Fight tiger sports
In 1948, Chiang Ching-kuo, the wealthy man of the Chiang family, personally established the "Greater Shanghai Youth Service Corps". He used mass campaigns to crack down on the illegal accumulation of profiteers, and pointed the spearhead of the battle at the rich and wealthy. The code name of this mass movement is "Fight the Tigers."
It was a summer story, and Chiang Ching-kuo, the wealthy son of the Chiang family, came to Shanghai with the Nanjing government's "Financial and Economic Emergency Punishment Order" and confidence in saving the economy, trying to stabilize soaring prices by cracking down on speculators. But the result was bleak, and his hopes were finally dashed. In this economic "tiger fighting" campaign, if Chiang Ching-kuo knew that he had nothing but this, then even if he was a "prince", he would not necessarily come to the muddy waters of Shanghai.
In the summer of 1948, the situation in the Nationalist government in Nanjing was somewhat turbulent. Chiang Kai-shek had just taken office as president, but the situation at home and abroad was not satisfactory. National Congress deputies from Henan came to the presidential palace to cry, saying that the Kuomintang army had lost one after another in the Yudong battlefield and lost Kaifeng. This was a great headache for Chiang Kai-shek, because the PLA also showed great strength on the battlefields in Shandong and northeast China. In addition to military pressure, Chiang Kai-shek was more worried about the deterioration of the economic situation.
The fiscal deficit of the Nanjing Nationalist government has reached 260 trillion yuan, and the war has caused military spending to account for 69% of fiscal expenditure. In order to pay for military spending, the Kuomintang government issued a large amount of fiat currency. However, the U.S. Congress eventually passed aid to the national government, but the aid was still not disbursed. Due to the lack of funds and materials, the Kuomintang government fell under Communist control in large areas of grain-producing areas in northeastern, northern and eastern China, resulting in a shortage of grain and cotton and other materials; Salt farms in Shandong and Jiangsu also lost most of their production capacity, greatly discounting salt taxes; Railway transportation has also been seriously affected, and the interruption of the three railway lines of the Jinpu Line, the Pinghan Line and the Longhai Line has made the transportation of materials difficult, the freight costs are high, and the already few materials are even more difficult to turnover.
On August 19, Chiang Kai-shek promulgated the "Financial and Economic Emergency Punishment Order" in accordance with the "Anti-Disorder Regulations", which mainly stipulated that gold vouchers should be used instead of legal tender, and 1 yuan of gold vouchers was converted into 3 million legal currency.
Then strictly control prices, based on the price on August 19, no negotiation, and at the same time carry out warehouse inspections and registration, and severely punish hoarders.
Chiang Ching-kuo, who was 38 years old, came to Shanghai with this paper order and the appointment of deputy economic supervisors. The identity of the "prince", holding the sword of Shang Fang, the cadres below who were personally trained. Apart from these, Chiang Ching-kuo had no money, no materials, nothing. But he was ambitious, vowing to help his father stabilize his father's economy in Shanghai and turn the tide.
Riding on the back of a tiger
As soon as Chiang Ching-kuo arrived in Shanghai, he put on a posture of fighting to the death. On August 23 and 27, he commanded Shanghai's military and police, searching warehouses, land and water transportation fortresses, and public places throughout the city. At the same time, he met with celebrities in Shanghai's economic circles, such as Li Fusun, Zhou Huamin, Qian Xinzhi, and Dai Mingli, and forced them to declare their stocks of gold and silver and foreign currency and hand them over to the central bank within a time limit. For Zhou Huamin and Dai Mingli's disobedience, Chiang Ching-kuo immediately ordered his arrest. Liu Hongsheng, the king of Shanghai coal matches, was forced to hand over 2.3 million US dollars, 8,000 taels of gold, and thousands of silver dollars. Chen Guangfu, general manager of the Shanghai Commercial Savings Bank, also had to hand over $1.14 million in foreign exchange.
