The Development Of The Inland Area Industry During The Anti-Japanese War And Its Long-term Effect

This paper studies the industrial development of the rear area during the Anti-Japanese War and its long-term influence.After the July 7 incident,the industrial enterprises in the eastern coastal provinces and cities moved to the western region in large numbers,which opened the "golden age" of the rear area economy.Using all kinds of archival materials,the paper first combed the internal migration of industrial enterprises since the War of Resistance against Japan.Then,supported by a series of statistical data,the development of rear industry is analyzed and evaluated.Finally,the long-term effect of rear industry in wartime is investigated through econometric model.The main work of this paper is as follows:Firstly,through the analysis of the authorities' five-year plan for heavy industry,the three-year plan and the work plan for internal relocation,it was found that the Kuomintang government had a serious misjudgment of the war situation.In the heavy industry plan,the three provinces of Hunan,Jiangxi and Hubei were listed as the core regions,of which Wuhan topped the list.However,after the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance,the three provinces were quickly caught under the fire of the Japanese army,Sichuan,Yunnan and other western provinces and regions became the real center of the rear.The misjudgment of the situation led to the internal relocation in a hurry,increasing the economic losses in the transfer.Second,the technical efficiency of 206 subdivision industries was calculated by using the statistical data from the 1933 China Industrial Survey report.Light industry,characterized by labor-intensive,is found to be relatively more productive.This result also explains why,in the absence of government intervention,there were fewer public enterprises and private enterprises operating light industry were with better development.After the outbreak of the all-out War of Resistance,in response to the needs of the war,the government began to intervene more in the economy,so that heavy industry in the rear provinces and cities developed during this period of time.This historical fact tells us that if we want to develop heavy industry against our comparative advantage,active state intervention will be essentialThirdly,according to the summary statistics rear industry(1942)related data,the paper calculates the agglomeration in the rear industry.Spatial Gini coefficient calculation is only 0.055,which means that the wartime industrial agglomeration degree was low,while the regional distribution was relatively uniform.Compared with the spatial Gini coefficient,the index considered the characteristics of different scale enterprises,which we use to calculate the degree of industrial convergence that is also higher than the spatial Gini coefficient.However,in the breakdown of the industry ranking,the two indicators provide sufficient consensus,that is to say,the agglomeration degree is generally high in miscellaneous industry,smelting industry and metal products industry,while the regional agglomeration degree is relatively low in machine manufacturing industry,textile industry and chemical industry and so on which were important to the contribution to the rear industry.In order to measure the rear area of specialization in the industry level,the paper calculates the entropy index and Krugman index,whose results show that the professional degree of specialization is generally low in the rear provinces.The absolute index(entropy index)is the lowest in Hunan,Guangxi and Sichuan.The relative index(Krugman index)is the lowest in Gansu,Jiangxi and Sichuan.Fourthly,using the statistical yearbook data of the rear provinces during the War of Resistance against Japan,a set of county data on the distribution of industrial enterprises in wartime was constructed and matched with the economic statistics of the counties in 2000.Through the econometric model,it verified the long-term impact on the industrial heritage of the War of Resistance against Japan.The regression results show that the counties with more industrial enterprises in the period of the War of Resistance against Japan have higher GDP per capita in 2000,which means that war has a long-term impact on industrial development in the rear.After a series of robust tests,this conclusion is still robust.Further more,we also found that the industrial base during the Anti-Japanese War could affect long-term economic growth by changing initial economic conditions and attracting population migrationDifferent from the historical research methods in the past,the research in this paper pays more attention to quantitative analysis and expects to describe the development of the rear industry during the War of Resistance against Japan through objective data,enhancing the scientificity and credibility of qualitative analysis conclusions.The difference between this paper and previous studies lies in that the existing historical literature pays more attention to the textual research of facts,while the research in this paper is based on the description of facts,and through the quantitative analysis of the statistical data,the paper further discusses the long-term influence on the rear industry.The conclusion of this paper reflects on the strategy of comparative advantage.The industrial structure of the rear area in wartime is obviously contrary to its comparative advantage.In the long run,however,this kind of industrial policy may have a positive effect.For backward countries or regions,active state intervention in the economy is still a possible option for industrialization.Of course,how to avoid government failure in the process of state intervention will be another problem we are faced with.