The Rural Economic Research Of Jin-Sui Base Area During The Period Of The Anti-Japanese War

As one of the many base areas under the leadership of the C.C.P.during the the Anti-Japanese War, the Jin-Sui Base Area (JSBA), lying to the east of the Yellow River, facing the Shan-Gan-Ning Border Area (SGNBA) with the River in-between, provided an important defence for the SGNBA;in the east,the JSBA,guarding the northern part of the Tong-Pu Railroad, directly menaced the artery by which the Japanese forces moved down to the south, was the only passage from the Jin-Cha-Ji Base Area (JCLBA)to Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu Base Area (JJLYBA) and SGNBA;in the north, the JSBA, extending to Bailing Temple and Wulanhua along the frontier of the country, presented a constant threat to the Ping-Sui Railrod, which was of great importance to defeat the attacks to the Northwest by the Japanese forces and the Puppet Troops; in the south, the JSBA, separated by the Jie-Fen Road, faced the region under the control of Yan Xishan.This dissertation takes a focus on the rural economics in the JSBA during the period of the Anti-Japanese War, including mainly its natural environments, social environments, agricultural production condition (the divisions of economics, farm implements, kinds of agricultural produce, farming system), rural land problems, lending and borrowing relationship, agrarian finance, mutual aid and cooperation, ect.Our studies reveal, owing to the interposition of the C.C.P.government, a whole series of changes took place in JSBA’s rural economics, such as landlords and rich peasants were no longer the classes who possessed much of the land, they had been replaced by the poor peasants and the farm laborers; tenancy became much longer than before, rental and rent rate decreased; the ratio of private money-lending and borrowing decreased; the new form of finance—the ratio of the government loan represented by the banks increased; family production has been turned into collective production through the organization of mutual aid and cooperation; class structure had been changed from the dominance of the landlords, rich peasants, poor peasants, and farm laborers to that of the poor-middle peasants.The present dissertation consists of seven parts, of which the introduction is devoted to a brief account of the selection of the argument, the literature review, the research method, and the originalities and limitations of the research, etc.Chapter1is a retrospect to the founding of the JSBA, and the then natural and social environments, political, economic, and military environments, educational and social environments.Chapter2is discussion on the agricultural economic divisions, farm implements, agricultural produce and the distributions, farming system, etc.Chapter3takes a focus on the land problems in the rural areas in the JSBA. So far as the land allotment is concerned, under the influence from privatization of land in the modern age, the landlords and the rich peasants formed the class with the possession of much of the land. After the break-out of the Anti-Japanese War, the government of the JSBA, on the one hand, tried to re-established the relationship of land possession by means of, first of all, transferring the land ownership through decreasing and paying the rent. Although the rent decreasing regulations were mainly for maintaining the tenancy relationship, landlords were not allowed to take the land at will, they could did it if they wanted to sell, pawn, or re-rent their land. Secondly, the government tried to do it by means of transferring the land ownership by way of redeeming the pawned land. Usury had been forbidden since the establishment of the JSBA government; land pawning was a sort of usury. So it was encouraged by the government to redeem land.On the other side, increases peasants land by reclaiming wasteland. In tenancy relationship, before the war, food rent, money rent and labor rent coexist and food rent is the main part. During that period, most of the leases are written with short tenancy period and high rent and rental rates. The border government not only extended the tenancy period, but also canceled terms of exploitation in written lease. The border government also reduced rent and rental rates.Chapter four takes a focus on loan relationships in border areas. The reasons why loan exists in the border areas are the exploitation of land rent and usury, lacking agricultural production materials and capital and disorders of the financial situation. This chapter not only discusses the species, source, duration, interest rate of the loans in border area before the war, but also gives a review about cutting interest rates policy and putting real estate policy after the war. I also pay more attention to introduce the lending movement centered by Northwest Farmers Bank. They made agricultural loans mainly to poor peasants and made loans in the right season. They also combined the government investment and private capital and made agricultural loans issued mainly on production. Loans issued not only aroused the enthusiasm of farmers, promoted the development of production, but also promoted the changes in class structure which decreased the ratio of landlord and increased the ration of poor and middle peasants especially middle peasants.Chapter five takes a focus on financial situation. The Northwest Farmers Bank was established on Xing County Farmers Bank and further improved the banking institutions, personnel structure, and made use of the "four mobilization" to expand the bank fund and make the bank become a well organized financial institution with a sound system. At the same time, The Northwest Farmers Bank actively carried out the functions of issuing currency, managing foreign exchange, handling remittance and savings, and managing treasury, etc. The Northwest Farmers Bank issued the border’s standard currency-Northwest