Chapter 25 Title VIII Business History

In 1979, Zhang Wuchang, a young Hong Kong scholar who studied institutional economics at the University of Chicago, traveled to Guangzhou. He was very good at finding the truth from the details.In the hotel where he stayed, he saw two female workers sweeping leaves on the ground of several hundred square feet every day, which seemed to be their full-time job; plaster, another plastered the hole, and a third pointed to the hole; breakfast was only served for an hour, but after half an hour there was no one working, and twenty or so young The waitresses gathered in a corner of the restaurant, chatting casually.A civil engineer claimed that he knew about the procedures for sending Chinese students to study in the United States, but the information he provided was completely inconsistent with the facts; even senior officials in Guangzhou were not clear about the difference between visas and passports; Businessmen who conduct business negotiations are "utterly ignorant", making all negotiations in vain; what's more, Chinese officials have various titles, and foreigners have to distinguish their official ranks based on the presence of cadres.

Zhang Wuchang thus concluded that no matter which path China's modernization takes, it will encounter a huge obstacle.Measured by the standards of other countries, there are not many people under the age of forty-five in the whole of China who can be called well-educated.The result is a loose workforce and ignorant officials; that is to say, China is completely bankrupt in terms of technology and knowledge resources.The obstacles created in this respect will be far more serious than the foreign exchange problems of foreign capital mentioned by ordinary people. In January 1979, 56-year-old Hong Kong businessman Huo Yingdong started contacting the Guangdong provincial government. He proposed to build a five-star hotel in Guangzhou—the White Swan Hotel. He invested 13.5 million US dollars, and the White Swan Hotel borrowed 3631 from the bank. million US dollars, and the cooperation period is 15 years (later extended for another five years). This is the first high-end hotel jointly established by China and foreign countries after the founding of the People's Republic of China, and it is also the first five-star hotel.Huo Yingdong, who later became the vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, recalled, "At that time, when investing in the Mainland, I was afraid of a sudden change in policy. In that year, a mural showing the festival scenes of ethnic minorities appeared at the Capital Airport (referring to the large mural when the new Beijing Airport was completed. "Water-Sprinkling Festival - Hymn to Life", the author is the painter Yuan Yunsheng), one of the girls is naked, which has caused a lot of controversy in China. Every time I go to Beijing, I have to check whether this painting is still there , if it is there, my heart will be more at ease."

When Huo Yingdong built a hotel, the first thing he faced was the shortage of materials caused by the planning system. "A large hotel needs nearly 100,000 kinds of decoration materials and supplies. At that time, there was almost nothing in the mainland. They didn't even produce bathtub corks, so they had to use hot water bottles. What's more, if you import anything, you have to go to a dozen departments to get a bunch of red stamps." Later, Huo Yingdong, who was tortured to "take off his human form", finally came up with a trick. He first The opening invitation was widely distributed to people in Beijing, Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau, and the opening date was firmly fixed. Then, he took this invitation to the competent departments of various links to urge the formalities. This tactic is almost "rogue". The practice actually took effect, and the progress of the project was greatly accelerated. In February 1983, the White Swan Hotel officially opened, and more than 10,000 citizens flocked to the hotel that day.

Compared with Huo Yingdong, the Frenchman Pierre Cardin seems to be more popular. He came to China in March. He is the first international fashion master to come here. He is both an artist and a businessman. The temperamental Frenchman led twelve fashion models to hold a fashion show at the Minzu Palace Hotel in Beijing. At that time in China, there was still a "blue ocean" surging on the streets. The popular fashion at that time was fat cuffs and greasy cotton coats.However, it is not difficult for careful people to find that the pretty and beautiful girls have already put on pink scarves or exposed calico inner jackets under the gray-blue smocks.There is still a photo taken by an Associated Press reporter that remains to this day: Pierre Cardin is wearing a black coat and walking on the streets of Beijing with his hands in his coat pockets. An old man with a crumpled leather bag is standing in front of him on the left. The farmer turned his head to look curiously at this strange-looking foreigner. His hat and double-breasted padded jacket formed a sharp contrast with Pierre Cardin.

