The Taxation System of the Shansi-Chahar-Hopei Border Region, 1938–1945

Abstract

Shansi-Chahar-Hopei was one of the largest of the Chinese Communist areas during the war against Japan and was the only one of the areas behind the Japanese lines to receive some sort of recognition from the National Government. (Its boundaries were the Tat'ung–T'aiyuan railway on the west and T'aiyuan–Shihchiachuang–Techow railway lines in the south and it extended into Jehol and Liaoning in the north. The population under its control may have reached 20 millions.) In its general level of administration, Shansi-Chahar-Hopei was probably the most advanced of the Communist wartime areas. Its government had started the earliest, at the beginning of 1938, and it was able to develop with less Kuomintang-Communist friction than other areas. It had more than the average proportion of educated officials since, as it adjoined the Peiping-Tientsin area, students or other intellectuals who decided to leave the occupied areas to take part in anti-Japanese work were most likely to come to Shansi-Chahar-Hopei. And, while much of the mountain base area west of the P'ing-Han railway was very primitive, Central Hopei had reached a fairly high level of economic and social development before 1937.