Wake up（344）

 

344

 

When Liu Xiaosheng chatted with Lao Pantou and those young people, he said that Zhao Ziyang, Hua Guofeng, and Hu Yaobang were all tragic characters on the Chinese political stage.

Zhao Ziyang was born on October 17, 1919 in Zhaozhuang, Sangcun Township, Huaxian County, Henan Province. His father, Zhao Tingbin, whose name is Liangxiang, also known as Qiuxi, has dozens of acres of land in his family. He is a local landlord, but he is always kind and generous, and is loved by the villagers. He and his first wife, Liu, have a son named Zhao Xiuye. In 1927, Zhao Ziyang entered the County Seventeenth Primary School located in Sangcun Township. In June 1932, he swore to join the Chinese Communist Youth League in a simple classroom in Sangcun Primary School. The introducers were the principal Yang Qingran and two teachers, Hu Jingyi and Nie Zhensan, all of whom were underground members of the Communist Party of China. Later, due to the suppression of the summer Huaxian riots and other uprisings prepared by the CCP, the underground party organization was disbanded, and Zhao Xiuye lost contact with the organization. When Zhao Ziyang was preparing for this riot, he led the peasants to carry out the land revolution, overthrew the landlords and divided the land; he also distributed his own land and livestock to the peasants and sold them, and the expenses were donated to the party organization, which aroused the displeasure of his father Zhao Tingbin, but he Still managed to convince his father.

In the autumn of 1932, Zhao's father sent Zhao Ziyang to study at No. 1 Primary School in the county. In the summer of 1933, Zhao Ziyang successfully passed the provincial junior high school in Kaifeng. In middle school, he achieved excellent grades and won several scholarships from the school. In 1935, when the 129th Movement broke out in Beiping, Zhao Ziyang and his classmates took part in activities to support the students in Peking. At that time, he was still a junior high school student, and he participated in the lying-on-track petition initiated by Kaifeng high school students, demanding that the government stop the civil war and send troops to resist Japan. In 1936, Zhao Ziyang was admitted to Wuchang High School.

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, China entered a state of full resistance. Zhao Ziyang was studying in Wuhan when he was 18 years old. He dropped out of school due to the war and returned to his hometown to form an anti-Japanese group. In February 1938, Zhao Ziyang got in touch with the CCP organization again and was sent by the CCP to study at the Party School of the Hebei-Shandong-Henan Provincial Party Committee. In May of the same year, he officially joined the Communist Party of China; in September, Xuecheng returned to Hua County. At the age of 20, he was appointed by the Communist Party of China as the secretary of the Hua County Working Committee, and recruited a large number of party members. In the spring of 1939, the Hua County Working Committee was renamed the county party committee, and Zhao Ziyang became the secretary of the county party committee, with a large territory and local armed forces.

In 1939, at the instigation of Zhao Ziyang, his old classmate Chen Shuhui, the former magistrate of Huaxian County, who was originally from the Chinese Kuomintang, led his army to defect to the Chinese Communist Party, announcing that he would break away from the leadership of the Kuomintang and accept the reorganization of the Chinese Communist Party. This bold and successful move made Zhao Ziyang more important to his superiors. In June of the same year, Zhao Ziyang was promoted to be the Propaganda Director of the Northern Henan Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China. Because of this, he met Liang Boqi, a cadre of the Propaganda Department, and the two got married later.

In June 1940, Zhao Ziyang was appointed secretary of the Second Prefectural Committee of the Shanxi-Henan-Luoji Border Region, and later changed to the Secretary of the Sixth Prefectural Committee. In 1943, he was appointed Director of the Propaganda Department of the Fourth Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China. In July of the same year, Zhao Ziyang carried out the campaign of hiring poor peasants and reducing rent and interest in Hua County, mobilizing the enthusiasm of landlords and farmers. His experience in building Hua County was appreciated by Deng Xiaoping and others. By the time of the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Zhao Ziyang had become a well-known middle-level leader in the CCP.

During the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang was highly regarded by Deng Xiaoping many times.

After August 1945, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China appointed Zhao Ziyang as deputy secretary of the prefectural committee and deputy political commissar of the military division, secretary of the fourth prefectural committee of the Hebei-Shandongyu Military Region and political commissar of the fourth military division. In the spring of the same year, Deng Xiaoping, secretary of the Central Bureau, especially affirmed Zhao Ziyang’s land reform experience in Hua County at a symposium on land reform held in Guan County, Shandong Province, and extended Zhao Ziyang’s experience to all jurisdictions of the Central Bureau. At that time, he was called an "expert on land issues".

In May 1946, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China instructed to carry out large-scale land reform in the "liberated areas" across the country. Zhao Ziyang, who had created the successful peasant movement experience in Hua County, was once again valued by Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping said to those around him, "In the future when we are liberated, comrades like Xiao Zhao will be treasures of the party."

After Liu and Deng's army conquered Huaxian County, Huaxian County and Weinan became the important rear of the People's Liberation Army. Zhao Ziyang once again returned to Hua County to preside over the thorough land reform movement. He insisted on supporting the peasants in the land reform, and punished the landlords in three forms: civil combat, military combat, and self-examination according to the severity of their crimes. During the land reform period, Zhao Ziyang's father, Zhao Tingbin, was emotionally stimulated by the loss of property and died of a pulmonary heart attack.

