Research On Institutional Reform Of Weights And Measures In The Republic Of China

China's modernization not only includes the modernization of social patterns,but also the modernization of culture,economy,science and technology and so on.The reform of weights and measures system is an important part of China's modernization.The system is very important for the country and the people.However,there is no clear standards and the weights and measures system is very confusing.The chaos of the system not only caused a lot of troubles to people's life,and not conducive to the economic and social development of the country.In order to unify the weights and measures system,the government of the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China carried out several reforms of the system.After the Opium War,the foreign weights and measures standard entered into China,and then appeared the customs weights and measures standard,which caused more chaos to the system.In order to maintain the rule of the Qing Dynasty,the government made plans to unify the weights and measures.However,due to the outbreak of the Revolution of 1911 and the destruction of the Qing Dynasty,the efforts to draw a system of weights and measures failed.The reform of system of weights and measures of the Republic of China is twice dominated by the universal metric reform.It can be divided into four periods:Beiyang Government,the first ten years of Nanjing National Government,the Anti-Japanese War and the postwar.After the founding of the Republic of China,the Beiyang Government proposed a scheme to unify the metric system of weights and measures in 1912,but the program has not been examined by the Parliament.But at the same time the call for reform of system of weights and measures had not been reduced.The Beiyang Government drew up a new scheme and enacted relevant laws in 1914.Nevertheless,the new scheme was only carried out in Beijing,Shanxi,Yunnan.The reform did not change the disorder in weights and measures.There are several reasons,such as the political instability,shortage of funds,the lack of talents and the rebellion of merchants and so on.After the Nanjing National Government was established in 1927,the local government and some business groups were calling on the central government to take measures to take measures to harmonize the system of weights and measures throughout the country.The voices of all social people caught the eyes of the government.The Ministry of Industry and Commerce organized experts to discuss the project.After discussing the National Government decided to take the metric system as the standard system of weights and measures,at the same time,to set an assistant system in the transition phase.Confirmed the standard,the government had taken action to enforce the weights and measures,including built up related laws and rules,convened regulations committee,drew a six years plan and established organizations,strengthened the manufacturing and management of the various weights and measures appliances,trained the personnel of supervisors,and strengthened the inspection and guidance of the local system,and so on.In the first 10 years of the Nanjing National Government,the reform of the system of public weights achieved basically unification,the civil measure and weights in the cities and counties in the central and eastern part of China were basically unified.This weights and measure system was one of a few successful system reforms in the history of China,which effectively alleviated the chaos of the system.However,the achievements of the reform in this period are limited and there is no uniform system of weights and measures in the whole country,mainly manifested in the inadequacy in the central and eastern regions and the slow progress of reform in the western regions.The outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War interrupted the process of the national government's unification of the system of weights and measures,so that the uniformity of the system stalled.In order to meet the Japanese invaders to occupy China's territory and plunder the economy for a long time,Wang puppet regime implements a unified system of "reform" in the occupied areas,but this metric system reform has not succeeded,instead caused more confusion in the enemy-occupied area.In the area under the rule of the Kuomintang,the system of weights and measures played an important role in winning the victory of the Anti-Japanese War.After the National Government moved to Chongqing,it continued to promote the uniformity of the weighing system.In order to unify the weighing and measuring system,National Bureau of Weights and Measures made great efforts in improving laws and regulations,training Prosecutors staff,supervising the measurement equipment,and promoting local progress of weights and measures reform etc.During the period of the Anti-Japanese War,the National Government had made some achievements.Although the achievements were limited,it was not easy to achieve such achievements under the severe political,military and economic conditions at that time.It deserves recognition.After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War,the reorganized Central Bureau of Standards took some measures to unify the country's weights and measures system.The Kuomintang faced a serious political,military and military crisis because of the Kuomintang's unrelenting launch of a full-scale civil war,regardless of the people's opposition.In the severe crisis,The government did not pay much attention to the reform of the system of weights and measures,so the reform of the system the national government did not achieve much success after the war.In the CCP-ruled region,the Border Region Government,represented by the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region,adopted measures to measure and balance the system.After the efforts of the Border Region Government,the countermeasure of the former chaotic system was reversed.The post-war reform of the weights and measures system of the Border Region provides a valuable reference for the new China.