Chapter 19 silver dollar

Silver dollars have been favored in Shanghai for a long time. In the 1920s and 1930s, Shanghai had the largest silver reserves in the world: about 400 million ounces—Shanghai was almost a Chinese silver bank, storing most of China's silver. "Because everyone thinks that the Shanghai Concession is a safe area, the surrounding landlords, inland banks, rich men, usury bosses and warlords all try to transport their silver to the concession to store it." Yang Zhongwen said. Shanghai has been surrounded by the wave of silver dollar speculation more than once, and now, the environment for silver dollar speculation has emerged again. A piece of news from "Shanghai Ta Kung Pao" at that time described the suffocating run on the Central Bank of the Bund on Jiujiang Road: "The section from Jialing Building on Sichuan Road to Fuzhou Road was full of people from 4:00 am to 9:00 am, and pedestrians were not allowed to pass. Even many bank staff were unable to go in to work. The reporter entered a certain building in the morning, and the crowd was even more crowded when he came out. With great effort, he finally broke out of the encirclement and came back to check. People who ran on the central bank blocked the entrances of nearby buildings, and the people living in the building rushed for a long time without breaking out, so they opened a large window on the first floor and put a board on the heads of the people who were running. Get out of the building."

"Speculators took advantage of people's psychology, and silver dollars became a catalyst for people's fear. Masses of panicked citizens with cash in their hands turned to the black market, selling new currency for silver dollars, and hiding them— Put them in safes, boxes, and tin cans, and many people dug a hole in their backyard and buried silver dollars in it." Zhang Zhenguo recalled. Before May 29, 1949, it was the "Golden Yuan Notes" that were sold out. After May 29, the RMB encountered a similar fate.The strength and weakness of the renminbi and the silver dollar are almost clear at a glance.Within 10 days after liberation, the price of silver dollars in Shanghai more than tripled, and the soaring price of silver led to the rise of the entire commodity price.Within 13 days after the liberation of Shanghai, the wholesale price index tripled.

Shanghai has once again become a speculative paradise, with more and more street vendors. "On June 5, there were 20,000 hawkers on the street, and by June 8 it had grown to 80,000." Ding Gongliang served as the head of the Security Department of the Ninth Corps in Shanghai after liberation. He recalled, "At that time, some major On the roads, especially along Xizang Road, Nanjing Road and the Bund, many people can be seen selling silver dollars on the sidewalk or at crossroads.” The Shanghai Stock Exchange is a prominent building on Hankou Road, known as the largest stock exchange in the Far East at that time.

After the liberation of Shanghai, the old Shanghai Stock Exchange once again became the center and headquarters of financial speculation in Shanghai. "The speculators have close ties with the branch bases distributed in every corner of the city, and the major cities in the whole country and even the Far East," Zhang Zhenguo recalled. There are also thousands of people who come to inquire about the market to pass information in and out, so some financial speculators on the stock exchange can manipulate the price of silver dollars in the city, just like buying short and selling short securities in the past. The water in the securities building is very Deep', bureaucrats and gang forces are involved behind many seemingly ordinary securities numbers." "During that time, Chen Yun often came to the bank to discuss this issue against silver dollars with the bank's consultants, experts, and some old Shanghainese in the bank. How to fight a speculative battle."

Chen Yun and Chen Yi are not the first to open fire on black marketers and speculators in Shanghai.Three years ago, Jiang Jingguo quietly came to Shanghai with his wife and dispatched troops to bring 7,000 people from the 4th and 6th Exploration and Construction Brigades of his direct descendants to Shanghai. At the same time, he organized the "Great Shanghai Youth Service Corps", The economic inspection in Shanghai was carried out, and the result was a complete failure.During this extraordinary period, the courts in Shanghai continued to impose death sentences and executed them immediately.Since the beginning of September, Chiang Ching-kuo has shot the profiteer Wang Chunzhe and others, and arrested "rice moths", "cotton moths" and "caterpillars" in Shanghai. Du Weiping, Du Yuesheng's son, and Wan Molin, Du Yuesheng's housekeeper, were imprisoned successively. , Mr. Rong Zongjing's son Rong Hongyuan, etc., and Shen Laizhou's son-in-law Huang Guoliang was also taken in as a "caterpillar".But Chiang Ching-kuo's setbacks began with a strange incident: Mrs. Chiang received a phone call from Shanghai one night, saying that her stepson had intercepted a large shipment from the Yangzijiang Development Company. The extremely large company is the property of the Kong family.Madame Chiang was very annoyed when she heard that Chiang Ching-kuo wanted to arrest her nephew and general manager Kong Lingkan, and Chiang Kai-shek decided to leave the matter to her.In the end, Kong Lingkan was not arrested, but left Shanghai to travel to the United States for a few months, and then the company headquarters moved to Florida.

