Chapter 23 Section 3 Farewell to Sadness in Jiazi Year
The Chinese Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches match in order, that is, A, B, C, D, E, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui and Zi, Chou, Yin, Mao, Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, You, Xu and Hai are combined, starting from "Jiazi" and ending with "Guihai", 60 years is a reincarnation.Therefore, Jiazi is an important historical era.From the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 to 2009, the People's Republic of China has just finished its first 60 years. In 60 years, a reincarnation has achieved "China's great changes", full of victories and twists and turns, struggles and hardships, glory and dreams.The end of the first Jiazi reincarnation, entering the post-"China Great Change" era, is a new era of inheriting the past and ushering in the future.
Since the outbreak of the Industrial Revolution in Britain in 1820, the international economic landscape has undergone dramatic and earth-shaking changes in the past 200 years.The wave of the industrial revolution that started in the UK swept across the entire European continent. The invention of the steam engine enabled the British textile industry to carry out industrial chain layout around the world.The European economy accounted for more than 40% of the global economy at the end of the 19th century and dominated the global economy until the rise of the United States.Both China and India were economically powerful countries at the beginning of the 19th century, but because they failed to adapt to the industrial revolution, the relative proportions of these two economic giants in the world's total economy declined rapidly, and finally became economically insignificant countries. In 1900, the US economy overtook the UK and became the leader in world economic development. From 1929 to 1933, the Great Depression in the United States triggered the world economic crisis. In 1934, US investment activities rebounded surprisingly and gradually emerged from the depression.After the Second World War, the American economy was in full swing, accounting for more than 40% of the world's total economy at one time, becoming the locomotive of the world economy.
In the 1970s, Japan developed into the world's second largest economic power, and other countries and regions, such as Singapore and South Korea, became famous as the "Four Asian Tigers" because of their rapid development.But the good times didn't last long. The Japanese stock market bubble burst in 1990 and the real estate bubble burst in 1991, and the Japanese economy fell into long-term stagnation. In 1997, the East Asian financial crisis made the "East Asian Miracle" disappear. Although the financial system has been repaired, the high investment rate has disappeared.The United States successfully responded to the challenges brought about by Japan and Germany’s rapid catch-up. In 1971, it quietly entered the information economy. In 1984, it unexpectedly stepped out of the haze of “stagflation” in the 1970s. From 1992 to 2001, it began a decade-long The economy prospered until the Internet bubble burst in 2001, the real estate bubble burst in 2007, and the US financial crisis in 2008 triggered the world financial crisis.On the other side of the Atlantic, Europe has gradually pursued economic integration since the Treaty of Rome in 1957, and finally gave birth to the European Union.
The European Union expanded from 5 countries to nearly 30 countries today, established a unified labor market, and issued a common currency - the euro.However, the European economy seems to be suffering from "Eurosclerosis". The monetary policy of the European Central Bank, which pays too much attention to anti-inflation, is slow to respond to the economic downturn, and the momentum of economic growth is far below expectations.Due to "shock therapy", the economies of the former Eastern European countries regressed sharply in the 1990s. After joining the EU integration, their economic systems quickly converged, and their per capita income quickly converged with the EU, which is impressive.In Latin America, Mexico has benefited from the North American Free Trade Area, which has attracted significant foreign investment. In November 2001, in a research report, Goldman Sachs suggested to focus on the four rising emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and coined the term "BRIC" (BRIC). became popular internationally.Brazil's economy developed steadily after the crisis in 1998; Russia's economy also developed rapidly, but the "Dutch disease" caused by oil prices began to appear in the world financial crisis.
Over the past 200 years, China's economy has been both tragic and glorious. After the Opium War in 1840, the signing of a series of unequal treaties put China in the predicament of trade deficit and deflation for a long time, which made the Chinese economy further decline. In 1895, the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Shimonoseki plunged the Qing government into a financial crisis.Stavrianos said in "General History of the World": "The humiliation and disaster that China suffered in the second half of the 19th century caused the traditional self-centered China to undergo painful self-reflection, re-evaluation and reorganization. "
Entering the 20th century, China encountered unprecedented external and internal troubles. In 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces occupied Beijing. The "Xin Chou Treaty" made China's economy develop into a debt crisis. Exorbitant tax rates and real interest rates inhibited the development of industry and commerce. The level is lowered to the bottom of the world.It can be said that the two mentalities of the Chinese people blend with each other: on the one hand, self-improvement and sense of responsibility have become a powerful force, and saving the nation and seeking strength have become the main theme of China's economic and social and political development for more than 100 years; on the other hand, sadness has always implied In the hearts of the Chinese people, self-confidence has become severely lacking.Unlike India, China has been a unified country for most of its history, and the concept of "India" was inadvertently cultivated by Britain during its colonial period.The self-perception that China’s economy was the world’s number one for a long time, China’s economic status plummeted after 1840. This huge contrast has created a huge historical tragedy subconsciously, and also lost confidence due to the long-term sluggish economic development.
