[cdavid]

Necessary but not sufficient and all that... In how Asia works, Studwell argued quite convincingly how land reforms in Japan, South Korea, etc. was a prelude to successful industrialization because it allowed creating financial surplus thanks to increase agricultural output across a significant part of the population.

And in China, it is well acknowledged that the reform from 1978 were a significant step toward China economic growth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_Rural_Reform

[earlINmeyerkeg]

But like I said about how these wide sweeping reforms, they create instability and also famine. The reason it ended up being good (as your link also shows) was due to land consolidation. Millions of independent farmers does not create a food surplus as much as a few consolidated landmasses that can maximize production. As I stated, the consolidation inevitably occurs and always have in the many times China has performed land redistribution.

The primary reason the growth occurred was because of the land consolidation. Instead of having millions of independent farmers, they consolidated the land and only required hundreds of thousands of laborers to work on the land to maximize production. Thus allowing for a massive labor force that could be utilized for industrial production.