Hereditary Tenancy and Corporate Landlordism in Traditional China: A Case Study

Abstract

After half a century of intense debate, landlordism in traditional China continues to be one of the most controversial subjects in Asian Studies circles. The earlier literature on this topic tends to be contradictory and, at times, highly polemical. Two loosely defined schools of thought have emerged since the 1930s: (A) those scholars who argue that landlord-tenant relations were primarily exploitative with the balance of power passing increasingly to urban-based absentee landlords, and (B) those who maintain that a high rate of tenancy is not particularly unique to the twentieth century and that the relationship between landlord and tenant was not uniformly exploitative. The present paper does not fit neatly into either school, although specific elements of the following argument can be isolated to support opposing sides of the debate. I intend to explore one form of traditional Chinese tenancy, known in the literature as ‘hereditary’ or ‘permanent’ tenancy, which was common throughout many parts of Southeastern China until the Communist land reform campaigns of the early 1950s. The tenants were hereditary in the sense that the usufruct passed patrilineally from father to son while the actual title to the land remained in the hands of powerful lineage corporations. The tenants lived in satellite villages near the landlords' communities and were overshadowed in every way by their dominant neighbors.