The Economics of Mobilizing Free Riders: Evidence from the Chinese Civil War 1945–1949
Keywords:
land reform, redistribution, free rider, war mobilization, ChinaAbstract
How can governments use redistribution to mobilize support for war? This paper shows that redistributive policies can increase political participation by altering the cost-benefit calculus of participation. I study a unique case of wartime land reform conducted by the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War. Using newly digitized death records of over 566,000 soldiers, I show that land redistribution increased death tolls on the extensive margin, but reduced fighting effort on the intensive margin when transfers were large—consistent with increased free-riding. However, both effects were driven by regions near enemy lines, where peasants faced higher risks of landlord reprisals. The findings highlight how strategic redistribution and violent class struggle interacted to reshape incentives for participation in collective violence. More broadly, the paper contributes to understanding how states engineer compliance during wartime through economic and coercive tools.
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