The Development Of "Work And Cooperation" In The Northwest Region During The Anti-Japanese War And Social Changes

Along with the outbreak of Anti-Japanese War, Chinese Industrial Cooperative Movement was born and played an important role in the economic construction of its time. The C.I.C. Office had established seven headquarters before the ending of the war, which include Northwest, Southeast, Southwest, Zhewan, Jinyu, Dianqian and Chuankang. They were around eighteen provinces, such as Shanxi, Henan, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangxi and Sichuan. The movement was a large-scale and deep-going production campaign, widely known as national defense line for economy. As so far, scholars have carried out many researches on it, most of which turn to the process of Gong Ho and the role of Gong Ho in the war of resistance against Japanese invasion. However, the Northwest Headquarter, firstly established and as the most active area in the development of Gong Ho, has not got proper attention. During Anti-Japanese War, the Northwest Headquarter set up 26 offices under the aegis of many democratic personnel like Soong Ching-ling and Edgar Snow, distributed in the frontier, rear area and the intermediate zone. It concentrated refugees, skilled workers, peasants, women and patriotic intellectuals into a group of powerful workforce. On the basis, over 500 industrial cooperatives were built in the Northwest Headquarter, which had 10,000 cooperators, including spinning, apparel, chemical, machinery and hardware. About 100 kinds of production were output, covering blankets, uniforms, alcohol, flour, etc. Moreover, the Northwest Headquarter ranked first place, compared with other headquarters from the points of cooperatives, cooperators, total output value and the loans. So the paper focuses on Gong Ho in the Northwest Headquarter. Firstly, it introduces the background, organizations and association constitution of Gong Ho. Then it discusses the social change led by Gong Ho in the Northwest Headquarter, taking its education and production activities as the keys. Three points are analyzed in this section, that is, refugee relief and growth in living standard in the view of social instability, semi-industrialization and resource exploitation in the view of industrial development, thinking of female emancipation and the spread of anti-Japanese thoughts in the view of conscious change. In addition, as a part of Gong Ho in the Northwest Headquarter, Yan’an C.I.C. Office is very different from the others. So the last chapter make a brief introduction of it, just as supplementary. Also, analysis on the decline of Gong Ho in the Northwest Headquarter will be present in the last chapter. Some references may be available to the development of cooperative cause in modern times.