Economic Life Of Middle And Lower Classes In Kunming During The Anti-Japanese War Period

During the period of anti-Japanese war,the movement of the provinces,the inwardness of the industrial and commercial enterprises,and the influx of financial forces brought opportunities for the development of Kunming especially in three parts which contains education,technology and capital.The entry of a number of wellknown scholars promoted the development of education.The inwardness of factories and enterprises brought Kunming with new technology.Capital forces settled to speed up the flow of capital in Kunming.However,with the wartime economic changes,prices also rose fiercely,which leads to the consequence that to the late period,the increase of price in Kunming became the most violent among the nation.The people’s economic life has gradually changed,with the changing class situation.Faced with increasingly severe inflation,the rapid rise in prices becomes the common problem in people’s daily life.To some degree,economic life can reflect the people’s living standards and socio-economic situation.This paper attempts to analyze the economic life of the three groups of government employees and teachers,labor groups and small and medium-sized industrial and commercial enterprises,and try to analyze the angle of Kunming’s modernization changes from the perspective of economic history and social history.Inspecting the eight years of anti-Japanese war(1937-1945),the basic living conditions of the citizens of Kunming,deepen the understanding of the course of economic and social development in Kunming,and pay attention to the changes of the middle and lower classes in society.The article is divided into three parts,First of all,mainly from the wartime population,industrial finance capital of the inward transfer situation,the changing characteristics of three stages of the price and three aspects of control measures on the price increases given by national government,,analysis the social and economic background of the people during the war in Kunming.Secondly,the economic life of these three groups is analyzed concretely from the three aspects of stratum group,income situation and economic life.The income section mainly discusses the teacher’s salary standard or the wage subsidy of the worker or the business condition of the businessman,according to the characteristics of each group.Then through the actual income and the living expenses index,combined with the specific consumption situation and some real life examples,pry into the life of the three groups as the representative of economic life of the middle and lower classes.Finally,through the horizontal and vertical comparison of these three groups,the paper analyzes the redistribution of social wealth and changes of social structure during wartime in Kunming.Through the investigation of the life of the people in Kunming during the war,it is helpful to deepen the understanding and grasp of the social and economic life during the war of resistance against Japan.