4 ideas
Peasant distress in the Yangtze delta came less from land shortage than from the collapse of household silk production, which had supplemented farm income. When world silk prices fell and factory silk took over the market, families could no longer pay rent and taxes from farming alone. They turned to usurers and lost land, so the land question was at root an industry question.
Land was divided into two separately owned and tradeable rights. Subsoil rights belonged to landlords, often absentee town dwellers, and entitled them to rent. Topsoil rights let the peasant cultivate the land indefinitely and pass it on. This let urban capital draw income from villages without managing farming, and it turned rent into a flow of wealth from country to town.
Reformers from a sericulture school set up a cooperative factory in the village. It used modern reeling machines and scientific silkworm rearing, so that industrial profits would stay with the peasant members rather than go to urban capitalists. The experiment raised quality but pulled women's labor out of the household, reshaping family roles and authority. It shows that technical change sets off social change.
Studying one small community intensively reveals how kinship, land tenure, farming, industry and ritual interlock as parts of a single system. Because each institution meets needs that others depend on, any intervention in one ripples through the rest. Modernisation schemes must therefore be judged by their effect on the whole of village life, not just their intended target.