31. The Fed Up Underfed Peasants
China’s political turmoil, natural disasters, hardships and hunger, took place against a backdrop of a resentful peasantry. In addition to the catastrophes plaguing the country, the peasants’ main grievance was a rise in debt slavery, and steady consolidation of agricultural land into large tracts controlled by powerful magnates.
The formerly independent yeoman peasant owners of those plots were reduced to tenant farmers or serfs. They thus often found themselves tilling what had once been their own holdings on behalf of others. Other peasants simply got kicked off the land altogether, and were reduced to a life of itinerant wanderers. For years, the downtrodden peasants endured their suffering, but patience has limits, and the downtrodden Chinese peasantry finally reached theirs.