Chapter 13 Section 6 on the subject of the State Council retreat

Before the Central Work Conference, a State Council retreat was held. The participants in this meeting were the ministries, commissions, bureaus, offices, and groups affiliated to the State Council, and each unit was required to have a main person in charge.This is also a long meeting, which lasted for more than two months from July 6th to September 9th. Since the participants all live in Beijing, they can hold the meeting and work without delay, so they don’t live in a hotel. The way to get off work, and basically only hold half-day meetings, and rest on Sunday.This is different from the Central Work Conference, which has no such thing as a Sunday off.

The location of the retreat, if I remember correctly, is in the lecture hall of Huairen Hall in Zhongnanhai. There are about 40 to 50 institutions like the State Council, plus the staff, there are 60 to 70 people sitting in the conference room.There were several rows of people sitting on the left and right of that conference room.The meeting was chaired by Li Xiannian, Vice Chairman of the Party Central Committee and Vice Premier of the State Council.Vice Premier Gu Mu of the State Council has also been participating. The nature of this meeting is a retreat, no decisions are made, and free speeches are required around the center of how to speed up modernization. The economic and business agencies of the State Council have prepared written speeches. , but they have all been studied in the unit and are collective works.Such written speeches are delivered to the meeting one after another during the meeting. Each unit talks about matters within the business scope of the unit and problems of the unit.Our Political Research Office of the State Council collectively wrote an article and handed it in.

These written materials are generally very long, and they are not required to be read at the meeting, which is very boring, but they are required to be outlined, and they can leave the manuscript to talk about other things.For example, Yao Yilin (at that time he was in the finance and trade group, and the manuscript prepared by this group was about reducing grain prices, but the focus of the speech was on the issue of imported grain).The speeches can be interrupted by asking questions at will, and the opening is very lively. Everyone expressed a lot of opinions and expressed a lot of reform ideas.In this way, until September 9th, Li Xiannian made a summary, summarizing everyone's opinions, including some reform ideas, such as clearly proposing to reform production relations that are not compatible with productivity, and reform and economic foundation. Inappropriate superstructure.

Everyone was very satisfied with the retreat of the State Council. When Li Xiannian reported to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, Hua Guofeng and Ye Jianying also thought it was very good. .Later, it was decided to hold a central working conference. On the opening day of the central working conference, in addition to announcing the discussion of agricultural issues and the two-year plan, another topic was announced: discussing Li Xiannian’s speech at the State Council retreat two months ago.I was a participant of the State Council retreat, so I understand the situation of this meeting.I think this meeting really deserves attention.

There are several things that are still fresh in my memory about this: (1) At this meeting, the past economic work was criticized for not respecting the objective economic laws and for acting on the "will of the chief executive"; it emphasized the importance of improving the people's consumption level; ; Remind that economic benefits must be emphasized in economic work, and opposition is not an economic account. (2) Not long before the meeting, the Chinese Communist Party delegation headed by Li Yimeng and vice-chaired by Yu Guangyuan and Qiao Shi visited Yugoslavia.After returning home, the delegation wrote a report to the central government.Based on what they learned during the inspection, they proposed to restore the relationship between the two parties in China and South Africa.The basic content of this report was introduced at the State Council retreat.The report held that Stalin attempted to impose the model of the Soviet Union's economic system on Yugoslavia, which was firmly rejected by Tito, but Yugoslavia did not lose its status as a socialist country, and the Yugoslav Communist Party did not lose its status as a party on the road to socialism.It was wrong for us to follow the Soviet Union in denying that Yugoslavia was a socialist country.This report was approved by the Central Committee.After the visit, we made a clear understanding: the same basic economic system of socialism can have many models.We think this point is of great inspiration to our country.The report on the delegation's visit to Yugoslavia received great attention at the State Council retreat.There were some doubts about whether Yugoslavia was a socialist country, but most agreed with the centrally approved delegation.Of course, the system of social autonomy implemented by Yugoslavia was unacceptable to many people.The delegation did not advocate learning from Yugoslavia, but we believe that no country should blindly copy the practices of other countries, but should study the experience of other countries well.

