The world is known to be extremely corrupt during the Kuomintang's rule over the mainland. However, it is often not well understood how it is corrupt.
This article intends to make a three-dimensional introduction to the corruption during the Kuomintang's mainland rule from the three aspects of the party, government, and army.
Party: Local party departments at all levels have no real power, no money, and do not care about anything
If "corruption" is limited to "corruption" in the narrow sense, then the National Government does not have the conditions for large-scale "corruption" in the aspect of "party", because its local party departments at all levels are extremely weak and their status is abnormally low; However, if the definition of "corruption" is expanded to the extent of "inaction" and "anti-action," then the National Government has done almost nothing in the "party" aspect because its local party departments at all levels have done almost nothing, which can be said to be extremely "corrupt."
Before 1939: The number of party members was very small, and the local party department "had no real power and must not ask any local government affairs"
Although the Kuomintang (KMT) began its "political training" in 1927 and claimed to be the only ruling party in China, its membership did not swell rapidly because of its control over the regime. As far as the number of ordinary party members in the Kuomintang is concerned, the statistics in April 1927 are about 600,000; Later, after a bloody "qing party", the statistics in March 1928 were about 220,000, and by January 1937, the statistics were still only about 520,000. In 1935, the ratio of Kuomintang members to the national population was 1:990; In contrast, in 1958, the CCP, which also had more than 8 years of founding, had a ratio of 1:52 members to the national population. The weakness of the KMT's "party strength" during its rule over the mainland can be seen from this. The data on the construction of local party departments can also illustrate the weakness of the Kuomintang's "party strength" - in 1934, the National Government in Nanjing had been established for 7 years, but less than 40% of the provinces still established the Kuomintang Provincial Party Department, and less than 17% of the counties established the Kuomintang County Party Department. Until the eve of the outbreak of the All-out War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression in 1936, even the official provincial party departments of Henan, Anhui, Fujian, Yun, Gui, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Ning, Qing, and Xin could not be established. The rest, such as the Shanxi Provincial Party Department, was squeezed out by Yan Xishan and did not recover until the middle of the War of Resistance; The Shandong Provincial Party Department was forced into underground activities by Han Fuyu and was not restored until Han was executed; The open Kuomintang organizational activities in the northeast and north China have almost disappeared; The party affairs in the two Guangdong regions were self-contained under the control of the Gui clan and Hu Hanmin, and were completely independent of the Nanjing government. As for the rural grassroots society below the county level, it is almost impossible to see the figure of the Kuomintang party organization and party members. Such data not only show that the "party strength" of the KMT during the period of rule on the mainland was very weak and that the KMT was seriously unattractive to the people, from the perspective of corruption, it also shows that the "ability to corrupt" of the National Government at the level of the "party" is quite limited.
The principle of separating the party from the government has further weakened the "corrupt capacity" of the National Government at the "party" level. According to the concept of Hu Hanmin, the designer of the Kuomintang's training system, "the party department must not interfere with the administration." Because of interfering in the administration, the government and the party department have become dual doors. The responsibility of the Party Department is only to go deep into the people, to instruct the people and lead the people to complement the government. At the Fifth Plenary Session of the Second Central Committee of the Kuomintang held in 1928, Chiang Kai-shek also explicitly ordered that "the party members and party departments must not directly interfere in or deal with the administration." This division of labor between the party and the government is very special, for example, local autonomy, according to the above-mentioned division of labor, handling the specific affairs of local autonomy is the work of the government; It is the responsibility of the party department to propagate and agitate and to make the people understand the principle of autonomy. In other words, party departments at all levels should act as bridges and links between the government and the people, and should not become "yamen", and it is precisely for this reason that local grass-roots party departments are not allowed to hang signboards, so as not to give the people the bad impression that the party department is also an official government organ; Party personnel at all levels are not considered civil servants. However, reality and ideals are often difficult to reconcile, and Hu and Jiang people hope that party departments at all levels will stay away from the power of government, but party personnel do not have the consciousness to go deep among the people at the bottom, but only want to compete with the government for local administrative power, and the ideals of Jiang, Hu and others will eventually become illusions. Since the Kuomintang came to power in 