So who were these victims of land reform, of land confiscation, execution, struggle and escape? The individual-level registers that Matthew Noland has collected and analyzed. Surprisingly it shows patterns which are even more, and more astonishing than the district level sort of pattern of of behavior in land reform. Because what Matthew documents is that, the victims of land reform were not just the exploitative landlords. The middle, and even poor peasants, also had land confiscated during land reform. And the middle and poor peasants, and even laborers, the have nuts, were also the executed or otherwise killed during the struggle. That the revolutionary masses, in fact, struggled against several hundred. So called corrupt poor peasants and laborers as well as against the haves and the have a lot. Indeed what he shows that overall we look at these registers we find that exploitation, the stated reason for land reform, for the communist revolution. And in fact, on the individual level, is cited as the, justification for less than half of all struggles. Rather as he shows, a large number of, the victims were middle and poor peasants and laborers. And this table what Matthew has done, is he has taken these different registers. Summarize them by a vertical axis looking at the confiscation, execution death, escape other forms of punishment. Looking at a horizontal axis of absentee landlords, large landlords, little small landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, poor peasants and laborers. And then shows you that, with a, total per example of some 8000 of some odd cases of whom, only 6,500 are have identified class backgrounds. Of that 6,500, something like 13, 1,400 of them are middle and poor peasants. similarly he looks at the crime, what Mathews shows you is that the, economic crimes out of the 10,000 sort of recorded crimes, for justifying revolution, justifying persecution, that in fact. Out of the 10,000 recorded crimes, economic crimes constituted less than half. Only 4,500, of the 10,000 sum up crimes. Rather, political crimes constituted 2,600 of the 10,000 crimes, personal social crimes constituted 1,500 of a total of over 4,000. Almost equal in number to the economic category. And he also shows you a result which is quite striking compared to the choreography of political struggle and land reform. He shows you that about 5% of these so-called criminal cases end up with them finding that these people are innocent. That they have no crime. That they did not commit exploitation, they are not political enemies, they did not commit any crime whatsoever, and therefore should not be victims, of the revolution. Now, the economic crimes, in fact, that these shows you also are Of course, largely exploitation [FOREIGN] the political crimes by contrast are much more variant. They include counter-revolutionaries, [FOREIGN] former officials uh, [FOREIGN] former military officers [FOREIGN] corrupt people people who discontent, people who escaped or simply people who has various kinds of bad behavior. And what you can see here therefore is that our formal officials and formal military people actually constitutes a much larger proposition you know, equa, then say counter-revolutionaries. So we're looking therefore, is political crimes being almost, on the same scale as economic crimes and including both [FOREIGN] people from the [UNKNOWN] period, people from the KMT and so on. meanwhile, personal and social crimes runs the gamete of criminality as a whole. From people who are bandits people who in some way have improper behavior to people who have who abuse power local bullies and then also other kinds of opression. In other words, what was ostensibly first and foremost, a social revolution. A revolutionary situation, producing a political revolution, a political outcome, seems of anything to have been, sort of, intertwined or rather reversed. A political revolution creating a social revolution rather than vice versa. Moreover, these, this pattern where what is ostensibly class revolution actually producing political revolution. Is, is, common not just to China but, ironically, also to our understanding of other well-stated revolutions, perhaps the most famous revolution in the western world, the French revolution of the late 18th century. In the French Revolution, of course, we had similar patterns of violence not with the populist struggle. but rather with the use of the guillotine. but with the results also reflecting local politics. According to Donald Greer's well known study of the French Revolution and the victims of the guillotine, of the 14,000. people who were executed by the guillotine. The sans-cullottes, the difference between the upper and the lower classes made up 70% of the total number of victims. the aristocracy made up only less than 30% of the victims. And overall if we look at the the terror during the French Revolution, 84% of the victims in fact belonged to the third estate. So we have as a finding where the Chinese Revolution in many ways looks like the French Revolution. there's a marked similarity with victims being classified in fact were classified as class enemies. The fact being people from these so called uh,dispossed from the have a littles and the have a lots. In Shuangcheng it's not 60%. It's almost one third of the victims were executed being have a littles or have nots, In France as a whole it was double. But, for the majority of those who were otherwise punished, you know, there were those who were not executed but were struggle against, the majority, in fact, were poor peasants and laborers. So something which is much more similar to the French Revolution. this is also common to other communist revolutions such as for example say North Vietnam in the 1950s where about 30% of the so called landlords executed during land reform were even communist party members. So we see here therefore is a revolutionary outcome which is similar to the revolutionary outcomes else where but which is different from the from the stated revolutionary re, sort of situation as described by Marx, by Moore, by Tilley, by Mao. what we see here is, is that revolution doesn't seem to be a structural or even a voluntarous outcome, linked to the distribution of wealth, rather it seems to be a top down political outcome over revolution organized by revolutionary party. One however which is even more than the leaders of the French Revolution which is wedded to a social revolution and therefore which created a social revolution after they had been successful at their political revolution, at regime change. So we find, therefore, is not wealth distribution leading to revolution, but rather revolution leading to changes in wealth distribution.
