Chapter 68 death of a banker

One early morning in August 1938, a commercial airliner took off from Hong Kong Airport and headed westward for Chongqing.The plane just flew over Zhongshan, Guangdong, when the captain suddenly found a fighter jet emerging from the clouds not far away. The Japanese sun flag painted on the side of the fuselage was shocking—it was a Japanese fighter plane that had been ambushed long ago!After a while, another fighter plane appeared on the flank of the Japanese fighter plane, followed by the third, fourth, and fifth planes. The people on the civil flight immediately became nervous. They fell into the air trap set by the Japanese. .

Seeing that the situation was not good, the captain pulled the joystick suddenly, and plunged into the thick clouds, trying to get rid of the Japanese ambush. Immediately, five Japanese fighter planes surrounded them in a fan-shaped formation, and their machine guns shot at the civilian airliner with tongues of flame.In less than a minute, the civilian airliner was beaten to the point of losing its ability to fly, and plummeted rapidly with black smoke. All the pilot could do was try his best to make an emergency landing in the paddy field. Fortunately the driver made it through.Passengers who were still alive struggled to climb out of the cabin and fled in all directions.Just as one of the passengers ran two steps, he suddenly remembered that there was an important briefcase in the cabin, and immediately turned around to grab it.At this time, Japanese fighter planes swooped down one after another, shooting at all the lives that were still alive.The passenger who had just returned to the cabin was shot and died.

The brave passenger is a Chinese banker, his name is Hu Bijiang, the chairman of the Bank of Communications.At the same time, another heavyweight banker, Xu Xinliu, chairman of Zhejiang Industrial Bank, one of the "three southern banks", was also in distress. Japanese fighter jets did not encounter this commercial airliner by chance and shot it down.In fact, Japanese spies have been closely monitoring the whereabouts of several Chinese bankers in Hong Kong. They used beauty tricks to obtain the flight information of Hu Bijiang, Xu Xinliu and others from Hong Kong British officials. Intercepted halfway from Hong Kong to Chongqing.

If it was just to assassinate two Chinese bankers, it seems that the Japanese Air Force and espionage organizations would not have to go to war so aggressively.In fact, what Japan wants to assassinate are not only these two bankers, but also the important mission they shoulder! At this point, the bags of the two bankers carried the fate of China's legal currency, and the fate of the currency would ultimately determine the fate of the country. In 1933, the national government began to implement the "abolishing the two and changing the yuan", and established a financial system of "four banks and two bureaus" to unify China's chaotic currency issuance. In November 1935, China completed the reform of the currency system, abolished the 400-year-old silver standard system, silver was nationalized, and legal currency became the only legal currency in China.The four major families of Jiang, Song, Kong, and Chen gained the greatest benefit from this series of currency reforms.Among the "four lines", the Song family controls the Bank of China; the Kong family controls the Central Bank; the Chen family and the Song family share the Bank of Communications; Huge opium profits.In the "two bureaus", the Kong family took over the Central Trust Bureau and monopolized the foreign trade and arms business; the pie of the Postal Savings and Remittance Bureau was shared by all families.The "Central Cooperative Treasury" established later was dominated by the Chen family.Foreign exchange, the most scarce financial resource in China, is jointly monopolized by the Song family and the Kong family.Of course, the biggest boss is Chiang Kai-shek.

When Chiang Kai-shek developed from military centralization, political centralization to financial centralization, the national government's ability to control the country's economic resources increased dramatically.Through the financial system, the four major families have monopolized almost all heavy industry, infrastructure, trade and foreign exchange, realizing the unified pattern of money and power.The power of foreign banks in China had to change from direct control to indirect control, from monopolizing China's financial system to sharing power with the four major families.Objectively speaking, the four major families already have the possibility of evolving into the Japanese chaebol system, and the national government has gradually strengthened its control over the high financial frontier.

In the previous China, the currency map was fragmented; now, as soon as the legal currency comes out, it will dominate the rivers and lakes, order the world, and end the disorder of China's currency system.The unification of currency also promoted the formation of a unified domestic market and stimulated the development of national industry and commerce.After the reform of the legal currency, within 20 months until the outbreak of the war, "China experienced a stable exchange rate for the first time in history" [1], which greatly promoted China's foreign trade capabilities, and the Chinese economy began to walk out of the shadow of the Great Depression , into a steady growth track.If it were not for the unilateral "silver wave" set off by the United States, China would most likely be one of the countries that emerged from the Great Depression earlier in the world.

