Chapter 8 Kong Song Model of Enterprise History Figures

Fu Sinian called Song Ziwen "really a monster that never happens in a hundred years"—as the eldest son of the prominent Song family, he had received the most advanced cultural education at Harvard University, and preferred to use English instead of Chinese when thinking, speaking and writing. Only greed for power and wealth is Chinese.Therefore, Fu Sinian said, "Under the failure of the Song family today, he must go away to thank the people of the country." Six months after Song Ziwen "walked away", he was appointed chairman of the Guangdong Provincial Government by Chiang Kai-shek. On the second day after he took office, he met with American oil magnate Rockefeller and discussed with him about mining in Guangdong, and then approached Huangpu with Panyi Company. The construction project of the port decided to sell the iron ore from Hainan to Japan.Judging from his past behavior, it is really hard to tell whether these are public affairs or private affairs, or whether they are "public and private affairs" at all.

In 1949, the demise of the Kuomintang regime had become an established fact. On January 24, Song Ziwen resigned as the chairman of the provincial government and fled to Hong Kong. On June 10, he fled to the United States.After Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Taiwan, he called him many times to return to Taiwan to "help each other in difficult times", but he refused. In October 1952, the Kuomintang held its Seventh National Congress and passed the "major purge case within the party" and expelled a group of important "disloyal" party members. Among the list, Kong Xiangxi ranked first and Song Ziwen ranked second.In the list of Kuomintang war criminals released by the Communist Party of China three years ago, Chiang Kai-shek ranked first, and Song Ziwen ranked second.In the two lists of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, they can appear at the same time, and they both rank second. This is probably a symbolic position of Song Ziwen-style characters on the Chinese political stage.

After Song Ziwen went to the United States, he completely faded out of politics. In 1958, he visited Hong Kong, and in 1963 he went to Taiwan.According to the "Song Family Dynasty", the three Song brothers spent the rest of their lives "frantically engaging in oil stocks, commodity futures and new technology transactions." His daughter Feng Song Qiongyi described in a 2008 memoir, "He Walking in New York's Central Park, taking an afternoon nap, sharing delicious snacks with friends, watching American football, playing cards, and playing hide-and-seek with his grandchildren. My late father was as excited about medicine as he was about new companies listed on the Stock Exchange. In 1967, Kong Xiangxi died in New York, and he did not attend the funeral. Seagrave believed, "In his later years, there was no relationship between them." On April 25, 1971, Song Ziwen was at a friend's home in San Francisco, USA After dinner, he suffocated due to eating, fell down suddenly, and died before being sent to the hospital for emergency treatment. He was 77 years old at the time.

Like Kong Xiangxi, how much assets Soong Ziwen has is still a mystery. "Encyclopedia Britannica" said, "It is said that he is the richest person on earth", and "Asian Wall Street Journal" listed him as the richest man ever in human history. One of the 50 people in China, and believed that "Song Ziwen may have been the richest man in the world in the 1940s".U.S. President Truman has always been concerned about Song's misappropriation of American aid. In an interview with writer Merle Miller, he once cursed: "They are all thieves, fuck, none of them are not thieves! They never Of the $3.8 billion we sent, $750 million was stolen. They stole that money and invested it in real estate in São Paulo, some right here in New York."

But his descendants completely denied this. According to the Song Ziwen files provided by them, Song Ziwen’s property was 2 million US dollars around 1940. When Song Ziwen died in 1971, including the sale of real estate, his total assets were 8 million. US dollars, after deducting more than 2 million US dollars in taxes, Song Ziwen left his wife Zhang Leyi with an inheritance of more than 5 million US dollars. Later generations study the "big monster" Song Ziwen not only because of how much money he took away, but also because of what kind of "institutional product" he is.

In China's public opinion circles and economic thought circles, criticisms of Confucius and Song-style figures often tend to be moralized condemnation, but rarely reflect on and eliminate them at the institutional level.In the book "The Origin of Totalitarianism", Hannah Arendt found that, in fact, in the philosophical traditions of China and the West, thinkers never believed that there is a kind of "complete evil". Nature is inherently good”, while in Western Christian theology, the devil himself was born as an angel. Kant used “abnormal malice” to describe the understandable motivation behind evil behavior.Therefore, Arendt believes that "only one thing can be discerned, we can say that complete evil and a system appear at the same time." Thinking about official business culture and models must also be based on the study of economic systems superior.

