Sugar Beets And "modernity": A Study On The Development Of Chinese-run Sugar Beet Factories After The Sino-Japanese War (1895-1931

The process of modernization or the gradual appearance of modern characters is an important theme in the early stage of modern Chinese social development.No matter how diverse the characters of "modern" are in the social politics,economy,thought and culture of the late Qing Dynasty,or the long-standing debate between the modernization process under the influence of the West and the origin of China’s endogenous "demand for modernity ",Industrial civilization,mechanized mass production and the concept of change have always been the core of the transformation from traditional society to modern society.China’s edible vegetables——beet from the ancient traditional crop status to the early Qing Dynasty "sugar crops" is a typical representative of the initial development of modernity.After the Sino-Japanese War,the failure of the war not only lost our country’s important sugar producing area in Taiwan,but also brought a new wave of influx of sugar,which seriously impacted the interests of the domestic sugar market.The decline of sugar industry shows that the national strength and national crisis seriously impact the ideological cognition of domestic politicians and patriotic intellectuals.In this context,the western advanced sugar beet technology has attracted the attention of the intellectual class,sugar beet quickly introduced and successfully tested in the northern multi-provincial agricultural test field,the official led Fengtian Province Hulan and the official supervision of Shandong Puyi two sweet vegetable sugar plants in the first and twentieth centuries officially put into operation,became the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China sweet vegetable sugar industry in China to achieve initial development of the biggest performance.From the beginning and the rise and fall of the two domestic sugar beet mills,some material,environmental,cultural,ideological and other related changes in Chinese society show that they belong to the "modern characteristics"of our country.Hulan Sugar Factory is the earliest sugar beet factory in China.The local officials and gentry in Fengtian province took the lead in obtaining official funds and policy support from the local environment and foreign capital suitable for planting sugar beet.However,due to the traditional operation mode,the sugar factory has been shut down for seven years,Finally,in the 1930s,with Japan’s aggression against the East three provinces fell to the Japanese acquisition of the dismal results.Compared with the completely official Hulan Sugar Factory,the government of Puyi Sugarbeet Sugar Factory in Shandong Province has less participation factors,and its operation and operation are relatively smooth.In its previous production periods,sugar beet sugar products of good quality,wide market and threatening sugar were produced and sold with good results,but at the micro level,the excessive competition consciousness of "sugar outside" and the excessive ideal expectation of sugar factory have produced contradictions with their problems in the supply of raw materials such as farm buying,planting and storing.Although local officials,gentry,businessmen and farmers have also given some help to sugar factories,they have always been unable to achieve complete and smooth cooperation with sugar factory operators because of their own interests and disputes,The sugar factory was forced to shut down in 1928 because of insufficient raw materials and environmental changes.Through an investigation of the production and operation of two beet sugar plants in the 10 st and 20 st in the twentieth century.It can be found that although sugar factories have patents,tax exemption and other special preferential policies for domestic industries.However,due to the three prominent problems of the operation mode of the official supervision and business office,the local social interest game and the unstable external environment.Maintenance soon went to failure.The integration of western industrial civilization and Chinese social tradition is a unique appearance of"beet" modernization in the practice of beet sugar in the late Qing Dynasty and early people.Such contradictions,conflicts,running-in and integration still remain in the industrial development process of China’s cur-rent society.Some thoughts can be put forward for the current socialist modernization construction in China.