Jagged Warlord

In fact, there has been an office of Chinese Commercial Bank in Shanghai for a long time. The so-called opening to Shanghai this time is to expand the Shanghai office into the largest Chinese Commercial Bank in East China, and take charge of all other branches in East China.The candidate has also been selected, he is Song Hanzhang.

Song Hanzhang and Zhang Jiaao became famous in the domestic banking industry in one fell swoop, which originated from the incident in 1916 when the Shanghai Branch of the Bank of China resisted the Beiyang government's "stop payment order".

After Yuan Shikai became the President, in order to deal with the Southern Revolutionary Party, wars continued for many years and military expenditures were huge. The military leaders did not believe in banknotes and demanded payment in cash.The Beiyang government has always regarded the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications as its own money printing machine, requiring advance payment of various financial expenditures, resulting in excessive money issuance, affecting the credibility of the bank and damaging the interests of shareholders. When Yuan Shikai abolished the imperial system in 1916, the two banks had issued more than 7000 million yuan of banknotes and only 2000 million yuan of cash in stock. In May, there were deposit and withdrawal runs in Beijing and Tianjin, and the bank was in a hurry.Liang Shiyi, a tycoon of the transportation department, advocated the suspension of cashing the bank and conspired to merge the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications.On May 5 of the same year, Premier Duan Qirui ordered the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications to stop cashing, which immediately shocked the government and the public.

Ethical bankers regard credit as the life of their business. Once they comply with the order and stop the payment, it will not only cause heavy damage to the social economy, but also commit suicide to the bank.Before the suspension order was issued, central banks in various places rebounded violently, expressing their reluctance to accompany Bank of Communications to commit suicide.Song Hanzhang and Zhang Jiaao planned emergency countermeasures closely and decided to openly disobey orders.The two acted separately, and Song went to Shanghai to seek legal aid from the joint trial office; Zhang was responsible for contacting Zhejiang Xingye, Zhejiang Industrial, Shanghai Commercial Savings Bank (known as the "Southern Three Banks") and foreign banks.The Chinese and foreign counterparts are well aware that the suspension of exchange orders will have a huge impact on the financial industry, and they will lose everything, so they decided to fully support the disobedience.

The act of disobedience was strongly supported by the famous industrialist Zhang Jian and other commercial shareholders. The Bank of China Commercial Shareholders Association solemnly declared: "Shanghai is the national financial hub and is under the guidance of Chinese and foreign investors. ", refused to implement the suspension order of the State Council and the Beijing Head Office, and announced five measures: 200. The shareholders' association shall elect supervisors to supervise the bank, and transfer the property liabilities and issuance reserves of the whole bank to foreign lawyers for safekeeping, and then the foreign lawyers shall Entrust Song Hanzhang and Zhang Jiaao to continue the business; [-]. The banknotes issued can be cashed at any time without suspension of payment; [-]. All deposits in the bank will be exchanged at the due date; [-]. The government will not be able to withdraw funds in the future, and everything will be operated as an ordinary bank [-]. In the future, if the business suffers losses, the Association will negotiate with the North and South governments.Song and Zhang replied to the government: "In order to be responsible to the bearers, no matter what difficult circumstances they are in, they are willing to do everything possible to redeem the cash in the treasury to the last dollar before stopping the exchange."In order to prevent the shortage of cash, he also signed an overdraft contract of [-] million yuan with foreign banks.

On the day when the order to stop payment was issued, banks of communications all over the country followed the order to stop the payment. The Shanghai Branch of Bank of China became the mainstay of the disobedience. A crowd of more than 2000 people appeared in front of the bank, which gradually decreased day by day, and the trend subsided after a week.The feats of Song Hanzhang and Zhang Jiaao preserved the reputation of the bank, and they also became heroes in the industry.

