However, the term "own cultivation" is vague and may be interpreted to include the hiring of farm hands for commercial farming. Vigorous enforcement followed immediately in 1949 to prevent the repossession of land for commercial farming. Furthermore, new contracts were later required to be no shorter than three years. This minimum lease period was extended to six years in the new act of 1951.[9]
The other possible form of tenure rearrangement, that the landlord sell his holdings outright, was not significantly restricted in all provisions prior to and including 1949. Not only could the owner sell his land to his tenant, but he could also sell to a third party. Although a tenant's preferential right to purchase from his landlord was expressed in the prereform land law, the tenant had to be willing to accept "the same terms as are offered to any other person."[10]
From the above we arrive at the following conclusions: (a) Compensating payments were restricted in regulations up to 1949, and the alternative that the landowner might share in "cereals" after the percentage rent reduction, though feasible, was not substantial. And, (b) tenure rearrangements were conditionally restricted if the landowner repossessed land from the tenant. But the owner's right to sell his holdings outright was not restricted.
Two additional remarks are called for here. First, although compensating payments to a landowner in the form of the tenant's paying the full nonland farming cost were restricted (in the event that the landowner had contracted to pay a part), there existed no restriction on the landowner's requiring the tenant to commit additional farming inputs. Second, although repossession of land from a tenant through lease cancellation was conditionally restricted and subsequently vigorously prohibited, partial repossession of land which entailed no lease cancellation was not restricted in the period under study. I shall discuss these points more fully in the next two chapters.
[1]. The Land-to-the-Tiller program was at this time in the making and drew the main attention of the land reformers.
[2]. A fuller explanation for this will be provided in the next chapter.
[3]. Art. 112, in Cheng Chen, Land Reform in Taiwan (Taipei: China Publishing Co., 1961), p. 155.
[4]. Art. 5, in Hui-Sun Tang, Land Reform in Free China (Taipei: JCRR, 1954), p. 222. It is under "Regulations Governing the Lease of Private Farm Lands in Taiwan Province."
[5]. Art. 12, in Chen, Land Reform in Taiwan, p. 193.
[6]. Only some tenants had been contractually allowed to grow such "cereals" for home consumption, and only on marginal land. Note that in none of the rental disputes on record under the share restriction is this third type of compensating payment mentioned at all.
[7]. Art. 9, in Tang, Land Reform in Free China, p. 222.
[8]. Chen, Land Reform in Taiwan, pp. 154-55. These two articles were cited in chapter 1 of this study.
[9]. Art. 5, ibid., p. 191.
[10]. Art. 107, ibid., p. 154.
C.Evidence of Illegal Compensating Payments and Tenure Rearrangments
Since under the share restriction most offsetting contractual rearrangements were prohibited by law, the hypothesis that compensating payments and tenure rearrangements would follow from the maximum share control will be tested by a review of the evidence as to various illegal practices and law enforcement. It is not easy to determine just how comprehensive the enforcement was, or how arbitrary. We know the following facts. (1) The 37.5 percent rental rule was widely publicized in every town and village in 1949, and official contract forms were provided.[1] (2) The enforcement was intensified as illegal practices increased:
The inspection work was confined to harvest times and random sampling of tenant families and their farm leases was made to find out whether rent was paid according to the reduced scale. About 126 county workers and 26 provincial inspectors covered the Province in two months after each harvest. This inspection pattern…became ineffective when the number of rent disputes became alarmingly great. JCRR and Provincial Land Bureau, therefore, designed a new supervision pattern using fulltime employees with full pay.[2]
(3) A total of 7,325 field workers, as well as other resources, were employed for the enforcement.[3] And (4) by 1951, the inspection work was no longer based on random sampling but covered the whole population affected by the share restriction, and most of the illegal practices were soon suppressed.[4]
Compensating Payments and Rent Disputes
Higher water fees were one form of compensating payment in 1949:
Though tenant farmers were obligated to supply labor for improvement of water conservancy, they were now asked to share in the payment fee after the improvement had been completed. This was one device by which landlords sought to reduce their loss from the rent reduction.[5]
This occurred because the responsibility for payment of water rights fees had not been clearly defined:
According to the old regulations… , landowners paid a special water fee which was used for farm improvements and tenants paid an ordinary water fee to cover irrigation costs to the local water conservancy associations which were composed exclusively of landowners. However, no clear demarcation and definite percentage for these two fees were made. Landowners therefore frequently shifted the burden of special water fee to the tenants.[6]
The resulting water-fee disputes, however, were soon settled by the Provincial Land Bureau and Water Conservancy Bureau. Under the new regulation, water charges by landowners in excess of the stipulated terms were reported in 107 cases between June 1949 and March 1950.[7]