As awkward as it is, the two worlds are finally coming together.Tickets to the fashion show are strictly controlled, and only officials and technicians from the foreign trade and fashion industries can participate in "internal observation".On a temporary "T"-shaped stage set up by the National Cultural Palace in Beijing, eight French models and four Japanese models performed smoothly and naturally, showing a kind of randomness.The male and female models shuttled back and forth, eyeing each other, hooking shoulders and shoulders, showing the intimacy that the Chinese considered quite immodest at the time.

In the backstage dressing room, an interesting thing happened. The careful Chinese tore a large tarpaulin and divided the room into two. The reason was that the models were male and female, and the performance costumes were close-fitting. Mixed men and women caused a lot of inconvenience. .But Pierre Cardin stubbornly wanted to remove the tarpaulin, "We have always had male and female models changing clothes in one room, which is not inconvenient. As a fashion designer, you must understand my body like a surgeon. The figure of the model. I’m sorry, please remove the tarpaulin, this is work.” The Chinese reception staff looked at each other in blank dismay, and finally followed the master’s advice, but this detail must not be leaked as a “discipline”.

As a romantic art master, Pierre Cardin is very satisfied with the shock wave he set off in mainland China - from this year to 1994, the French fashion designer came to China 20 times.For the next twenty years, he will always be extremely grateful for that performance.Because for a long time, Pierre Cardin was the most famous foreign clothing brand in the minds of Chinese consumers, and it once became synonymous with high-end clothing and luxury consumption. The "preconceived" brand effect has been the most extreme embodiment in it. For China, 1979 was a year of recovery of economic cells, and various modern economic elements began to be activated and reused one by one.

Beijing established the State Administration of Foreign Exchange to fully manage RMB and foreign exchange transactions; in March, the China Enterprise Management Association was established, and China Central Television established an advertising department. Twenty years later, it has become the most powerful advertising broadcaster in China. On May 1, the Hepingmen branch of Beijing Roast Duck Restaurant opened. Its construction area is 15,000 square meters, and the usable area of ​​the restaurant is nearly 4,000 square meters.There are more than 40 banquet halls of various specifications inside, and the whole restaurant can receive more than 2,000 guests for dining at the same time. It is the largest roast duck restaurant in the world.The freshest thing is that this restaurant has restored the gold-lettered signboard of "Quanjude Roast Duck Restaurant". Quanjude, which opened in the third year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1864), is the most famous roast duck restaurant in old Beijing. All of them were discarded as the "Four Olds". Now, its reappearance clearly expresses a signal: all old brands can be revived.

In Shanghai, some veteran business people and some foreign citizens raised private funds to establish a company called "Shanghai Industrial and Commercial Office Patriotic Construction Company", which was later recognized as the first private enterprise in China, and the first advertising company was also established. This city with a century-old commercial tradition appeared. On March 15th, Wen Wei Po published the first advertisement of a foreign brand. The Swiss Rado watch was the first to appear. On the same day, Radar was also broadcast on Shanghai TV. For reasons of time and operation, this commercial was even narrated in English with Chinese subtitles. Although there were not many English-speaking people in China at that time, within 3 days, it arrived More than 700 consumers asked about this brand of watches in shopping malls in Huangpu District.

In Guangzhou and other places, some service companies have emerged, and the tourism industry has also begun to take off. Newspapers have begun to discuss whether hotels can also be managed as enterprises; the national economy has begun to transform into light industry, and the State Council has issued documents to encourage the development of light industry. In Shanghai, a steel factory transferred its factory building to a Shanghai clothing company. This kind of transfer of property rights between state-owned enterprises was a very sensational news at the time. Discussions about whether the insurance industry should be restored have also been put on the agenda. It is unbelievable that from 1959 to 1979, all insurance businesses in China were suspended, and enterprises and households were considered not to need this kind of "capital". tools of exploitation".In 1980, the People's Insurance Company of China resumed its establishment, and then entered a six-year monopoly period. The second insurance license was issued in 1986, and it took another six years for foreign insurance companies to be allowed to enter.The step-by-step opening-up progress of the insurance industry is almost the epitome of all monopoly industries in China.