1927, the power struggle between local party departments and local governments has never stopped, so much so that Chiang Kai-shek lamented bitterly: "This is one of the biggest reasons why our party has been unable to achieve anything for more than a decade." But at least at the level of the Kuomintang Central Committee, the target of condemnation of local party and government disputes is often the local party department. Therefore, in the struggle for administrative power, by 1931, the local party department had lost to the local government and was finally defeated. By 1934, local party officials had published an article in the Central Party Affairs Monthly, angrily denouncing the name of "one-party training the government": "Do you know that for three years, the name of the party has been training the government, and it is really no different from listening... The party departments of all provinces, cities, and counties sit in vacant positions and have no real power, and they absolutely cannot inquire into any local government affairs. ”
Before the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the monthly salary of a provincial government member was 500 yuan, plus office subsidies, which could be obtained by one or two thousand yuan, while the monthly salary of a provincial party member was only 150 yuan, and the office subsidy was almost zero; The monthly salary of a county chief is 250-300 yuan, and the monthly salary of a county party secretary is only 40 yuan. For example, in 1941, the monthly salary of members of the Yunnan Provincial Government was 560 yuan, while the monthly salary of the provincial party committee was only 170 yuan. So much so that "the members of the county party department, every day is quite county chief; Members of the provincial party department want to be members of the provincial government every day," and there is also a saying in society that "learning is excellent and the party is good, and learning without worrying is the party." In the 1940s, the staffing of a provincial government was as high as five or six thousand, while a provincial party department generally had only a few dozen people, and many of them were no more than a hundred.
After 1939: the number of party members soared, the quality of party members plummeted, and the local party departments were still very poor and their status was still low. According to 1939 statistics, the 520,000 ordinary party members before the war were only more than 280,000 due to the impact of the war (in 1940, the CCP had 400,000 members). In order to save the party organizations on the verge of collapse, the Kuomintang decided to begin a large-scale recruitment of new party members. Between 1939 and 1945, the average number of ordinary Kuomintang members grew at a rate of 300,000 to 400,000 per year, and by 1945, it had increased to 2.64 million. At the same time, its organizational construction was also strengthened, and according to the statistics of the Kuomintang Central Organization Department, by the end of 1945, the official provincial party departments of the Kuomintang had been established in 29 provinces across the country, and the number of county-level party departments increased from 1128 in 1939 to 1992. The number of district party departments increased from 546 in 1939 to 9397; The number of divisions increased from 13,188 in 1939 to 78,681. In other words, during this period, the kuomintang's party organization tentacles seemed to have penetrated into the grass-roots society below the county level on a large scale.
But it's just "seemingly". The extension of the Kuomintang party organization depended on the explosion of the number of party members; But the surge in the number of Party members actually came at the expense of a plummeting in the quality of Party members. During this period, the Kuomintang Central Organization Department issued an annual quota for the number of party members, for example, in 1940, the levy target for the 18 provinces in the rear was 1.78 million new party members, but by the end of the first half of the year, only 140,000 people were collected in the 18 provinces. The result of such a high index is bound to be a variety of unscrupulous abuses. For example, chiang kai-shek's 1939 instruction that all civil servants in the country must join the party collectively within one year, otherwise those who have officials will be dismissed and those who have offices will be removed; In the localities, there are various means, such as Xingtai using grain as bait to lure the poor into the party, resulting in the whole village being a Kuomintang in some places; It was a very common phenomenon at that time to directly fill out the roster of the chief of the baojia, to increase the age of students by 10 years to join the party en masse, and even to directly fabricate the list behind closed doors and report it; So many people did not know that they had joined the Kuomintang until 49 years later, and they did not know that they had become cadres of the grass-roots party organizations of the Kuomintang. What is even more absurd is that in the end of the expansion, even the Organization Department of the Kuomintang Central Committee could not figure out who was a party member and who was not a party member, and in 1942 the Central Organization Department appointed Zhou Tianxian as a member of the party department of Hunan Province, and as a result, he was accused that Zhou was not a member of the Kuomintang at all. In 1946, the Kuomintang Central Committee solemnly decided to "permanently expel Zong Weitai from the Party", and after the resolution was issued, the Central Organization Department found that Zong was not a member of the Kuomintang at all.