After Yuan Shikai's death, the Beiyang government appointed Xu Enyuan as the president of the Bank of China. The Beiyang government has always been worried about the Shanghai branch's disobedience. In December 1916, Xu Enyuan proposed to transfer Zhang Jiadun to be the manager of the Chongqing Branch of the Bank of China, and Hu Muxiang, the assistant manager of the Shanghai Branch, to be promoted to the deputy manager in order to achieve the purpose of separation.Song Hanzhang believed that Xu Enyuan's move was completely revenge against the Shanghai branch, and resigned angrily to express his opposition.

As a result, Wang Jiang, the president of Chinese Commercial Bank, took the opportunity to poach Song Hanzhang and Zhang Jiaao, and recommended them to Li Mohan.Li Mohan was overjoyed, praised Wang Jiang severely, and then appointed Song Hanzhang as the general manager of East China Region of Huashang Bank.Zhang Jiaao, who was known as the number one financial manager in the Republic of China, was left in the Governor's Mansion and served as the director of the Shandong Provincial Department of Finance.

As soon as Zhang Jiaao took office as the director of the Finance Department, he began to flex his muscles. He first sorted out the industrial situation in Shandong.

At that time, there were mainly two groups of people who invested in enterprises, namely in-service officials and businessmen or gentry with certain funds.The former, such as Beiyang bureaucrats Xu Shichang, Li Yuanhong, and Zhu Qiqian, used to operate Shandong Zhongxing Coal Mine in their private names and made huge profits.The latter is like Cong Liangbi, the founder of Zhenye Match Factory. He was originally a Yantai trader. A match factory.Most of the enterprises invested and established by in-service officials have strong funds and large production volumes, and thus occupy a dominant position in production and sales in certain industries.Businessmen who have turned from commercial capital accumulation to investment in industry often need to turn to competent officials to solve the problem of insufficient funds.

However, because Li Mohan swept up Shandong like a storm, many gentry, businessmen, and old Beiyang bureaucrats who resisted were suppressed, which made the prestige and execution of the Shandong Governor's Mansion reach the peak. Village level.In view of this, Zhang Jiaao believed that the Shandong Governor’s Mansion could use the method of centralized government quotations for procurement and signing bulk purchase contracts with foreign merchants to ensure the interests of the majority of Shandong merchants.

After reading Zhang Jia'ao's suggestion, Li Mohan said, "This policy of unified purchase and sales conflicts with the very traditional model that people want to stock up when prices are low and sell when prices are high."

Zhang Jiaao said: "In theory, this is the case. However, according to your industrial construction plan, Governor, we need to buy a lot of machinery and equipment. If we don't expand the profits of exports, where will we get the money? In addition, the development of the textile industry requires a lot of cotton and raw silk , if farmers are allowed to hoard at low prices and sell at high prices, how can the industry develop?"

The experience of later generations tells us that the unified purchase and marketing system is exactly adapted to the needs of industrial capital accumulation.In the process of operation, the transfer of agricultural accumulation to the industrial field has been realized in the form of price scissors between industrial and agricultural products.The so-called price scissors difference is: adopting the national pricing form of agricultural products, purchasing from farmers at a low price, and selling to urban residents and industrial enterprises at a low price, so as to maintain low wages and low raw material costs in large industries, and provide a means of continuously generating excess industrial profits. Conditions, and finally turned over by the industry to concentrate the construction funds for the country's industrialization. "Scissors" is actually a "hidden tax".In addition to paying the "clear tax" to the state, that is, public grain, farmers also pay "hidden taxes" when selling agricultural products. The unified purchase and marketing also intensifies the division between urban and rural areas, and widens the gap between urban and rural areas. It is the "sacrifice" of Chinese farmers, It provided primitive accumulation for China's industrial construction, thus establishing a preliminary industrial foundation.

However, accumulation is the premise of expanded reproduction, and the same is true for agricultural production.In the case of relatively insufficient national financial support for agriculture, the accumulation of agriculture itself is particularly important.If the scissors gap is too large, the value created by the agricultural sector will be transferred too much, and the price of agricultural products will be very low, so that the sales income of commodity agricultural products will make little profit after deducting the cost, or even lose money, and agriculture will lose its self-accumulation ability.