Internationally, some people are already thinking about what the rise of China's economy means to the world. While "Time" and "Newsweek" were still clamoring for China's opening of the country, "The Economist", which has always been rigorous and quiet, was already thinking about deeper issues. It proposed a Very forward-looking question: Will the rise of China pose a fatal impact on the existing international market?You know, the problem didn't really become a "problem" until 20 years later.Judging from the available information, The Economist is the first media to raise this question. Based on this alone, it can be called a true prophet. "How much can China export?" published on March 3. "In the article, "The Economist" analyzed, "As a continental country similar to the US and the Soviet Union, China's long-term export growth rate may be maintained at 4% to 5%. It is enough to make China a medium-sized country around 1990. A trading country. What China has is land, energy, and labor, but what it lacks now is the experience and awareness of a market economy." "The Economist" boldly predicted that although in the short term, China needs a large amount of imports, which will stimulate the production of industrialized countries, but in the long run, "the flood of Chinese exports will become inevitable." The author said in the article: "Is China's export growth likely to be faster? In terms of crude oil, the most important factor restraining expansion is supply, but they may be quite strong for a while. Profits depend on processing exports. Currently South Korea's per capita The export volume is 25 times that of mainland China, while that of Hong Kong and Taiwan is 100 times. China has begun marketization in some simple manufacturing fields, such as textiles, footwear, jewelry, toys and travel appliances, etc. Electronics and light machinery industries Will follow shortly. "One of the barriers to China's lack of market knowledge is lack of experience with what products, designs and quality specifications the market needs. One way is to copy the experience of other countries, and in fact China has already begun to do this. It calls it the 'three Let's make up for it'. "China provides land, energy, labor and raw materials, while foreign countries provide equipment, original technology, management and market experience (for example, overseas Chinese have established factories in China and exported 200 buses to Hong Kong a year). Ultimately, the largest The export area is Taiwan. "Another big hurdle is trade protectionism. The Americans have tried to negotiate 'market order arrangements' on textiles. However, China is in a position of extreme bargaining power. It will soon become a new supply with huge margins At the same time, there are new attractive markets. In the near future, the flood of Chinese exports will become inevitable. China's exports will quadruple by 1990, which is only 1/3 of Japan's annual exports today. 3 (equivalent to more than twice the combined exports of South Korea and Taiwan today). 10 years of rapid growth, coupled with the raw materials and crude oil it needs, will mean that China will begin to be seen as a country comparable to Britain today. Middle trading nation. The West should try to live with that reality." This is the most farsighted report on China's economic recovery by Western countries that year. The busy Deng Xiaoping searched the world for models to revitalize Chinese enterprises. In January, he visited the United States as originally arranged. On the afternoon of the 28th, when the special plane flew over Japan, he thought of his old friend Ohira Masakasa, so he sent him a telegram: "One week later, when I return from the United States, I plan to stay in your country. I am happy to chat with other Japanese friends.” After Deng Xiaoping finished his visit to the United States, he arrived in Tokyo on February 7 and held talks with Ohira at the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence as scheduled. When visiting the United States, Deng Xiaoping's most important task was political.At the governor's mansion in Georgia, he dined with 16 governors who came to visit him.Deng Xiaoping took the trouble to introduce China's political and economic policies towards opening up, hoping that the normal diplomatic relations between China and the United States would be recognized by the American people.But when he went to Japan, he had more intentions of learning. In 1979, in the field of business, there was only one topic in the world, and that was the rise of Japan.This country that was defeated in World War II has achieved an incredible economic miracle with its stubborn nationality and realistic company growth strategy. In 1945, General Douglas MacArthur, the commander in chief of the Allied Forces, came to Japan from the Philippines. He refused to go to the palace to meet Emperor Hirohito, but asked the latter to greet him at the U.S. embassy. After the meeting, he told the Chicago Tribune with a pipe " said, "Japan has become a fourth-rate country, and it is impossible to make a comeback and become a world power." In 1955, China's national income accounted for 6.5% of the world's, while Japan's only 2.5%. By 