In this way, it is not difficult to understand what happened to the so-called 2.64 million Kuomintang members in 1945, just as a Kuomintang deputy in Hunan openly attacked in 1946: "In recent years, when the lower-level party departments have recruited new party members, every time they are limited to the number stipulated by the upper peak, they must be recruited as scheduled, and they often pay a wide range of money and collect them indiscriminately, and as a result, corrupt elements can take advantage of the opportunity to infiltrate, not only making no contribution to the party, but also making outstanding elements in society ashamed of joining the party." "And local party departments at all levels still can't retain real talents; Still very poor – the monthly office expenses of the party departments in some counties and cities are only enough to cover one expense of postage; The monthly expenses of the general branch department are only equivalent to the price of two pieces of burnt bread; Still very low status; Still incapable of organizing, "claiming millions of party members,...... However, most of them are nominal party members, and there is no organizational connection on weekdays", according to 1942 statistics, 70% of the sub-departments could not even meet regularly.
Politics: The employment of people depends entirely on nepotism, and officials are generally corrupt
Although the National Government in Nanjing claims to be "one party to discipline the government," as mentioned above, the "party" is actually powerless to "discipline" the people or the government. Compared with the "powerless corruption" at the "party" level, the corruption at the government level has always been extremely fierce.
Employing people "do not ask the party or the party, only those who are not talented, only ask whether they are close or not, and send those who are not sent."
Before 1939, among the civil servants at the central and local levels, Kuomintang members did not dominate. For example, in 1929, the proportion of Kuomintang members among the civil servants of the central organs was 36.3%; In 1933 only 22%. For example, in 1929, the proportion of Kuomintang members among the civil servants of the Nanjing Municipal Government was only 10.9%; In 1930, the proportion of Kuomintang members among the civil servants of the Shanghai Municipal Government was only 17.2%.; In the same year, among the civil servants of the Wu County Government in Jiangsu Province, the proportion of Kuomintang members was only 8.8%. In 1939, because civil servants of the central organs were forced to join the party collectively by a paper order from Chiang Kai-shek, the proportion of Kuomintang party members among civil servants in the central organs increased to 45%, and in 1941 it rose to 64.4%, but these high figures obviously have no significance, and Kuomintang party members have never been able to control governments at all levels; And the more you go to the base layer, the weaker its control. Even if the county chief is such an important local leader, the proportion of Kuomintang party members is not too high, and the survey data in 1935 shows that only 49.3 percent of the county chiefs in Hunan are Kuomintang party members, and only 61.4 percent of the county chiefs in Hubei are Kuomintang party members.
Party members are unable to monopolize the political resources at all levels within the government, which is closely related to the employment system of the National Government. Wang Zizhuang, secretary of the Party Department of the Kuomintang Central Committee, once complained that "it is a deformity for party members to only run the party and not enter the government," while Chiang Kai-shek repeatedly criticized comrades in the party for "not specifically hunting for high positions in the government." It is good not to allow the Party to monopolize the government, but the National Government's elaborate employment system - the examination institute - does not actually play a role, and the administrative officials are not appointed by it, nor are the administrative officials selected by them. The former was in the personal hands of Chiang Kai-shek, while the latter was in the hands of the competent officers of the various departments and organs. The employment of government organs depends entirely on nepotism. He Lian, who became the chief of government affairs of the Executive Yuan in 1936, had a personal experience of this: "The appointment and dismissal of officials large and small in the court are almost always resolved through personal relationships. Although an examination system is practiced under the supervision of the examination institute, no single official position of any size is replaced by this system, and it is only limited to those relatively low-level titles. ...... The Examination Institute rarely rejects anyone's recommended appointment. ”
In such an employment environment, once the competent official leaves office and a new person takes office, the subordinate officials will inevitably change blood, "do not ask the party or the party, only do not talent, only ask relatives or not, send no faction." The wind of nepotism prevailed, and so did the selling of official titles. According to the "Diary of Tang Zhong", in 1932, the county magistrate of Anyang County in Henan Province was denounced by the public for cheating. Provincial Chairman Liu Zhi interrogated him and accused him of corruption and should be punished. The county magistrate replied, "The county magistrate was bought with money, so if he doesn't get the money, won't he lose the money?" He also took out a receipt from Zhang Tingxiu, secretary general of his provincial government, and presented it to him. Liu Zhi asked Zhang, "Is there such a thing?" Zhang said, "My aunt has an account in her hand." Liu yi was helpless. At that time, such incidents could be said to be everywhere.
