Develop the Economy and Ensure Supplies

In December 1942, Mao Zedong put forward his ideas in his report entitled "Economic and Financial Problems in the Anti-Japanese War" at the meeting of senior cadres in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region. Mao Zedong pointed out: "The general policy guiding our economic and financial work is to develop the economy and ensure supplies.” He criticized the conservative view that only calculating revenue and expenditure and ignoring the economy, pointing out: "The financial problem in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region is that of supplying funds for the living and operating expenses of tens of thousands of troops and civilian personnel, in other words, the problem of supplying funds for waging the war.”  “We will simply allow ourselves to face extinction unless we develop both the private and the public sectors of the economy, financial difficulties can be overcome only by down-to-earth and effective economic development”.

Mao Zedong said that appropriate steps and methods should be adopted “to help the people develop agriculture, animal husbandry, handicrafts, salt industry and commerce, so that they gain at the same time as they give and, moreover, can gain more than they give; only thus can we sustain a protracted war against Japan”. He opposed the one-sided emphasis on “a policy of benevolence” by the government and emphasized that only defeating the enemy in the War of Resistance will be where the true benevolence of the revolutionary government lies, and he also opposed the policy of “draining the pond to catch the fish”, which ignores people’s hardships and one-sidedly considers only the needs of the government and the army.