Mao Dun's novel Midnight reflects the social life of China in the late spring and early summer of 1930.

Through the depiction of Wu Sunfu, a typical national capitalist, and the complicated relations and changes among classes intertwined around this central figure, the novel truly and vividly shows the living conditions and mental outlook of the national bourgeoisie in the early 1930s and its changes, and reveals their duality and the inevitability of their fate.

Wu Sunfu in the novel is an "able man", who takes pains to look at the interests of enterprises with the other eye. In the early 1930s, when the national economy was depressed and the national industry was dying, Wu Sunfu was ambitious to get rid of the control of imperialism and develop the national industry independently.

The "prince" and "knight" of this industrial kingdom with French bourgeois character, relying on their abundant capital and industry, rich knowledge and talent, resolute character and courage to take risks, struggled hard to revitalize national industries and increase individual capital. Wu Sunfu started a business in his hometown and established a "double bridge kingdom" of emerging industries; Opening Yuhua Silk Factory in Shanghai, dreaming of becoming the overlord of Shanghai silk industry; He founded a trust company with Sun Jiren and Wang Yiqi, and "swallowed eight grocery factories" like a "lion grabbing food". "He doesn't want these small factories to be sold to foreigners, which will increase the influence of foreign industries in China by one point, which is even more unfavorable to China's industries." . His expansion of business "caused fatal injuries to small factories in the same department newly transplanted from Japan to Shanghai". In the development of production, whether it is to open power plants, rice mills, or operate light bulbs. ...