How many died?
Six historians. Six numbers. A hundred thousand to five million. Nobody has the full archive.
One campaign. A fiftyfold gap.
Each row is one historian’s figure for deaths in land reform. 6 give a number. A bar is a range, a tick is a floor, a square is a single figure.
Every name opens the source: who they are, what the figure rests on, their affiliations and the published criticism of their work. Judge them yourself.
Suppressing counter-revolutionaries 镇反, 1950 to 1953
- 1712,000Xu Zirong and Luo RuiqingThe Party's own count
- 2> 712,000Yang Kuisong 杨奎松Researcher
- 3712,000Zhou Xun 周逊Researcher
- 4753,275Yinghong ChengResearcher
712,000 executed is the Party’s own internal figure, from January 1954.
It tells us what the Party said, and it is shown as that. Two sources repeat it, one argues it is too low, and one finds 753,275 by end 1953.
The gap is small here because a count exists. For land reform there was no count.
The killing is not in doubt. Only the size of it is.
Five of the six figures start at one million. The lowest is a number attributed to Mao himself. The best method declines to give a number at all. That is not a defence of the campaign. It is the shape of the evidence: violence ordered from above, counted badly below.
We publish the range and the reasons. We will narrow it only when a new archive does.
Sources 来源
Every row is in the database. A link is the proof.- 1Jeffrey JavedLand and Retribution: Morality, Mobilization, and Violence in China's Land Reform Campaign, 1950 to 1952declines a figureNo public copy
- 2Julia C. StraussMorality, Coercion and State Building by Campaign, The China Quarterly 188, 20061 to 5 millionOpen ↗
- 3Zuo Ci 左慈An Analysis of Execution Ratios in the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, issue 178, April 2020about 100,000, attributed to MaoOpen ↗
- 4Brian DeMareLand Wars: The Story of China's Agrarian Revolution, Stanford University Press, 2019at least 2 millionOpen ↗
- 5Frederick C. TeiwesThe Establishment and Consolidation of the New Regime, in The Politics of China, Cambridge University Press, 20111 to 2 million executedOpen ↗
- 6Frank DikotterThe Tragedy of Liberation, Bloomsbury, 2013. Second of the People's Trilogyno land reform figure sourcedOpen ↗
- 7Jurgen DomesSocialism in the Chinese Countryside, C. Hurst, 1980, page 85 million killedNo public copy
- 8Benedict StavisThe Politics of Agricultural Mechanization in China, Cornell University Press, 1978, pages 29 to 30over 1 million, disputed attributionOpen ↗
- 9Xu Zirong and Luo RuiqingInternal report, January 1954, and campaign reports 1951712,000 executed (the Party's own count)No public copy
- 10Zhou Xun 周逊Violence in Revolutionary China: 1949-1963, in The Cambridge World History of Violence, vol. 4 (2020)712,000 executedOpen ↗
- 11Yang Kuisong 杨奎松Reconsidering the Campaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries, The China Quarterly 193, 2008higher than 712,000Open ↗
- 12Yinghong ChengQuota, Class, and Political Violence in Mao's China, Journal of Chinese History, Cambridge University Press753,275 by end 1953Open ↗