Bureaucrat Capital and Bureaucrat-Capitalist Economy

Bureaucrat-capital refers to "the bureaucrat-capital obtained during the reign of the KMT in Nanjing". Mao Zedong pointed out: "To serve the needs of its aggression, imperialism created the comprador system and the bureaucrat-capital in China.”

It was gradually formed and developed after the establishment of the Nanjing Government of the KMT established in 1927, and reached its peak during and after the Anti-Japanese War and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. Bureaucrat-capital in China has several component parts: firstly, the state monopoly capital owned by the KMT government and controlled by the bureaucrats; secondly, the private capital companies directly owned by the KMT bureaucrats; thirdly, the "openly known shares" owned by the KMT government and the "private shares" owned by the individual bureaucrat capitalists in the private capitalist enterprises. The first and second component parts, especially the first part, were the main pillar of the bureaucrat-capital.

There were three specific forms of bureaucrat-capital: the first was the form of capital owned by bureaucrats, which refers to certain enterprises run and operated by bureaucrats themselves; the second is the form of capital used by bureaucrats, which refers to those enterprises called "public", but actually controlled by bureaucrats; the third is the form of capital controlled by bureaucrats, which refers to the private enterprise capital controlled by bureaucrats in many ways and aspects. These three forms of bureaucrat-capital were interdependent and interconnected, and the latter two facilitated the former. In the old China, the bureaucrat-capitalist economy was characterised by three features of being comprador, feudal and state monopolized capitalist economy which was closely combined with foreign imperialism, the domestic landlord class and the old-type of rich peasants.

In 1947,Mao Zedong pointed out that "the monopoly capital groups, headed by Chiang Kai-shek, T. V. Soong, H. H. Kung and Chen Li-fu”, and the four big families, Chiang, Soong, Kung and Chen, “have piled up enormous fortunes valued at ten to twenty thousand million U.S. dollars and monopolized the economic lifelines of the whole country during their twenty-year rule. This monopoly capital, combined with state power, has become state-monopoly capitalism. This monopoly capitalism, closely tied up with foreign imperialism, the domestic landlord class and the old-type rich peasants, has later become comprador, feudal, state-monopoly capitalism; such is the economic base of Chiang Kai-shek's reactionary regime.”

Bureaucrat capital accumulation was not based on the basis of capital production process, instead the bureaucrat bourgeoisie headed by Chiang Kai-shek, T. V. Soong, H. H. Kung and Chen Li-fu have made use of special economic privileges to accumulate capital, mainly by financial and commercial speculation, in the process of acting as comprador of foreign imperialism, plundering the working people and by exploiting and annexing the national industry and commerce. Fundamentally, the development of bureaucrat-capital economy was not equal to the development of social productive forces, on the contrary, it posed a serious obstacle to the development of social productive forces.