LAND REFORM: COMPROMISES 301He cited Ch'eng Hao's memorial to Emperor Shen-tsung (r. 1068-86) that praised
the well fields of ancient times for ensuring equitable land distribution, lauded
the efforts of the Tang rulers for granting land allotments to individuals (i.e.,
the k'ou-fen grants), and chided the Sung rulers for failing even to attempt the
Tang adaptation of the well-field to save the peasantry from penury.
Yu noted that Fan Tsu-yii extolled the well-field system for "repressing the
wealthy" to eliminate the differences between the rich and the poor, and that
Lin Hsiin had recommended an adaptation of the well-field system to Emperor
Kao-tsung of the Southern Sung (r. I 127-3 I) as an antidote to conditions of
economic chaos.x^5
The more optimistic supporters of the well fields agreed that the landlords
would provide the stiffest opposition to any seizure of their property. Ch'eng I
warned that care should be taken to prevent popular resentment against the insti-
tution of a well-field system (that is, against confiscation of private land), but
success could be achieved by the use of correct methods. Chang Tsai agreed
that thorough discussion in advance and careful implementation would be needed
to ensure cooperation and prevent opposition, but there was no substitute for
the well-field system. Lii Ta-lin agreed that "The most difficult thing to do is
first to seize the land of the wealthy people forthwith," but he was confident that
"with the use of skill and proper tactics, this could be carried out without hav-
ing to punish a single person."86
Land-Limitation Plans
Most Sung reformers who rejected the Utopian possibilities of a literal well-
field restoration and opposed outright confiscation, however, favored some form
of a limited-field plan in the fashion of Tung Chung-shu and Shih Tan of the
Former Han dynasty, and Sud6 Yoshiyuki has provided a convenient summary
of these views. Li Kou of the mid-eleventh century deplored the monopoliza-
tion of fertile land by the rich, their use of tenants as cultivators, and their lack
of interest in reclaiming marginal land. He favored limiting the occupation of
land but not limiting the reclamation of marginal or wasteland.^87
Su Hsiin was a gradualist who believed that literal restoration of the Chou
well-field system was impossible because it would take several hundred years
to recreate the waterway system associated with it. Since the thirty kyang limit
of the Han could not be adopted so easily either, the only solution was a grad-
ual program of limitation. No land would be confiscated, but subdivision of landed
property among heirs over the generations would eventually yield an egalitar-
ian pattern of landownership tantamount to a well-field system.
Ch'en Shen-yu optimistically believed that if the families of officials were
provided their "hereditary salaries" (serok), they could be induced to give their
surplus land to the state voluntarily, and landlords would not resent confisca-
tion if limits on ownership were large enough. Wei Hsiang called his own plan
an equal-field system, but in fact he proposed limits on land that could be owned