That’s actually pretty accurate, and it wasn’t so much “Mao’s policy” as just what wound up happening as a result of peasant outrage mixed with suddenly being given agency and an ideological push to redress their personal grievances. It was as I understand limited specifically to the rural landlords who lived in or near their the villages their victims did, the people who’d most directly committed crimes against their tenants, while absentee landlords who lived in cities far from their estates were spared and often given deals where they willingly gave up their claims to their former lands in exchange for party membership and jobs as bureaucrats on account of the CPC of the early 50s being that desperate for literate workers that they made a lot of “oh, you can read? If you’ll take this desk job doing paperwork and make a gesture of good faith by voluntarily giving up your capital and land, we’re ready to forgive a whole lot of stuff you may or may not have done” concessions.
I didn’t say “good”, just that the ones who weren’t personally doing their crimes seem to have mostly avoided punishment and received special treatment in exchange for going along with expropriation quietly.
That’s actually pretty accurate, and it wasn’t so much “Mao’s policy” as just what wound up happening as a result of peasant outrage mixed with suddenly being given agency and an ideological push to redress their personal grievances. It was as I understand limited specifically to the rural landlords who lived in or near their the villages their victims did, the people who’d most directly committed crimes against their tenants, while absentee landlords who lived in cities far from their estates were spared and often given deals where they willingly gave up their claims to their former lands in exchange for party membership and jobs as bureaucrats on account of the CPC of the early 50s being that desperate for literate workers that they made a lot of “oh, you can read? If you’ll take this desk job doing paperwork and make a gesture of good faith by voluntarily giving up your capital and land, we’re ready to forgive a whole lot of stuff you may or may not have done” concessions.
To be clear you said the “good landlords” were expropriated too, even if they got concessions?
I didn’t say “good”, just that the ones who weren’t personally doing their crimes seem to have mostly avoided punishment and received special treatment in exchange for going along with expropriation quietly.