"According to the last change of land deeds, in all 16 counties, there are 19 landlords with more than 10 hectares (1,000 mu) of land, and most of these people are related to Liu Xiang's 21st Army, Yang Sen's 20th Army, and Li Jiayu's border guards, and there are 137 households with more than 500 mu of land, 859 households with 100 to 500 mu, 8,335 households with 50 mu, and less than 50 mu," Li Zhilong said: "We have summarized and classified them, and 70 percent of these more than 9,000 households are related to various armies. In particular, Liu Xiang's 21st Army and Yang Sen's 20th Army, both of which had been stationed in eastern Sichuan and Yucheng for a long time, and they were inextricably linked with the local Pao Ge organizations, and if they opposed them, the social order in the Yucheng area might be greatly disturbed. ”

Zhuang Jihua did not speak, but looked at Teng Jie with his eyes, Teng Jie understood, and he continued: "The grassroots party organizations in the rural areas have been established, and we mobilized the peasants last year to build farmland and water conservancy measures, helped some peasants who lacked farm tools and labor, and punished a group of bullies who ran rampant in the township, so we have won the trust of the peasants, and we can rely on strong grassroots organizations to implement this policy." ”

"The Eight Pao Brother Organizations in Yucheng have been controlled in our hands," Tang Zong said unhurriedly, as soon as he entered Yucheng Zhuang Jihua, he asked him to secretly send people into the Pao Brother Organization, and then control these underworlds, at first he was still a little resistant, but as time went by, he felt more and more that the original strategy was clever: "However, the Pao Brother organization is very loose, often a township or even a village is an organization, which is the biggest difference with the Shanghai Qinghong Gang, so we can't control all the Pao Brother organizations." ”

"Mayor Yang, what do you think?" After Zhuang Jihua listened to the briefings of several generals under him, he turned his head and asked Yang Yongtai.

"It seems that you have figured out the situation very clearly," Yang Yongtai sincerely admired the meticulousness of their work, and also realized that Zhuang Jihua's move had been planned for a long time, and the implementation of rent reduction and interest reduction in Yucheng was already on the way, and no one could stop it: "Mr. Zhang Jingjiang once engaged in rent reduction and interest reduction in Zhejiang, and was unanimously opposed by the landlords and gentry, and they adopted the method of refusing to pay salaries, and Mr. Jingjiang finally had to give in, the Cultural Revolution, this strategy is extremely dangerous, once it fails, it will be wasted, Grassroots organizations will be destroyed. ”

"If we can't reduce rents and interest rates, and ordinary people can't benefit from development, why should they support us? Soldiers are fighting at the front, their loved ones are starving in the rear, will they work hard? Will reservists be willing to go to the front? Zhuang Jihua remembered Zhao Hanjie's past, and he couldn't help but feel sour in his heart. After Zhao Hanjie came over, he talked to him, and Zhao Hanjie told him that until he became the company commander, the situation at home was slightly better, and the so-called better point was that the coarse grain could be full. Zhuang Jihua immediately took out a hundred yuan of ocean for him to send home, and asked his family to come to Yucheng and work as workers in the factory. Subsequently, an internal rule was developed that the families of the development team could be given priority to enter the factory. Zhuang Jihua didn't expect the mood of the guards to rise all of a sudden, on average, each person brought two brothers and sisters, Zhuang Jihua didn't care about anything, all of them were stuffed into the factory, of course, the literacy work was better, and the wages were higher.

Yang Yongtai politely objected to this regulation, telling Zhuang Jihua that it was impossible for him to recruit everyone into the factory, and that there should be a condition, such as three years after serving as a soldier, or the immediate family members of the soldiers of the escort team who were recruited first by the factory. Zhuang Jihua immediately accepted Yang Yongtai's suggestion, because there were too many people who flocked to him, and the most important thing was that the cultural quality of these people was too low, and most of them could only engage in manual work.

However, Zhuang Jihua did not intend to accept Yang Yongtai's persuasion this time, and the rent and interest reduction must be carried out and must be successful, otherwise the peasants' active surnames cannot be thoroughly mobilized.

"The Red Army has already moved south, and immediately ordered Song Yunfei and Du Yuming to bring the troops back." As soon as Zhuang Jihua's words came out, Yang Yongtai knew that he had made up his mind to implement this policy even if he used force, so he simply kept silent.

"I don't intend to use force, but force is the backing, it's the guarantee, and sometimes it will be bloody." Zhuang Jihua's tone was very stern: "But if this blood is to flow, it must be flowed." ”

"Dry," Li Zhilong first expressed his support: "Those people have sucked the blood of the peasants, and if someone dares to defy the law, then we don't have to be polite." ”

"I'm in favor of sending out the convoy if necessary." Teng Jie was also unceremonious, the rural reform plan of the Blue Coat Society was also rent and interest reduction, but it has not been implemented. Kang Ze's formation of a special unit in Jiangxi was also forcefully carried out by killing people, but the purpose of his implementation was to suppress the Communist Party, and the method adopted was to merge families and villages, which would cause greater harm to ordinary peasants. Now Zhuang Jihua wants to implement rent reduction and interest reduction in Chongqing, touching the interests of the gentry class, but ordinary peasants will undoubtedly get greater benefits, what kind of shock will there be in society? Teng Jie felt his blood boil when he thought about it.