In the autumn of 1947, Zhao Ziyang led local troops to go south with the Tenth Column of the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan Field Army. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China appointed him as the deputy secretary of the CPC Tongbai District Party Committee and the deputy political commissar of the Tongbai Military Division. After several months of fighting, the CCP finally gained a foothold in Tongbai Mountain. In December, the Central Plains Bureau of the CPC Central Committee approved the establishment of the Tongbai District Party Committee and the Tongbai Military Region. Commander Wang Hongkun, political commissar Liu Zhijian, and Zhao Ziyang served as deputy political commissars of the military region and concurrently served as deputy secretary of the Tongbai District Party Committee. Zhao Ziyang was mainly responsible for land reform work and organizational personnel Work. In July 1948, at the Ping Clan Conference, he announced that he would stop allocating land, cracking down on local tyrants, and confiscating it indiscriminately. In March 1949, in order to adapt to the operation of crossing the river, the Tongbai Military Region was abolished, and Zhao Ziyang was reassigned as the secretary of the Nanyang Prefectural Committee of the Communist Party of China and the political commissar of the Nanyang Military Division.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, from October 1949, Zhao Ziyang served as a member of the Standing Committee, Secretary-General, Minister and Deputy Secretary of the South China Branch of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. In 1950, he served as Secretary of the Prefectural Party Committee of Nanyang District, Henan Province. In April 1951, he resigned from his position as secretary of the Nanyang Prefectural Party Committee, moved south to Guangdong, and became a member of the "Southern Cadres", assisting Tao Zhu and others to lead the land reform work in Guangdong.

At that time, the CCP launched a large-scale land reform movement shortly after its establishment of power across the country. In Guangdong at that time, Ye Jianying served as the secretary of the provincial party committee and chairman of the people's government, and his two main subordinates, Gu Dacun and Fang Fang, presided over the land reform. Based on Guangdong's unique social and historical reality, they advocated "better slow than chaotic", and promulgated the "Guangdong Land Reform Implementation Measures", which implemented a relatively moderate approach to Guangdong's land reform, and provided a way out for most landlord families without overdoing it. liquidation.

After Zhao Ziyang arrived in Guangzhou, he was soon appointed as the secretary-general of the South China Branch of the Communist Party of China; in May 1951, he was co-opted as the deputy director of the Land Reform Commission of the Guangdong Province of the Communist Party of China, with Fang Fang as the director. And Tao Zhu served as the fourth secretary of the South China Branch. After they took office, they were dissatisfied with Guangdong's "warm sentiment"-style "peaceful land reform". In addition, the conflict between the local cadres and the southward cadres at that time was sharp, and the southward cadres were rejected by the local cadres. "style" land reform has also been thwarted.

Tao Zhu and Zhao Ziyang then wrote a report on Guangdong's land reform to the central government, arguing that Guangdong's land reform was backward and the cadres were impure.

In 1952, Mao Zedong issued a land reform policy of "relying on the army, relying on the cadres going south, and letting the army and cadres going south take command" to Guangdong. Mao Zedong's instructions reversed the political situation in Guangdong. Both Ye Jianying and Fang Fang were criticized and inspected. They were transferred from Guangdong, and Gu Dacun's authority was also truncated.

Tao Zhu was promoted to the second secretary of the South China Branch and presided over the overall work; Zhao Ziyang was later promoted to the deputy secretary of the South China Branch and also the head of the Rural Work Department of the branch to preside over the land reform work. At that time, Zhao Ziyang, as Tao Zhu's assistant, strictly implemented the land reform policy , personally approved many land reform decisions. In the ultra-left atmosphere at the time, according to the opinions of the central government, Tao Zhu launched a campaign to rectify the cadre team and "anti-localism", resulting in a series of unjust, false and wrongly decided cases.

In April 1953, when Ye Jianying was promoted to Wuhan, he announced that the land reform work in Guangdong Province had been successfully completed, and the work tasks in the countryside had entered the stage of fully developing production. At that time, Zhao Ziyang had just taken over the agricultural affairs, and he immediately issued instructions to stabilize production relations, reverse the chaotic situation in the countryside, and protect private ownership, and the results were notable.

However, in November of the same year, Mao Zedong issued an order, and the whole country immediately abandoned the policy of protecting private ownership, and began the agricultural cooperative movement to carry out socialist transformation of the countryside. The quantitative index-based cooperative movement led to the slaughter of livestock, the felling of trees, and the sale of production tools in rural areas across Guangdong, disrupting production.

Zhao Ziyang repeatedly emphasized that in the process of cooperativeization, we should focus on the mutual benefit of farmers and the improvement of production, and pay attention to step-by-step. However, Mao Zedong wrote an article praising the enthusiasm of the poor and lower-middle peasants for taking the socialist road, criticizing the rightist and conservative line, and putting forward many aggressive ideas.