Farmers' income is low, their living standards cannot be improved, their enthusiasm for production is frustrated, and their ability and enthusiasm for inputting agricultural means of production are reduced accordingly.Moreover, heavy industry is a capital-intensive industry, and its ability to absorb employment is poor.Therefore, the priority development of heavy industry has not brought about the non-agricultural transfer of surplus agricultural labor while capital has flowed out from the agricultural sector in large quantities.With the natural increase of agricultural population and labor force, the growth of agricultural labor productivity will inevitably stagnate for a long time, and the rate of surplus products will tend to decline.The result of the vicious circle was slow agricultural development and the hope of the state to provide more accumulation through the agricultural sector was dashed.

The long-term scissors policy also has a negative impact on industrial development.Most of the textile industry uses agricultural products as raw materials.For a long time, due to the low price of agricultural products affecting farmers' enthusiasm for production, resulting in a shortage of domestic supply of raw materials for light industry, they had to rely on a large amount of imports and spent huge amounts of foreign exchange.In addition, most of the markets for heavy industrial products are in rural areas.The scissors gap is too large, the agricultural self-accumulation ability is poor, and the farmers' demand for agricultural and industrial products with the ability to pay is not strong, which greatly limits the market expansion of heavy industrial products.

Li Mohan rejected Zhang Jiaao's suggestion, saying: "Actually, the Ministry of Finance is not short of money, and it can be said to be very rich. But what I am worried about is that investing too much money into the market at once will cause inflation. "

Zhang Jiaao thought for a while and said: "Then the only way is to issue public bonds. Inflation is the rise in prices and excessive currency circulation, and the issuance of national bonds is conducive to recovering excess currency in the market, reducing currency circulation, and reducing price increases and inflationary pressures." .”

Zhang Jiaao continued: "I am from Baoshan. The landlords and gentry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang lack industries and suitable investment projects. After making money, the landlords and gentry often choose to buy land first, or they simply pile up the silver in the cellar to mold. When I was in Jiangsu, I met a lot of landlords and gentry who had millions of dollars but were reluctant to invest. This situation is caused by the country’s turmoil in the past ten years, and they all keep money for self-defense, and secondly, there is a lack of investment projects in the country. , especially the landowners who guarantee their income during droughts and floods are not willing to invest in risky industrial and commercial industries. Over the past three years, various countries have issued currency indiscriminately in China, especially Japan, which has issued tens of millions of yen through Zhengjin Bank to circulate in our country, and withdraw gold and silver through currency to make a huge difference."

Zhang Jia’ao’s suggestion is to use Shandong’s industrial and mining enterprises and planned railway shares as collateral to raise public bonds from China, and use a high annual interest rate of 5 cents to speed up the return of these dead money. It is estimated that about 5000 million can be withdrawn from this alone.In addition, national government bonds will be issued and sold to the market.

As soon as Zhang Jiaao's words came out, Song Hanzhang and Wang Jiang shook their heads. Wang Jiang said, "The annual interest rate of five cents is too high. Currently, the annual interest rate of loans to China in various countries is only about 7 cents. If the public debt exceeds 500 million yuan, only the interest will be paid every year." It will cost [-] million."

Song Hanzhang said: "The risk of doing so is too high. Once the current situation continues to be unstable, or the future economic growth rate is lower than the speed of paying interest, then the national finance will bear a huge burden, which is very likely to lead to financial bankruptcy. Severe financial turmoil, which eventually led to the collapse of the entire monetary system."

In the parallel world, Japan was able to reverse its pre-war debt of 17 billion yen and become a capital-exporting country because it made a fortune in arms during World War I. In addition, it took advantage of the contraction of Britain and France to exploit China at extremely low prices, and continuously transferred raw materials. Sell ​​to Europe to earn the difference.Even the Beiyang government at that time created a miracle of 13% annual economic growth during the war.Li Mohan asked himself, why can't I do it myself?

However, Li Mohan, who is not short of money, finally decided to issue 5000 million public bonds.In addition, a total of 5000 million Chinese merchant coins were invested in Shandong's economic construction from the fiscal allocation of [-] million.