Agricultural Bill, which create good conditions to establish independent economic system for Jin-Sui base area. The bank made use of the Northwest Agricultural Bill struggling with silver dollar, kuomingtang currency, and bogus currency. The border government made the Northwest Agricultural Bill as the only standard bill and built the self dependent financial system. That has many advantages such as changing the chaos aroused by various currencies, preventing the financial confusion made by Japanese puppet and avoiding losing materials. It also did good to balance the import and export.The bank increased its foreign exchange forces through the management of foreign exchange, and then promoted the balance of import and export. The bank also regulated import and export trade through the bank rate, thereby stabilized prices and improved the living standard of the people.The sixth chapter mainly introduces the movement of mutual-aid working in the border area. This is the production organization mode that the border area government make use of the old mutual aid form and organize people to undertake collective labor.At that time, because of the Japanese army’s wantonly killing and capture and massive conscription by YanXishan, the eighth route army and new army, active migration and forced fleeing, labor in the border decreased rapidly. At the same time, draught animals are greatly reduced by the war. So, in face of increasing wasteland, for developing production, it is inevitable choice to concentrate limited human and materials, and do the work together.Its development during the period of the Anti-Japanese War mainly has three periods. The first period (1940--1942) is the exploration period of mutual aid organization. At the first two years, the government only vaguely proposed the development of cooperation organization and didn’t do the detailed research and management in practice. In1942, the border government really started to attach importance to the establishment of mutual aid cooperation organization. Because of putting aside of original form, taking a set of procedures and taking the command mode, the mutual aid organization did not get good effect. The second period (1943) is the preliminary development period of the mutual aid organization. Taking Wenjia village as an example, by studying the mutual aid movement in this village, we find that mutual aid generally existed between friends and relatives or dependency relations, such as those families that have the similar production materials or those families that have mutual needs. Mutual aid working group can solve the difficulties of different classes, attract more people to take part in production. Work group size should be appropriate. The cooperation mode should be developed from simple, small to complex, big. The leaders of the organizations should be just, wholehearted devotion to public duty and make himself as an example. The third period (19441945) is widely developed period. In1944, the organization increased significantly comparing to the former years, but the distributions were imbalance and their effects are not optimistic. In1945, to solve this problem, the government put forward the idea that we should consolidate and expand the organization in agriculture. On avocation, we should absorb residual capital force and organized cooperation groups by different methods such as Using money stock, labor-sharing stock, and sharing bonus, etc. In the women’s textile, we should appeal everyone to join the group. In the mining industry, we may organize the cooperation by public, private, and cooperation. For accomplishing different kinds of producing tasks, government and public enterprises should also pay attention to absorb civilian force to develop mutual cooperation organization, adopt the system of democratic evaluation and carry out the policy of "mutual benefits to public and personal","clear separation between public and private","mutual benefits to military and civilian". Before1944, they mainly made use of the old mutual aid form. After1944, on the basis of mutual aid group, the government also set up textile, transportation and other types of work cooperatives. In addition, the government also regulated the ways of recording work and summarized the significance and deviation.of mutual aid working organization.The innovations of this paper include three points:1) The innovation of research paradigmatic. The relation between CPC’s economic construction and grassroots society is an interactive process of mutually exclusive, integration and transition. Civil society and the vast majority of the people didn’t just play completely passive role. Traditional mode of operation, the traditional mentality and behavior of people is to a considerable extent restricts the policies of the CPC and shape each economic policy. So breaking through the past research focusing on the upper side, paying attention to the interaction of CPC’s economic construction and rural social have been of great benefit to considering the complete picture of CPC’s rural construction.2) Rich research contents. Unlike traditional Jin-sui border region economy researches that only focus on an issue, to fully reflect the interaction between nation and society under the war background, my paper is a comprehensive research which involves the relation between Jin-Sui border rural land ownership and tenancy, the relationship between the new financial construction and rural lending, and mutual aid and cooperation movement.3) The innovation of research materials. This paper fully used the large amount of original materials of Shanxi Archives about Jin-Sui base area to do a systematic research about the economic development of the border area, and enlarged the materials border about the economic research of the base area. My research materials include many investigation reports which provide many farmers’ real reflection to the government measures.