After the Japanese side made concessions and agreed to let the new and old mechanics of the prisoners of war stay in China and send their families to China, Hu Weidong, on behalf of the Red Party, agreed to release the remaining prisoners of war back to Japan, but at the same time demanded that the Japanese government promise not to persecute those prisoners of war who accepted or partially accepted the Red ideology. Not only did he readily accept this request, but he even said that he could recognize the Japanese Communist Party as a legitimate political party and allow them to fight for the legitimate rights and interests of the workers and peasants through parliamentary struggle, provided that all members of the Japanese Communist Party made their identities public. However, Hu Weidong still agreed to demand that the Japanese Communist Party abandon the armed insurrection method of struggle in the future, and let some of its personnel disclose their identities in order to strengthen communication with the Japanese government, provided that Japan abandons the national policy of foreign aggression and expansion and brutal exploitation at home.

This demand is naturally not low, but Hu Weidong said it very vividly, for example, "liberation of the colony" is not counted in foreign aggression and expansion, and as long as the common people can survive, it is not considered cruel exploitation, so the Japanese government finally accepted Hu Weidong's conditions, although the Japanese high-level leaders, including Chongren, understood very well that Hu Weidong was deliberately leading Japan's "troubled waters" to the Western colonies in the South Seas

It is worth mentioning that when Hu Weidong signed the peace treaty, he not only represented the Red Party and the people's government of the liberated areas, but also signed the peace treaty in his capacity as the plenipotentiary representative of the Chinese central government. However, it must be noted that although the situation in the Northeast was not completely clear. The Red Party Central Committee demanded that the major military regions make preparations for the liberation of the whole of China, but it was the national army that made the first move

At that time, although the total strength of the national army was also 5 million, most of them were cobbled together by strong men, whether it was morale, training or combat experience, it was far from being comparable with the elite divisions of the PLA, and even weapons and equipment and logistics supplies were obviously inferior, and even half of the main force of the PLA was engaged in a decisive battle with the devils, but even if it was only half of the field army, it was by no means comparable to the rabble of the national army. In vain gave the Red Party the pretext of unifying the whole country by force. Did he have water in his brain? As the most successful warlord during the Republic of China, Lao Jiang naturally would not be so stupid, and the reason why he took the lead was that he really had no other choice. Because at this time, his Chongqing government was so poor that he couldn't even pay his military salary. Fighting, of course, is looking for death. If you don't fight, you're waiting for death!

Historically, after the Second Year of the Anti-Japanese War, the Chongqing government's finances were already seriously unable to make ends meet, largely relying on the intentions of overseas Chinese (donations, subscription of public bonds, etc.). or unintentional funding (remittances and the like) to keep going; And in this space-time. After the Central Plains Field Army crossed the Yangtze River, recovered the Shanghai-Nanjing-Hangzhou region, and helped the Jiangnan Military Region to grow rapidly, while the Japanese army withdrew from the mainland, the southeastern coastal areas of China were soon all liberated, so that even if there were many overseas Chinese who supported the Chiang regime, the "legitimate" central government, their funds could not be transported to the Kuomintang area

However, when the financial situation was on the verge of collapse, Lao Chiang, out of fear of the People's Liberation Army, had to maintain the size of the army at about 5 million, and the military salaries required by these officers and soldiers alone exceeded the financial limits of the Chongqing government. In desperation, Lao Chiang had no choice but to raise taxes frantically, and officials at all levels were greedy for ink, which made the actual taxes collected from the common people astonishingly large, and the situation in Sichuan was the most serious, and the early collection of taxes actually received in the 21st century

But even so, it still could not fill the huge financial black hole, but the Chongqing government still had a trick, that is, desperately started the money printing press, used hyperinflation to quench thirst, and indirectly passed on the heavy financial burden to the people in the Kuomintang region, coupled with Hu Weidong's "economic blockade" strategy, which led to a serious shortage of supply of daily necessities in large and medium-sized cities in the Kuomintang region, making prices more and more out of control, and in the second half of 1938 alone, the average price in the Kuomintang area skyrocketed by more than 100 times. As a result, the vast majority of the Kuomintang region, including intellectuals and landlords and gentry with good incomes, except for the top elites, went bankrupt, and an American journalist faithfully recorded the situation in the Kuomintang at that time in one of his reports

"For the inhabitants of the city, the immediate question is no longer whether they want communism or dictatorship. Dedicated Chinese faculty members have previously declared that they would rather starve to death than leave their posts. But now that they were in real danger of starvation, rather than the possibility of starvation, their thinking soon changed to a different level. On October 24, 1938, 82 professors from Southwest Associated University announced a boycott, saying that their monthly salaries were only enough to support themselves for a few days. Two days later, seven major colleges and universities, including National Central University and Zhejiang University, held a class and teaching boycott. Chongqing's 16 municipal secondary schools and 234 primary schools also responded. Since November 13, tens of thousands of professors and students from 18 institutions of higher learning and middle schools in Hankou and in Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Changsha and other cities have joined the strike. Education in the Western sense has come to a standstill. Teachers had to spend hours borrowing money to buy food. The students went to the queue to buy rice for the cold professor

Soon, faculty members began to commit suicide. A female biology professor at Xiamen University was poisoned, saying she couldn't feed her children. Du Su, a professor at the National Guangxi University, committed suicide by jumping off a building because he could not afford the hospital. A teacher at Hermes-Epitek Middle School hanged himself because he was seen selling his clothes on the side of the road and suspected that he had stolen something. Not only instructors, but also military officers have committed suicide. Major General Luo Yingchao committed suicide by jumping into the water from the boat, and the suicide note said, "Yu has been in the army for 30 years, and as a major general, he still can't support his family, and he can't bear to see them starve to death."

Insensitivity and despair spread dramatically. At the same time, anger is rising. Chengdu's mass rice shops, restaurants, grocery stores and briquette shops. The police arrested dozens of troublemakers, but later had to release them because the prisons were already overcrowded. What's more, there have been police officers who turned their heads and pretended not to see anything when the mob stormed into the rice shop. A policeman said to me, 'Why should I arrest them?' Maybe I'll do it with them myself tomorrow. (To be continued......)