Wake up（337）

 

Chapter 58 Disagreement

 

337

 

Liu Xiaosheng talked about the special provision system unique to the Chinese government to Lao Pantou, Nanyangsheng, Pan Tianliang, Nan Liwa, Wanru and other young people. After the "reform and opening up", the special supply system has not disappeared. Today's new era, likewise, has not been cancelled.

China's high-level officials can enjoy special food that the grassroots are afraid of, but China's economy has been declining.

In 1988, the rapidly deteriorating economic situation, the rapid nationwide rush to buy goods and the massive withdrawal of savings deposits fully confirmed Chen Yun's concerns. It’s too late.” After that, on the morning of October 8, 1988, Chen Yun had a special talk with Zhao Ziyang.

In this conversation, Chen Yun said: "In a socialist country like ours, it seems that learning the methods of the Western market economy is quite difficult. You are exploring, and it is inevitable that you will encounter some problems in the process of exploring, and you can continue. Explore and sum up experience at any time.” It must be pointed out here that Chen Yun sometimes used the term “market economy” in previous talks or manuscripts, but in this talk, he deliberately added “market economy” before “market economy”. The word "Western" was dropped. Chen Yun's intention is very obvious. His intention is to clearly tell the high-level CCP leaders like Zhao Ziyang who blindly advocate "total Westernization" that in the reform of the economic system, all methods of copying the "Western market economy" are seriously divorced from China. It is a reality for a socialist country, it will definitely fall into trouble, and it will definitely not work.

A few years later, Chen Yun once mentioned Zhao Ziyang, who had left the top leadership position of the CCP, in his talk. He said: "(Zhao Ziyang) has always pursued the so-called free economy in the West, but he doesn't understand it at all. He is rich, likes to listen to left and right, is not realistic enough, and has gone to the opposite side of the central government at critical moments."

Chen Yun's conversation was naturally deliberate, and his evaluation of Zhao Ziyang was undoubtedly in line with reality. In fact, Chen Yun had fully confirmed Zhao Ziyang's opinion as early as 1988 when he was anxious.

If "worry" is used as the psychological background of Chen Yun in 1988, then, as a veteran of the CCP, the psychological background of Wang Zhen, Vice Chairman of the Republic in 1988 can only be described by the word "anger".

On March 21, 1987, as the leader of the drafting of the report to the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Zhao Ziyang wrote a letter to Deng Xiaoping. In this letter, Zhao Ziyang systematically explained the concept of "primary stage of socialism" for the first time. He said: "We are in the primary stage of socialism, we can only progress step by step, we cannot rush for success, and we cannot "rush to seek purity". We must allow various economic components with public ownership as the main body to exist for a long time, and we must allow distribution according to work. The principle of multiple distribution of subjects has existed for a long time, and we must devote ourselves to developing the socialist commodity economy, promoting the formation and development of a unified socialist market, and correctly handling the relationship between planned regulation and market regulation. At the same time, we must carry out political system reforms and build socialist democratic politics , must also be carried out in an orderly and gradual manner under the leadership of our party."

In this regard, Deng Xiaoping simply approved five words: "This design is good."

On May 29, 1987, Zhao Ziyang told the visiting Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong: "The long-term goal of the reform is to build a highly democratic socialism. In the future, the party will no longer interfere in government affairs, and there will be a high degree of democracy within the party." .

Under the cover of high-sounding rhetoric, Zhao Ziyang was completely acting according to his own ideas. Under the guidance of such thoughts, it is undoubtedly not surprising that in 1988, when Zhao Ziyang's "reform" just started, it quickly caused economic turmoil in Chinese society and great confusion in the ideological field. As the American Fu Gaoyi pointed out sharply in his book "The Era of Deng Xiaoping": "Actually, Zhao Ziyang is (using the primary stage of socialism) to delay the advanced stage of socialism indefinitely, and he wants to let those who hope People who think that the party will once again move towards an advanced stage of socialism after the rectification dispel this idea.”

Although Deng Xiaoping established himself as paramount leader in 1978, he was only one of the veterans of the revolution who survived the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. Although Chen Yun is one year younger than Deng Xiaoping, he joined the party earlier, so his qualifications are deeper.

Chen Yun, formerly known as Liao Chenyun, was born in a rural area that is now part of Shanghai. He gave up his last name during the CCP’s underground activities in the 1920s. After finishing elementary school, Chen did not receive formal education. At the age of 15, he had already started working in the Shanghai Commercial Press, where he came into contact with a lot of fresh political theories.

Less than five years later, he led a strike at the Commercial Press and joined the Chinese Communist Party, which had been formed four years earlier. He had no military training, but quickly became an urban guerrilla and took part in several armed uprisings in Shanghai, where he clashed with Nationalist forces led by Chiang Kai-shek.

He was elected to the Communist Party's Central Committee in 1931, where he remained for 56 years, making him the longest-serving member of the leadership, as many other senior leaders were purged by Mao during the Cultural Revolution. Chen Yun only left office in 1987, when Deng Xiaoping persuaded him to let him serve as the chairman of the Central Advisory Committee and enter a semi-retirement state.

