The Food Crisis In The Initial Victory Of Anti-japanese War And The National Government’s Response (August 1945-July1946)

The food problem is a major issue related with the national economy and people’s livelihood. During the Anti-Japanese War, the area occupied by the Japanese is lack of grain year after year due to the double blow of natural and man-made disasters.Since our victory in the war, the occupied areas were recovered, but the agricultural productivity had been destroyed badly in most of these places. Therefore, in the recovery areas, the food production could not recover in a short time, the difficulties of the food supply arose after the war. Meanwhile, due to the large number of the population backflow and the stores purchase by the national government, the demand of food had increased sharply. The imbalance between supply and demand of foodstuff led to the outbreak of the food crisis in the initial victory of Anti-Japanese War. But, in this case, the people in the recovered areas could not get support effectively. On one hand, the food crisis in the post-war was global. Although the United Nations relief agency was willing to help us, but it was strong in will but weak in power. On the other hand, the original distribution agencies and transports could not restore quickly after the war, which resulted in the difficulty of the grain transportation. In addition, it was a question that other areas had food whether or not. Moreover, the artificial hoarding led to the rising of food price constantly. The cancellation of the policy of land tax grain levies also made the government doesn’t have abundant food to control the market. All of these deepened the seriousness of the food crisis.In short, influenced by various factors, the food crisis was still with the recovery areas.in the postwar which particularly had two appearances. Firstly, after the war, the food supply did not remain enough. Secondly, the price of food increased severely. This phenomenon mostly occurred in big cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou etc. The spread of the food crisis not only had a strong impact on the politics, economy and military affairs of the Kongmintang(KMT), but also affected the livelihood of people seriously.Given the importance of food problems and complexity of the food crisis after the war, the national government implemented a series of measures to deal with the food crisis, including implemented loan for rice, requested food outside, launched a campaign to save, speeded up the recovery of agricultural production, developed the transportation, cracked down on hoarding behaviors and restored the land tax grain levies policy, etc. The measures taken by the national government played a positive role in easing the post-war food panic, but due to the defects of various measures and the shortcomings in the process of pushing, and to a certain extent, the disadvantages far more than success. So, generally speaking, the measures taken by the national government after the war were a failure.