On Song Ziwen's Financial Thoughts

Song ziwen was an important person in the history of Republic of China.Heplayed various roles in the polictal arena,but first and formost was a financier. From1925 to l933,he successively served as the minister of finance in Guangzhou,Wuhanand Naning national govemxnent,he planned, directed and put a series of importantfinancia1 refOrmation prOjects into practice.Song ziwen's dissertations on financemainly exsisted in the reports of treasury department, finance subjects,documents,letters,telegraphs and speeches.Among the upper class ofKuomintang,Song ziwen had more open and practical minds.Furthermore,he hadstrong sense of renovation and nationalism standpoint.He played some active roles onthe development of national industry' & commerce,social economy, andmodernazition of finance system. This article tries to analyze his financiaIthoughts and opinions from his financial policies and measures.This paper is composed of six parts.The first part is preface,which rnainl}' expounds theresearch vaIue and practicaI meaning of studying Song zi\'-en's financial thoughts.The second partelaborates the formation process, the measures taken,the content and historical meanings offinance unification. The third part e1aborates his opinions of budget s}'stem establishment anddisarmament,military expenditure reduction.On the other hand,this paper focus on the featurecontent of his budget sy'stem. ln general,the budget establishment and finance unification aresupplement each other, to achieve budget by unif}'ing finance ''hi1e achieving financeunification by strict enfOrcement of orders and prohibitions. His financial opinions to somedegree reflect the wishes of the financia1 circle and industriaI circIe(focus on the areas of Jiangsuand Zhejiang) to reduce the military expenditUre,put an end to civil strife, develop econom}'.The fourth part elaborates the taxes reformation from fOur aspects. First of a1l, he settled andreformed old chaos taxes system, abolished some severe and miscellaneous levies, acceleratednational industry & commerce, consAncted Chinese taxes system; secondly, he managed to getpartial boiff autonomy; thirdly he resumed salt tax audit system, abated exclusive seIling rights,gave salt taxe5 an overall reform; he dismissed the former provincial transit duty and levieduniop tax.Tarriff salt tax and unitary tax formed three central taxes system, which were mainrevenue of Kuomintang government before anti-Japan war broke out. The fifth part elaboratesthe schemes that Song ziwen cleared up home and foreign loans and the opinion of loaning tosolve finance difficulty. The sixth part is epilogue which set forth the historical limit and classlimit of Song ziw'en's financial thoughts...