1960, Japan Already keeping pace with China, which has fallen into ideological frenzy.The symbolic event of Japan's revival occurred in March 1970. At that time, the World Expo was held in Osaka. The Japanese government allocated two billion U.S. dollars to hold this unprecedented trade fair. 77 countries around the world flocked to it. Herman Kahn, one of the founders, predicted for the first time in the "Chicago Tribune" - the same newspaper that MacArthur made his remarks 25 years ago, "Japan has entered the ranks of the world's economic powers, and in the 21st century it will It is the century of Japan." Throughout the 1970s, Japan was the country with the fastest economic growth in the world. In July of this year, Harvard University professor Ezra F. Vogel published his famous work "Japan, the World's No. One", the book that kept the world talking about Japan throughout the 1980s.In the international market, Japanese products—from home appliances, watches, cameras, automobiles to semiconductors—are almost all the rage and unrivaled in the world.The management experience of Japanese companies has become a model for global entrepreneurs and politicians to learn from. Larry Ellison, an American who later founded the famous Oracle Corporation, often mentioned what he heard when he listened to the speeches of Japanese entrepreneurs in 1979. In a sentence, the Japanese said, "In Japan, we believe that less than 100% market share is not enough. We believe that it is not enough for me to succeed, and everyone else must fail. We must beat our competitors." In the newly awakened China, Deng Xiaoping also regarded Japan as the first object of study.Wang Xiaoxian, then deputy director of the Japanese Department of the Asian Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, recalled: "Xiaoping's most important task in Japan this time was to learn from Japan, besides exchanging the ratification documents of the treaty. I remember that he worked in Panasonic I said to Mr. Konosuke Matsushita that the four modernizations cannot be achieved without the electronics industry, so I want to see your factory, and I hope you can mobilize the Japanese electronics industry to invest and build factories in China. We want to learn from you .” A few months later (June 29), Konosuke Matsushita visited China at the invitation of Deng Xiaoping. When Deng met him, he asked him many times about strengthening enterprise management and developing the electronics industry.He said: "We need to ask you more. Whether the four modernizations can be done well, the electronic industry is the key. What is modernization? I am afraid that the first is electronic industrialization. Without electronic industrialization, there can be no modernization. The population of China is so large. Many, the place is so big, it is not commensurate with the responsibilities we should fulfill internationally. In this regard, we need our own efforts and international help. We need to introduce a lot of technologies to drive us to improve. We must really introduce some Advanced technology, our modernization cannot just follow others.” Deng Xiaoping's humble attitude undoubtedly directly aroused the enthusiasm of Japanese companies to invest in China.In China's first round of opening up to foreign capital, Japanese companies showed the strongest desire to expand, and they rushed to the market one after another, which also made Japanese products popular in China throughout the 1980s.In 1979, various news about cooperation and joint ventures of Japanese companies emerged one after another: Shanghai Jinxing TV Factory introduced color TV production lines from Hitachi; Changhong introduced black and white TV production lines from Panasonic; Sanyo established the "Sanyo Electric Trading Co., Ltd. Beijing Office" in Beijing; Akio Morita, one of the founders of Sony, also visited China. In an interview with the "Yomiuri Shimbun", he believed that any All products should be "simple, practical and cheap".This is the first time that Japanese entrepreneurs have expressed their opinion on their China market strategy. 1979.Dramatically, this year, China's most famous entrepreneur was a fictional character named Qiao Guangpu. Tianjin writer Jiang Zilong's novella "Joe's Inauguration as Director" was published in the July issue of "People's Literature". The emergence of a new force, the emergence of a certain new era.In the following years, people used to use "Director Qiao" to describe those who made reforms. In real life, the person who most resembles Director Qiao is Zhou Guanwu of the Capital Iron and Steel Company. We can even say that Zhou Guanwu looks more like a character in a reform novel than Director Qiao.He was born in the military, and was transferred from a deputy chief of staff of the Guixi Military Sub-district to the establishment of Shougang (originally called Shijingshan Iron and Steel Plant). He spent most of his life in this factory. In 1979, when he was nearly 60 years old, he caught up with a A grand change; he has a dignified appearance, a loud voice, likes to comb a shiny back hair, has a resolute and flamboyant personality, and is good at doing amazing things.One year, Shougang Factory