The success of China's currency system reform has greatly stimulated Japan, especially the Japanese military, which has a strong impulse to conquer China. The basic premise of Japan's grand strategy of "to conquer the world must first conquer China" is that China is poor, weak and fragmented.Now China has carried out the reform of the currency system and unified the issuance of currency. This is a very dangerous signal for Japan.Japan's own Meiji Restoration started with the unification of currency, gradually improved the high financial frontier, and finally, with the strong support of the country's finance, embarked on a fast track to complete industrialization within a generation.

American diplomats have a deep understanding of this, "Japanese soldiers have a belief that China's plan to unify the country, develop the economy, and improve the military has made progress and achieved obvious success in recent years, so it has constituted a threat to Japan's security. threatening. Postponing the current action to destroy that program only means that it will be more difficult to destroy it at a later date” [2]. What annoyed the Japanese soldiers even more was that the French currency actually chose the policy of pegging to the British pound and the US dollar to maintain a stable currency value, thus in fact rejecting the possibility of the yenization of the legal currency.This is tantamount to a declaration of currency war! As soon as the Currency Reform Act was promulgated on November 3, 1935, it stipulated a fixed exchange rate between the French currency and the British pound, which actually included the legal currency into the British pound group. In May 1936, the "Sino-US Silver Agreement" was signed. The United States purchased 70 million ounces of silver from China with gold. In addition, China borrowed 25 million U.S. dollars with 50 million ounces of silver as a guarantee, and deposited the gold and U.S. dollars in China. The government's account in the Federal Reserve is used as a reserve for the issuance of legal currency, and the exchange rate between the legal currency and the U.S. dollar is 1 legal currency to 30 cents.This agreement firmly binds the fiat currency to the pound and the dollar.

A group of lieutenants and majors of the Japanese military and the Kwantung Army immediately realized clearly that the result of the Chinese government’s actions was to bring China into the pound and dollar zone, to make China and the British and American forces form a community of destiny, and to completely exclude Japan. out.Gu Zhuang, vice-officer of the Ministry of the Army of Japan, criticized China's currency system reform, "There is no agreement with Japan, a neighboring country with extremely political and economic relations... It is obvious that Japan has given up its pro-Japanese policy, so it is difficult to ignore Japan, which is in charge of stabilizing oriental forces."Even the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, known as the "dove", stated that China's implementation of currency reform is "contempt for Japan's position, so it cannot commit to it", and the Japanese side "will categorically reject it, even if it resorts to force, it will stop it." accomplish". 【3】The Kwantung Army's response to the reform of the currency system was to speak directly with cannons.As soon as China announced the currency reform plan on November 3, the Kwantung Army immediately dispatched infantry, tanks, and field heavy artillery troops to assemble on the front line of Shanhaiguan on November 15, ready to enter the pass at any time and expand its military aggression against China.At the same time, Japan began to instigate the so-called "North China Five Provinces Autonomy Movement", vigorously infiltrating North China, in an attempt to turn North China into a "Manchukuo".

Japan's logic is very clear. China's currency system reform actually shows that the Nationalist government has decided to "extend itself" from Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."Since China does not eat toasts, it is fine to serve them with wine! In 1937, the Anti-Japanese War broke out in an all-round way, and it was an important reason why China's legal currency completely fell to Britain and the United States! Through currency reform, China's financial system, which had just stabilized, began to crumble.War needs money, and modern warfare needs more money.The national government had to use inflation to mobilize the country's war capabilities. To put it bluntly, it was to let the money printing machine of the Central Bank's Mint Bureau run at full capacity to print money.The key to maintaining the stability of the legal currency value is the exchange rate stability in the foreign exchange market, and the real exchange rate stability requires the free trading of foreign exchange.The war and inflation caused the people to throw out a large amount of legal currency and snap up dollars, pounds, gold and silver, and soon the national government's foreign exchange reserves would be exhausted.

