The four major families generally refer to the four major families of Jiang, Song, Kong and Chen, which refer to the four families that controlled China’s political and economic lifeline in the first half of the 20th century, namely the Chiang Zhongzheng family, the Song Ziwen family, the Kong Xiangxi family and the Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu families.
Youdao is: the Jiang family’s world is the Chen family’s party, and the Song family’s sisters are the Kong family’s wealth.
Chiang Kai-shek is the undoubted leader of the "Four Great Families". With Chiang Zhongzheng's talent and ambition, the once extremely illustrious "Four Great Families" - "Chiang, Song, Kong, Chen" came into being. Chiang controlled politics, Chen controlled the party, and Song and Kong served as finance ministers successively, holding the country's financial power for a long time.
Extended information
The theory of the four major families of Jiang, Song, Kong and Chen was first proposed by Qu Qiubai, the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, in the 1920s. Later, Chen Boda was involved in the Kuomintang civil war. In the article "China's Four Major Families", he alleged that the four major families used the name of the Anti-Japanese War to amass people's wealth and gained as much as 20 billion US dollars in wealth.
Nowadays, the four major families of Jiang, Song, Kong and Chen generally refer to the capitalist comprador ruling group headed by Chiang Kai-shek during the Republic of China. That is, the four major families of Chiang Kai-shek, Song Ziwen, Kong Xiangxi, Chen Guofu, and Chen Lifu are representatives of the Kuomintang's bureaucratic bourgeoisie.
After the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the four major families took advantage of the new situation during the war to try their best to strengthen the monopoly of bureaucratic capital in the entire national economy, make great fortunes from the national crisis, and make bureaucratic capital expand rapidly.
The four major families’ bureaucratic capital expanded rapidly and their monopoly status strengthened. It is achieved by relying on political privilege and economic plunder. It plunders not only workers, farmers and the urban petty bourgeoisie, but also the national bourgeoisie and the small and medium-sized landlord class.
Although the four major families are popular among the people and have become an important reason for accusing the Kuomintang of losing popular support; however, there has been controversy in academic circles about the existence of the four major families, and furthermore, their "gathering" results. . Because these people's disputes arise from the party-state system's profiteering.
Currently, mainland academic circles have considered this kind of statement very controversial; after research and investigation, although Jiang Chen has some family property, it is actually insignificant. Although Kong and Song were large conglomerates, the accumulation of wealth still fell within the scope of individual capitalism, which was different from state capitalism.
Guo Daijun, a researcher at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University in the United States, believes that Chen Boda is neither a historian nor a scholar, and his creations are basically propaganda materials. There are many fallacies in his book "The Four Great Families". For example, Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu are not big families at all. Chiang Zhongzheng and Chiang Ching-kuo were very honest. The Kong and Song families were originally extremely wealthy. Kong Xiangxi and Song Jiashu were also financial backers during Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary period. Song Ziwen's total property was approximately US$7 to 8 million. No specific evidence of corruption has been found so far.
Although the two brothers Chen Guofu and Chen Lifu were in charge of the Kuomintang party organization, Chen Guofu did not even have money for medical treatment in his later years, and the Kuomintang paid for his funeral. Chen Lifu also borrowed money to raise chickens when he went to the United States. It has been proven that Er Chen is in charge of party affairs and there is no evidence of using public affairs for personal gain. However, some people believe that in order to cover up corruption, the four major families deliberately use blinding methods to show their integrity and deceive the world.
A secret report made by the Japanese secret service in October 1939 on the deposits of Nationalist government officials in the Shanghai Foreign Bank was discovered in Zhang Jiabao's files stored at Stanford University in the United States.
The report shows that Chiang Kai-shek has assets of 66.39 million (USD 8.09 million), Soong Meiling has assets of 30.94 million (USD 3.77 million), Song Ziwen has assets of 52.3 million yuan (USD 6.37 million), and Kong Xiangxi has assets of 52.14 million (USD 6.35 million). ). Since the purpose of the investigation conducted by the intelligence agency was not to publicly discredit senior National Government officials, it has a certain degree of credibility. However, Kuomintang supporters generally question the accuracy of this information.
Reference materials ?Baidu Encyclopedia ?Four major families