Chapter 30 29. Shekou first

If Xiaogang was China's pioneer in rural areas during the reform era, then Shekou in 1979 was China's experiment in cities.Shekou (now Shekou Industrial Zone) is located in the southeast of Nantou Peninsula, Shenzhen, facing Shenzhen Bay in the east and the Pearl River Estuary in the west, facing Yuen Long and Lau Fau Shan in the New Territories of Hong Kong across the sea.This area of ​​10.85 square kilometers is the earliest land of hope in China, and it is China's first export-oriented economic development zone.However, Shekou’s experiments did not stop at business. It shocked China at that time in all aspects. Shekou’s values, talents, time, and money were very different from previous China; its labor and employment system, The cadre employment system, the salary distribution system, the housing system, the social insurance system, the project bidding system, and the enterprise shareholding system are all pioneering measures from the present point of view.It was a laboratory, the prototype of many of the special zones that have sprung up since then.

On the morning of December 26, 1978, Yuan Geng went to Shekou for field inspection. At this time he was already a 61-year-old man.But judging from the photos he left at that time (or even later), Yuan Geng did not look old at all.He always wears a suit, with his shirt buttoned all the way to the top, and the hem of his shirt tucked into his trousers; his hair is still black and thick, combed back neatly, exposing his broad forehead.His height is 1.76 meters.This was already tall among the Chinese at that time.In a photo taken in October 1981, Yuan Geng stood between Li Ka-shing and Huo Yingdong, about half a head taller than the two Hong Kong tycoons.Li Ka-shing and Fok Ying-tung, both wearing ties, are friendly and confident.In contrast, the attire of Yuan Geng and his colleagues appears informal.Back then they hoped that these Hong Kong tycoons would invest in the nascent Shekou industrial zone.Yuan Geng folded his hands behind his back, and the smile on his face showed that he was equally proud—he later told his subordinates very openly that the super rich group was not a poverty alleviation group; The disappointment of Shekou Investment.

Yuan Geng, who joined the Communist Party of China in 1939, has a proud resume—but this proud resume did not bring Yuan Geng much convenience: he began to participate in the Anti-Japanese War in 1938, joined the Party in 1939, and served in the Worked in the Dongjiang Column of the South China Guerrilla Army (engaged in intelligence work). During the War of Liberation, he worked in Sanye (Third Field Army), and later in Siye. After liberation, he joined the Central Investigation Department.After the start of the Cultural Revolution, Yuan Geng was arrested and imprisoned on charges of being a spy and a traitor.He and his colleagues in the Dongjiang column were slandered as enemy intelligence personnel.On March 28, 1968, Kang Sheng wrote in the report of the business leading group of the investigation department that Yuan Geng "has a very serious problem, and he should be arrested immediately and interrogated together with Zeng Sheng's case."Zeng Sheng was Yuan Geng's boss in the Dongjiang column, and later became the chairman of Hong Kong China Merchants.

It was not until September 30, 1973 that Yuan Geng was released from the Qincheng Prison where he had been imprisoned for five and a half years only because of the personal intervention of Premier Zhou Enlai.In "Biography of Yuan Geng: Reform Scene" written by the female writer Tu Qiao in 2008, Tu Qiao wrote: "Yuan Geng knew in his heart that if Premier Zhou Enlai did not intervene personally from time to time, he might be imprisoned forever. He didn't want to go back to the original He worked in the Central Investigation Department of the unit. With the help of Liao Chengzhi, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, he approached Ye Fei, Minister of Communications, and was assigned to work in the Ministry of Communications. He was first in charge of the Foreign Affairs Bureau, and was soon officially appointed as the Deputy Director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau. He cherishes his new position and works with the spirit of "Desperate Saburo". During this period, the Sino-British Maritime Agreement, the China-Pakistan Maritime Agreement and the 11 maritime agreements between the People's Republic of China and relevant countries were all signed by Yuan Geng's organization. He Accompanying Ye Fei many times or going abroad alone for investigation, he is good at distinguishing between comparisons, has a certain understanding of the disadvantages of China's economic system, and has deep thinking about the problems existing in China's economic order at that time. Sun Shaoxian, who worked in the Ministry of Communications in 1976, not only believes that He was open-minded, open-minded, and thought he was open-minded and courageous."

By 1978, the 61-year-old Yuan Geng had begun to think seriously about retirement and pension issues.He and his friends must think that Yuan Geng's 60-year career has been rich and colorful: he has experienced wars, and during the wars he engaged in the most adventurous and legendary intelligence work; His comrades successfully created a new regime in a country, and they can all be called "Founding Brothers", which brought them glory and power; but then he experienced a small fall from the top, and experienced almost hopeless Wronged and imprisoned; followed by a new round of struggle and rise, he regained the trust of powerful people, and ran for a fledgling country at home and abroad.

No one can think that everything he has experienced may be just a preview.It's as if no one could have imagined what kind of glory Churchill, the lion of England, would usher in in the years after the First World War.People, perhaps even themselves, think their stories are told and that they will spend the rest of their lives as spectators. But some of them find themselves facing new challenges.This challenge is not just for them personally, but is part of the new challenges facing the whole country and the whole era.They must travel to new frontiers.When the 61-year-old Yuan Geng was asked by Minister of Communications Ye Fei whether he would like to "open up the situation" at China Merchants in Hong Kong, this was what he faced.Tu Qiao wrote in her biography of Yuan Geng that the words "open the situation" made Yuan Geng's heart skip a beat.The lion's heart is still not aging.

