Chapter 16 5.1 First Five-Year Plan

In 1840, the powerful ships of the imperialists blasted open the closed gate of China. Generations of benevolent people with lofty ideals opened mines and set up factories for the salvation of the Chinese nation, dreaming of saving the country through industry and making the country rich and the people strong.However, under the ravages and squeezes of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism, China's national industry has always been difficult to make great achievements. The birth of new China gave hope of realizing China's dream of industrialization.With the rapid recovery of the national economy, China began large-scale economic construction in 1953.As the leader of new China's financial work, Chen Yun devoted himself to this great cause with full confidence.

For the first planned large-scale economic construction in Chinese history, the First Five-Year Plan was formulated and implemented at the same time. Chen Yun worked hard to implement the projects one by one. In order to carry out large-scale economic construction, a practical plan must be prepared.Chen Yun was the director of the Central Finance Committee at that time, responsible for presiding over the country's economic work. Therefore, the task of formulating economic development plans also historically fell on his shoulders. On January 28, 1951, the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee put forward the major decision of "three-year preparation and ten-year planned economic construction", that is, another 22 months for preparation, and the implementation of the first five-year plan began in 1953. year plan.

According to Zhou Enlai's proposal, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided to set up a leading group consisting of six people including Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, Bo Yibo, Li Fuchun, Nie Rongzhen, and Song Shaowen, responsible for organizing and leading the formulation of the first five-year plan. Under the organizational leadership of Chen Yun, the Central Finance Committee tried to compile a rough outline of a five-year plan in 1951.This is the first compilation of my country's first five-year plan.Due to incomplete data at that time, the war was still going on, and the overall situation of the national economic construction had not yet been determined, especially the comprehensive assistance from the Soviet Union had not yet been obtained. Therefore, this plan outline can only be an experiment and cannot be used as a formal plan.

Entering 1952, the economic situation further improved, and the task of national economic recovery was about to be completed.The Party Central Committee decided to speed up the preparation of the first five-year plan, and decided that after the plan was completed, it would be sent to the Soviet Union in August to solicit opinions from Big Brother and enlist their help. The National Fiscal Conference held from May 21 to June 5 again deliberated and discussed the first five-year plan. Under the leadership of Chen Yun, the Central Finance Committee began to compile the draft of the first five-year plan for the second time. In July, the second compilation of the five-year plan was completed.Despite the rush of time and lack of experience and data, the plan included a great deal.After the plan was printed, there were twenty-five booklets in total, mainly including "Guidelines Concerning the Outline of the Five-Year Plan" and "China's Economic Situation and Five-Year Construction Tasks" as well as steel, non-ferrous metals, machinery, automobiles, ships, electrical appliances, Development plans for chemistry, building materials, electric power, coal mines, petroleum, textiles, light industry, transportation, post and telecommunications, etc. The investment in the five-year capital construction plan is 50.5 billion yuan, and it is proposed to ask the Soviet Union to assist my country in 91 industrial construction projects.

In August, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided to organize a delegation, with Zhou Enlai as the head and Chen Yun and Li Fuchun as the deputy heads, leading more than 30 experts to visit the Soviet Union. After more than a month of intense work, the talks were a complete success, and the Soviet Union agreed to help us design a batch of enterprises and provide equipment.Winning the Soviet Union's aid to China's industrialization was the biggest achievement of this visit.A large industrialized country fully helping a backward agricultural country to achieve industrialization was a selfless manifestation of internationalism among socialist countries at that time, and provided a once-in-a-lifetime historical opportunity for the Chinese economy to achieve leapfrog development.

After returning to China, at the end of 1952 and the beginning of 1953, according to the suggestion of the Soviet Union, Chen Yun organized the Central Finance Committee to compile the "First Five-Year Plan" for the third time.At this time, the State Planning Commission had been established, and the central government decided that Gao Gang should be the chairman of the Planning Commission. Therefore, the preparation of the "First Five-Year Plan" should have been presided over by Gao Gang, but Gao Gang was a layman in economic work. It was impossible for him to preside over the preparation of the "First Five-Year Plan". Gao Gang himself knew it well. Therefore, Gao Gang wrote to Mao Zedong, requesting that after the establishment of the Planning Commission, the work of preparing the "First Five-Year Plan" should still be presided over by Chen Yun.In this way, the burden of compiling the "First Five-Year Plan" is still not missing from Chen Yun's shoulders.

