Japan's economic development

In the early days after World War II, Japan's democratic reforms in a wide range of fields, such as politics, economy, military affairs, education and justice, were all carried out under the leadership of the American occupation authorities. Mainly includes: First, in order to crack down on Japanese militaristic forces, the following measures are taken: dissolving all Japanese troops; Arrest tojo hideki and other 140 war criminals and organize trials by the Far East International Military Tribunal; Abolish the Law on Public Security and the Law on Public Security Police, and abolish the ultra-high police; Dissolve right-wing fascist groups; Dismiss militarists from public office; Shinto is separated from the state; Release all political prisoners, including producers. Second, amend the Constitution according to the intention of the American occupation authorities. The revised Japanese Constitution was adopted by the House of Lords and the House of Representatives on1October 7 1946, officially promulgated on1October 3 165438, and came into effect on May 3 1947. The new constitution stipulates that "sovereignty belongs to the people" and abolishes the absolute ruling power of the emperor. "The emperor is the symbol of Japan and the symbol of all Japanese people"; Japan is a parliamentary country, the cabinet is responsible to the National Assembly, and the executive power is executed by the cabinet. "Forever give up the war launched as a national sovereignty" and "do not maintain the army, navy and air force and other war forces". The new constitution has made Japan a bourgeois constitutional monarchy and realized the democratization of the political system. Third, dissolve the chaebol. The American occupation authorities first designated 83 companies such as Mitsui Company as holding companies, and 56 of the top ten chaebol such as Mitsui, Mitsubishi, An Tian and Sumitomo were chaebol families. All the stocks of these appointees must be handed over to the "Holding Company Arrangement Committee". Dissolve the holding company, and order the heads of chaebol families and chaebol companies to resign, and they shall not be reinstated within ten years. On this basis, the Law on Prohibition of Monopoly and the Law on Prohibition of Excessive Concentration of Economic Power were enacted to prohibit cartels from acting together and to define small enterprises with excessive concentration of economic power. This reform is far from achieving the expected goal. Only 28 of the 83 designated holding companies were dissolved. Of the 325 enterprises initially designated as excessively concentrated economic power, only 8 were actually classified as small enterprises. Although the dissolution of chaebol was not complete, it eradicated the feudal rule form of Japanese chaebol and promoted the reform and modernization of Japanese enterprise management system after the war. Fourth, agricultural land reform. The agricultural land reform plan has been promulgated twice. The main contents are as follows: the leased land owned by landlords in the village and the leased land owned by landlords who are not in the village are forcibly purchased by the government and sold to landless or landless farmers. More than 6,543.8+0.9 million town steps were purchased from the original 2.3 million town steps leased land in China, of which more than 6,543.8+0.8 million town steps were sold to tenants at low prices. In rural areas, 90% of cultivated land has become a yeoman, and about 90% of farmers have become a yeoman or a semi-yeoman. The feudal landlord system was basically eliminated, and a new land ownership relationship with yeomen as the main body was formed. In addition, Japan has also carried out reforms in culture, education, labor legislation, civil service system, police system and family system. Post-war reform is a top-down bourgeois democratic reform, which solved the historical task left over from Meiji Restoration. Japan changed from a militaristic fascist country to a bourgeois democratic country, which laid a good foundation for post-war economic recovery and rapid growth.

By analyzing Japan's economic base, American support policies, opportunities of Korean War and Vietnam War, reduction of defense expenditure and military burden, and favorable international political and economic environment, it is revealed that the rapid development of Japan's economy after the war is caused by rare favorable conditions and great opportunities.

Japan's Economic Recovery and Development after World War II

After World War II, Japan's economic growth rate was the highest among the major capitalist countries. From 1953 to 1979, the average annual growth rate of Japanese industry is 10.9%, while that of the Federal Republic of Germany is 5.7%, that of France is 4.2%, that of the United States is 4%, and that of the United Kingdom is 2.5%. The proportion of Japan's gross national product in the capitalist world was only 1.5% in 1950, and soared to 13.3% in 1980, and its position in the capitalist world jumped from the seventh place to the second place, second only to the United States. Some western scholars call the economic development of Japan after the war "miracle" in the 20th century.