In 1900, Liang Qichao vividly expressed this intertwined emotion of pride and sadness:
Alas!Is it really the boss of China?Standing today, it refers to the past, Tang and Yu three dynasties, how were the rulers; Qin Huang, Han Wu, how great heroes were; the literature from the Han and Tang Dynasties, how prosperous;Narrated by historians and sung by poets, why is it not a relic of the beautiful scenery and enjoyable things in our country's youth!Now I am old and depressed!Cut off five cities yesterday, cut ten cities tomorrow, and the birds and mice will be exhausted everywhere, and the chickens and dogs will be frightened every night.The land and property of the eighteen provinces have become the flesh in the arms of the people; the four hundred trillion fathers, brothers and children have been registered as slaves. How can it be said that "the eldest married into a businessman's wife"?Alas!According to Jun Mo's words, I can't bear to look at the haggard time!Prisoners from Chu faced each other, looking at their shadows in a precarious situation, their lives were in danger, and they never cared about the night.A country is a country waiting to die, and the people of a country are people waiting to die.There is nothing to do with everything, and it is no wonder that everything is played by others!
When grief reaches its highest point, it is Shang.The country's death lies in the economy.As Qu Yuan wrote in "Nine Songs National Memorial":
You can't go in and out, you can't go back, you can't go back, and the plains are suddenly far away.
With a long sword and a Qin bow, the head is separated and the heart is not punished.
Sincerity is both brave and martial, and finally strong and invincible.
When the body is dead, the gods have spirits, and the souls of the sons are ghosts.
In the early morning of December 8, 1905, after Chen Tianhua, who was 31 years old at the time, wrote the nearly 3,000-word Jue Ming Ci, he committed suicide by crossing the sea in Omori Bay, Tokyo. Who will send the alarm bells in the sleepy country" lamented.Chen Tianhua's martyrdom is a typical manifestation of the deepening tragedy of the Chinese nation since 1840.
The collapse of the Qing government in 1911 should have been a good opportunity for the new Chinese government to restructure foreign debts and get out of the debt crisis.However, in order to win the support of foreign financial loans, the Beiyang government and the Nanjing National Government continued to recognize these unequal treaties, but at the same time they were unable to change China's long-standing trade deficit, making the Chinese economy unable to extricate itself from the quagmire of the debt crisis. From 1929 to 1936, China's economy did improve in a short period of time, but no fundamental solution was proposed to the long-term macro imbalance of China's economy. In 1936, the Nanjing National Government successfully implemented the currency reform, abandoned the "silver standard" and adopted paper money, the "legal currency".However, under the circumstances of loose fiscal discipline and failure to deal with the imbalance of international payments, the Nanjing National Government can only maintain the credibility of legal currency in the foreign exchange market by continuing to borrow from abroad. This is feasible in the short term, but not in the long run. If it does, it will only deepen the debt crisis. In 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Northeast China; in 1937, Japan invaded China in an all-round way, and China's economic development was completely interrupted. From 1945 to 1949, the Nanjing National Government could not control the fiscal deficit internally, and could not solve the terminally ill debt crisis externally, which eventually led to hyperinflation.
From 1840 to 1948, the two antidote to China's problem is: the balance of payments imbalance and the resulting debt crisis must be solved from the demand side, and the "high-level dynamics" caused by low human capital must be solved from the supply side. balance" trap.Unfortunately, the late Qing government, the Beiyang government, and the Nanjing Nationalist government were unable to solve these two fundamental economic problems.As a result, China's economy was unresponsive to the Industrial Revolution, moribund with its debt crisis, and per capita income stagnated for a long time.
"China is a sleeping lion. When it wakes up, the world will be shaken." This is Napoleon's famous quote. On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong solemnly announced on the Tiananmen Gate: "The People's Republic of China and the Central People's Government have been established today!"
In just a few years after 1949, the new Chinese government immediately proved to the world that it was able to control the fiscal deficit, quickly controlled hyperinflation, established a stable paper currency system (RMB), abolished unequal treaties, and reversed the century-old troubled Chinese economy. China's trade deficit has completely restructured the modern foreign debt, and successfully got rid of the debt crisis under the capital account, which has won the preconditions for economic growth.
