If you are from Nantong, or have been to Nantong, then you must not be unfamiliar with this person.
The modern industrialization of Nantong began with the Dasheng Spinning Factory he founded in Nantong.
This man's name is Zhang Jian (jiǎn).
The beginning of modern industrialization in Nantong
After the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, Zhang Jian was stimulated by the national crisis.
Explore local industrial autonomy in Nantong and develop modern industry.
Starting from the Dasheng Spinning Factory, Zhang Jian gradually set foot in education, animal husbandry, machine building, ship transportation and many other fields, and by the 1920s, a capital group containing more than 20 enterprises such as oil mills, flour companies, soap mills, paper mills, and telephone companies had been built in Nantong, and Dasheng Capital Group was also the largest national enterprise group in China at that time.
Prior to this, Nantong was a closed and backward small feudal town north of the Yangtze River, and the local economic structure was dominated by agriculture and cottage industry, with almost no trace of industry.
Zhang Xiao's transformation allowed Nantong to form a local industrial system with cotton textile industry as the main industry, including light and heavy industry and agriculture, and Nantong gradually transitioned to a capitalist city on a modern scale.
The rise of Zhang Xiaohe's industry has made Nantong and Zhang Xiao's influence in China jump.
At that time, it was widely rumored that "if there is a domestic matter, Zhang Jizhi must be asked to sign his name when there is electricity; if there is a problem in the industry, Nantong must take the lead." This also reflects the status of Nantong in the domestic industry at that time.
Until now, whenever scholars and experts pay attention to China's manufacturing development and industrialization and modernization process, people always think back to Zhang Xiao and his Nantong.
When new Chinese industry began, Chairman Mao once said that heavy industry cannot forget Zhang Zhidong, and light industry cannot forget Zhang Jian.
Zhang Xiao's choice: Da Sheng Yarn Factory
Zhang Jian was a scholar of the 20th year of Guangxu (1894), a traditional Confucian intellectual.
In China at that time, scholars, farmers, industrialists, and merchants, and traditional scholars and doctors ranked first among the four people.
It was also unthinkable at the time that he would have to succumb to industry and commerce, which was regarded as the last class.
Times dictate
Zhang Xiao was founded in 1895 as a daisen spinning mill, at the turn of the old and new centuries, and Chinese society is undergoing drastic changes. "The wind and clouds are changing, as if they are a hundred years old", the land of China has been washed away by events such as the restoration and change of law, the change of gengzi state, the constitutional monarchy and the republican revolution, and the ruling order of the feudal dynasty has been shaken.
The times have shaken the whole country, and the new situation has given birth to new people and new undertakings in the old soil.
In addition to the pursuit of profits, the first generation of Chinese industrialists founded enterprises, but more importantly, they had a strong patriotic ideology and a grand desire to resist the economic invasion of the great powers.
Personal awakening
A year before the establishment of the Dasheng Spinning Factory, the Sino-Japanese War was defeated and the Treaty of Maguan was signed. The treaty has lifted many restrictions on foreign investment in setting up factories in China. Zhang Xiaozhi heard this and was indignant in his diary: "A few of China's anointed blood, the gains and losses of the national body do not matter." ”
Economic aggression by the great powers
China has a large labor force, agriculture is the most important industry, in the Jiangnan area, weaving has become an important source of income for many families. According to statistics, for every piece of cloth woven by a peasant woman, it takes 3 to 4 laborers to spin yarn to supply it. Before the industrial production of the West, we generally used handmade earthen yarn as a means of production. However, after the wave of western industrialization, the cotton yarn produced by its machines was low in price, the color, toughness and appearance were better than the soil yarn, it was not easy to break the head, and it was quickly accepted by the weavers and occupied the vast majority of the market.
Economic historian Yan Zhongping has calculated that from 1871 to 1873, the value of cotton cloth imported by China from abroad was about 32 million yuan, and the value of cotton yarn was 37791 quintals, and after 20 years, by 1891-1893, the value of imported cotton cloth increased to 44.91 million yuan, and cotton yarn rose to 704877 quintals. In the past 20 years, the import volume of cotton cloth from abroad has increased by only about 30%, but the import volume of cotton yarn has increased by nearly 20 times.
Therefore, the choice to set up a spinning mill in Nantong has a sense of confrontation against economic aggression, which answers why the spinning mill was established first and not otherwise.
Daisei Spinning Mill
The Name of The Dasheng Spinning Mill comes from the I Ching, "The Great Virtue of Heaven and Earth", which reflects Zhang Xiao's understanding of industry. In Zhang Xiao's view, modern industry is "the great scripture of raising the people, the magic of enriching the country, not only for the royal insult, but also for the imperial insult in it."
Zhang Xiao has a strong tendency to compete with the great powers for profits and protect the domestic market, hoping to develop machine production, change the fate of the country, prosper the economy, and be local.
Why Nantong?
First of all, Nantong is Zhang Xiao's hometown (base camp).
Second, Nantong has the objective conditions for the development of capitalist industry and commerce.
1. Nantong is a cotton-producing area (raw material base)
Local county records that from the ming Dynasty Apocalypse (1621-1627) period, local officials encouraged farmers to plant cotton, local cotton is known as "sand flower", by the beginning of the 20th century, Tongzhou (now Nantong), Chongming, Haimen three places on the market about 400,000 bales of cotton.
2. Nantong cotton textile industry is developed, and its products sell well outside guanwai.
At that time, the Qing Dynasty increased the development of the northeast region, and a large number of immigrants poured into the northeast. In the absence of materials, ordinary workers need more durable cotton fabrics. The wear-resistant cloth tailored clothes produced in Nantong can meet the daily needs of the middle and lower classes of the people, so they sell well in Guanwai.
On the consumer side, the demand for cotton yarn in Nantong family soil cloth handicraft workshop is increasing. At the beginning, the Daisei Spinning Mill was oriented to the market for the means of production of the rural commodity cottage industry.
Because it is close to the cotton production area and the consumer of cotton yarn, small and medium-sized weavers, while minimizing the cost of transporting raw materials in the production process.
3. Taxes
In the late Qing Dynasty, local governments had to levy a lot of harsh taxes and miscellaneous taxes. For example, there are additional taxes from port cities to non-port areas, and yarns are shipped from ports in Shanghai to other provinces and subject to a 5% tax.
The physical distance between Nantong and Shanghai is less than three hundred miles, which is a very delicate and just right distance. On the one hand, the economic ties between the two places pass through the Yangtze River, which is convenient; on the other hand, it protects the relative independence and security of Nantong.
Although Zhang Xiao had a meritorious name, he did not have a real position.
Its exploration in Nantong is an innovation from the marginal zone, with a certain degree of bottom-up, which can be said to be one of the beginnings of the modern industrialization movement independently carried out by Chinese national capital.