Nationalist Government pre-war grievances: economy, peasants

Question 1

NG economy improvement

Answer 1

• National Reconstruction Commission built power plantsand radio stations
• Post Office network was expanded to total 12,000 bureaux by the early 1930s
• Plans wereelaborated to build 5,000 miles of railway track, check river flooding, and encourage mining and agriculture.
• Industrial output jumped by up to 10 per cent a year

Question 2

NG economy decline

Answer 2

• 1935 the silver standard was replaced with amanaged currency, but this did little good
• trade deficit doubled between 1928-33
• 1902, the country had exported 34 per cent of the world’s tea; by 1932 this was down to 9.8 per cent.
• inflation – Between 1937 and 1948, the nationalists issued money to the value of 413 trillion yuan,
• prices of items to multiply by up to 28.7 million.

Question 3

NG peasants - warlords

Answer 3

• controlled only five provinces in the Yangzi region
• Further west, the largest province, Sichuan, was controlledby local militarists
• Guangxi Clique came backfrom its short exile to run Guandong
• each confrontationdemanded the application of resources, time and attention, which could have been better spent on state-building.
• military nature of theregime was accentuated, as was the sense of living in permanent crisis.

Question 4

NG peasants - overseers

Answer 4

• regime depended on the rural gentry to actas a local government force.
• Chiang encouraged the baojia system oflocal militia which would be loyal to the regime,
• they often acted as whatone observer called ‘petty tyrants with armed police to support them’,
• they were often not local people and lacked roots or empathy with local problems.

Question 5

NG peasants - economic general

Answer 5

• ‘Rural China,’ concluded the economist Yao Hsin-ning, ‘is now bankrupt.’
• in 1933 average farm income, at $42, fell below average outgoings.
• a report in 1937 found that ‘while the industrialistscan enjoy huge profits . . . the silk peasants cannot even make a living wage.’
• 80% owned no land

Question 6

NG peasants - debt

Answer 6

• terrible flooding in central China in 1 9 3 1 forcedmany people to borrow money to buy food
• annual interest rate roseas high as 300 per cent.
• When foreign relief aid arrived, the lenders took60 per cent of it as repayment.

Question 7

NG peasants - tax

Answer 7

• · 50% tax burden, 70-90% in war years, most of which never made it to the central government as they allowed regional leaders to collect it
• 44 different taxes, in Guanzu

Question 8

NG peasants - famine

Answer 8

• famine 1934-45
• Food remained in the cities
• KMT refused to ship food in case their rivals stole it
• many of those towns there were still rich men [who] profiteered enormously. The shocking thing was that the cities…there was grain and food, and had been for months.” Edgar Snow

Question 9

NG peasants - education

Answer 9

• number of secondary schools trebled in ten years but thepeak of pupil numbers did not exceed half a million.
• state education budget was only 15 per cent of what was needed to achieve the goal of free schooling for all.

Question 10

NG peasants - health

Answer 10

• a third of the adult population of Yunnan was thought to be addicted to opium
• take from opium exceeded $100 million by 1934.
• By the mid-1930s, apopulation of 450 million had just 30,000 hospital beds and 5,000 doctors.
• up to a quarter of rural deaths on diseases spread throughthe use of excrement as fertilizer
• imported fertilizers paid 50 per cent duty

Question 11

NG bourgeoisie

Answer 11

• nascent bourgeoisie which had emerged in the Yuan Shikai and warlord period was treated ruthlessly, squeezed for money and excluded from real power - Fenby
• When Nanjing wanted to nationalize the big Shanghai banks,it used force, including Green Gang muscle.
• The bourgeoisie could enjoy a comfortable life so long asit did not challenge the regime, and kept its head down.