Given Mao Zedong's authority, the cooperative movement developed according to his instructions, and the CCP Central Committee finally declared victory in the autumn of 1956. During the period of the cooperative movement, Zhao Ziyang’s thinking began to change. This change was influenced by his boss Tao Zhu. During those years of work, Tao Zhu gradually realized the mistakes and scourges of the original ultra-left policy. , to move closer to the moderate line of Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. Tao Zhu's change led to Zhao Ziyang's ideological change, and Tao Zhu's influence on his thought continued until Tao Zhu's death.

Since 1953, Guangdong Province has actively developed agricultural production, carried out agricultural production increase campaigns, vigorously built water conservancy projects, carried out agricultural technological reforms, and promoted grain production increases. In the autumn harvest of 1955, the Chaoan County Party Committee announced that Chaoan County became the first county in the country with a high rice yield.

In the context of the increase in the central government’s grain purchase quota in 1958, Tao Zhu firmly believed that there was no bumper grain harvest that year, and suspected that the rural cadres concealed the production. Food and funds under the unified management of the commune.

At the same time, after Zhao Ziyang visited Leinan County, he believed that there was a problem of concealment of property in Leinan, and an anti-concealment campaign must be launched. In February, Zhao Ziyang wrote to Mao Zedong to report on the experience of "anti-concealment and private distribution of property". Mao Zedong immediately instructed to implement it nationwide. "Anti-concealment and private distribution of property" actually misled the central government.

After Zhao Ziyang learned more about the truth, he truthfully reported to the central government and suggested that the government stop the "anti-concealment of property". However, the impact of "anti-concealment and private distribution of production" has been irreparable. The central government affirmed Zhao Ziyang's report, forwarded it to all provinces, and called on the whole party to tell the truth, do honest things, and be honest people.

Zhao Ziyang began to criticize the "communist style" and "exaggerated style", and put forward the requirements of "getting paid according to work", "cherishing people's power", and "don't move mountains with foolish old men", emphasizing that things should be done in accordance with objective conditions and laws, and financial resources should not be alone. Rely on the enthusiasm of the masses for production. During the Great Leap Forward and the three-year difficult period, Guangdong was regarded as a relatively calm and stable province with fewer deaths in the country.

In March 1960, Zhao Ziyang, who was then the third secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, came to inspect a farmhouse surnamed Mai in Nanhai County. Fighting, he has a lot of feelings. After Zhao Ziyang returned to the provincial party committee, he said to Tao Zhu as soon as he opened his mouth: "In the old society, the Chinese Kuomintang forced the people to rebel. Today, is the Communist Party going to force the people to rebel?"

In the middle of the same year, Tao Zhu also served as the first secretary of the Central South Bureau, so that most of the work of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee was in charge of Zhao Ziyang. Zhao Ziyang was determined to implement the rectification of all aspects of work.

In order to restore production and develop the economy, Zhao Ziyang often went to the grassroots to investigate and understand the situation at the grassroots level. He not only held discussions with local, county, and city leaders, but also went to communes and brigades to listen to the opinions, voices, and demands of cadres and farmers, and helped solve the problems. Difficulties, discover and solve problems in a timely manner, and when he hears news of increased production, he must conduct on-the-spot inspections to sum up experience. Because Zhao Ziyang encouraged cadres to speak freely, then Foshan Secretary Du Ruizhi, commissioners Yang Deyuan and Zhang Xunfu, Shunde Leliu Commune Li Ziliu, Nanhai Dali Commune Chen Xianfang, Zhongshan County Party Committee Xie Mingren, Dongguan County Party Secretary Lin Ruo, Shantou Secretary Liu Junjie, Huiyang Secretary Yuan Lu, Li Fulin and others are willing to talk with Zhao Ziyang and tell the truth.

In November 1960, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the "Twelve Points", saying that it would resolutely oppose the "communist style" of "one leveling and two adjustments". The official statement from his superiors finally allowed Zhao Ziyang to let go of rectification, so he focused on reversing Guangdong's economy that was on the verge of collapse. He stated that the "communist style" and egalitarianism are not allowed, and that the two excellent styles of the Communist Party, democratic centralism, investigation and research, and seeking truth from facts must be rediscovered. He has doubts about the superiority of the collective economy. In agriculture, he boldly implemented policies such as "Three Self-One Guarantees" and "Four Freedoms". At that time, he promoted the "connected production responsibility system" created by farmers in Qingyuan County (similar to the "household contracted production" model) to the whole province, which restored production in rural Guangdong, and promoted farmers' ability to keep "private land" and raise a small amount of poultry, etc. "Land Policy", until 1963, the economic situation in Guangdong has basically improved.

In 1965, Zhao Ziyang served as the secretary of the Central South Bureau and the first secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee. At the same time, Li Yiqing and Jin Ming were additional secretaries of the Central South Bureau. Although Zhao Ziyang had never been the first secretary of the Central South Bureau, in 1965 at the age of 46, he was the youngest first secretary of the provincial party committee in the country at that time.

Not many people know about Zhao Ziyang's early experiences, including those in the early days of liberation and before the Cultural Revolution.

Liu Xiaosheng's narration gave Lao Pantou and those young people a preliminary understanding of Zhao Ziyang.