September 1952. Estimates are that about 300 million farmers acquired
some 700 million mu (or 47 million hectares) of arable land (S. Guo et al.
1989). After acquiring land poor peasants fared much better, and farmhands
became producers. In spite of farmers' enthusiasm, problems
arose. Farmers could not prosper on the small pieces of land they had
acquired and some lost their land because of poor management skills.
Re-emergence of a polarisation between rich and poor was frequently
reported. More importantly, the government deemed that small-scale
individual farming was unlikely to be able to support the industrialisation
programme, especially given the discriminatory policies against
agriculture.