Sunset Glory:the Private Industry And Commerce In The Early China(1949-1954)

This paper centers on Shanghai famous businessman and national capitalists hongsheng Liu’s core enterprise Zhanghua wool spinning company, tries to study the private industrial enterprises life-changing process at the beginning of PRC. Hongsheng Liu, like many of China’s national capitalists, started his business as a comprador in the early time, and like almost all Chinese national capitalists, he and his family enterprise also experienced from the Xinhai Revolution, the Northern Expedition, to the sino-japanese war, and a series of national political upheaval, struggling to survive in the circumstances of revolution, war, subversion, warlords and foreign capital extrusion. Even Liu’s Zhanghua woolen company, which started relatively late in his life, had to undergo highly turbulent unrest in the sino-japanese war and the kuomintang civil war. The reason why Liu’s enterprises, including Zhanghua wool spinning company could live to1949, was that Liu and his whole family got the tenacious perseverance for the industrial dream, and the flexible business strategy. Facing the new situation of the new communist ruler, Liu also adhered to the industrial belief as before, while the reality made a great joke on him. In May1949the people’s liberation army marched in Shanghai, Liu was persuaded to stay in and continued to run his enterprise, but by the summer of1954, Liu had to hand his Zhanghua wool spinning company over to the country as the example of "public-private partnership". The fate of Liu’s family and ZhangHua woolen company experiences ups and downs, became a true reflection of national enterprise’s fate change before and after1949.This paper gives priority to the documents, and combines with other related historical materials, mainly makes an empirical research on ZhangHua wool spinning company’s circumstances after the founding of PRC. Through describing the endeavors of Liu’s adapting to the new situation, saving Zhanghua’s woolen company’s fate, and the great pressure facing the new China’s special economic and political system and the ownership transformation, and the fate of ultimately having no choice but to hand over the enterprise, through this process, this paper wants to analyzes the reason why the Chinese national capital and national industry and commerce’s history fate was to come to an end.The full text is divided into three parts, namely, introduction, text and epilogue, and the body is divided into six chapters. The first chapter is about the general introduction of hongsheng Liu and his family, the modern Chinese wool textile industry developments and reforms and status of Zhanghua wool spinning company, which focuses on the company’s plight and Liu’s aspiration and expectation in the era of a revolution in the history of the kuomintang regime change. The second chapter tells the initial cooperation and the results between Liu’s family and the new regime, Zhanghua woolen company didn’t solve the most pressing demand of raw materials for the establishment of Domestic Wool Joint Procurement Agency, but due to the increasing city industrial and commercial tax and the regime’s other bonds, Zhanghua was faced with extremely difficult situation. The third chapter tells about a serious of readjusting policy on woolen industry which the new regime carried out in1950and the effects on Liu’s family and his company. The fourth chapter mainly analyzes Liu and Zhanghua’s kinds of efforts to solve the raw material shortage, reverse operation policy, save the costs, expand market, and shift production direction, as well as the practical effect produced by the changes. The fifth chapter focuses on the effects of suppressing counterrevolution, especially the "three antis movement " and ""five antis movement""in1952on Liu’s family and his company, reveals the inner connection between political movements in early China and private industry’s history fate to be public-private partnerships. The center of the last chapter is about ZhangHua wool spinning company’s great change of ownership, details the ins and outs of the public-private partnerships, and explores the multiple factors and profound reasons of Liu’s surrender of handing over.