A Study On Trade Control Of The National Government During The Anti-Japanese War

It was not accidental to perform the trade control during the Anti-Japanese War, which had necessity and inevitability under certain history background. Overview the decades of trade conditions before the Anti-Japanese War. The typical features were sustained trade deficit, distortion development, and manipulation by foreigners due to deliberate dumping, lack of protection, heavy taxes, and poor operation of businesses. Because of the trade crisis before the war, the government had been requested for interfering trade to protect the trade interests and trade balance.After the outbreak of the war, it was not enough to guarantee the supply of war urgent materials only depending on the domestic production. Therefore importing war materials overseas was necessary. However, the limitation of foreign exchange and gold reserve and reduction of immigrant remittance could not satisfy the huge demand. Meanwhile, Political and economic mobilization during the war before in the national crisis' structural adjustment was imperative to make trade control. Under such circumstances, trade control complying to the whole economic control turned up and developed at high speed at the beginning of the war.Trade control was a comprehensive and dynamic control during the Anti-Japanese War. From the franchise, commercial trade was the primary stage of trade control, commercial trade and state trade are parallel respectively. And state trade was the advanced stage.From the trade control period, at the beginning of the war the government emphasized on access to foreign exchange, in other words conducting trade control with foreign exchange policy. Later the government focused on war materials, in other words control of import and export goods with material policy.For meeting the purpose of obtaining exchange, it became important part of directly policies and regulations of trade control to meet, to encourage exports advantage products and restrict import non-essentials. For the core objective of exchange, the policy of exchange settlement and the policy of authorization import exchange established,and the polices used to comprehensively control exchange and were made the appropriate adjustments according to the situation. After the outbreak of Pacific war, increasing international aid and loan helped to relieve the need of exchange. At the same time, for tight block from Japan and difficulty of import materials, access to war materials was the main purpose at this stage.At the beginning of the war, benefits conflict between government and businessmen frequently took place.State trade was established as a national policy paralleling with commercial trade after heated debate. The system of state trade became major aspect of trade control during the war with the establishment and adjustment of trade committee, and establishment of the three state companies. Government trade institutions on behalf of the nation could obviously overcome the shortcomings which brought forth by private trade in the war. The system of state trade divided to two parts, one was government monopoly purchase and sale, the other one was barter. Externally, the government reached the trade agreements by diplomatic efforts, internally, it executed unified purchase and marketing accompany with agricultural and mineral products with barter.Trade control policy during the war adjusted frequently according to the facts and the national destination. Every coin has two sides, At the macro level, the policy effect is obvious, In the micro, there was many drawbacks. From the positive aspect, the government not only focused on collecting financial and material resources for the fight against Japanese aggression through trade control, but also played an important part in the maintenance of import and export trade balance and improvement of China's export structure.From the view of negative impact, in the process of trade control complicated agencies caused numerous drawbacks, distorted purchase and commodity price obstructed the development of production and trade. Favoritism was adverse to the state.In the progress of formulation and evolution of Trade Control Policy, although the regulatory documents were dominant, the results also were constrained by the policy of trade countries and interests and surroundings, also the interests conflicts between central and local government weakened the effect of trade control. Overall, the policy effects and policy-making met the original purpose.The trade control of KMT Government was constituted by policy subject, policy object and policy goals, policy content and policy instruments was the first comprehensive control of sovereignty in modern times, the concrete practice, the epoch-making progress in the foreign trade history. This was meaningful to Chinese to get rid of semi-colonial economy for independent economic. From Opium war, imperialist countries launched a series of aggressive wars against China in the aim of extra economic profits through the model of trade guide, force escort, privileges supported this basic model led China into its economic system. And Chinese economy gradually changed the nature to semi-colonial economy. Because the war broke out, the critical state of war forced the government to take the best interests as the main principle to control trade, in accordance with the reality of their need to control the import and export, obtain the leading trade, and actively adjust the layout of the national production and marketing system and industry. Expansion of the war and the involvement of major powers also made these countries who considered real interests give up their rights to give China more sovereignty after the destruction of the existing trading system in China for whole benefits of the war. All concessions were forced or voluntary. With establishment of independent trade system and the abolition of unequal treaties, China's economy had gradually transferred from the colonial economy to independent economy.