Tang Zong was not so excited, he was in charge of the police and secret service system, and the requirements of his profession made him accustomed to staying calm, he thought about it silently and asked: "Captain Zhuang, is it possible to close the net of the Communist Party in control, so as not to let them come out and make trouble." ”

Zhuang Jihua sneered twice: "No, it's better to continue monitoring, I'm still worried that they won't come out to make waves, if they dare to make waves, that is, they will cut themselves off from the peasants, that is their foundation." ”

"What if they take the opportunity to demand the formation of a peasant association?" Yang Yongtai asked rhetorically, he also did not believe that the Communist Party would come out to oppose rent and interest reductions, and he was worried that the Communist Party would take the opportunity to organize peasant associations and organize the peasants.

"Then let's organize a peasant association first and rob the road first," Zhuang Jihua said lightly, everyone looked at him incomprehensibly, not knowing what he meant.

"The steps to reduce rent and interest are as follows," Zhuang Jihua saw that it was time, and took out his overall plan:

"First of all, in the propaganda stage, all kinds of newspapers and broadcasts had to explain in detail why they wanted to reduce rents and interest rates, and linked him with the anti-Japanese resistance and the suppression of bandits, and with the people's livelihood doctrine of Sanming Cooking, and Teng Jie was in charge of this stage for a period of three months. The Three Youth League should organize its members to go to the countryside to publicize, and all village militia teams and party departments should participate in the propaganda and discussion. Zhuang Jihua's tone was very solemn, Yang Yongtai nodded worriedly, there were too many lessons in Zhejiang's failure, and after the failure, the grassroots cadres who advocated rent reduction and interest reduction in various places were almost slaughtered by the gentry under the pretext of the Communist Party, and the grassroots party organizations in Zhejiang were almost destroyed.

"In the second stage, a task force for reducing rent and interest rates will be set up in various towns and villages, and the escort team will send a protection team, each team member must be protected by two soldiers, and all members of the team must be equipped with guns."

"In the third stage, rent and interest reduction will be fully implemented, and the rent will not exceed 40%; The annual interest rate cannot exceed 20%, and the penalty for exceeding it is 10 times the heavy fine, and those who have armed confrontation and conspiracy and sabotage will be punished by law.

Tang Zong had to closely monitor the reaction of the Sichuan army, Liu Xiang, Liu Wenhui, and Yang Sen were local big landlords, and they were likely to indulge their subordinates to sabotage. ”

"We have a few months to prepare, planting in the spring, the wheat harvest in Yucheng is at the end of May and the beginning of June, there will be nothing before that, and when it comes to harvesting, it is time to see the real chapter."

After listening to Zhuang Jihua's arrangement, Yang Yongtai felt a little hope of success, just now he carefully weighed the difference between Zhuang Jihua and Zhejiang, and felt that Zhuang Jihua seemed to have the possibility of success; The main reason for Zhejiang's failure was that the gentry were asked for, the military expenditure was urgent, Zhejiang Tianfu levied several taxes a year, the gentry refused to pay taxes, and Zhang Jingjiang had no choice but to make concessions. The biggest difference between Zhuang Jihua and Zhang Jingjiang is that he does not collect taxes, and these gentry have no way to threaten him, unless they choose to fight by force, which will undoubtedly lead to their complete destruction. Yang Yongtai's current mood is to suffer from gains and losses, and he is worried that he will not succeed and will fail, so he opposes it; At a time, I felt that it was possible, so I was in favor of it. He lost his usual composure, and he couldn't help himself Zhuang Jihua pushed forward.

At the end of February, a letter from a reader disclosed in the "Yuzhou Evening News" that this was a letter from a member of the working group of the development team, in which he described the situation in the countryside in his area, where the landlord collected as much as eighty percent of the rent, and because he did not collect agricultural taxes, the landlord raised the rent; The interest on renting cattle used to be 60 percent, but now that the agricultural tax is no longer levied, the landlords dare to raise it to 75 percent, 20 to 200 percent for cooking oil, and 150 percent for salt. As a result, all the peasant taxes confiscated by the political axe went to the pockets of the landlords, and the peasants received almost no benefit, and he even suggested that if this was the case, it would be better to collect the peasant taxes and then feed the collected peasant taxes back to the peasants who had no land or little land.

As soon as this letter was published, public opinion was in an uproar, condemning the greed and shamelessness of the landlords, and scholars unanimously agreed that measures should be taken to limit land rents, and a professor at the Rural Construction College run by Lu Zuofu wrote an article saying that in order to implement the principle of people's livelihood, it is necessary to strictly reduce rents and interest rates, and he published an article in the newspaper that as early as the 18th year of the Republic of China, the policy of rent reduction and interest reduction was formulated as early as the 18th year of the Republic of China, limiting the land rent to no more than 40 percent and the interest rate not to exceed 20 percent.

Subsequently, some economists came out to demonstrate the impact of the bankruptcy of the rural economy on the cities, saying that once the rural market went bankrupt, it would inevitably spread to the cities, and if the rural markets were lost, there would inevitably be a backlog of commodities, and the peasants would immediately flock to the cities, and the supply of urban labor would exceed demand, so the wages of the workers would fall, and the decline in the wages of the workers would seriously weaken their purchasing power, so that the commodities would further backlog, and finally lead to the closure of a large number of factories, and the urban economy would also decline.

By mid-March, the Yuzhou Evening News had published an unsigned article entitled "The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and Rent and Interest Reductions," which for the first time linked rent and interest reductions to the War of Resistance against Japan, reversing the economic and moral discussion and deepening the discussion.

(To be continued)