Formosa CHIANG’S NOTABLE LAND REFORMS

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29728, 23 January 1962, Page 12

Formosa CHIANG’S NOTABLE LAND REFORMS

lßy STUaRT GRIFFIN in the ••Christian Science Monitor"]

Taipeh (Formosa) A group of smiling young farmers' wives paused in their work and politely put their tanned hands over their mouths in the traditional Asian gesture of demureness. Then the oldest, a woman in her early 30’s, explained through an interpreter why she and all the other young women were called “3-7-5” wives.”

It all goes back to a landreform programme started by Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek's government in 1949 This programme worked out jointly by Chinese and American advisers, had three phases. That year, the authorities devised a scheme of reducing the farm rents. They set a ceiling of 37 5 per cent, of the annual main crop, according to a standard rate for each grade of farmland, from the scanty to the abundantly productive. Rents Established

That standard yield is not necessarily the actual harvest. It is, instead, closely related to soil fertility and productivity, figured on the basis of paddy fields and dry land. With the amount of farm rent payable by each tenant definitely established, all surplus food that the farmer could produce—and certainly

he was given great new incentive so to grow—accrued to him as profit.

He could afford to get married and his bride thus became known as a “3-7-5” wife. The nuptials had been made possible by that 37.5 per cent, reduction and ceil-

ing. But this was far from all the government did to bolster a beneficial farm programme of land reform and the •■3-7-5" women were not the sole beneficiaries of a wise and far-sighted policy and project. In 1951 the second phase got going. This was the introduction of the sale of public land to tenant farmers and was designed to help such farmers become landowners by letting them purchase good land cheaply and on the instalment plan. Ownership Equalised

The price of such land was fixed at 2.5 times the value of the annual main crop, to be paid by the tenant-purchaser in semi-annual instalment* over a 10-year period of time. Two years later, the Nationalist Government, responsive again to American prodding, instituted what it called the “land-to-the-tiller'' programme. This was aimed at equalising land ownership through government purchase of privately owned farmland in excess of seven acres of paddy field, and resale to tenant farmers. Landlords could keep seven acres of medium-grade paddy field or twice that in dryland holdings. Land in excess of these seven and 14 acres, however, had to be sold to the Government. The Government. for its part, paid landlords for their holdings, 70 per cent, in land bonds and 30 per cent, in Govern-ment-owned industrial stock. The former bears an annual 4 per cent, rate of interest. Too, it is redeemable in rice aqd sweet potatoes in semiannual instalments over a 10year period, 20 payments in all. How Much Land? Ownership of the land passed to the tenant purchaser immediately upon his first instalment, but he must agree not to transfer or sell the land until he has paid the full price himself. That curbed former landlords from secretly dickering to regain their land by offering immediate cash to the farmer for his fresh-bought land. Most important. though, was this: the farmer may own any amount of land that he or immediate members of his family can work with their own hands.

Step I. therefore, benefited more than 300.000 tenant farmers; step 2 gave 168.000 acres of Government-owned farmland to 120.000 farm tenants and hired hands: and step 3 resulted in the sale of nearly 353.000 acres to nearly 200,000 such tenants and farmhands.

As a result of this vast land-reform programme, out of the 320,000 land buyers 40 per cent, built new farmhouses and repaired 320.000 old ones; 40 per cent also bought 140.000 water buffaloes; 13 per cent, installed pumps, dug wells. constructed reservoirs. and planted windbreak forests, and 40 per cent, purchased threshers. cleaners, cultivators, improved ploughs, and similar farm-use equipment. Economy Grows Tenant-farmers have become landowners and landlords have become shareholders. The Taiwan economy has thus grown—agriculture and industry—in balance, in diversity, and production value. No wonder the ••3-7-5” wives who go down to their paddy fields with menfolk smile and chatter so happily among themselves. The men, too, are pleased and prosperous. Land reform, is one programme against which critics of the Chaing Kai-shek regime cannot rail. It is here to stay.