Chapter 77 God of Wealth

On a winter night in early 1941, Nan Hanchen, deputy head of the United Front Work Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was walking in a hurry on his way to Yangjialing in Yan'an.An hour ago, he had just received an urgent notice from Mao Zedong, so he rushed here.Looking at the lights of the Yangjialing cave in front, I feel extraordinarily warm in the cold night. After a brief greeting, Mao Zedong straightforwardly explained the difficult situation in the border area.Beginning in 1940, Japan intensified its activities to induce the Kuomintang to surrender, and the friction between the Kuomintang government, the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army continued. In January 1941, the "Southern Anhui Incident" that shocked the whole country finally occurred.

Afterwards, Chiang Kai-shek's government cut off financial appropriations and aid to the border areas.At the same time, a policy of "blockade" and "siege" was adopted for the border area, and goods were prohibited from entering or leaving the border area.Since 1940, serious famines have occurred in the border area, resulting in an agricultural recession that has not happened in 30 years.The financial situation in the border area is extremely difficult. It can be said that the military and government personnel have no food, no clothes, no quilts, and no paper to use. They have reached the point of poverty.

Mao Zedong told Nan Hanchen that the situation is very serious. If Chairman Jiang does not cook for us, we will not be able to open the pot.But we can't jump off a cliff, we can't disband, we can only do it ourselves. Facing the economic difficulties in the border area, how could Mao Zedong think of Nan Hanchen? Because Nan Hanchen has rich revolutionary experience and extensive contacts.Especially in the early 1930s, when he served as the secretary-general of the Shaanxi Provincial Government, he assisted the provincial chairman Yang Hucheng to rescue the economic crisis after the severe drought in Shaanxi, and organized all aspects of Shaanxi in an orderly manner. The financial revenue supported government personnel and 50,000 Northwest Army.The central government decided to let him serve as the director of finance of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region, to be a "smart wife who can cook without rice", and to solve the problem of clothing and food for 40,000 to 50,000 military and government personnel in the border region.

Nan Hanchen was ordered in danger and became the chief steward of the border area. Nan Hanchen's top priority is to find food. An army without food is not only unable to fight, but even survival is a problem.The situation was indeed quite serious. The warehouse of the Grain Bureau had been scraped to the point where the ground was exposed. The administrator carefully picked up grains of rice from the ground, and only then did he collect a pot to cook a New Year's Eve dinner for the head of the Central Committee. After careful investigation, Nan Hanchen found the crux of the problem.

In the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the off-duty cadres and the army in the border area were small, and there was a lot of foreign aid. The government implemented a policy of recuperating and giving benefits to the people, and hardly collected grain from farmers.However, with the increase of military and political personnel, the number of horses increased, and more and more food and grass were needed, but the border government was still unwilling to collect food from the people, which led to the difficult situation in 1941. Nan Hanchen believes that if government finance always emphasizes living within its means, instead of starting from the actual needs of the revolution, and blindly emphasizing "benevolent governance", it will become "Song Xianggong's benevolence".The Chinese nation is at the juncture of life and death, and the people in the border areas should contribute their strength and money.The reason why the government wants to collect food from the people is because history requires the government to do more for the people and make necessary material preparations to defeat the invaders. That kind of one-sided view of "benevolent government" will not work in the war years. In 1940, 140,000 shi of grain was originally needed, but only 90,000 shi was levied, and the difference had to be improvised to borrow grain from the people twice and buy grain once, and the people felt unbearably disturbed.

Nan Hanchen calculated an account in detail and came to the conclusion: under the recuperation policy, on the one hand, the burden on farmers was very light. The 90,000 shi of grain collected in 1940 was only about 6% of the annual output. The burden on farmers in Sichuan is 10 times that of the border areas!On the other hand, farmers have food in their hands.Many of the farmhouses he visited during the first month were making dumplings. Compared with the situation where nine out of ten households had no overnight food before the Red Army arrived in northern Shaanxi, it was a world of difference.

After careful consideration, Nan Hanchen decisively decided to expropriate 200,000 shi of public grain and 26 million catties of public grass in 1941, and declared to the farmers that all previously borrowed grain would be returned and would not be borrowed in the next year. 【1】 Afterwards, the Department of Finance organized a large number of party school students and staff to go to various counties to publicize the truth, explain the truth to the masses, and let them understand: Only the army can protect the country; only the army can have the army.The border area is the brightest and happiest area in China, and the happiness of the people in the border area was created by the Communist army and is also protected by the army.The army must protect the people, and the people must supply the army; without food, the army cannot survive.