In 1934, Chen Yun participated in the Long March with Mao Zedong and the Communist forces forced to make a difficult retreat. The Long March ended up being a year-long rout in which thousands died along the way. Before the ragged army could reach Yan'an, Chen Yun was sent back to Shanghai and from there to Moscow to "report the Red Army's strategy to the Comintern."

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Chen Yun was appointed Vice Premier in charge of financial and economic affairs. Following the example of the Soviet Union, he formulated the first five-year plan for China's industry and agriculture.

But Mao Zedong's obsession with letting China catch up with the industrialized world ushered in a chaotic period, as China began to collectivize its agriculture and embarked on the Great Leap Forward, a movement to smelt steel in earthen furnaces. And those efforts were doomed to fail.

After conducting research in rural areas, Chen Yun joined a small group of leaders who dared to present proof of the disaster to Mao Zedong. According to Mao Zedong's personal doctor, in the spring of 1962, Chen Yun showed Mao the report he had brought back from the countryside, which angered the Chinese leader.

After leading the task force that put China back on its feet after a catastrophic famine, Chen Yun fell silent. From the early 1960s until Mao's death, he lived a life of internal self-imposed exile, retaining his party positions and titles but leaving Beijing and avoiding Mao's wrath.

With the death of Mao Zedong, Chen Yun became one of the first rehabilitated party leaders to demand that Deng Xiaoping be released from house arrest and return to the center. They agreed to implement pragmatic, incentive-based economic reforms to keep China's economy moving forward after a decade of the Cultural Revolution.

Chen Yun's political stance seems at odds with the label he eventually acquired as a leader of the "hardline" faction after the mid-1980s.

Chen Yun is a moderate conservative on economic issues and far more tolerant politically than many of his reformist peers.

In 1979, Chen Yun expressed opposition to Deng Xiaoping's decision to imprison Wei Jingsheng, a leading figure in the Democracy Wall movement. A decade later, Chen Yun was also rumored to have opposed the use of the military to suppress the pro-democracy Tiananmen Square demonstrations. However, after the actual use of force, Chen Yun voiced his support for the military.

Chen Yun left behind his wife Yu Ruomu, two sons and three daughters. The two sons are Chen Yuan and Chen Fang. The former works in the central bank, and the latter is said to have married Song Zhenzhen, the daughter of another revolutionary veteran, Song Renqiong. The three daughters are Chen Weilan, who held a senior party position in Beijing; Chen Weili, an executive at China New Technology Venture Capital, China's first venture capital and investment banking firm; and Chen Weili, who was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution and married Chen Weihua, a worker.

But the facts have proved: Chen Yun is a difficult political obstacle. Deng Xiaoping was forced to make concessions to him on policy and the makeup of the Communist Party leadership. The Communist Party leadership is divided over ideological differences over political reform, the economy and how to achieve China's long-delayed modernization.

Chen Yun is nothing special. He holds a high position in the party but is not in the public eye. He has a serious distrust of Western democracy and hates market economies.

While Deng Xiaoping instituted reforms, Chen Yun tried to prevent China's slide into capitalism. To boost foreign investment and experiment with free market policies, Deng Xiaoping's reforms established a "special economic zone" near Hong Kong, across the sea from Taiwan. Chen Yun refused to inspect the busy new town full of factories. There, gleaming high-rise office buildings and hotels have sprung up.

It is known that Chen Yun's focus is on the dark side of reform. What he saw was a resurgence of corruption, prostitution and gambling. For him, these habits were signs of failure and a betrayal of communist ideals.

One of his daughters once explained his distaste for Western culture. She told a university professor in the United States: "You have to understand this: my father hates America."

Unlike Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun never visited the United States. There was only one documented trip abroad in his life, and the destination was Moscow.

Chen Yun, like Deng Xiaoping, believed that economic stimulus and foreign investment were good for China, but as a central planner he believed that market forces should be "controlled" like birds in a cage: "It's like a bird and a cage It’s the same as the relationship between birds and birds. You can’t hold a bird in your hand. If you hold it in your hand, you will die. If you want to let it fly, you can only let it fly in a cage. Without a cage, it will fly away.”

Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun are the two people with the longest political life span among the core decision-makers in New China, and they are also the two people who played key roles in the political arena in the early days of China's reform and opening up. Therefore, their relationship in the early days of reform and opening up naturally became the most important relationship among party and state leaders during that period.

Liu Xiaosheng said to Lao Pantou and those young people: When studying that period of history, the academic circles often discuss Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping separately; even if they are compared together, they are mostly limited to a specific incident. Although scholars outside mainland China attach importance to their comparative studies, they always pay too much attention to their differences and differences, and some even exaggerate their contradictions. In fact, no matter what the situation is, it cannot truly and comprehensively reflect the relationship between the two of them, and it is not conducive to objectively understanding the history of China's early reform and opening up. Knowing about the relationship between Chen Yun and Deng Xiaoping in the early stage of reform and opening up, you will have a better understanding of reform and opening up.