Economic reconstruction in the post-war decade

After the war, it took Japan 10 years to reorganize wartime industry into peacetime industry to heal the wounds of war. It is generally believed that 1945- 1955 is the "revival period" of Japanese economy, that is, the period of national economic recovery and restructuring. 1On August 5, 945, the Japanese emperor sent a letter of truce to the whole country, and the Second World War finally came to an end. The large-scale war of aggression launched by Japanese militarism has brought profound disasters to people in China and other Asian countries, and also caused unprecedented havoc to the Japanese nation. At the end of the war, there were 1 19 cities in China, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were attacked by atomic bombs. 2.36 million houses were destroyed by the war and 9 million people were displaced. Nearly half of industrial equipment, roads, bridges and port facilities have been damaged to varying degrees. Industrial and mining production has fallen sharply. If the average level of 1934- 1936 before the war was 100, then the industrial and mining production index of 1945 was only 60.2, 1946, and even fell to 30.7. 1945 The agricultural harvest failed, and the rice yield was only 60% of the normal year, which caused a serious food crisis. Due to the extreme shortage of materials, the currency circulation has soared and inflation has increased day by day. From the autumn of 1945 to the beginning of 1946, the black market price of major consumer goods soared to 30 to 60 times the official price. Economic chaos continued until 1947. At that time, Japan's first economic white paper, written by the famous economist Liu Chongren, admitted that "the government, enterprises and families all suffered losses". This sentence summed up the difficult situation of Japanese economy at that time, and even became a famous saying. Japan's post-war economic reconstruction began with the implementation of the "tilted mode of production". In order to get rid of Japan's economic paralysis, the Japanese government established the Economic Stability Headquarters in August 1946, which is responsible for formulating and implementing relevant economic policies. At that time, the biggest obstacle to Japan's economic recovery was the lack of energy. Because of the lack of coal, blast furnaces have been closed, and half of the trains in the country have stopped running, which has hindered the transportation of raw materials urgently needed to resume production, and industrial production has been shrinking day by day. The Economic Stability Department subsequently implemented the "Inclined Production Mode" in the autumn of 1946. The so-called "tilted mode of production" means concentrating all efforts to restore and develop coal production in the case of serious shortage of funds and raw materials, using the produced coal to supply the steel industry, and then using the increased steel to expand the coal industry. First of all, efforts should be made to expand the reproduction capacity of coal and steel as a lever to drive the recovery of the whole economy. According to this economic strategy, the "Revival Treasury" specially set up by the government issued a loan of 47.5 billion yen to the coal industry in 1947- 1948, accounting for 36% of the total treasury loans. In 1946, Japan produced 22.74 million tons of coal, and in 1947, it reached 29.32 million tons, an increase of nearly 30%. In the same period, the steel output also increased by 2 1%. From 65438 to 0948, the Japanese economy showed initial signs of improvement. Industrial and mining production recovered to 54.6% before the war, including 90% coal and 49.2% steel. Despite these effects, inflation is out of control due to the payment of huge price subsidies and large loans. The increase rate of wholesale price is as high as 1947 and 1948, which are 193% and 167% respectively. Japan's economic recovery has been strongly supported by the United States. After the end of World War II, the United States occupied Japan militarily, carried out democratic reforms aimed at eradicating the socio-economic foundation of militarism in accordance with the spirit of the Potsdam Proclamation, and forced Japan to dismantle industrial equipment and compensate the victorious countries. After 1948, with the intensification of the cold war between the East and the West and the victorious tendency of the people's revolutionary war in China, the American ruling clique tried to use Japan as an anti-* * fortress in the Far East in order to resist the so-called "Far East productism", and the focus of its occupation policy towards Japan began to shift to supporting Japan's economic recovery. Specifically, first of all, Japan's war compensation to the United States has been reduced again and again. By May 1954, it was simply written off and all the dismantled industrial equipment was returned. The second is to provide Japan with funds and materials urgently needed to resume production. From 1949 to 195 1, in the name of "occupied territory relief fund" and "occupied territory economic recovery fund", the United States provided up to $2.3 billion in loans and American aid materials to Japan. The United States is also directly involved in Japan's economic restructuring. The State Council and the War Department jointly issued statements in February 1948 and 1948, proposing "Nine Principles