State Economy Built on Confiscated Capital | Generated by AI
Question: Explain in English the following sentence: “新中国诞生后，国营经济的主要来源是没收官僚资本。”
Answer:
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China (New China) in 1949, the main source of the state-owned economy was the confiscation of bureaucratic capital.
Explanation:
- 新中国诞生后 = After the birth / founding of New China (refers to October 1, 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was officially established).
- 国营经济 = State-owned economy / state sector / economy owned and operated by the government (also called “state-run economy” or “socialist state economy” at that time).
- 主要来源 = main source / primary origin.
- 没收 = confiscation / expropriation / seizure without compensation.
- 官僚资本 = bureaucratic capital (a specific Chinese Communist Party term).
Bureaucratic capital (官僚资本) referred to large-scale monopoly capital that was closely tied to the Nationalist government (Kuomintang regime), especially capital controlled by the “Four Big Families” (四大家族: Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Tse-ven/T.V. Soong, Kung Hsiang-hsi/H.H. Kung, and Chen Lifu/Chen Guofu) and other high-ranking Nationalist officials.
Historical Context (1949–1950s)
Right after the Communist victory in 1949:
- The new government did not confiscate ordinary private capital of national capitalists (民族资本) who had not been closely allied with the Kuomintang.
- But it did confiscate the huge enterprises and assets that belonged to:
- The Nationalist government itself (中央政府资产)
- Enterprises run by the Nationalist state or semi-state institutions
- Factories, banks, mines, transportation companies, etc., owned or controlled by top Kuomintang officials and their families (so-called bureaucratic capital)
This confiscated property became the foundation of China’s state-owned economy.
By the end of 1952, through confiscation + takeover of Japanese- and German-owned enterprises left from World War II + Soviet-aid projects, the state sector already controlled:
- ≈80% of heavy industry
- ≈40–50% of light industry
- Most modern banks
- Almost all railways
- Major mines and utilities
So the sentence is a standard statement taught in Chinese economic history and political textbooks: the earliest and most important material basis of socialist state ownership came from seizing bureaucratic capital, rather than from building new factories from scratch or nationalizing small/medium private businesses (which happened later during the 1953–1956 socialist transformation).
In short:
The state-owned economy in early New China was mainly built by taking over the large-scale, monopoly enterprises that had previously been controlled by the Kuomintang government and its top officials.