In the TV series "Wind Chaser", the second sister of the villain behind Yu Shiqing and Kang Ye (the historical prototype is Song Ailing), did not hesitate to manipulate the treasury bill market in order to collect money, and made a fortune of 15 billion legal currency, and all kinds of officials and businessmen in the government colluded, regardless of the lives of the people.
In fact, in the real history of the Republic of China, the high-ranking officials and magnates of the national government did everything to achieve the goal of accumulating wealth, and it was common for all kinds of officials and businessmen to collude and exploit the people.
Today, let's talk about the corruption and darkness of the country during the Republic of China!
First of all, after the establishment of the Nationalist Government in Nanjing in 1927 by the Chiang clan and the change of banners in Northeast China in 1928, the Nationalist Government of Nanjing completed the formal unification of the whole country.
However, it was not the ordinary people who supported Chiang's rise to the top of the political arena, but a group of big compradors and big bureaucrats, that is, the Nanjing government supported by the four major families.
The four major families are: the Jiang family (in control of politics), the Song family (in charge of finance, the real major shareholder of the Nanjing government), the Kong family (in charge of finance), and the Chen family (in charge of party affairs).
The four major families colluded with the imperialist powers externally, betrayed state sovereignty and interests, and colluded with local compradors, landlords, and other classes internally to oppress the common people, and corruption was even more entrenched.
At that time, an infantry division of the national army reported that the number of personnel was more than 7,000, but the actual number was less than 4,000.
For example, in terms of the army's food standard, each soldier has a rice food subsidy of nearly 40 catties per month. However, in fact, they will be deducted all the way, and then they will falsely report thousands of people, and the excess rice and other grains will be sold again.
Before the outbreak of the Battle of Changde, ordinary soldiers could only eat some brown rice, with rotten vegetable leaves and a small amount of pickles, and there was no oil and water at all.
Then, most of the soldiers of the national army still wore straw sandals, and only a few officers had leather shoes and rubber shoes to wear, and some of them were still in the Central Army sequence, which many people may not know.
Throughout the entire Republic of China, the phenomenon of eating empty salaries and drinking soldiers' blood within the national army has even reached the level of madness.
Of course, this level of corruption seems to be not worth mentioning in the eyes of high-ranking officials and elites in the Republic of China. Let's take Song Ailing as an example, after marrying Kong Xiangxi, he relied on his identity to make a lot of money.
In 1935, in the second and third customs treasury bill speculation case, Song Ailing made a profit of as high as 25 million yuan, and the result of the speculation led to the bankruptcy of some banks, large accounts, and retail investors, and even suicide and jumping off the building (the rickshaw driver Ah Wen in the TV series "Wind Chaser" is an ordinary person who committed suicide because of the treasury bills).
In November 1935, in order to prevent the outflow of silver and implement the policy of nationalization of silver, Song Ziwen, then Minister of Finance, began to carry out a drastic currency reform, and the "legal tender of the Republic of China" officially appeared on the stage of history.
When Song Ailing got the inside information from her younger brother, she directly used the treasury funds to invest a large amount of financial funds in the foreign exchange and gold markets, and was ready to make a lot of money with public money, and then put it all into her private pocket.
After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Song Ailing showed the greedy face of "tight in front, tight in rear" to the fullest.
In October 1937, after the national capital was moved to Chongqing, the Anti-Japanese War was in a difficult situation, and the people of the whole country should have fought against the Japanese together.
However, Song Ailing expected the shortage of supplies in the rear, so she used the power of her husband, Kong Xiangxi, as finance minister, to hoard food and medicine in Chongqing, and wait until prices soared before selling.
At that time, even when the government purchased military aircraft for the Anti-Japanese War, Soong Ailing had to take a commission from it and deposit it all in his private bank.
In 1948, Chiang Ching-kuo launched an anti-tiger operation in Shanghai, and Kong Lingkan, the eldest son of Song Ailing, inherited the family mantle and used the family identity to operate the Yangzi Company, hoarding luxury goods such as Western medicines, automobiles, paints, lipsticks, nylon stockings, as well as industrial materials such as steel, evading customs taxes, driving up prices, and making huge profits.
At that time, Jiang Jingguo, the eldest son who wanted to punish corrupt officials and corrupt officials, was finally criticized by Jiang Jingguo because of the network of these high-ranking officials and magnates, and finally failed to fight tigers in Shanghai, and was criticized by Chiang, and then resigned from the post of economic supervisor.
Of course, the most notorious thing about the eldest sister Song Ailing is her embezzlement of US dollar public bonds during the Anti-Japanese War, and this incident directly led to Kong Xiangxi's resignation.
In 1941, in order to support the anti-fascist war, the Roosevelt administration of the United States allocated 500 million US dollars to borrow money from the Nanjing government, and Soong Ailing and Kong Xiangxi discussed and decided to use 100 million US dollars as US public bonds to issue them, so as to make a fortune in the country.
In 1943, after receiving the news of inflation in the securities market, Song Ailing and others repurchased US dollar public bonds, transferred capital risks, and made a cumulative profit of 11.5 billion legal currency.
Although the corruption case was eventually exposed and reported, and Finance Minister Kong Xiangxi stepped down, the national disaster money they made was not lost, and almost all of it was transferred to the United States and South America.
Let's talk about Song Ziwen, don't think that he is a good person, in fact, he is the same as the Jiang family, and his implementation of currency reform is not for the country, but for the convenience of himself and the four major families to make money.
In August 1945, after Japan announced its unconditional surrender, Song Ziwen, president of the Executive Yuan, did not focus on the direction of national construction after the war, but stepped up the reception of Japanese fake materials, and personally went to Beiping, Tianjin, Shanghai and other places to supervise the receipt.
In the process of receiving materials, he even abused his power, and in the name of receiving Japanese fake property, he wantonly plundered the people's assets, including houses, cars, gold, banknotes, etc., and took the opportunity to expropriate and extort money, and the people were miserable.
At that time, when the Truman administration was investigating the Kong and Song families, it estimated that the savings of the two families were as high as more than $2 billion. In one of the banks, Soong has $80 million in personal deposits, Soong Meiling has $150 million, and Soong Ziwen has $70 million.
In 1942, extreme disasters broke out in the Central Plains, floods, droughts and other disasters alternated, tens of millions of people were displaced, starving for thousands of miles, the Nanjing government was forced to allocate 200 million yuan for disaster relief under the pressure of public opinion, but the actual local government was less than 80 million.
Originally, the 80 million yuan was a drop in the bucket for tens of millions of people in the disaster area, but local officials did not use it for disaster relief, but directly put a large amount of money into the bank to increase the value of interest, and puffed up the officials' pockets.
Only a small amount of relief money can be distributed to areas affected by famine, but local officials also have to deduct taxes from the relief money, resulting in very little relief for the people.
In fact, corruption within the Nanjing government is not an isolated case, but a systematic and diffuse corruption.
At that time, from grassroots officials to high-level officials, almost all of them were inseparable from corruption. Under the four major families, there are countless large and small corrupt bureaucratic families, and their corruption is even more than that of the four major families.
Under that cannibalistic society, ordinary people will not only be oppressed by corrupt bureaucrats, but also suffer from layers of oppression from warlords, bandits, landlords, etc.!