Soon, due to long-term work day and night, Chen Yun fell ill and had to temporarily leave his post to rest in other places from March 1953.In this way, the work of preparing the "First Five-Year Plan" was also suspended.The five-year plan is undecided, and the first year of the plan can only be reflected in the annual plan. On December 22, 1952, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued the "Instructions on the Compilation of the 953 Plan and the Outline of the Long-term Plan" to determine some major issues in the formulation of the five-year plan. In 1953, China began to carry out large-scale economic construction according to the predetermined schedule, and the first five-year plan for the national economy entered a state of being compiled while implementing it. This was also determined by the special historical conditions of lack of materials, experience and talents at that time.Later, this kind of compilation process with a strong color of exploration was vividly called "five-year plan, five-year plan".

In March 1953, Stalin passed away, but the Soviet Union's attitude towards aiding China's First Five-Year Plan was still very positive. In April, after research, the Soviet government put forward a formal answer to the question of China's "First Five-Year Plan". Therefore, the State Planning Commission made the fourth compilation of the "First Five-Year Plan" based on these opinions.This time, Chen Yun was unable to participate due to illness and recuperation in other places. However, the "First Five-Year Plan" compiled for the fourth time is still unsatisfactory.At this time, according to the scheduled time, the "First Five-Year Plan" has entered the implementation stage.In particular, in July 1953, the two sides of the Korean War achieved an armistice, and the external threat to China's economic construction was announced to be lifted. The conditions for accelerating the pace of national economic construction have been met, and the lag in the preparation of the five-year plan has become a major constraint to speed up the pace of economic construction. .In this regard, Mao Zedong and the Party Central Committee are very anxious.

At the beginning of 1954, according to the needs of work development, the central government decided to set up an eight-member working group composed of Chen Yun, Gao Gang, Li Fuchun, Deng Xiaoping, Deng Zihui, Xi Zhongxun, Jia Tuofu, and Chen Boda to compile the five-year plan outline. The preparation of the "Five" plan. On April 19, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China officially issued a decision, stipulating that the task of the working group was to further study the speed of industrial development in the Outline of the First Five-Year Plan, the 141 construction projects aided by the Soviet Union, the proportion of investment, and the socialist transformation of agricultural and sideline industries, handicrafts, and private industries and commerce. level and stability of the market.Therefore, Chen Yun devoted himself to the work of compiling the "First Five-Year Plan" for the fifth time.

After the first draft of the plan came out, on June 30, 1954, Chen Yun reported to the enlarged meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee on issues related to the "First Five-Year Plan".In this way, after nearly four years and five revisions of the draft, the first five-year plan finally had a first draft that could be produced. On March 31, 1955, the Party's National Congress reviewed the draft of the "First Five-Year Plan" presided over by Chen Yun, and decided to pass the draft in principle. In June, the Central Committee revised the draft again based on the opinions put forward by the National Party Congress. On July 30, the Second Session of the First National People's Congress reviewed and formally passed the "First Five-Year Plan".

Chen Yun attached great importance to the implementation of various projects in the First Five-Year Plan. At the beginning of 1952, when some projects began to be designed, Chen Yun presided over the meeting of the party group of the Central Finance Committee for discussion.In view of the fact that there is no experience in building new factories, and there has been a lot of waste in the past capital construction, the Central Finance Committee proposed that the construction plan and preliminary design of each factory should be carefully studied and reviewed. This is an extremely important Learn.In the future, all levels of industry, transportation and other departments must earnestly review the design when building new factories, and must not proceed hastily.It was decided at this meeting that all new factories with a value of more than 5 billion yuan (old currency) in all parts of the country must be reported to the Party Central Committee.All preliminary design protocols for larger and large-scale factories must be reviewed by the party group of the Central Finance Committee, and then submitted to the party group of the State Council and the Party Central Committee for approval.All relevant departments should try their best to avoid delays in the design and review work, and must be earnest.Chen Yun also personally drafted several reports to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the protocol for reviewing the preliminary design of the factory for the party group of the Central Finance Committee.Of the 156 industrial construction projects designed and constructed with the help of the Soviet Union, Chen Yun personally convened experts, technicians and relevant cadres to carefully examine many of them before deciding on specific plans.