Chapter 61 Economic Policy Mistakes After 1945

The economic construction of the Kuomintang government was interrupted by the Japanese War of Aggression against China in 1937, and the national economy was devastated during the subsequent eight-year war of resistance.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, the national government moved back from Chongqing to Nanjing under the eager expectation of the people of the whole country. However, after a short time, this regime was abandoned by the people. The failure of the Kuomintang people in industrial policy, monetary policy, fiscal policy and land policy It is worth reflecting on. After the "World War II", the Japanese and puppet industries waiting to be received in the occupied areas were about 4 trillion yuan, which was almost 90% of China's property at that time.Within the central government, major disagreements arose over the mode of reception of enemy property.

The Ministry of Economic Affairs, headed by Weng Wenhao and He Lian, drafted a plan called "General Principles of Economic Undertakings during the First Revival Period". Multiple economic components coexist.The plan also places special emphasis on limiting the scope of state-owned enterprises to military industry, coinage, major railways, large-scale energy and power operations, and postal and telecommunications and other important public utilities.Encourage private enterprises to develop under the guidance of the government's overall plan for economic construction, and the government will provide assistance in finance, operating facilities, etc., and in actual operation, enjoy the status, rights and obligations of equal competition with state-owned enterprises.The plan was approved by the Supreme National Defense Council and announced to the world.

However, the Executive Yuan and the Ministry of Finance led by Song Ziwen held firm opposition to the plan and still insisted on the pre-war stance of controlling the economy.Under his leadership, a large number of state-owned monopoly enterprises under the name of "China" were established one after another, such as China Salt Corporation, China Silk Corporation, China Vegetable Oil Corporation, China Paper Corporation, China Textile Construction Corporation, and China Tea Corporation. , China Petroleum Co., Ltd., China Fisheries Co., Ltd., China Aquatic Products Company, China Tobacco Company, etc.They obtained thousands of assets of the best quality by means of "allocation" free of charge. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, by June 1946, among the 2,243 industrial and mining enterprises that had been received, only 2,243 industrial and mining enterprises were "allocated". As high as 1017, only 114 were sold to private companies, less than 5% of the total number of receiving factories.In terms of output, state capital controls 33% of the country's coal, 90% of steel, 100% of petroleum and non-ferrous metals, 67% of electricity, 45% of cement, 37% of spindles, 60% of looms, and , railways and banks have long been fully controlled, and a powerful and monopolized state capitalist structure has been fully formed.

The nationalization of enemy production can be regarded as the fourth incident of "National Advancement and Private Retreat".Yang Xiaokai commented in his "Hundred Years of Chinese Economic History Notes": "Unfortunately, after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, most of these Japanese private capitals were transformed into Chinese bureaucratic capitals. It was damaged, and later became a tool for institutionalizing state opportunism regardless of government and business... This nationalization was also the basis for China’s subsequent institutionalized state opportunism, and it became one of the main institutional obstacles to economic development.”

The nationalization policy had several consequences: First, the efficiency of state-owned enterprises was low. By 1947, only 852 of the 2,411 industrial enterprises taken over from the Japanese and puppets had actually resumed production. Second, the private entrepreneurial class is completely disappointed with the government.Rong Desheng, the largest private group controller at that time, wrote to the government. He wrote: "If we talk about the national economy, the ruler is rich all over the world. He only needs to control the political power. The people live and work in peace and contentment. , the state is self-sufficient. If the power of the people cannot be used, even if everything is done by the government, it is useless. Because the government comes from the people, it does not cut itself, and it only increases waste.” Rong Desheng’s statement is remarkable, and it is still It is a pity that the universal truth is not heard by those in power.

Third, the industrial depression caused a large increase in the unemployment population, and urban strikes soared.In 1936 before the start of the Anti-Japanese War, there were 278 recorded strikes and labor disputes across the country, but by 1947, there were 2,538 in Shanghai alone. Suzanne Pepper wrote in "Cambridge History of the Republic of China": " The government has often accused workers of unrest at the hands of professional Communist agitators.  …However, these issues of contention are readily available and can be effectively exploited by anyone.” Compared with the nationalization movement in the industrial economy, the central government's mistakes in monetary policy are more serious.

During the war, there were two main types of currency in circulation in the Chinese market. One was the French currency of the Jiang government in Chongqing, and the other was the central reserve certificates of the Nanjing Wang puppet government. In 1945, the exchange ratio between the two was roughly 1:50. In November On the 1st, the official exchange rate came into effect, but the ratio was 1:200.As soon as this case came out, 257 million people in the enemy-occupied areas went bankrupt almost overnight. There is a popular folk song in Shanghai: "Firecrackers (firecrackers) were fired yesterday, and hanged today." The mistake of this exchange policy will cause endless troubles. Confidence in the Chiang Kai-shek regime was greatly lost, and it directly led to nationwide inflation, and the monetary policy became less flexible.

After the outbreak of the War of Liberation, the central finance was completely hijacked by military expenditures, and the real economic recovery was weak, so the government adopted an extremely loose monetary policy. In 1947, the issuance of legal currency reached more than 30 trillion yuan, which was 10 times that of the previous year. , a 25-fold increase over 1945.By the second quarter of 1948, 660 trillion yuan of legal currency had been issued, a surge of 1,180 times in three years, equivalent to 470,000 times the amount issued on the eve of the Anti-Japanese War.As a result of the random issuance of banknotes, it triggered the most serious hyperinflation in contemporary Chinese history.One of the most outstanding bankers of the Republic of China, Zhang Gongquan, later commented in his book "The History of Chinese Inflation": In the inflation centered on the urban economy, the most seriously injured were soldiers and civil servants, because the government raised salaries The speed of rising prices can never keep up with the speed of rising prices, which directly leads to the decline of governance efficiency and corruption of officials.

In August 1948, the national government was forced to reshuffle the cabinet, announced the suspension of the French currency, and reformed the gold-dollar coupons. The national prices were all frozen at the level on August 19, which was the "August 19 price limit".In order to prevent the dignitaries and speculators from hoarding and disrupting the reform, Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek, personally supervised the battle in Shanghai and swore to "fight the tiger".However, at this time, the party discipline and state laws had been completely corrupted, and the "tigers" could no longer fight the Yangtze Company controlled by Kong Xiangxi's eldest son, Kong Lingkan. On November 1, the Executive Yuan publicly admitted the failure of economic reform, the cabinet chief resigned, and prices showed revenge. The trend of rising sex, the economy is extremely chaotic, and the state affairs are finally impossible.

Under the circumstances of continuous mistakes in industrial policy, monetary policy and fiscal policy, the Kuomintang government did nothing in another important economic field-land reform, and lost to its opponent, the Communist Party. In September 1947, the Communist Party promulgated the "Outline of China's Land Law", announcing the confiscation of the land property of the landlords, the confiscation of the excess land property of the rich peasants, and the equal distribution of it to the landless peasants, and the implementation of the land system of "land to the tiller". , of which Article 11 clearly stipulates: "The land allocated to the people shall be issued by the government with a land ownership certificate, and the right to freely operate, buy and sell, and lease out under specific conditions shall be recognized." That is, the private nature of land after the reform is recognized .

In this way, in just five years after the war, the Kuomintang government lost the support of private entrepreneurs in the nationalization of enemy property, the support of urban residents in the currency reform, and the support of farmers in the land reform. In March 1948, the Kuomintang convened the "Constitutional National Congress" and announced that it would "return power to the people" and played its last trump card - the "democracy card". Among the choices, he seized the latter without hesitation.