Wu Guozhen, who once served as the mayor of Shanghai under the National Government and the governor of Taiwan Province, talked about the interaction between the Confucius and Song models and the system in the book "Wu Guozhen's Oral Memories". There is really no problem with what the wealthy capital does, everything is legal, because the decree itself is formulated by themselves, this is because they have influence, and everything is done within the legal scope.For example, no one could get foreign exchange at that time (because the application for foreign exchange needed to be reviewed), but their people, that is, Kong’s people, controlled the Foreign Exchange Management Committee of the Ministry of Finance, so they could get foreign exchange.Everyone has to apply to import the necessary goods first, but they have priority import rights, so although they do get rich from the blood and sweat of the Chinese people, everything is still legal.Wu Guozhen is a Doctor of Philosophy from Princeton University. His words are very plain, but he has dug into the root of the government-business model.Take the Song family again as an example. Song Ziwen has held official positions for a long time, while his two younger brothers, Song Ziliang and Song Zian, are serving in the business world. The brothers teamed up and they were surrounded by close friends. For them, the system was just a fig leaf or a tool they could use. At the Second Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee of the Kuomintang in March 1946, some people criticized Song Ziwen for being the president of the Executive Yuan and serving The chairman of Nanyang Tobacco Company, Hong Kong Guangdong Commercial Bank and China Construction Bank, Song replied, "When I became an official, all the chairman positions have been resigned, so I dare not advocate bureaucratic capital." And In fact, he ceded these duties to his two brothers.

In the century-old business history of modern times, there have been three typical government businessmen, one is Hu Xueyan, the other is Sheng Xuanhuai, and the third is the Kong Song family.They were all "the richest man in China" at that time. Their identities were both officials and businessmen. They were "red-top businessmen", and their wealth accumulation was related to their official careers.For comparison, we can see five characteristics: First, Hu Xueyan is relatively clear about the asset relationship. Most of his wealth comes from the military purchases for Zuo Zongtang. During this period, he worked hard and secretly took kickbacks.When it came to Sheng Xuanhuai, it was difficult to separate the government from the business, and the public and private stocks were intertwined. According to the people's comments on him at the time, it was "coercing officials to bully businessmen, coercing businessmen to deceive officials", "the harm goes to the public, and the benefits go to oneself".In the Confucian and Song Dynasties, it was divided openly, self-enriched privately, and even purchased in the name of the state and divided up in private capacity.

Second, the importance of their role in state affairs is also becoming more and more serious.Hu Xueyan was just a nominal Taoist from the top of the second rank, Sheng Xuanhuai was already the minister of the first rank, and Kong Song was the head of the country's administration. The two were in charge of the country's finances for a full 20 years.The assets of Hu, Sheng, and Kong Song are getting bigger and bigger, and the efficiency of accumulation is getting higher and higher. Third, the characteristics of institutionalization are becoming more and more obvious.If Hu Xueyan's transformation of the public into private is still a theft style, then Sheng Xuanhuai has evolved to shareholding, and in the hands of Kong Song, it is a scalpel-style delicate segmentation.They are better at using the design and implementation of the macroeconomic system for their own personal gain. Every economic crisis, major economic policy changes, and important development opportunities are often the best time for them to obtain wealth.Another characteristic of the cumulative increase of bureaucratic capital is that no matter whether the economic boom is booming or plummeting, it is an opportunity for expansion. It seems to be only related to turmoil. The time when Kong Song’s wealth soared was the time when the refugees were in trouble. During the eight years of the Anti-Japanese War.

Fourth, the increase in assets tends to be financialized.Hu and Sheng's wealth is mostly in the form of business, especially Sheng Xuanhuai, including Zhou Xuexi and others who were later than him, are very experienced in running industries. In a sense, their wealth comes from social increment .Kong Song, on the other hand, has no interest in industry. They use the means of financiers to directly cut off the stock of social assets—whether it is state-owned capital, private assets, or international aid. Therefore, their contribution to economic progress is even smaller. , the legitimacy is also worse, and the public anger is also greater.

Fifth, all the wealth obtained will be "beheaded in one lifetime".Because of the gray nature of asset accumulation, the social reputation of these three official and business families has been ruined more than their reputation. They often face major crises in their later years and behind them. After their demise, they were sealed up, and Kong and Song became "national thieves" that everyone called out to beat. Through the progressive outbreak of the three cases of Hu, Sheng, and Kong Song, we have to say that from the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, the central government’s control over the economy was not weakening, but gradually increasing. Strengthening and rationalization have become a governance model, and because of this, the parasitic bureaucratic capital groups are becoming more and more mature and powerful.Therefore, if the system cannot be fundamentally liquidated, especially the strengthening of marketization, rule of law, and democratization of economic governance, then it will be very difficult to eliminate the official business model. There is also a very hidden phenomenon that requires vigilance, that every moral crusade against the bureaucratic capital group may actually promote—or be used as—the further strengthening of nationalism, because when people hate bureaucratic capital, It is often compared with the loss of state-owned capital, so the mutual structure of the two is often ignored in the criticism.If the system has not been fundamentally reformed, then the collapse of one bureaucratic capital group often means the rise of another bureaucratic capital group.In the mid-to-late 1940s, after the Kong Song Group was liquidated, the corruption of the national government remained unchanged, and even intensified, and eventually became one of the important reasons for the collapse of the regime. Therefore, He Lian once lamented that Kong Song stepped down , Bureaucratic capital "hasn't hurt a single bit." In a sense, the reflection and liquidation of the Confucian-Song model has not really solved the problem so far.