Government officials were widely corrupt, and Chiang Kai-shek "felt ashamed and did not know what to do."
The corruption of national government officials began in 1927. The foreigner George Sokkelsky observed in 1928: "Poor officials who did not have even a small amount of money before the revolution soon became rich." They built beautiful houses in the capital city, and it was common to send their children to school by car. Many well-off bureaucrats suspect that Nanjing's entertainment life is lifeless, and they regularly go to Shanghai to enjoy a comfortable life. They built houses in the Shanghai concession and stayed there for a long time — 'weekends' often lasted from Friday to the following Tuesday. In 1930, the Ta Kung Pao published an article sharply criticizing the Nationalist government, holding that its immediate priority was not to suppress the Communists, but to punish 10,000 corrupt civil and military officials nationwide. By 1944, Kuomintang member Zhao Heting said at the Third National Participation Conference: "Since january, more than a thousand corruption cases have been detected in more than a dozen counties in Shanxi. This is the case in a corner of Shanxi, and the whole country has paid it back!" Corruption at the grassroots level is widespread.
To combat corruption, the Nationalist Government established the Control Yuan in 1931. From the founding of the court to 1937, the control court handled 69,500 cases involving corrupt officials, of whom only more than 1,800 had indictments, of which only 268 were found guilty, of which 268 were serious, only 13 were deposed, 41 were slightly triggered, and the others were not punished in any way. Incident officials often end up being transferred to the field to continue their posts. Even Chiang Kai-shek himself could not use his authoritarian authority to punish corruption. In 1944, Lu Xian, director of the State Treasury Bureau, was approved by Kong Xiangxi, president of the Central Bank, in the name of "adjusting the wartime life of the same people", and the staff of the State Treasury Bureau purchased more than 50 million yuan of "Alliance Victory US Dollar Public Bonds" (referred to as "US coupons") at "official prices". At that time, the highest market price of one dollar of US bonds had soared to 250 yuan, but the Treasury Bureau fans could still buy them at a low price of 20 yuan. More than 50 million yuan of U.S. bonds, with a market value of 12.5 billion national dollars, were privately swallowed by a small number of "fans" of the State Treasury Bureau. After Lü Xian obtained the legal procedures, he first honored 3.5 million yuan of Khun Xiang Xi's AMERICAN coupons, and then embezzled nearly 8 million yuan of US coupons by exchanging tickets for tickets and buying and selling short. The total of the two items is more than 11.5 million yuan, equivalent to about 2.647 billion yuan in national currency. This sensational "US coupon corruption case" made Chiang Kai-shek extremely angry. But in addition to the anger, there is nothing that can be done about Kong Xiangxi, the source of corruption. Jiang commented to Kong Xiangxi in his diary that "we should not think about the future of the party-state and the revolution, but for our own reputation and reputation," and in his diary, he scolded Kong Xiangxi for refusing to admit his account and doing everything he could to make sophistry: "He always wants to argue and cover up things, but he does not know that the evidence and facts of this matter are there, and it is absolutely impossible to evade his responsibility." Yu treated him with such sincerity and took responsibility for remedying him, and he was still bent on cunning, which is shameful!" Even in the end, he felt that "this person's greed is incurable, and therefore he was unable to take a nap.", to such an extent that Chiang Kai-shek must instruct the case to "hurry up, so as not to dream too much in the night and give people truth"; the all-round corruption of the government has completely kidnapped this government, and even the supreme leader, Chiang Kai-shek, is powerless to reverse this trend. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, this all-round corruption of government officials became even more intense, especially the most typical example of changing "acceptance" into "robbery." Chiang Kai-shek once wrote in his diary: "Wei Demai came to see me and told me how corrupt and illegal the personnel sent by the central authorities to North China had lost the hearts of the people, and they were ashamed and did not know what to do. "Its helplessness can be seen.
