AGRICULTURAL PERFORMANCE AND POLICY 79 their character. Land reform in China included some violence. Perhaps there was one death in 5-10 landlord families., This amounts to only 0.1 per cent of the rural population., but still this means that perhaps half a million people were lost. This number may be less than the people who died in natural disasters every few years in China., or less than the people beaten and killed for failure to pay rent and taxes; but even so, it represents an important issue. After establishing collective agriculture, maintaining the system has also been controversial. Constant, firm leadership by the Communist Party has been necessary to prevent the emergence of a new class (through ^spontaneous capitalism" or bureaucratic corruption) that would capture the benefits of agricultural development. China's success in agricultural development is no miracle. It reflects hard work and large investments over decades. It also reflects a political determination to support both agricultural growth and equitable distribution of benefits. There has been a willingness to destroy old institutions and to create new ones. There has been flexibility and ex-peri mentation with new institutions while at the same time there has been remarkable continuity in overall policy. Agricultural development means a long time and hard work, constant dedication and persistent experimentation but achieving both equity and growth is possible. It is not inevitable that large portions of the world's family remain impoverished. 1 Chao Kuo-chun, Agrarian Policy of the Chinese Communist Party, 1921-1959, Asia Publishing House, Bombay 1960. 2 Kang Chao, Agricultural Production in Communist China, 1949-1965, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison 1970. 8 For an excellent discussion of agro-technical change through multiple cropping around the twelfth century, see Mark Elvin, The Pattern of the Chinese Past, Stanford University Press, 1973. A detailed report of intensive cultivation practices at the beginning of this century is by F H King, Farmers for Forty Centuries, Rodale Press, Emmaus Pa. 1972, reprint of 1911 original. 4 There is, by now, an extensive literature comparing China and India: T J Byres and Peter Nolan, Inequality. India and China Compared, 1950-1970, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, England 1976; K Bandyopadhyaya, The People's Republic of China and India: A Comparative Study of Agricultural Development, \^'\\ey, New York 1976; Thomas Weisskopf, "China and India: Contrasting Experience in Economic Development," American Economic Review 65', 2 May 1975; "China and India, A Comparative Survey of Performance in Economic Development^, Economic and Political Weekly 10:5-7, 1975; Debesh Bhattacharya, "India and China—Contrast and Comparison, 1950-72," Journal of Contemporary Asia 4 : 4 1974, pp 439-459; Onkar S Marwah, "Change and Modernization in India and China," Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis Journal, New Delhi, October— December 1974; Subramanian Swamy, "Economic Growth in China and India. 1952-70", Economic Development and Cultural Change 21:4, 1973; Kuan-I Chen and J S Uppal, Comparative Development of India and China, Free Press, New York 1971; Netra Pal Jain, Rural Reconstruction in India and China, A Comparative Study, Sterling, New Delhi 1970; Pranab K Bardhan, "Agriculture in China and India: Output, Input, and Prices," Economic and Political Weekly Annual Number, 1969; "Chinese and Indian Agriculture: A Broad Comparison of Recent Policy and Performance," Journal of Asian Studies, 29 : 3 May 1970, pp 515-537; K N Raj, India, Pakistan and