舊中國の田面慣行 : 田面の轉頂と佃戸の耕作權

Abstract

Topsoil (tian-mian 田面) originated where land productivity was augmented by the investment of the tenants' labor (this was known as gong-ben 工本) in improvements of the irrigation, the fertility, and the cultivable area of the land they were renting. Accordingly, the tenants obtained rights either to demand a return on their gong-ben from the landlords or, when this was not forthcoming, to secure increases in the area of the (rented) land which was its result. However, the landlords rarely paid back the investment of labor; the tenants were apt at the expiry of their contracts to cede the topsoil to other cultivators and use the price they received for this as the means of recouping their gong-ben. There were two procedures for ceding the topsoil rights: "official" (guan-ding 官頂) and "private" (si-ding 私頂). "Official transfer" meant that the topsoil temporarily reverted to the landlords' possession and was then allotted to the next tenant, so that the landlord controlled the price of the topsoil transfer and the selection of the next cultivator. The "unofficial" version meant that the tenant directly handed over the topsoil to a third party, the landlord did not intervene in the process, the third party might be anyone at all, and the price of the topsoil fluetuated in accordance with the supply of and demand for land and with the ability of the tenant to drive a bargain. Historically, official transfer preceded private transfer: the movement in the direction of the latter came with the erosion of the landlords' power to control the situation. Tenancy contracts normally continued so long as the tenant was paying rent. There was no difference in cases where the tenant was the holder of topsoil rights: if the tenant ceased to pay his rent the landlord could abrogate the contract. But even if the contract was abrogated, the tenant's right to demand a return on his. gong-ben remained in force. Thus in reality the landlord's ability to abrogate the contract depended on whether he himself could buy back the topsoil rights, or on whether prospective new tenants who were in a position to do so existed or not. As the official transfer system broke down, the price of the topsoil increased steeply; as the cost of buying back the topsoil became prohibitive relative to the buying power of landlords and peasants in general, the security of tenure of the cultivators was stabilized. According to the conventional theory, topsoil rights were equivalent to permanent tenancy and peasants who had rights to the topsoil enjoyed permanent rights to cultivate it. But this is an error. In fact it was only the difficulty of paying back the price of the topsoil which checked the landlords' ability to dispose of the land as they wished.