After 1949, after arduous exploration, the Chinese economy laid the foundation of the industrial economy within the planned economic system, increased the accumulation of human capital, successfully broke the trap of "high-level dynamic equilibrium", created a millennium change in economic growth, and ended It has been a tragedy that the living standards of the Chinese people have been at the bottom of the world for a hundred years.When Deng Xiaoping met with Doe, the then head of state of Liberia, he was asked about the historical experience of China’s economic construction. Deng Xiaoping summed up the economic achievements in the first 30 years since the founding of the country, “Since the founding of the country, we have done some things, basically solved the problem of food and clothing. Clothing problem, food self-sufficiency. This is a very remarkable thing. The old China has not solved this problem for a long time. In terms of industry, we have established a relatively good foundation. Although it is still very backward, it is much better than in the past.”
Entrepreneurship is difficult and good things take time, and China has also paid high tuition fees. The serious setback of the "Great Leap Forward" in 1958, the heavy losses during the "Three Difficult Period", the stagnation of total factor productivity during the "Cultural Revolution", and the gradual loss of vitality of the economic system.In Deng Xiaoping's words, it was a delay of 20 years.To engage in construction behind closed doors makes China face the real dilemma of being "boiled frogs" by the productivity revolution. In the early 1970s, the information revolution broke out suddenly in the United States. Under the planned economic system, due to the slowdown of industrial technological progress and the diminishing marginal returns of capital accumulation, the Chinese economy was getting deeper and deeper in the quagmire, unable to cope with the productivity revolution. At the end of 1978, China finally embarked on the road of reform and opening up, and started a market-oriented economic system reform.
In 1992, the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China determined that the goal of China's economic system reform was to establish a socialist market economic system. Since then, "the big rocs have risen with the same wind in one day, and they have skyrocketed to 90,000 miles", and the speed of economic rise has exceeded anyone's imagination. force.After China reached a per capita income of US$1,000 in 2001, it continued to develop upwards. The development from 2001 to 2009 shows that, unlike some countries in Latin America, China's economy stagnates after the per capita income reaches US$1,000. In 2007, the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China determined the long-term strategy of improving independent innovation capabilities and building an "innovative country" with great foresight, laying the foundation for China's long-term sustainable development. In 2009, China's per capita income reached 3,000 US dollars, entering the important threshold of a "middle-income country". The "middle-income trap" in world experience will soon be overcome by China.
Looking back at the first "Jiazi" of the Republic's economic development, it was the 60 years since 1840 when China was reborn.From the Opium War to 1949, China experienced a century of humiliation.Beginning in 1949, China began to move toward the revival of a powerful country.In the past 60 years, China has achieved two productivity liberations.The first time was in 1949, the founding of the People’s Republic of China, which brought the Chinese economy out of the debt crisis and laid the foundation for economic growth, and the people’s living standards came out of the bottom of the world; the second time was in 1978, when China was on the road of reform and opening up , The market economy has gradually replaced the increasingly rigid planned economy, and the living standards of the Chinese people have entered a well-off society like "flying like lightning" from not having enough food and clothing.
The two leaps in China's economic development proved the correctness of Deng Xiaoping's famous thesis that "revolution liberates productive forces" and "reform also liberates productive forces". In 1992, Deng Xiaoping pointed out in a talk in the South that "revolution is the liberation of productive forces, and reform is also the liberation of productive forces. Overthrowing the reactionary rule of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism will liberate the productive forces of the Chinese people. This is revolution, so revolution is liberation. Productivity. After the establishment of the basic socialist system, the economic system that constrains the development of productive forces must be fundamentally changed, and a socialist economic system full of vigor and vitality must be established to promote the development of productive forces. This is reform, so reform also liberates productive forces. In the past It is incomplete to only talk about the development of productive forces under the conditions of socialism, without mentioning the liberation of productive forces through reforms. It should fully talk about the liberation of productive forces and the development of productive forces.”
Why "revolution is the liberation of productive forces"?Because without the establishment of the People's Republic of China, China would not be able to solve the century-long balance of payments imbalance and the debt crisis since 1901. Without sufficient financial resources to invest in education, it would be difficult to reduce the high birth rate, and the huge population base would bring In the future, the rapid population growth will lead to the stagnation of per capita income, and it will fall into a "high-level dynamic equilibrium" and cannot extricate itself.Why "reform also liberates productivity"?Because of the uncertainty and inevitability of the outbreak of the productivity revolution, new leading industries are often created from outside the existing economic leading sectors, and the adaptation efficiency of the planned economic system is low. Only the market economy can adapt to the new productivity revolution. Economic system reform is used to realize the transition of the economic system and liberate new social wealth contained in the productivity revolution.