In order to kill chickens and monkeys, Jiang Jingguo shot Wang Chunzhe, manager of the Shanghai Lin Wang Company with Sun Ke as the backstage, on the charge of "hoarding", and arrested Rong Hongyuan, general manager of Shenxin Textile, Wei Boxiang, general manager of Meifeng Securities, Hu Guoliang, executive director of China Cement Corporation, and others on charges of smuggling foreign exchange and hiding gold. After the news spread, the entire Shanghai economic community was shaken, and those economic giants had to give in.
In terms of prices, although it seems stable on the surface, Chiang Ching-kuo understands that this is only temporary. Apart from the deterrence of executive orders and guns, he had no other way to move supplies from across the country to Shanghai to stabilize prices. The price limit order in Shanghai has discouraged materials in the surrounding areas, forming a reverse pressure.
The economy is an invisible hand that is not subject to human will. In the process of forcibly suppressing the capitalists, Chiang Ching-kuo had to arrest Du Weiping, the son of Du Yuesheng. This caused an uproar in Shanghai, and Du Yuesheng quietly expressed support for Chiang Ching-kuo, but on the other hand, he directed people to expose the shocking hoarding case of Yang Zi as a response.
On October 2, Zhengyan Daily published a news article titled "Shocking Hoarding Case of Wealthy Families, Yangtze Warehouse Closed", which surprised people. It turned out that the Yang subsidiary was the property of Kong Xiangxi's son and Jiang Jingguo's cousin Kong Lingkan, and it was a big tiger in Shanghai that no one dared to touch. Now, however, the tiger has been suppressed by Chiang Ching-kuo.
In this turmoil, Chiang Ching-kuo can be described as riding a tiger. He wrote in his diary: "Already riding on the back of a tiger, you can't help but do it to the end!" Soon after, however, Chiang Ching-kuo discovered a problem: Yang had registered its goods with the Social Affairs Bureau as required, and the relative of the Kong family should not be prosecuted logically and legally.
The reason for the failure to fight the tiger
The problem is not who is caught, but that no one can compete with the laws of the economy. Lacking supplies and the suppression of executive orders, prices are on the verge of collapse. After the issuance of the Golden Round Coupon, prices in Hankou, Chongqing and Guangzhou rose by 21%, 40% and 83% respectively, and Shanghai was barely able to survive because of Jiang Gongzi's presence. On the other hand, the Nanjing government hoped that the United States would provide a $500 million loan to help stabilize the golden voucher, but by this time the Truman administration had abandoned Chiang Kai-shek and there could be no financial loan.
After Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo talked, things quietly changed, and the next day, the Shanghai police held a press conference announcing that "all the materials seized by Yang have been registered with the Social Affairs Bureau." In the end, Kong Lingkan left Shanghai and went to New York, handed over $6 million to the government, and the Yongan company, which was related to the Du family, sold a batch of cotton at a price lower than 1/4 of the cost. Du Weiping went home. On the surface, these "big tigers" all bowed to Chiang Ching-kuo, but prices eventually soared. The price limit order collapsed on November 1. Jingguo fought the tiger and ended in failure, but he did not lose to the tiger, but to an invisible hand. As Chiang Ching-kuo put it: "Due to the rapid rise in prices outside Shanghai, merchants and people flocked to the city to buy all goods and materials. Although Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces had bumper grain harvests in the autumn of that year, Shanghai was seriously short of grain. Raw materials were also scarce, and manufacturers stopped production. ”
A year later, Chen Yun, who was sitting in Shanghai, sent 12 instructions to various places, ordering the cotton gauze of the whole country to concentrate in the cities, the middle reaches of the Yangtze River to Hankou, the northwest to Xi'an, and the gauze in northern China to Jinjing. From November, Chen Yun ordered the northeast to transport 10 million jin of grain to Beijing and Tianjin every day, collect 400 million jin of grain from Sichuan to aid Shanghai, and buy an additional 400 million jin of rice from abroad. Under internal and external attacks, speculators led by Shanghai could not resist the concentration of materials throughout the country, the price of veils and grain began to plunge, and Shanghai speculators were finally defeated by the Communists who succeeded the Nanjing government. #Brilliant Brush Creation Challenge#