Chapter 18 5.3 Exploration of the economic system in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China

The scale of construction should be commensurate with national strength, and the market can play a role in the socialist system.Chen Yun explored his own path of China's socialist economic construction in practice. After several years of large-scale economic construction, the Communist Party of China has initially accumulated experience in economic work, and began to look at the road to the construction of the Republic with new eyes. After the completion of socialist transformation in 1956, the socialist economic system was basically established.The five economic components of the new-democratic economy, after transformation, only the state-owned and collective-owned economies remain; direct planning for state-owned enterprises, indirect planning for cooperatives and private enterprises, and markets for some private, handicraft, and self-employed members The transition from regulation to highly centralized state planning and management of social production; the coexistence of the state market and the free market transitioned to the implementation of state monopoly on the circulation of industrial and agricultural products.

This economic system is the highly centralized and unified Soviet planned economic model.It meets the needs of large-scale economic construction after the founding of the People's Republic of China.In order to carry out industrialization in a relatively short period of time in China, which has a relatively backward level of economic development, limited resources must be used in major areas, which can only be achieved through a high degree of centralization. However, this system has also exposed a lot of drawbacks, mainly because of excessive and rigid control, and the lack of autonomy of localities and enterprises, resulting in a reduction in the variety and quality of many commodities, and inflexible operations.

As the main leader of financial work, Chen Yun focused more on the economic aspect when exploring the path of socialist construction suitable for China's conditions.Before and after the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, he conducted in-depth exploration of the socialist economic system suitable for China's situation in view of the shortcomings of the socialist economic system. On September 20, 1956, Chen Yun delivered a speech at the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Based on his thinking about the economic system over a period of time, combined with the explorations of other central leaders and relevant departments at that time, he proposed a relatively complete and systematic social system to the conference. The overall conception of the socialist economic system.This idea was original and sharp at the time.

In his speech on September 20, Chen Yun pointed out the shortcomings of the economic system and proposed reforms.The principle of reform is to proceed from reality to see whether it is conducive to the development of production and to meet the needs of the people, rather than proceeding from dogma and copying foreign models.Chen Yun pointed out: "We should adopt the correct policy to guide the production and management of enterprises. That is to say, we must improve the quality of consumer goods, increase the variety, expand the output of industry and agriculture, and provide comprehensive service in the service industry. socialist industry and commerce, individual agriculture, and handicrafts, and transform them into such a socialist economy that benefits the people."

On this basis, Chen Yun put forward the general idea of ​​"three main bodies and three supplements" for the reform of China's socialist economic system: "In terms of industrial and commercial management, state management and collective management are the main body of industry and commerce, but a certain number of individual businesses are attached. This kind of individual management is a supplement to state management and collective management. As for production planning, the main part of the country's industrial and agricultural products It is produced according to the plan, but at the same time, some products are freely produced within the scope of the national plan according to market changes. Planned production is the main body of industrial and agricultural production, and free production within the scope of the state plan according to market changes is planned. production. Therefore, the market in our country will never be a capitalist free market, but a socialist unified market. In the socialist unified market, the national market is its main body, but it is attached to a certain extent. The free market under the leadership of the state. This free market is under the leadership of the state and serves as a supplement to the state market, so it is an integral part of the socialist unified market.”

However, since the primary task of economic work at that time was to realize industrialization.In the case of low productivity and a weak foundation, financial and material resources must be concentrated. This situation greatly limits the expansion of market functions. After the anti-rightist struggle in 1957, the party made "left" mistakes in the guiding ideology of economic construction. Chen Yun's ideas that were inconsistent with the traditional planned economic model were actually impossible to put into practice. Among Chen Yun's explorations, the most urgent and difficult is the way the economy works.Both the classics of Marxism-Leninism and the experience of the Soviet Union have shown that the law of proportional and balanced development of the national economy must be observed.Of course, there is a principle of proportional and balanced development of a plan. When guiding practice, it must be implemented flexibly and flexibly according to the actual situation at that time and local conditions, instead of dogmatically and mechanically copying ready-made conclusions.When this principle is applied in China, we should also consider China's special favorable conditions and constraints, consider the needs of China's leapfrog development, explore some prominent proportional relationships and specific proportions in the Chinese economy, and determine the appropriate construction scale and development speed.

It is the urgent desire of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people to strive to develop the national economy as quickly as possible, change the face of long-term poverty and backwardness, and improve the lives of the broadest masses of the people.However, subjective wishes must be adapted to objective conditions.At that time, the foundation of the national economy was very weak, especially the modern industry was pitiful.The Soviet Union and countries in the socialist camp of Eastern Europe were willing and did provide selfless assistance within their capacity, but because these countries themselves had suffered greatly in the war, such assistance, although important, was also limited; The Western capitalist camp headed by the United States imposed an economic blockade on New China.New China's large-scale economic construction can seek foreign aid, but it cannot rely on foreign aid. To a large extent, it has to rely on self-reliance as much as possible.How to deal with the contradiction between the desire for rapid development of the national economy and the limitations of new China's own resources such as capital, technology, and material foundation, and to formulate an appropriate development speed is a practical problem facing the leaders of New China.

On June 30, 1954, Chen Yun reported to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the preparation of the first five-year plan: "The law of proportional development must be followed, but the specific proportions between various production departments are different in each country. Even each period of a country will not be the same. A country should determine the proportion of the plan according to its own economic situation at that time. It is difficult to say what ratio is right. The only way is to See if it is balanced. Proportion is balanced; if it is balanced, it will generally be proportional.”

At the same time, in Chen Yun's view, this kind of balance is not a negative balance, but a positive balance, a tight balance.He said: "Because our country is economically backward, we need to catch up in a short period of time. Therefore, the balance in the plan is a tense balance. There must be something leading in the plan. In the near future, it is industry, especially heavy industry. With the development of industry, other departments must keep up. In this way, it must be very difficult and tense. There will be no balance of affluence in everything, and progress at the same time is not fast. But the tension must not lead to a breakdown of the balance .Our current plan is tight, but it can get by without breaking."

Generally speaking, this balance is tense and positive, but there must always be a limit, that is, to maintain the balance and not break the balance.Therefore, the construction scale and development speed are the largest possible scale and the fastest development speed under tight balance. But for such a method of determining the speed of development, everyone has different understandings in the exploration. In July 1955, Mao Zedong felt that the speed of agricultural cooperation was too slow, so he accused some cadres of being like "women with small feet".Immediately, he extended his criticism of the "right-leaning conservative" ideology of the socialist transformation of agriculture, industry and commerce to the field of economic construction.He advocated not to follow the routine. "The development of objective things is unbalanced. It is a good thing that the balance is constantly broken. Don't do things according to the balance. There will be problems in the units that do things according to the balance." The current central idea is "to speak out against right-wing ideology , against conservatism."

Due to the abandonment of the concept of balance in the guiding ideology, the idea of ​​impetuosity and aggressiveness in economic work has rapidly expanded within the party.Inspired by slogans criticizing "rightist conservatism" and "realizing industrialization ahead of schedule", various production departments began to revise their original production plans one after another. At the beginning of 1956, most of the professional conferences of various ministries required that the 15-year vision and the 12-year or 8-year tasks stipulated in the "Seventeen Agricultural Articles" be completed within 5 or even 3 years ahead of schedule.The situation at that time was just like what Zhou Enlai said: "Thousands of troops from all walks of life came galloping." Facing this upsurge of construction, Premier Zhou Enlai and several vice premiers in charge of economic work were also inspired by this enthusiasm.But because of their responsibilities, after understanding and analyzing the actual situation, their minds calmed down first, and they unanimously raised the issue of preventing and opposing blind and rash advances.Therefore, in 1956, in the process of organizing the production and construction of that year, and in the preparation of the 1957 plan and the draft of the "Second Five-Year Plan", efforts were made to fight against rash advancement. Later, when Chen Yun summed up the lessons of this period, he said: My method at that time was to "cut" and "cut" to the extent that the country's financial and material resources, especially agricultural production, could bear. After reducing unrealistic high targets in specific work and reducing the excessively large construction scale, Chen Yun was not satisfied with it.By summing up the experience and lessons of the economic work during the first five-year period and the anti-rash advance thinking at this stage, he systematically put forward the theory of preventing rash advance with the "theory of national power". On January 18, 1957, at the provincial, municipal, and autonomous region party secretaries meeting held by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chen Yun systematically sorted out and improved his thinking during this period, and made a speech entitled "Construction Scale Should Be Comparable to National Power" Adaptation" speech.This speech combined the Marxist social reproduction theory with the actual situation in China, summed up the positive and negative experiences and lessons of the "First Five-Year Plan" construction, especially the economic work in 1956, and creatively proposed the idea of ​​adapting the scale of construction to national strength. To achieve the perspective of proportional development of the national economy. In his speech at the meeting, he pointed out that in 1956, the achievements in economic construction were the main ones, but nearly 3 billion yuan was spent in finance and credit, and the supply of means of production and means of living was tight.Therefore, it is necessary to find a way to restrict the scale of construction beyond the country's financial and material resources. He said: "The scale of construction must be compatible with the country's financial and material resources. To adapt or not to adapt, this is the boundary of economic stability or instability. In a big country like ours with a population of 600 million, economic stability is extremely important. The scale of construction exceeds The possibility of a country’s financial and material resources is risky, and there will be economic chaos; if the two are in harmony, the economy will be stable. Of course, if it is conservative, it will hinder the speed of construction. However, it is easier to correct conservative than correct aggressive .” In the speech, some control methods were put forward to prevent the scale of construction from exceeding the national strength, mainly: (1) fiscal revenue and expenditure and bank credit must be balanced, and there should be a slight surplus; (2) materials should be allocated reasonably and queued for use. At that time, first of all, we must ensure the minimum needs of the production departments necessary for life, and secondly, we must ensure the production needs of the necessary means of production, and the remaining part shall be used for capital construction; (3) The improvement of people's purchasing power must be compatible with the supply of consumer goods; 4) The balance between the scale of capital construction and financial and material resources not only depends on the current year, but also must look forward and backward; (5) Pay attention to the fact that agriculture has a great constraint on the scale of economic construction. As a result of anti-aggression, the comprehensive balance work was done relatively well in 1957, the proportional relationship of economic development was more coordinated, and the "Second Five-Year Plan" was formulated more realistically.If this momentum continues, China's economic construction is likely to usher in an unprecedented period of high-quality, high-speed development.