Jun: Business smuggling has become the norm, and the demand for bribes has intensified
The corruption of the Kuomintang army is concentrated in two major areas, one is the army's business; The second is military smuggling. Along with these two is the flood of private pockets among the army's generals, in Chiang Kai-shek's words, "especially the senior generals, who are above the rank of commander, almost most of them are corrupt..."
The military engages in business smuggling: "Under the pretext of a cooperative to operate a commercial ,...... All war zones are inevitable."
The Republic of China army has been engaged in business since the Beiyang era. However, the real popularization was after the Kuomintang allowed and advocated the establishment of "army production cooperatives" after the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. The "army production cooperative," similar to the ancient tun tian, was a helpless move under the shortage of national strength at that time and the anti-Japanese resistance was necessary, with the aim of improving the lives of soldiers. Its contents include farming, processing agricultural products, manufacturing daily necessities such as clothing, socks, bedding, and exporting labor services (such as building roads). Along with the "Army Production Cooperative" is the "Army Consumption Cooperative", which was established with the aim of "avoiding the exploitation of intermediate merchants, directly purchasing goods from producers and distributing them to its members." In short, the troops raised funds and set up special organizations to seek to buy soldiers the necessities of improving their daily lives at the most suitable prices.
But the result was the opposite of the original intention. According to the original intention of the National Government, the army runs cooperatives not for profit, but to improve the lives of soldiers. However, the overwhelming majority of the armed forces have no interest in participating in production or in the procurement of daily necessities for soldiers, and have thrown themselves into business under the name of "army cooperatives." Especially in the middle and late period of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the armed forces have become generally engaged in business, and most of their business goods have nothing to do with improving the lives of soldiers, but are purely for profit. Chiang Kai-shek was deeply disgusted by this, and on September 9, 1942, he bitterly criticized: "The reason why we have come to advocate the establishment of cooperatives in the army should be carried out to the fullest extent possible in order to improve the lives of officers and men, but there must be a disadvantage in the world's affairs, but there must be a disadvantage in the world's affairs, and now there are even advantages in our army to operate business under the pretext of cooperatives, only as a source of fraud for personal gain, especially the garrisons that rush to traffic in the vicinity of the river and the coast." ...... At present, the abuses of military personnel in business are inevitable in all theaters of operations, and I hope that all commanders and commanders-in-chief will strictly ban and prohibit them, and if they engage in commercial business and sell enemy goods, they will all be regarded as the crime of collaborating with the enemy. ”
Another drawback that arises from doing business with the military is military smuggling. These smugglings are also often carried out in the name of "army cooperatives". For example, in 1936, Xiong Dahui, the commissioner of Jiangxi Highway Operations, formulated a "Plan for Sorting Out the Operation and Management of Jiangxi Highways," which clearly stated that it was necessary to ban the smuggling of goods by military consumer cooperatives: "The establishment of consumer cooperatives in all the troops stationed in this province has many consumer cooperatives, and its original intention is good. However, there were rumors of smuggled goods from time to time, which affected the legitimate business of the Land Registry, so in order to maintain the operation of the Land, it was necessary to petition the provincial governments to consult the military commanders, and strictly to the consumer cooperatives to which they belonged, and thereafter they were not allowed to smuggle goods, thus hindering the progress of the Business of the Land. But the problem of military smuggling, Mo said that the Jiangxi provincial government can't manage it, even the central government in Nanjing, there is no way." At that time, most of the smuggling involved the army was some large-scale international smuggled