# The Outline Land Law of the Chinese Soviet / CCP drives mass struggle and killings

Date: 1947

## The fact

On 10 October 1947 the CCP promulgated the Outline Land Law of China, calling for abolition of landlord property and equal redistribution through mass struggle. In the civil-war base areas this meant public ‘speak bitterness’, beatings, executions, and driving out of landlord families. Mao’s December 1947 report treated the campaign as a wartime necessity. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

## Context

Civil war against the KMT was the setting. 1946–48 land work was more violent than the later 1950 statute’s paper guarantees. Work teams were under party committees, not independent courts. Some poor peasants gained plots; that gain, if dated as the 1950 law, is a separate improving Fact. It does not cancel 1947–52 killings. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, museums, and adaptations are not converted into extra lifetime acts.

## Evidence and sources

Mao’s December 1947 report is an official line text. Britannica’s land-reform essay describes Communist class-struggle methods in China. Independent social histories (Hinton as participant-observer; later demography) report killings without agreeing on a national total. This catalog does not invent one. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Official or archival record: Mao, The Present Situation and Our Tasks (25 December 1947, land-reform line) (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_13.htm; Marxists Internet Archive).

## Significance

Worsening forced-displacement path with lethal coercion. Complex because local teams killed. Mao’s line still authorized the method. Medium confidence on totals; high on the instrument. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Confidence is stated on the impact path, not hidden in adjectives. Do not merge this with the 1950 Agrarian Reform Law as an improving twin. Killings and title transfer are different paths. Mixed effects of The Outline Land Law of the Chinese Soviet / CCP drives mass struggle and killings are separate paths.

## What is established and what is not

Established: the 10 October 1947 Outline Land Law and Mao’s wartime line organized mass struggle. Not established: a Factrail-original national death or exile count. Later museums, competitions, UNESCO lists, and translations are not this Fact. The CCP, State Council, PLA, and local cadres may share the file; they do not erase a documented decision, and they are not a licence to treat every local killing as his handwriting.

Shared responsibility is part of The Outline Land Law of the Chinese Soviet / CCP drives mass struggle and killings. Naming Mao Zedong does not delete co-authors, institutions, or later transmitters. The lag from 1947-10-10 to any measured indicator is not treated as zero. Alternative explanations — weather, other armies, later statutes, or independent cultural change — remain live where the sources do not close them.

The attached driver is [forced-displacement-scale](/drivers/forced-displacement-scale). The welfare reading used in this dossier is worsening. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself.

If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Mao Zedong: https://factrail.ai/people/mao-zedong

## Drivers

- Forced-Displacement Scale: https://factrail.ai/drivers/forced-displacement-scale

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/topic/land-reform/Communism
- https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_13.htm

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/cn-mao-land-reform-killings-1947