Because pig raising is an important sideline industry in rural China, and coupled with natural climate conditions, the quantity and quality of pig raising ranks among the best in the world. There are many types of Chinese bristles, and the bristles are long and hard, with strong elasticity and good quality, making them most suitable for making brushes. Moreover, according to historical records, the world's annual supply of bristles at that time was about 6,000 metric tons, with China accounting for more than 75% before the war.
During the Anti-Japanese War, bristles played an important role in life at that time. Pig bristles can be made into brushes. Brushes made of them (including long-bristle brushes) are not easy to bend, coil, or break. They can be swung freely when applying paint, can withstand high temperatures, and are extremely versatile.
In the early days of the Anti-Japanese War, the ports along the coast of mainland China fell to the enemy one after another; land transportation from the mainland to the outside world, including the Yunnan-Burma Highway and the Yunnan-Vietnam Highway, were also cut off one after another. China's bristles could not be transported out, causing prices around the world to skyrocket. rise.
In the military industry during the war, from using paint to paint warships, aircraft and various military vehicles, to cleaning the barrels and barrels of machine guns and cannons, bristle was undoubtedly the best tool. It can protect weapons from damage very well, so the countries participating in the war used pig bristles to paint their weapons so that those weapons would not be exposed to the front line with their steel bodies. As a result, the export of Chinese bristles has increased dramatically.
Extended information:
Bristles are an important strategic material used by China to compensate for the loans or materials aided to China by the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States and other countries. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, China was in urgent need of a large amount of arms and was short of foreign exchange. The government decided to monopolize more than ten traditional export materials-tungsten, antimony, tin, silk, tea, tung oil, wool, bristles, etc. and repay them at a price, which was known in history as "barter compensation". debt".
From 1938 to 1945, the Nationalist Government implemented a unified purchase and sales policy for export materials such as bristles for almost eight full years. During this period, more than 80,000 quintals of bristles were purchased, worth 7.095 billion yuan in legal currency.
The export of bristles was an important source of China’s wartime foreign exchange earnings. In the nine years from 1937 to 1945, China's foreign exchange earnings from exporting bristles reached US$30 million. The tungsten sand loan the United States lent to China in 1940 was only US$25 million. In 1941, the National Government issued gold bonds with a 30-year repayment period to build the Burma Highway, China's most important land passage during the war, but the amount was only US$10 million.
In China’s annual output of bristles, the United States has always accounted for more than 30%. During World War II, the demand in the United States was even greater. There were four to five hundred brush-making factories in the United States. Even prisons in each state had their own brush-making factories. Almost all the raw materials used for brush-making came from China. During World War II, the U.S. government not only listed bristles as strategic materials Category A, but even regarded bristles as one of the factors that determined the outcome of the war.
Reference materials: Baidu Encyclopedia-Bristles People’s Daily Online-Looking at the diversity of biological resources from the bristles