One of the ways Yuan Geng came to China Merchants to "open up the situation" was to ask China Merchants to develop the industrial zone by itself.At first Yuan Geng considered buying land in Hong Kong, but he gave up because of the high land price.Instead, Shekou, which is across the water from Hong Kong, attracted his attention.This is exactly the purpose of Yuan Geng's investigation in Shekou. Tu Qiao described Shekou and said: "The location of the Shekou Commune is Shekou Town, which is located on the edge of a deserted bay. Not far away is a fish-drying field. The dilapidated red brick and tile houses can't stop the stench. Blowflies are buzzing, circling and harassing the crowd. Before 1978, Shekou was a small town where farmers, fishermen and oyster people lived together. The town was underpopulated. Thousands of people. There are only more than a dozen small grocery stores and a few simple places serving migrant fishermen in the town. It was bought to build a power plant, but because the construction was not started for a long time, the machine was exposed to the sun and rain, and turned into a pile of scrap iron. There were no people on the street, and occasionally saw old and weak women and children in twos and threes, huddling in front of the door or in the corner. The expression on his face is dull."

It is very different from Hong Kong, the Pearl of the Orient. Although the physical distance between the two is very short, the time difference is very far. At that time, no one calculated how long it would take Shekou to develop to reach the level of Hong Kong, or , Yuan Geng's own inner expectation, "Oriental Hawaii". Too many people want to traverse short physical distances and long temporal distances.Therefore, "every summer and autumn, there will be a climax of mainlanders smuggling into Hong Kong. Sometimes several corpses are buried in a day. What makes people dumbfounded is that when they sleep at night, the townspeople have to close their doors tightly, and they often enter the water from Shekou. The smugglers swam in a daze for hours, and when they saw a light, they ran over and knocked on the door, thinking they had successfully smuggled. The villagers shouted through the door: This is the mainland, and you haven’t swum across it yet!”

This is not the tragedy of one region or some smugglers.It is the tragedy of an entire country, which is finally coming to an end after a long period of internal attrition, distrust and struggle among men, long periods of economic stagnation, famine in the countryside and depression in the cities.In Beijing, it took the form of debates on abstract issues in the newspapers and magazines of the various parties and governments.This kind of debate seems unbelievable today. Perhaps in another 60 years, our descendants will be confused and excited about why their ancestors would argue endlessly about a simple common sense issue.In the countryside, it manifests itself as the burgeoning land reform, where farmers spontaneously demand to contract the land, demand the right to work and enjoy the fruits of labor; in the cities, or in the southern frontier cities, it manifests as Yuan Geng’s breakthrough in Shekou , and the subsequent expansion of the SAR.

Because of his rich experience, Yuan Geng was able to win the support of almost all the most important politicians at that time and later (we can clearly see this in Tu Qiao's biography of Yuan Geng).Li Xiannian generously satisfied Yuan Geng's request to set Shekou as a special zone, "I'll give you this peninsula!"; later President Jiang Zemin helped Shekou solve the problems of telephone and communication; Hu Yaobang directly asked Yuan Geng, for the sake of Shekou Reform, "How much power do you need?" When Gu Mu learned of the conflict between Shenzhen and the Shekou Special Zone, he told Yuan Geng that he had problems and could "go to Beijing to find the State Council to solve them." Wan Li encouraged the reformer to say, you Go boldly; when Deng Xiaoping visited Shekou, the most important authoritative figure in China at that time affirmed Yuan Geng's slogan "time is money, efficiency is life".

It was at the beginning of 1984. Deng Xiaoping went to Shenzhen for inspection and went to Shekou. Yuan Geng was determined to gain recognition for his efforts from the leader.When he reported to Deng Xiaoping, he recalled the past of Shekou: "In 1979, Shekou was a barren beach, with potholes on the road, and there were no toilets or washing water. Now the roads extend in all directions, factories are everywhere, and a modern industrial zone has begun to take shape. The Party Central Committee The policy of opening to the outside world has exerted great power on the two square kilometers of land in the Shekou Industrial Zone. The construction of such an industrial zone did not cost the country a penny.”, “Comrade Xiaoping, we put forward a slogan called: Time is money , Efficiency is life. I wonder if this formulation is correct?" Finally, Deng Xiaoping's word "right" made Yuan Geng and Shekou breathe a sigh of relief. There are many equally famous quotes by Yuan Geng and Shekou, such as Yuan Geng’s bold statement that he will not be able to reform, “I will go back to Qincheng Prison at worst”; for example, Shekou’s “Abandon everything in the Mainland”; for example, Yuan Geng’s famous “Ass decide the head". Shekou’s leading role is not only reflected in the economy. This economic gene is still talked about today. An example is that well-known domestic companies such as Ping An Insurance, CIMC, China Merchants Bank, and Vanke Real Estate are all related to Shekou (in those days Yuan Geng’s driver, Ma Mingzhe, the current chairman of Ping An Group, is known as a luxury driver); Yuan Geng and Shekou are pioneers in the press, publishing and media freedom, talent introduction and reform, and Shekou’s political governance structure.It's just that the advance in the economy is easier to be remembered and publicized, while the advance in other aspects is like a series of footprints on a deserted desert, with no one to follow and an unknown future.