Through publicity, the work of expropriating grain and grass has won the understanding and support of the people. The sufficient grain and grass collected basically guaranteed the supply of the border area and enabled the border area to overcome the imminent difficulties.Later, Nan Hanchen considered that after the land revolution, the difference between the rich and the poor of farmers was not much different, and proposed a progressive agricultural tax system based on the actual harvest of each household, so that most farmers should pay agricultural taxes, and those who have more will pay more, and those who have less will pay less. , fair and reasonable, and everyone contributes to the War of Resistance.

The food problem has been alleviated, but daily necessities such as cotton cloth are still in short supply, and can only be imported from the border areas, and the Kuomintang has blocked the neck with the blockade.Nan Hanchen thought hard about the countermeasures. He believed that the only way to break the blockade was to find the materials needed outside and trade.Through investigation and research, he found that there are three treasures in northern Shaanxi: salt, fur and licorice.So, salt became the only choice. At that time, table salt in northern Shaanxi had unique advantages.Since the Anti-Japanese War, sea salt was under the control of the Japanese army and could not be transported here, while the output of other adjacent salt-producing areas has been decreasing year by year.The status of the salt-producing area in northern Shaanxi has been rising continuously, and it has become the main salt supplier in the northwest region.With strategic materials like salt, the border region has occupied the commanding heights of trade.

In order to solve the problems of backward technology, low output and poor transportation and marketing conditions in the salt field, the Finance Department of the border area specially set up a salt affairs bureau to be responsible for the production and transportation of table salt.The Bureau of Salt Affairs organizes the army to participate in salt production to increase production; uniformly purchases the salt produced by the army and the common people at a reasonable price; encourages the common people to transport salt, and the salt transporters do not pay the public grain for their freight income, but they can also share the profit from selling salt; the Finance Department Funds were allocated to renovate the salt transportation road, and inns were set up along the way to solve the problems of food, lodging and aquatic plants on the road.These measures mobilized the enthusiasm of all parties, and the masses refused to stop even on the first day of the new year in order to transport salt to make money.

The Kuomintang blocked the salt transported from the border area at first, but later it couldn't stop it, and then took advantage of the weakness of the scattered transportation to let the salt transporters lower the price of each other.In response to the conspiracy of the Kuomintang, the Salt Bureau of the Border Region implemented a unified purchase and sale, first buying the salt from the salt transporters in a unified manner, and then selling it after waiting for an opportunity.When the Salt Bureau heard that the surrounding salt-producing areas were occupied by the Japanese army, it immediately doubled the price of salt. When you see the bottom, just keep calm and wait for them to come to your door.After more than 20 days, Yan Xishan took the initiative to come to the door to buy, and a few days later, Hu Zongnan in Xi'an couldn't hold back anymore. In this way, the government's salt transportation plan was successfully completed, which effectively broke the Kuomintang's blockade and ensured the supply of materials in the border area. In order to communicate with the trade between the border area and the Kuomintang-controlled area, Nan Hanchen also found the leader of the gang in Xi'an.Nan Hanchen participated in the revolution in his early years. In order to mobilize the masses, he made friends with various religions and elites, and was very senior in the gang.At this time when he went to Xi'an, the local leading brothers would respect Nan Hanchen as a senior and listen to him.Through them, Nan Hanchen mobilized the gang members in Hu Zongnan's army, sent the local specialties of the border area to Xi'an for sale, and then bought medicines, cloth and other urgently needed materials in the border area, which solved the urgent needs of the border area. In addition to mastering strategic materials and opening up trade channels, Nan Hanchen and Zhu Lizhi, the governor of the Bank of the Border Region, proposed to independently issue currency in the Border Region, hold the right to issue currency, and use their own currency to support trade and economic development, so that the Border Region has overcome financial difficulties. In 1941, the deficit in the border area exceeded 5 million yuan. After more than a year of hard work, it achieved a surplus of more than 10 million yuan in 1942.Nan Hanchen, who had never studied economics, relied on the experience gained in practice and investigation and research to successfully become a "good wife who can cook without rice" in the border area and saved the economy of the border area.