(3) Shortly before this State Council retreat was held, Gu Mu led a Chinese government delegation to visit five Western European countries, and after returning home, he wrote a report and took it to this retreat.This material also attracted attention at the meeting.That report no longer completely rejects the experience of Western countries as in the past, but believes that there are many good experiences of Western countries that we can learn from.I still remember that Gu Mu said in his report that French farmers cannot pass their farms on to their sons to run them.In order to ensure the good operation of the farm, the government stipulates that if a son wants to run his father’s farm, he must graduate from an agricultural school, and after graduation, he must work on a farm that is not his father’s for two years and obtain a passing certificate.This makes everyone know that capitalist countries have some good systems.

(4) At this meeting, the Research Office of the State Council also provided an article entitled "Acting in accordance with objective economic laws".This article was co-authored by Hu Qiaomu, Yu Guangyuan and Ma Hong.Among them, Yu Guangyuan wrote the part about following the basic economic laws of socialism and clearly understanding that the purpose of production is to meet the needs of the society and not to produce for the sake of production. After discussion, the three agreed.Regarding the objective nature of the law, it was adopted from a book by Guangyuan. The part on the law of commodity production value was written by Ma Hong, and Hu Qiaomu made some considerations for the whole article.

(5) There were many inspiring speeches at this meeting. Yao Yilin quoted Lenin's saying "Learn to howl among wolves", saying that since we have to deal with capitalist countries today, You have to understand what they do. This State Council retreat played a role in broadening horizons and inspiring people's thinking.In my opinion, it is not necessary to say that our party faces up to the problems in the economic system and attaches importance to reforms, starting from this retreat.Economists came into contact with the reform of the economic system and began to think and study issues in this area relatively early, but they have not been able to attract the attention of the top leadership of the party and government.It is of course impossible to ask the top leadership to accept reform ideas before the "Gang of Four" is crushed.We have also used the language of "economic system reform" before, such as reforming the taxation system, labor system, price system, material system, etc. Sometimes people say that we have carried out many system reforms in the past 20 years.But the reform ideas discussed at the State Council retreat are not the ones we have talked about before.

Although, in the 1960s, economists in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe began to publish articles on the need for economic system reforms in socialist countries, and some countries began to practice reforms.Our country has also learned its own painful lessons, and has the idea of ​​no longer worshiping the Soviet system as a god.However, something new in nature began to emerge on the issue of the economic system. It should be said that it began with this retreat.It is precisely because of something new in this nature that it has attracted the attention of some leaders at the highest level.Needless to say, Deng Xiaoping, apart from him and Li Xiannian who presided over this retreat, Vice Chairman Ye Jianying paid special attention to this retreat.After hearing the situation of this retreat, he thought it was very successful.

Still, one must admit that the thinking about reform at that retreat was very preliminary, and the goals of reform were still low.The only language in the communiqué of the Third Plenary Session that involves reform is: "According to the new historical conditions and practical experience, adopt a series of new major economic measures, start earnestly reforming the economic management system and management methods, and actively develop economic cooperation with other countries on the basis of self-reliance on equality and mutual benefit," "A serious shortcoming of my country's current economic management system is that the power is too centralized. There should be a leadership to decentralize boldly, so that localities and industrial and agricultural enterprises have more autonomy in operation and management under the guidance of the national unified plan; we should vigorously streamline all levels of government. Economic administrative agencies should transfer most of their powers to professional professional companies or joint companies; they should resolutely implement economic laws, attach importance to the role of value laws, pay attention to combining ideological and political work with economic means, and fully mobilize cadres and The production enthusiasm of laborers; under the unified leadership of the party, we should seriously solve the phenomenon that the party and government are not separated, and the party replaces the government and the government replaces the enterprise, implement classification, division of labor, and division of responsibility, and strengthen management institutions and management personnel authority and responsibility, reduce meeting documents, improve work efficiency, and conscientiously implement systems such as assessment, rewards and punishments, and promotions."