for Stabilizing Japan's Economy" and demanding that Japan end its financial chaos as soon as possible. In February of the following year, Joseph Dodge, the director of Detroit Bank, went to Japan as the special envoy of the President of the United States and the financial adviser of the occupying forces, and proposed to the Japanese government to strengthen taxes, freeze wages, cut financial subsidies and stop lending, and implemented the so-called "Dodge Rectification". The Japanese budget of 1949 was classified as "super-balanced budget" with a large surplus, and the exchange rate of 1 USD equal to 360 yen was also determined at this time. "Dodge rectification" makes residents' taxes heavier, enterprises' money is tight, commodities are overstocked and demand is shrinking. However, in 1949, the government's fiscal revenue turned from deficit to surplus for the first time, the currency circulation tended to decrease, the price level began to decline, and the rampant inflation was alleviated, which created the necessity for the subsequent economic recovery? Premise. From 65438 to 0950, after the Korean War broke out, the United States purchased a large amount of arms and materials in neighboring Japan to repair trucks, tanks and ships, which was a gratifying stimulus to the Japanese economy, which suffered from insufficient demand at that time. Japan's "special needs" income from goods and services was1490,000 dollars in 1950, and soared to 809 million dollars in 1953. During the war, it totaled $2.47 billion, accounting for half of Japan's total exports during the same period. On the other hand, the Korean War prompted the western countries to expand their troops and prepare for war, which set off a craze for material procurement and opened the door for Japanese goods to enter the world market. 1950 in the second half of the year, Japan's exports increased by 55% compared with the first half. The export value of 1952 is 2.7 times that of 1949. Since 1949, nearly150 billion yen of goods accumulated due to market depression have been sold out. The textile industry has quickly resumed its development because of a large number of orders; The output of steel, machinery, shipbuilding, cement and other industries has also increased significantly. The whole economic life has become more active than ever before. The gross national product reached the pre-war level in 195 1 year. As the Japanese monopoly bourgeoisie said, the "Korean War" became a "godsend opportunity" to promote Japan's economic recovery. 195 1 year, after the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the United States nominally ended its military occupation of Japan. Under the slogan of "economic self-reliance", the Japanese government vigorously reorganized the economic structure, built basic industries, and began to implement a series of state monopoly capitalist measures. It mainly includes: making production rationalization plans for steel, coal, shipbuilding, electric power and other industries, attracting 40% private investment to these industries, and speeding up the transformation of old equipment; Establish Japan Development Bank and Japan Export-Import Bank to provide long-term low-interest loans for equipment investment and import and export of key industries, directly invest in railways, ports, electric power and other departments, and support the recovery and development of basic industries; Amend the tax system, implement a special depreciation system for enterprise equipment, speed up equipment renewal and expand capital accumulation. On June 1953, the government stipulated that enterprises can deduct depreciation expenses equivalent to 50% of the equipment price from the total profits of the current year without paying taxes. Encouraged by the government, enterprises compete to increase investment and update equipment. 195 1 year, 7 1% of Japanese enterprises used old equipment with a service life of more than 6 years, and it dropped to 42.8% in 1955. Japan began to implement the Foreign Investment Law in 1950, and joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in 195 1, using foreign capital, and imported equipment gradually increased. From 195 1 to 1955, the labor productivity of Japanese manufacturing industry increased by 47%, and the industrial output increased by 12.3% annually. During this period, Japanese agriculture also recovered and developed. After the war, the United States carried out agricultural land reform in Japan, established an individual peasant economy based on small land ownership, and farmers' enthusiasm improved. In addition, the government encourages the increase of chemical fertilizers, the promotion of improved varieties, and the construction of water conservancy projects, so that agricultural output will increase year by year. By 195 1, Japan's agricultural production has exceeded the pre-war level. From 65438 to 0955, the total grain output reached a record high, in which rice was basically self-sufficient. This year, Japan's per capita national income exceeded the pre-war level, thus marking the completion of the post-war economic recovery. After reviewing the economic life of 1956, the government's economic white paper officially declared: "Now it is not' post-war', what we are facing now is a completely different situation, and the era of seeking development through recovery has passed. Future development depends on modernization.