In September 1921, shortly after the founding of the Communist Party of China, a vigorous peasant revolutionary movement broke out in Yaqian, writing the four firsts in the history of the Party, launching the first peasant revolutionary movement, establishing the first peasant association, issuing the first peasant revolutionary program of action, and founding the first rural primary school to educate the children of peasants. In 1924, the Yaqian Farmers' Association established the country's first revolutionary financial institution, the Yaqian Credit Cooperative.
The third episode of the large-scale financial media "Red Financial Road" jointly planned by the Central Radio and Television Corporation and the Chinese Minmin Bank today, the reporter came to Fenghuang Village, Yaqian Town, Xiaoshan District, Hangzhou City, to explore this unforgettable history together.
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Farmers' associations reduce rents and resist rents, and "big fights" become "public fights"!
Some of the local stone walls with a sense of age look like very ordinary stone slabs, but more than 100 years ago, for the people of the local yaqian town, these were the last lines of defense to protect the people's livelihood. At that time, the people would carry thick stone slabs to build the embankment every year, but whenever the tide of the Qiantang River struck, the newly repaired embankment soon collapsed again, and the villagers here suffered from ten years of nine floods.
Local villagers said that at that time, every year there was a big tide in the Qiantang River, and every year the embankment would be washed away and repaired every year, and the people's life was very hard, and the people did not have a good life. The taxes handed over to the landlords are relatively heavy, and the common people themselves cannot eat enough, and they certainly cannot afford to pay the taxes.
Yaqian Town on the Qiantang River, about 14 kilometers away from The Xiaoshan District of Hangzhou, its geographical location has been described since ancient times as "east and west divided into two Zhejiang, Wuyue Tongqu", about 100 years ago, here faced years of collapse of the river, floods, coupled with warlords and warlords, as many as 50 kinds of heavy taxes and miscellaneous taxes, the contradiction between peasants and landlords has reached the point where they cannot survive without struggle. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, on September 27, 1921, the Yaqian Farmers' Association was formally established in the local Dongyue Temple, issued the "Declaration of the Yaqian Farmers' Association" and the "Constitution of the Yaqian Farmers' Association", proposed that the land should be used by the peasants, and democratically elected 6 members of the Agricultural Cooperative headed by Li Chenghu, and carried out a series of economic struggles such as fighting for the right to raise fish, fighting against rice and rapeseed incidents.
More than 100 years ago, a narrow local canal carried too much class struggle and antagonism, and now it only gently flows through this very rich jiangnan water town, but the memory of 100 years ago has already had its mark on the riverbank, Dongyue Temple is the predecessor of the peasant association founded in 1921, when everyone gathered and worked, and the earliest economic struggle revolved around rent reduction and interest rate reduction.
Li Jun, a descendant of Li Chenghu, a former leader of the peasant movement, said that the landlord's family bucket has 17 pounds, and compared with the public fight, each bucket can be 2 pounds worse. For example, if an acre of land is handed over to 10 buckets, the previous landlord's family was 10 buckets and 170 pounds, and as long as the farmer's family encountered natural disasters, as long as it paid 3 buckets, it was a three-fold discount first, which was a 15-pound bucket, and it was 45 pounds. 170 pounds lost 45 pounds, a difference of 125 pounds.
According to the "Statutes of the Yaqian Peasants' Association", the main goal of the peasants' association in reducing rents and resisting rents in that year was to achieve "three-fold rent repayment", that is, to pay three-fold discounts to the original fixed rent in the event of natural disasters, and to unify the bucket used for rent payment -- the "big bucket" of 17 pounds per bucket of the landlord's family was changed to a unified "public bucket" of 15 pounds per bucket.
Li Jun said: "125 catties for the poor peasants at that time was enough for him to survive before the harvest of the second year, otherwise there would be many people who would starve to death." ”
Solidarity and struggle can save lives. The Yaqian Peasants' Association eventually became the first organized and programmatic peasant movement led by the Communist Party of China after its founding; in more than two months, 82 villages established peasant associations, and more than 100,000 poor peasants threw themselves into the revolution.
Raise $540 and start a credit union!
One dollar to join, borrow money and no interest!
The peasants who underwent that round of economic reform found that the most important thing to get rid of the exploitation of the landlord class was to take more financial resources into their own hands. In 1924, a new organization was established on the site of the former farmers' association, that is, the farmers' credit cooperative.
"At the beginning of the establishment, each family paid 1 yuan as an entrance fee, which is the most original fund, and in the follow-up, each family paid 5 cents per month." Han Wei, head of the Party History Research Office of the Xiaoshan District CPC Committee in Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, said in a briefing. "A total of 540 yuan was raised at that time."
Farmers' credit cooperatives require farmers to deposit 1 yuan per household, as a loan fund for joining the union, many responders, the first time they received 540 yuan, the credit cooperative was established.
Is 540 yuan enough to start a credit union? Han Wei said: "In fact, it was not enough, at that time, in addition to the 1 yuan membership fee paid by each family, the local squires including Zhejiang University sponsored it at that time. By September 30, 1929, nearly 7,000 yuan had been loaned out. ”
Han Wei said that at that time, the peasants did not borrow much every time, almost 3 yuan, 5 yuan, generally more than 10 yuan is very small, the main purpose is marriage and funeral, repair houses, buy grain, buy seeds. At that time, it was basically interest-free, it was the first revolutionary financial institution in the country, and it also provided practical experience for the financial institutions in the revolutionary base areas later.
According to the records, as of September 1929, the total amount of loans from the Yaqian Credit Cooperative was 6820 yuan. Later, with the defeat of the Great Revolution, the Kuomintang launched a fierce and brutal suppression of the peasant movement, and the Yaqian Credit Cooperative gradually contracted its business, and by the end of 1929 all loans were recovered, the funds were returned, and the loans were paid off, and finally ceased operations in early 1930. Although it has existed for only about 6 years, yaqian credit cooperative, as the country's first peasant revolutionary financial institution, has made a pioneering attempt to establish a financial system that truly represents the interests of the people.
Whether it is the basic cultural knowledge needed to establish rural finance or the cultivation of revolutionary seeds, education and rejuvenation of the country have always been the concept of the Communist Party of China. 100 years ago, Shen Dingyi, an early member and intellectual of our party, built a yaqian rural primary school in his own home, which was also the first rural primary school built by the Communist Party of China for the children of peasants.
In the first year of its establishment, more than 200 children of poor peasants in Yaqian Town were recruited free of charge, and while imparting cultural knowledge, they preached revolutionary concepts to the vast number of peasants. Shou Baosheng, a nearly 90-year-old villager, was the first child in his family to have the opportunity to study.
Shou Baosheng, a yellowed textbook that has been treasured to this day, was distributed to him free of charge when the Yaqian Rural Primary School summoned the children of peasants from all over the village to school.
One hundred years ago, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, the people of Yaqian dared to be the first, and along with the enlightenment and development of education, they successively carried out economic struggles and financial innovations, and explored with revolutionary ideas, scientific knowledge and practice, creating a precedent in history and lighting up hope for the future. Today, a hundred years later, the original intention remains unchanged, the sound of books and laughter still comes out of the rural primary school in Yaqian County, and the red spirit is passed down from generation to generation.
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