The Art of the Party: The Bloodstained Shirt

This sketch, entitled "The Bloodstained Shirt," was created by Chinese realist painter Wang Shikuo in 1959.

It depicts farmers rising up to protest their treatment by a cruel landlord and victoriously regaining their land rights in a town in East China's Shandong province.

Before the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, landlords had controlled 70-80 percent of the cultivated land in some areas with a small population.

There is a huge gap in living standards and access to resources, especially in rural areas.

Following the founding of the PRC, the Chinese government published a Land Reform Law on June 30, 1950.

The law abolished ownership of land by landlords and started land ownership by peasants. It was one of the important policies in the early days of the founding of New China.

The law defined the principles and methods for the expropriation and re-allocation of land.

Land was confiscated from former landlords and redistributed to landless peasants and owners of small plots, as well as to the landlords themselves, who now had to till the land to earn a living.

By the spring of 1953, land reform had been implemented in most parts of the country.

More than 300 million farmers across the country were given 47 million hectares of land and large amounts of production materials for free.

The reform effort led to increased agricultural productivity and laid the basis for the industrialization of China.

(CGTN)