goods, mainly tung oil, mercury, and mineral sands, while the imports were cigarettes and opium, which were often linked to the front-line garrisons. Chen Cheng, a former senior general of the expeditionary force, said in his posthumous draft that garrisons in various parts of Yunnan not only engaged in business smuggling, but also gambled, smoked opium, and stole ordnance. It can be seen that the leading organs of the Kuomintang military and government are fully aware of this kind of commercial defeat in the army, but they have no choice but to do so. Some also want to divide the fat from the subordinate business smuggling; Such collusion between the upper and lower levels forms a vicious circle, and stubborn diseases will eventually be difficult to get rid of. On November 18, 1939, Kong Xiangxi relayed to the Central Committee that Ma Hongkui was openly shielding smuggling, saying: Warlord Ma Hongkui had summoned the head of the Ningxia Chamber of Commerce to secretly instruct: "Don't look at my anti-smuggling notice, because it is the central government's order, I can't do nothing else." In fact, you can still smuggle as usual, because if it stops, let alone the uselessness of Lanzhou's dignitaries and wives, even my army will not be able to do it. [Detailed]
Eating an empty forehead and asking for bribes: "Although Chiang Kai-shek personally approved the warrant to receive the weapon. You can't get a (gun) without bribery."
"Eating short quotas" has always been a stubborn disease of the army, and the Kuomintang army is no exception. The usual situation is that the superiors acquiesce in the false declaration of the number of troops in each unit, usually the company commander can report two people, the battalion commander doubles the false report in turn, and the officers of each unit can be postponed for one or two months according to the different circumstances after the vacancy, and their salaries are intercepted by the chief officer. During this period, there were generally only 6,700 people in a division of the army, but when the leaders were paid, they all reported a full amount of 10,000 people, and most of the empty military salaries of 3,300 people were falsely reported into the pockets of the chief officers. Chiang Kai-shek himself was well aware of this situation, saying on December 9, 1941: "The emptiness of the number of troops in our front has been fully known to the whole country. All levels are blinded, and even if there is a shortage of more than 3,000 people in a division, it is also regarded as a common practice. In peacetime, the salaries of the first division cannot be used as half of the division temporarily, and when the battle is declared afterwards, it is allowed to float the report, saying that the first division has suffered 5,000 or 6,000 casualties. ”
Asking for bribes was also rampant, as Li Zongren recalled: "When the army needs to replenish weapons and ammunition, it must also pay bribes to higher-level officials and military stations to get replenishment." Miscellaneous troops, especially. If you don't pay bribes, you won't get any supplements. Even if Chiang Kai-shek approves the replenishment of a batch of ammunition, the officials of the military depot will extort bribes, and without bribes, the military stations will prevaricate that the stock has been exhausted. Therefore, some unit commanders have tried every means to bribe the officials of the military station and even the attendant room to obtain weapons and ammunition to preserve their strength. For example, the new Wang Zhiqu Division in the 5th Theater was allowed to get 1,000 new guns, and sold 200 of them, bribing the officials of the military depot with the proceeds. Wang Zanxu, commander-in-chief of the 29th Group Army, although Chiang Kai-shek personally approved the order to receive weapons. You can't get a bribe without a bribe. [Detailed]
References: Wang Qisheng, "Party Members, Party Power and Party Struggle", Shanghai Bookstore Publishing House; Yi Laoyi, "The Revolution of Miscarriage", China Youth Publishing House.
epilogue
How serious was the corruption during the Kuomintang's mainland rule? Chiang Kai-shek should have the most say. On November 24, 1948, Chiang wrote in his diary: "The selfishness, incompetence, looseness, and corruption of party, government, and military cadres are irredeemable. If we want to rejuvenate the nation, revitalize the revolutionary banner, abandon the existing foundation, choose another simple environment, narrow the scope, fundamentally transform, and start a new stove without merit, the success or failure of the current situation will not be taken seriously. "His desperation is evident.