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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

James L. Watson
James L. Watson
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
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Extract

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.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 1977 , pp. 161 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

Portions of this article were first presented at the Oxford China Seminar, All Souls College (1975), and at the Peasants Seminar, University of London (1976). The author thanks the Foreign Area Fellowship Program, S.S.R.C. (U.S.A.), and the Center for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley, for supporting the field research upon which this study is based.

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5 These ‘wars’ are best described as periodic hostilities and confrontations between rival lineages. But, as noted later in this paper, people were killed on occasion. See also Maurice, Freedman, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (London: Athlone, 1958), p. 107.Google Scholar

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17 See e.g., Potter, , Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, pp. 110–12.Google Scholar

18 Based on survey of land records (1905) for the San Tin area held at the Yuen Long District Office, New Territories.

19 See Chen, Landlord and Peasant, p. 31. Baker (Sheung Shui, p. 17) and Potter (Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant, p. 96) cite estate ownership figures of 52 and 93 percent respectively for two other lineage villages in the New Territories. See also Freedman, Lineage Organization, pp. 11ff.Google Scholar

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26 A similar argument is made by Melvyn, C. Goldstein, ‘Serfdom and Mobility: An Examination of the Institution of “Human Lease” in Traditional Tibetan Society,’ Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (05 1971), p. 522.Google Scholar

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35 Data on this form of servitude will be presented in a subsequent paper.Google Scholar

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39 Watson, , Emigration and the Chinese Lineage, pp. 19–20.Google Scholar

40 Baker, , Sheung Shui, p. 29;Google Scholar see also his ‘The Five Great Clans of the New Territories,’ Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 29–30.Google Scholar Kam Tin, the most powerful lineage village in Hong Kong, has an origin myth similar to the one discussed by Baker; see Sung Hok-p'ang, ‘Legends and Stories of the New Territories, Kam Tin,’ reprinted in ibid., Vol. 13 (1973), pp. 160–85, first appearing in Hong Kong Naturalist (– 1935).

41 Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society, p. 6. Several New Territories genealogies, collected by Hugh Baker, are on file at the British Library in London.Google Scholar

42 There are two basic approaches to the anthropological study of myth. The first, characterized by the early work of Edmund Leach in Burma, sees myth as a social charter that can be manipulated according to present needs. The second, represented by Lévi-Strauss and the later writings of Leach, attempts to analyze myth as a form of communication at a ‘deeper’, structural level. I have not attempted a structural analysis of these Chinese origin myths.Google Scholar

43 Man genealogy referred to earlier.Google Scholar

44 Pasternak, Burton, ‘The Role of the Frontier in Chinese Lineage Development,’ Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 28, No. 3 (05 1969), p. 561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also his Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), pp. 155–7.Google Scholar

45 Chen, , Landlord and Peasant, p. 58;Google Scholar and Yuen-fong, Woon, ‘Social Organization of South China: The Case of the Kwaan Lineage of Hoi-p'ing,’ unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of British Columbia, 1975), p. 116.Google Scholar

46 Hu, , The Common Descent Group, pp. 91–2.Google Scholar

47 Hayes, James W., ‘Peng Chau between 1798–1899,’ Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 4 (1964), pp. 71–96,Google Scholar and ‘Cheung Chau, 1850–1898,’ ibid., Vol. 3 (1963), pp. 88–106. For another interesting variation of absentee corporate-landlordism see Muramatsu, Yuji, ‘A Documentary Study of Chinese Landlordism in Late Ch'ing and Early Republican Kiangnan,’ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 29 (1966), pp. 570–2.Google Scholar

48 Peasant Life in China, p. 177.Google Scholar

49 American anthropologists are currently engaged in a debate concerning the nature of exploitation in peasant societies. See e.g., Dalton, George, ‘How Exactly Are Peasants “Exploited”?,’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 76, No. 3 (09 1974), pp. 553–61;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and William Roseberry, ‘Rent, Differentiation, and the Development of Capitalism among Peasants,’ ibid., Vol. 78, No. 1 (March 1976), pp. 45–58.