After being quite pessimistic about China's economy, international public opinion has been extremely optimistic about the future of China's economy since 2001.The British "Times" once published a signed article "This is China's Century".The article said that the 18th and 19th centuries were British centuries, and the 20th century was American centuries.Although the United States is still the most powerful economy in the world, it will not be the United States that will change the world economy, but China. In 2007, Eric Izralevich said in the book "When China Changes the World", "In the economic history of mankind, there has never been such a huge country (1.3 billion people) in a Such rapid growth (8% per annum) over such a long period (25 years). This success should have been euphoric, but has caused uneasiness. The world has changed over the past 1/4 century China. Today, China will change the world. Tomorrow, China may surpass the United States and become the world's largest economic power."The famous investment guru Jim Rogers said in "China Bull Market", "Furthermore, if the 19th century was the century of the United Kingdom and the 20th century was the century of the United States, then the 21st century may be the century of China."Hearing these words makes people feel very comfortable.However, the road to the Nirvana of the Chinese economy requires not only passion and confidence, but also rational thinking.
In the current period of world financial crisis, China needs a clear head more than when the economy is booming.Will China's economy repeat the mistakes of Japan's bubble economy in the 1980s?It's not impossible.China's high savings rate is difficult to change. Once investment opportunities in manufacturing and urbanization gradually disappear, it will cause a lot of liquidity in the economy, unless the RMB is internationalized, third parties hold a large amount of RMB assets, and Chinese companies successfully go out , invest in foreign assets and industries, otherwise the risk of high inflation and asset bubbles brought about by excess liquidity will linger.In a certain sense, the Japanese economy was killed by international economic public opinion, and it was also "boiled frogs" by the information industry revolution.At the end of World War II, when the Japanese economy was so far apart from the US economy, few could have foreseen that the Japanese economy could catch up with the US economy in the near future.
However, since the early 1950s, Japan's economy has maintained rapid growth for 20 years, and Japan's per capita GDP has approached that of the United States by the 1970s.In the 1980s, Japan's per capita GDP was way ahead of the United States.At that time, many scholars were optimistic about the Japanese economy, believing that the United States had gone from peak to decline like the United Kingdom, and that the economic status of the United States would be replaced by Japan. In 1985, after Japan accepted the "Plaza Accord" proposed by the United States, Japan maintained high interest rates, the dollar began to depreciate, and the yen began to appreciate sharply within two years.But in fact, Japan's economic growth is already very unstable, and the yen should not appreciate significantly in the short term.On the other hand, Japan has been hailed as a "star" at home and abroad, and its growth prospects are promising. A large amount of capital has entered the stock market and housing market in China, which has become one of the important causes of asset bubbles.In the 1990s, the U.S. and Japanese economies suddenly experienced a major reversal.Since the burst of the asset bubble in 1991, Japan has not been able to get rid of the long-term stagnation of growth, while the United States has emerged a "new economy" represented by the information industry, and the US economy has experienced vigorous growth for nearly 10 consecutive years.
The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games showed the world an "old and young" China. The Tokyo Olympics in 1964 is generally considered a milestone in Japan's entry into the world's industrial economy. In the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, South Korea showed the world the image of an emerging industrial country and jumped into the ranks of the "Four Asian Tigers" in one fell swoop. 2008 is the year when the Chinese dream was launched.The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games showed the world China's rich and imaginative culture, and it also marked the re-emergence of China's economy and rekindled the blazing flame of the Chinese dream.A Chinese picture scroll made of high technology opened the prelude to the history of 5,000 years of civilization.On August 19, 2008, Singapore's "Lianhe Zaobao" published an article titled "The Olympic Games should bid farewell to China's century-old tragedy".
The article believes that "China has been bullied by foreign powers for a long time since it entered modern history, and the Olympic Games means that China has finally become a world power and stood on the world political stage. In fact, China's hosting of the Olympic Games has shown in many ways The trend of farewell to sadness. Chinese sports fans and audience not only cheered and applauded the excellent performance of the Chinese team but also foreign teams. Before the Olympics, some Western leaders wanted to use the Olympics to blackmail the Chinese government, which aroused strong dissatisfaction among the Chinese people. But when the leaders of these countries finally decided to come to China to participate in the Olympic Games, both Chinese leaders and ordinary people showed an open attitude of "it is a joy to have friends coming from afar". These phenomena show that the Chinese people are surpassing a century The national tragedy has begun to have the mentality of a normal national of a major country. This mentality has profound significance for China's real rise and its responsibility as a major country on the international stage."
Chinese living in this era, remembering the past and exploring the future, will inevitably be stung by China's modern economic slump and sinking experience. In 2009, the Chinese people regained their millennium-old self-confidence and reopened the floodgates of rich imagination. They completely stepped out of the century-old tragedy, traveled lightly, let go of the Chinese dream, pursued the colorful "Chinese Dream 2.5", and looked forward to a better "Chinese Dream 3.0" in 2049.
Notes:
Notes: