Chapter 20 6.2 The trend of “satellite release” across the country

All localities and departments rushed to "put satellites" on various planning indicators. Chen Yun was suspicious and tried his best to correct the unscientific practices in the "Great Leap Forward" movement. Criticize and oppose rash advances, clearing away ideological obstacles for rash advances.The rapid expansion of the economy and the rapid expansion of the scale of construction formed the frenzy of the "Great Leap Forward", which made Chen Yun's idea that the Second Five-Year Plan should focus on solving the people's food and clothing problems in vain.All localities and departments are comparing with each other, scrambling to rise, just like this, a high index will not work within a few days.

In the process of continuously increasing production indicators, Chen Yun is in a very difficult situation.Chen Yun advocated that the formulation of plans should be comprehensive and balanced, and the scale of construction should be compatible with national strength.Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, he has led the economic work, and in the past two years, he has personally visited various places to see the newly built factories and mines.He already has an account in his mind of how big the country is. In this nationwide frenzy, Chen Yun was one of the early sober ones.He immediately took the most tactful way possible to address the problems he found, and organized corrections in the infrastructure work he was responsible for.

After the Beidaihe meeting, on September 19, the central government established a capital construction committee to take over the original work related to infrastructure from the planning committee, and Chen Yun was in charge. On October 12, Chen Yun served as the director of the Capital Construction Committee of the State Council, responsible for leading the country's capital construction work.As soon as he took office, he organized the basic construction work conferences of several major cooperation areas. At that time, the infrastructure construction front was also very popular. It was planned that the annual infrastructure investment in 1959 would be more than 50 billion yuan, while the entire investment scale during the "First Five-Year Plan" period was only more than 40 billion yuan.The sudden increase in the scale of infrastructure investment will inevitably cause a comprehensive shortage of supplies.The flamboyant style of blind work on the infrastructure front has also begun to spread.Chen Yun has been engaged in economic work for many years and has a clear understanding of this.However, due to the "Great Leap Forward" environment, and it is inconvenient to say it clearly, I can only gently warn everyone to pay attention to supporting facilities and quality.

The quality of capital construction projects is also very serious.In order to save money, some factories did not even lay a good foundation; in some places, brick and wood structures were used in steelmaking workshops with an annual output of 50,000 tons, and soil cement and unqualified steel were used in water conservancy dams; There are also some projects, which are constructed by earth methods, even the basic procedures of survey and design are ignored. They dare to get on the horse after drawing a sketch, and the workers rush to work without training. The consequence of doing so is to pay the price of life, and it has left countless hidden dangers, and people will die someday.According to statistics, in 1958, due to the emphasis on rapid construction, random modification of design and building structure, random use of substitute materials, and random violation of rules and regulations, many serious quality accidents occurred, many newly built factories collapsed, and the number of deaths rose sharply.Only 435 people died in the construction department system, compared with 135 people in the previous year, and the number of deaths increased by 2.2 times.Among these deaths, 117 people died due to the collapse of engineering structures, while only 3 people died in the previous year; 70 people died due to falling from high-altitude operations, while only 38 people died in the previous year.Among the people who died due to the collapse of structures, 46 were from the collapse of reinforced concrete structures, 50 were from the collapse of wooden structures, and 21 were from the collapse of brick structures.Most of these problems occurred after October.

Faced with these serious problems, Chen Yun was very distressed.At the end of 1958, he held a national on-site meeting on engineering quality problems in Hangzhou to take remedial measures. The purpose of Chen Yun calling the Hangzhou on-site meeting is to draw the attention of the whole country and the whole party to the sharp decline in project quality, and to take measures to remedy and change this serious problem.Therefore, from December 27th to 31st, Chen Yun was in Shanghai again and attended an on-site meeting on the remedial measures for engineering quality. On December 31, after Chen Yun returned to Beijing, he sent a letter to Deng Xiaoping, presenting materials for the Hangzhou on-site meeting, and pointed out: In capital construction, the general trend is to inappropriately and one-sidedly emphasize economy, only focusing on quantity and ignoring quality.

Due to the timely discovery of the problems in the infrastructure work, all localities took effective measures in accordance with the arrangement of the central government to control the losses caused by the "Great Leap Forward".