In February 1938, after the fake "China United Reserve Bank" was released in North China, the arbitrage activities of the Japanese and fake financial forces in Shanghai's foreign exchange market were quite rampant. Up to £500,000! 【4】At the same time, the value of the legal currency fell all the way.From March to August 1938, the 1 yuan French currency dropped from 14 pence to 8 pence against the British pound, and from 30 cents to 16 cents against the U.S. dollar, depreciating by half in 5 months! Due to the huge pressure to buy foreign exchange, the national government gave up the policy of free foreign exchange trading, and the central bank came forward to manage it and implemented the "foreign exchange approval" system, that is, all foreign exchange purchase applications must be approved by the central bank before being sold at the legal exchange rate. to foreign exchange.Shanghai and Hong Kong have become two official foreign exchange markets, and the legal exchange rate has a price but no market. However, the restrictions on the trading of foreign exchange immediately led to the emergence of the Shanghai foreign exchange black market, which had a more violent impact on the value of the legal currency. The credit of the legal currency has reached a critical juncture. The only way to maintain the value of the legal currency and stabilize the financial system on which China’s war of resistance depends is to borrow money from Britain and the United States.Deposit the borrowed British pounds and U.S. dollars in the accounts of the Chinese government in the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. At the same time, the investor will send personnel to establish a "board of directors" to manage the foreign exchange, and throw the British pounds and U.S. dollars to the Chinese foreign exchange market in a planned way. Return the legal currency to stabilize the currency value of the legal currency.After the end of the war and financial stability, China will regularly repay the borrowed pounds and dollars. This money is called the foreign exchange stabilization fund, and the "board of directors" that manages the stabilization fund is the stabilization fund committee.The committee is basically a semi-independent financial institution, which has the right to independently make decisions to intervene in the foreign exchange market based on fluctuations in the foreign exchange market at that time.Since legal currency is a foreign exchange standard, the committee's power to manipulate the exchange rate is equivalent to controlling China's currency issuance power to a certain extent.Moreover, as long as any institution or individual wants to obtain foreign exchange, it must report to the committee for approval and allocation.In this way, the Stabilization Fund is equivalent to taking the approval power of "foreign exchange verification" previously exercised by the central bank into its own hands.In addition, all monetary policies of the Chinese government must be submitted to the Stabilization Fund Committee in advance, and the committee nods before it can be implemented. Therefore, once the proposed Stabilization Fund Committee is implemented, it will become China's de facto central bank! Xu Xinliu and Hu Bijiang, who were shot down by Japanese warplanes, were recalled by the Chinese government to Chongqing, the wartime capital, and they will represent the Chinese government to go to the United Kingdom and the United States to borrow money and discuss the matter of the Pingzhun Fund.Xu Xinliu and Hu Bijiang are also the best candidates for this mission.Xu Xinliu studied in England in his early years, and joined the banking industry after returning to China. He quickly rose to become one of the pillars of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang chaebols. He also served as a Chinese director of the International Bankers Council in China-Shanghai Public Concession Industry Bureau for a long time, and has close contacts with the international financial community. , is also an old friend of US Treasury Secretary Morgenthau, and it is absolutely appropriate for him to go to the City of London and Wall Street to discuss the Stabilization Fund on behalf of China.Hu Bijiang, as the chairman of the Bank of Communications, is a resolute anti-Japanese faction among the Jiangsu and Zhejiang chaebols. He once supported the 19th Route Army of the "January 28th" Songhu War of Resistance, and went to the underworld of Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese military. list.An anti-Japanese banker appealed to persist in the War of Resistance and demanded international monetary cooperation. He was very persuasive in the circle of international bankers, in Western parliaments and in the media.The combination of the two can be described as a golden partner. This is why the Japanese must put the two Chinese bankers to death.Once the Sino-British-U.S. foreign exchange stabilization fund is completed, the value of China's legal currency will stabilize, fundamentally enhancing the Chinese government's financial mobilization capabilities for fighting against Japan.And the Anglo-American control of the Stabilization Fund is tantamount to firmly bringing China into their sphere of influence, which is absolutely intolerable to Japan, which is trying to dominate China.Therefore, Japan must use all means to disturb the matter of pornography, even if it cannot be stopped, it must do its best to disrupt its pace and rhythm. Xu Xinliu and Hu Bijiang can be said to have fallen on the front line of the "currency resistance war".