This passage is very good, and some of them have not been fully realized yet.However, in this passage, there is no idea of ​​establishing a socialist market economy at all, nor does it involve the development of a multi-ownership economy, the issue of the shareholding system, the reform of the socialist ownership structure, the reform of the socialist distribution system, or the reform of the socialist distribution system. It involves the issue that various regions can have multiple economic models under the same basic system of socialism within a country.It was of course impossible to ask these questions at the time.But if we could spend more time discussing my country's reform and opening up when discussing the topic of Li Xiannian's speech at the State Council retreat, we could always get more content than what was written in the communiqué.However, there are too many issues to be resolved at the Central Work Conference, and there are more pressing issues that need to be raised.Therefore, although some speeches at the meeting mentioned the State Council retreat, they did not discuss the economic system reform issues that were encountered in the retreat. Since very few attendees of the Central Work Conference have participated in this State Council retreat, Li Xiannian's speech seemed relatively flat, and Hua Guofeng did not explain why this topic was discussed, nor did he propose to study it when discussing this topic. The issue of economic system reform, therefore, when discussing this topic, the participants of the conference often discussed it together with the second topic, namely, the two-year plan, and did not say much about reform and opening up.The text of the communiqué on economic system reform was summarized by the drafters based on the opinions that were not fully developed at the meeting.I think it should be acknowledged that the drafters of the communiqué did a good job.Since the communiqué was formally discussed and adopted by the participants of the Third Plenary Session, it should be recognized as an outcome of the meeting. The heads of various departments who participated in this retreat at the Central Work Conference did not say anything about reform and opening up, although they believed that the State Council retreat was very important.I also did not take the opportunity of discussing this topic to introduce the results of that retreat to deepen my understanding of reform and opening up.The fundamental reason is that the focus of this meeting is still on the political and ideological lines.The situation formed after the conference achieved a breakthrough in the political and ideological lines made the reform and opening up to make progress soon after the conference.But looking back today, I think the topic of the State Council retreat should be well discussed, and more reform issues should be discussed.I have made so many speeches at the Central Work Conference, but I haven't devoted a whole chapter on reform. This cannot but be a shortcoming in my work. Everyone now says that my country's reform and opening up started with the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee. It is impossible to say that these two conferences have thoroughly resolved the issue of reform and opening up.From the facts I mentioned in this section and the previous section, it can be seen that the situation is not like that, especially with regard to rural reforms, the documents passed at the meeting specifically stipulated that "no contracting production to households is allowed", while the implementation of contracting production to households Households are the first step in rural reform. After the Third Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee, the reform of enterprises in accordance with the requirements in the communiqué was carried out relatively early, but no breakthrough results were achieved.With the efforts of Wan Li and other comrades, the rural reform has achieved a breakthrough after several years of hard work, that is, the implementation of "household production contract" or the further implementation of large-scale contract work. Here, we point out the shortcomings of the Central Work Conference and the Third Plenary Session in terms of reform and opening up, but this does not prevent us from fully evaluating the significance of the Third Plenum to my country's reform and opening up when we commemorate the Third Plenary Session, and it does not prevent us from saying that the reform and opening up at the end of 1978 The Central Work Conference and the Third Plenary Session are a great turning point.The great significance of these two meetings lies in the word "turning point". The Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of my country divided the history of our country into two stages.The 30 years from the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949 to the convening of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1978 were the 30 years when the People's Republic of China made a tortuous progress on the road to socialism and finally realized that reform was necessary.Reforms have been implemented since the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee.In the first 30 years, from 1949 to 1952 was the recovery period of the national economy; from 1953 to 1956, it took 4 years to carry out a hasty and unsightly socialist transformation, and in 1956 it announced that it would enter the society China's socialism in the 21 years from 1957 to 1978 was a premature baby and a deformed baby.If it is said that China entered the primary stage of socialism at this time, then these 20 years are the initial stage, the initial stage of a special primary stage of socialism characterized by economic stagnation, political turmoil, cultural decline, and poverty.After the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, our country entered the reform stage in the primary stage of socialism.After the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee, reform policies and measures were introduced one by one, and reforms were deepened layer by layer.The reform has achieved results and promoted economic and social development. Where does this phase start?At the end of 1978, the Central Work Conference and the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee.At that time, the lack of understanding of the significance, scope, and depth of reform and opening up was not the most important thing. The important thing was to move forward.Even if there are certain hesitation and twists and turns in the progress, it is good to be able to overcome the hesitation and twists and move forward in the end.The successful starting point of this reform cause was the Central Work Conference and the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee more than 20 years ago.The slogan of "emancipating the mind, seeking truth from facts, and uniting to look forward" put forward by the meeting, the ideological line and political line determined by the meeting, and the Party Central Committee established after the meeting with Deng Xiaoping as the core ensured the advancement of the cause of reform and opening up.This is the most important point, and it is worthy of our long-term commemoration.