heavy corvee and heavy taxes.
The household registration system was implemented in the Western Han Dynasty, and those who were formally incorporated into the government household registration (household registration) assumed taxes, corvees and military service according to their assets. The burden of farmers in Han Dynasty mainly includes land rent (lighter), population tax (heavier, including tax and customs tax), excessive tax (instead of service money), miscellaneous tax and handyman. After entering the Han dynasty, it continued the previous land system in which "public land" and "private land" coexisted and both "private land" could be bought and sold. During the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, in view of the serious situation of land merger, Dong Zhongshu put forward the proposal of "restricting private land", that is, he advocated limiting private land occupation and restraining the merger of the rich. This proposal is close to the method of ancient mining field system, which allows farmers to own land more evenly, but Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty did not adopt it. After Wang Mang usurped the Han Dynasty, he nominally implemented the Wang Tian system, but actually restored the Jing Tian system. After Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty ascended the throne, he abolished the land policy promoted by Wang Mang, and implemented the policy of "crossing fields" in the fifteenth year of Jianwu, ordering all counties to check the number, registered permanent residence and age of the fields occupied by the people. Its purpose is to limit the number of powerful people who merged land and kept slaves, and also to facilitate tax collection and forced labor. During the Eastern Han Dynasty and Cao Wei period, the system of reclaiming land owned by feudal countries was implemented, and the military and civilians were fully used to reclaim and reclaim wasteland, thus achieving the goal of guarding the border and ensuring military supplies. In the Western Jin Dynasty, the system of reclaiming farmland was destroyed, and the system of occupying farmland was implemented, allowing farmers to occupy wasteland. On the surface, the implementation of land occupation system is to limit the annexation of land, but in fact it is to protect the vested interests of bureaucratic gentry.
During the Northern Wei Dynasty, the government implemented the land equalization system, and distributed the land held by the feudal state to farmers. Some farmers could obtain the ownership of the land after farming for a certain period of time.
During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the system of equal land was further developed. In the Tang Dynasty, the method of "equal land and rent" was established, that is, on the basis of the equal land system, the tax system of "equal land and rent for all households" was implemented. The system is not based on land, but people-oriented, that is, "recognizing people but not land", relying more on the investigation and management of registered population. At that time, the "rural account" system was established, which stipulated that accounts should be made once a year (population register) and books should be made once every three years (household registration book). Qian Mu believes that the tenancy adjustment system is the best tax system in China's history. When it comes to light and thin taxes, the Tang Dynasty should also be the most important. However, in the long-term implementation, because the stock of account books and household registration statistics can't keep up, the cost of system implementation is too high, the increase of cultivated land can't meet the needs of population growth, the contradiction between people and land is prominent, and land merger is inevitable. After the "An Shi Rebellion", this system had to be abandoned.
Generally speaking, the feudal state intervened in land distribution during this period, on the one hand, it restricted the sale and merger of land, and made the private ownership of landlord land in an incomplete and unconstrained development state at that time; On the other hand, the state distributes land, develops small-scale peasant economy, and actively cultivates yeomen and tax sources. On the whole, the land system presents the distinct characteristics of coexistence of "public land" and "private land", and the state divides land equally and the aristocratic landlords annex land.
2. Landlord land ownership from the Middle Tang Dynasty to the Song and Yuan Dynasties. After the "An Shi Rebellion", in order to alleviate the urgent needs of the national finance, Tang Daizong issued a decree in the first year of Dali to collect tax money at the time of young crops, instead of waiting until the autumn harvest as in the past, which was called "young crops money" in history and then collected in summer and autumn. This was the first sound of the implementation of the "two tax laws". In the first year of the founding of Tang Dezong, Prime Minister Yang Yan suggested that two tax laws should be implemented, that is, household tax and local tax should be used to replace the unsustainable tenancy system, which should be levied in summer and autumn every year. Although the "two tax laws" have some disadvantages, such as aggravating the disparity between the rich and the poor, benefiting business and harming agriculture, they have been praised and criticized differently in history. Moreover, they were not only used in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, but their influence continued until the Republic of China, which was an important watershed in China's ancient taxation and land system. On the one hand, the "two tax laws" follow the principle of "living within our means", cooperate with the rent adjustment system to reform the land administration rent allocation system, and implement a new system of collecting rent and not granting land. Since then, the state has paid more attention to fiscal revenue and paid less attention to the fair distribution of land, which is equivalent to giving up the policy of restricting land and even land, and also canceling the restrictions on land occupation by landlords, so that "private land" has developed and gradually occupied a dominant position. At the beginning of Song Dynasty, Song Taizu changed the policy of restraining land annexation in the past, and implemented a relatively free policy of land sale and private lending, which led to the continuous annexation of land by landlords. The subsequent reform of Wang Anshi only temporarily suppressed the merger forces of the powerful landlords. On the other hand, in the implementation of the "two tax laws", the practice of "only taking capital as the family" and "recognizing land but not people" made the state relax its control over farmers, which was conducive to the legalization of the status of tenant farmers, and it was at this time that the popularization of tenancy system began in China history. The popularization of tenancy system has created better conditions for the free development of landlord land ownership.
