300 LAND REFORMappropriate. Yu commented that this was a shallow opinion based on Po's fail-
ure to conduct a thorough study ofthe ancient system.8oyu probably meant either
that the term ch 'i5nmaek did not represent a new system at all, as Chu Hsi had
pointed out in the twelfth century, or that since it was a system of private prop-
erty, it was an unsuitable substitute for the well-field system at any time.
Yu also copied out Tu Yu's (T'ang dynasty) opening statement in his survey
of land systems in China in the Tung-tien, which lauded the well fields and the
hierarchy of local communities (pi and ry6) of the sages because they perceived
that land was the basis of agricultural production and that settling the people on
the land would guarantee continuous production and ensure equitable distribu-
tion oflabor service requirements through an accurate census of the population.s!
A recent study by Sud6 Yoshiyuki has revealed that by the Sung dynasty a
large majority of scholars and statesmen felt that a literal restoration of the well-
field system was impossible if not undesirable, even though most of them were
in favor of some kind of reform. The great philosopher Ch'eng Hao, for exam-
ple, was a gradualist willing to settle for either the well-field or limited-field
system. Ou-yang Hsiu proposed limiting the land the rich already owned but
giving them free rein on the reclamation of wasteland. Su HsUn thought that you
needed flat land to layout the well-field grid and that it would take a century to
do it. Wei Hsiang and Ch'en Liang agreed that the task was too difficult, and
that a gradual approximation, possibly a limited-field scheme, was the best that
could be hoped for. 82
Sud6 also showed that the most forceful and optimistic advocate of a restora-
tion ofthe well-field system of antiquity was Chang Tsai of the Northern Sung,
even after the T'ang equal-field system had collapsed. Chang believed that a well-
field restoration would naturally be welcomed by the majority of the peasant
population and opposed only by the minority of landlords. Although he admit-
ted that the well fields were ensconced in a feudal context in Chou times, he
also had hopes that enough elements offeudalism could be revived to make the
well-field system viable. He was confident that the adoption of the system
depended only on the will and resolution of the ruler and that the use of force
would not be necessary. Private ownership would be disallowed and the needs
of the officials would be met by fiefs of no more than fifty ii. His assumption
that the landlords would be willing to give up their land for the benefit of the
people without coercion was, however, condemned for its naiVete by most other
Sung scholars and statesmen.^81
Chang's optimism was reiterated by Ch'en Fu of the late Southern Sung, who
thought that the well-field system was adaptable to any age as long as a suffi-
cient lead time of three to seven years was provided to ease the pain to the land-
lords from the confiscation of their land. In addition to Chang Tsai, Ch'en cited
Chu Hsi as an authority on the feasibility of restoring the well-field system, even
though Chu had expressed reservations about its feasibility.8^4
Yu Hyongwon omitted an evaluation of the history of land reform and con-
fined his attention to the theoretical discussion of Sung scholars and statesmen.