Now, on the same battlefield, can the new regime and the newly born RMB win this battle?Zhang Zhenguo said, "We first analyzed that the price we set was low and the market was not very attractive, so the first idea was to use economic means to suppress the silver dollar." The name of this plan is "making silver dollars from silver dollars".Those "Yuan Datou" molds that were about to be put into the museum were rediscovered. It took the Shanghai Mint a day to make a surprise production of 100,000 silver dollars in an attempt to stabilize the price of silver in one fell swoop by putting it on the market. "We concentrated these 100,000 silver dollars and put them on the black market at a low price at the same time. On June 6, we sold 10,000 silver dollars in a market in only one district of Shanghai." Zhang Zhenguo recalled that the silver was sold in Shanghai. All the little inventory silver squeezed out by these new regimes was eaten by speculators.

Judging from the amount of silver held in Shanghai's history, the absorptive capacity of this huge market is unfathomable. Ji Chaoding, who had been engaged in underground financial work in Shanghai for a long time, participated in the Shanghai takeover day several times, and pseudo-financial institutions, later wrote in his memories: "When we took over Shanghai, the central bank vault that was evacuated contained only 6,000 taels of gold and 300,000 taels of silver. 10,000 taels, 1.547 million silver dollars, 8.678 U.S. bills (Note: This is the original book) and a very small amount of British pounds and Hong Kong dollars. We conservatively estimate that there are at least 2 million silver dollars in the hands of Shanghai residents alone. They want to use them in the market Economic intervention in the market to solve the problem of the renminbi's foothold is powerless."

Another objective reason also denies the possibility that economic intervention can be effective in the short term.Yang Zhongwen analyzed that the Central Finance Committee had realized at that time that the strength of the silver dollar was to some extent the inevitable product of the rapid collapse of the gold dollar coupons after the Pingjin People's Liberation Army crossed the river. "Before crossing the river, the liberation war usually liberated the countryside first and encircled the large and medium-sized cities. In this way, financial trade took root in the countryside first. Once the cities were liberated, it was relatively easy for our currency to occupy the market and restore urban-rural exchanges, such as Shenyang. After crossing the river, the situation is different, the cities are occupied first, and then the villages are occupied, and the urban and rural areas have already become the market for silver dollars. Under this background, the only way to promote the renminbi is to use extraordinary means.”

On June 10, 1949, the unified action involving the largest scope and tough means since the liberation of Shanghai kicked off. "The coverage of this crackdown on silver dollar speculation is quite large in Shanghai. Almost every point where there is a financial black market on Xizang Road, Nanjing Road, Hongkou, Shiliupu, and Caojiadu is included in the crackdown. Shanghai trade unions also mobilized workers and students The parade formed a peripheral propaganda offensive." Zhang Zhenguo said.The center of the storm is the Shanghai Securities Building at 422 Hankou Road. Zhang Zhenguo and Ding Gongliang's wife, Sophie, who was the confidential secretary of the 20th Army Party Committee at the time, were all witnesses to the siege of the securities building.Sophie recalled, "Shanghai Police Commander Song Shilun led a battalion of security forces, divided into 10 large trucks and surrounded the securities building in the early morning of the 10th."

"We were in a team of three, including a soldier, a bank cadre and a policeman from the Public Security Bureau. Each team was responsible for checking six rooms. Many of our people involved in the operation actually entered the building on June 9th. I borrowed a gown from my cousin, and according to the instructions, I was to mark people.” Zhang Zhenguo recalled, “The next morning, we arrived at the building at 8:00, and Li Shiying, director of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, led more than 200 plainclothes officers to control Various venues and all entrances and exits. As soon as the market opened at 10 o'clock, we put on the armbands of the Military Control Commission and ordered all personnel to stop activities immediately."

Zhang Zhenguo said, "In room 445 on the 6th floor, Zhou Hanqing, a broker of Yongcheng Securities Co., Ltd., and his subordinates are constantly contacting the Hong Kong and Macau markets. They have codes for various speculative chips. The dollar is called 'sugar'. , Gold is called 'ginseng'. Another speculator named Zhang Xingzheng set up an office 'Shouchang Gold' on the 4th floor, which is a command post for speculative trading of silver dollars. In this office, there are 25 telephone sets , There is a red letter form on the wall, on which are written 4 items and 8 characters: gold, dollar bills, Yuan Tou, Sun Tou, and under each item, the buying and selling prices are marked with white chalk pen.” "A total of 2,100 people gathered in the lobby to give lectures in this operation, and 238 people were arrested on the spot. More than 3,000 taels of gold, more than 30,000 silver dollars, and more than 10 million yuan were confiscated. 2,000 yuan fell to 1,200 yuan. The new regime has just conquered a market for the yuan.”