Generally speaking, during this period, the state relaxed the restrictions on landlords' possession of land, land annexation intensified, landlords' ownership of land was fully developed, and land possession changed from relying on political power to relying on economic power. Tenancy relationship plays an increasingly important role in social and economic life, and gradually occupies a dominant position in the relationship between landlords and farmers, and a relatively complete private ownership of land has begun to be established.
3. Land ownership of landlords in Ming and Qing Dynasties. After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang combined land management with grass-roots management innovation and implemented the "Yellow Book", "Fish Scale Book" and Li Jia system. The "Yellow Book" is a household registration book, and the "fish scale book" is a land book. Without considering the changes in specific technical methods, these two books have been used until the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China. Li Jia system is a form of grass-roots organization, and each Li Jia is actually a grass-roots organization or cooperative community with a strong sense of collective identity, which undertakes public functions such as tax collection, social education, grass-roots governance and administrative management. These three systems cooperate with each other and complement each other, forming an effective mechanism of high integration of household registration system, land system, tax service system and grassroots social governance, which can achieve multiple goals. However, the effective operation of these systems is based on the static and relatively closed grass-roots society. With the social and economic development, population mobility and frequent land transactions, the rigid management system is increasingly out of touch. After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the tax system based on the Li Jia system was hard to return, and the people's burden of various corvees became heavier and heavier, while the national financial absorption capacity was declining, and the finances became more and more unable to make ends meet. In order to ensure the national tax revenue, many officials put forward the proposal of "one whip method", that is, the collection and payment should be combined into one, and the collection and payment (population tax) and grain (land rent) should be combined into one, and the focus of collection should be shifted from households to fields. In the ninth year of Wanli, with the support of Zhang Zai, he began to implement the "one whip method" throughout the country. After the political reform, the Li Jia system was no longer needed for the collection of taxes, and the social order of "dividing land into prisons" declined day by day. Farmers have more personal freedom and career choices, which promotes the development of industry and commerce and commodity production, and promotes the transition from family tax to land tax, as well as the transition from material tax to monetary tax.
In the early Qing dynasty, the "one whip method" of the Ming dynasty was nominally continued, but in fact, the "one whip method"+Ding Yin was implemented. Ding Yin collects taxes according to the number of people, regardless of the rich and the poor, which has obvious social injustice. In order to properly solve this problem and consolidate the rule of the Qing Dynasty, Yongzheng implemented the reform measures of "spreading land into mu" on the basis of pilot projects in various places, that is, all taxes levied according to population were spread into land and collected together with land tax. "Tanding Entering Mu" completely changed a part of the tax levied on the land according to the head before, which is equivalent to implementing a complete land tax, and solved the long-standing problem of tax confusion in one fell swoop. Because the population is no longer the object of taxation, the government has relaxed its control over the population, farmers can move freely throughout the country, land tenancy and trading are more active, which promotes the feudal private ownership of land and the development of urban industry and commerce, and the number of "foreign landlords" is increasing day by day.
Generally speaking, during this period, the land management system continued to innovate, the land market transactions were active, the tenancy relationship was developed, and the permanent tenancy right characterized by the separation of the ownership and the right to use the leased land became increasingly popular. The state pays more attention to adjusting the relationship between the state and landlords, landlords and farmers by using economic means such as tax policy, which creates a relatively relaxed environment for the development of small and medium-sized landlords and private ownership of land.
3. Semi-colonial and semi-feudal society (modern times)
(1) Peasant class:1The land system of China promulgated by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in 853.
Content: Abolish the feudal landlord class land ownership, distribute land equally according to population and age, and establish a "paradise on earth".
(2) National bourgeoisie: the people's livelihood advocated by Sun Yat-sen in the Revolution of 1911 and reinterpreted by Sun Yat-sen in 1924.
Content: Average land ownership-the national land price is approved, the existing land price belongs to the original owner, and the land price increased after the revolution belongs to the state and is shared by the people, so as to make the best use of everything and people. This is a capitalist land plan. 1924 added the content of "controlling capital".
(3) Land policy in China.
① Ten-year confrontation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party: fighting local tyrants and distributing land, abolishing feudal exploitation and debts (confiscating landlords' land and distributing it to farmers, and establishing farmers' land ownership).
(2) War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression period: the landlord reduced rent and interest, and the farmers paid rent and interest (the landlord's land ownership remained unchanged, but the landlord's exploitation of farmers was restricted).
(3) During the War of Liberation, relying on the poor farm labourers and uniting with the middle peasants, the land system of feudal exploitation was gradually and separately eliminated, the land of landlords was confiscated, the land system of land to the tiller was implemented, and the land was distributed equally according to the rural population.
4. New China (Modern)
(1)1950 ——1952 At the end of the year, the feudal landlord's land ownership was abolished and the peasant's land ownership was implemented (the private ownership of land remained unchanged).
(2) 1953—— 1956: through the establishment of mutual aid groups, the development of primary agricultural production cooperatives and the establishment of advanced agricultural production cooperatives, the main means of production such as land will be transformed from private ownership to public ownership, and collective management will be implemented (agricultural cooperative movement or socialist transformation of agriculture).
(3) 1958: merge and expand agricultural production cooperatives to improve the degree of public ownership (the people's commune movement has not changed the nature of land public ownership).
(4) Since the reform and opening up, under the premise of adhering to the public ownership of land, land contract management has been implemented. Changed the way of management and distribution.