Taiwan's leading landlord Lin Hsien-tang left for Japan "for treatment" in 1949 and never came back, and the 1953 land-to-the-tiller law paid landlords in bonds and shares

Lin Hsien-tang became head of the Wufeng Lin family of Taichung in 1904. Under Japanese rule he petitioned the Imperial Diet every year from 1921 for a Taiwan assembly, and in 1930 he co-founded the Taiwanese Alliance for Home Rule. On 23 September 1949, at odds with the Nationalist authorities, he left for Japan, citing medical treatment. He never returned. A 2021 book by his great-grandson, reported by Taiwan's Central News Agency, says Chiang Kai-shek wrote asking him to come home once he was well, and that Lin prepared to go and changed his mind at the last moment. The book says many people believed he stayed away over the taking of his land, and that the money was only part of it. The Land-to-the-Tiller Act of January 1953 let a landlord keep up to three jia of middle-grade paddy that he rented out. The state bought the rest at two and a half times the annual main crop. It paid 70 percent in land bonds redeemable in rice and 30 percent in shares of state companies. An economic history study at National Taiwan University finds that a landlord who held the bonds and shares earned less in ten years than the old rents, and one who sold within six months got less than half the price. Lin died in Tokyo on 8 September 1956.