Relationship with the Nationalist State

The relationship between the Nationalist government and private capital has been a controversial subject. This golden decade for the Chinese bourgeoisie represented in Communist historiography a collusion between Nanjing and the capitalists, especially those from Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Scholars, on the other hand, identified oppression by a ruthless regime serving interests of its own. 1 Recent studies, in contrast, emphasized the ad hoc nature and the institutional basis of that relationship. 2 For the salt industry, historians have focused on the successful efforts from a bureaucratic and institutional perspective of rationalization, professionalization, technocratic orientation, and buffering of the Salt Administration against external politicization under the new government, finding no contradiction between the laudable goals of modernization and revenue enhancement. 3 On the other hand, while contemporary critics continued to blame revenue farmers as appendages to a corrupt and bloated bureaucracy, Nanjing confronted the same problems as previous regimes had: finding a balance between revenue stability, industrial development, and people’s livelihood. 4 For the refined salt industry, its relationship with the Nationalist government thus defies characterizations of collusion or collision; it was both.