This unit begins by examining the problem of rural poverty in China in the 1940s. A variety of solutions attempted by the Chinese government between the mid 1940s and the present all aimed at the improvement of peasant living standards in the countryside. Because 80 percent of China's people are peasants, the Chinese Communist party saw the necessity of altering Orthodox Marxism from an urban to a rural focus. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the government embarked on a program of land reform to obtain political support from poor peasants. In 1956 the government shifted dramatically to a system of communal land ownership similar to that which existed in the Soviet Union. After many twists and turns marked by both natural disasters and political upheavals, the government began in 1980 a new phase of private land ownership called the "Family Responsibility System." This unit examines the above progression of events. Lesson 1 dramatizes the inequality of land ownership between the gentry and peasant classes. Lesson 2 documents Mao Zedong's realization that peasant support was necessary to gain political power and describes the initial stages of land reform. Lesson 3 explains how peasant life was altered by the establishment of the communes. Lesson 4 describes the partial return to private management of land. Whenever possible, the student assumes the role of the peasant to dramatize and make relevant the choices that were faced. The student will evaluate the benefits and shortcomings of the different approaches to land ownership taken by the Chinese government. Contains 13 references. (Author/DK)