did China need to kill so many people in 1950s to get the land reform done? In my own hometown, at least two men were killed because they had about 100 acre lands around 1955 (before I was born).
In Japan, the policy if roughly like this: if a person bought 100 acre lands, his family can only keep about 20% when this person dies. This means the family would own almost nothing in a few generations. That is why no one is interested in buying big lands in Japan. A good outcome is no one would be killed because he is a big landlord.
In Taiwan, no one was killed too under GMD but it still was successful in land reformation.