celebrated with a sculpture of a steel eagle at the gate of the factory—this was a common hobby of Chinese enterprises at that time. Flying an eagle with wings spread at the gate of the factory would continue until the mid-1990s.Guanwu asked, "What is the largest eagle sculpture in Beijing?" He answered, "Two meters." He asked again, "What about the whole country?" He answered, "Six meters."Guanwu said, "Okay, let's have a 12-meter one." This 12-meter super eagle has been squatting at the east gate of Shougang. At the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the previous year, the central government believed that: "A serious shortcoming of my country's economic management system is that power is too concentrated, and there should be leadership to decentralize boldly, so that localities and industrial and agricultural enterprises can be guided by the unified national plan. There will be more operational and management autonomy.” It is based on this consensus that the expansion of corporate autonomy has become the starting point for the reform of state-owned enterprises. In the next two decades, this has been the struggle of state-owned enterprises Vigorous main line of reform. In May 1979, the State Council announced that eight large state-owned enterprises, including the Capital Iron and Steel Company, Tianjin Bicycle Factory, and Shanghai Diesel Engine Factory, took the lead in experimenting with expanding corporate autonomy. In July, five documents including expanding the autonomy of state-owned industrial enterprises in operation and management, implementing profit retention, introducing fixed asset taxes, increasing depreciation rates and improving the use of depreciation fees, and implementing full credit for working capital were issued together. The reform of Shougang and other enterprises The move became a national focus.History made Zhou Guanwu suddenly stand under the spotlight of the times when he was nearly 60 years old. Zhou Guanwu is the kind of person who becomes more excited when the stage is bigger. After becoming a "pilot", he quickly proposed a refreshing management method "three hundred percent": every employee must implement the rules and regulations 100%; Any violations of rules and regulations must be 100% registered and reported; regardless of whether losses are caused, 100% of all bonuses for the month will be deducted from violators.This management method was really eye-catching and shocking in the Chinese business world with lax discipline and no motivation at that time.The production order of Shougang was quickly restored, and the enthusiasm of the workers was stimulated, so the production capacity increased year by year, and the reform seemed to be an overnight success.In the first three years after the reform, Shougang’s net profit increased by an average of 45% annually, and the profits turned over to the state increased by an average of 34%. By 1989, the average annual growth of Shougang’s profits remained at 13.5%, which was the average annual growth rate of global steel companies at that time. 2.4 times the profit growth rate.The performance of Shougang is enough to make the whole country have the illusion that the chronic problems of state-owned enterprises lie in internal management disorder and lack of autonomy. As long as these two problems are solved, they can completely complete the transformation without changing property rights. Hallucinations would continue until 1997. Come back and talk about the reform of Zhou Guanwu.The decentralization of autonomy means the adjustment of the authority relationship between Shougang and the superior management department. Zhou Guanwu is no longer a factory director who manages 200,000 people but only has the power to sign the renovation of a toilet. He wants to control his own destiny.This directly touches on the power adjustment of managers and asset owners of state-owned enterprises, which is one of the important propositions of Chinese enterprise reform. In the context of entanglement and entanglement, the game is going on sharply within the vested interest group. Under the premise that the property rights are not clear, it will be lingering and endless, without beginning or end.Shougang is nothing more than the first example. After the implementation of autonomy, what Zhou Guanwu has been doing is how to sort out the relationship between the enterprise and the state.First of all, he proposed the contracting system, "the base of the contract is dead, and it is guaranteed to be turned over. If the contract is exceeded, it will be kept, and the debt will be self-responsible."Around 1979, its advanced nature was unquestionable, but the problem it could not solve was also so obvious, that is, in the last four words "receipt at your own risk". Can institutions and functions really be "self-contained"?This problem will not appear in the era of commodity shortage. It is like a sinister foreshadowing buried on the road ahead of the reform of state-owned enterprises, quietly but extremely deadly. In the years after 1979, Zhou Guanwu's reforms, in a word, were constant bargaining with the state.In an era of extreme shortage of commodities, in a monopoly heavy industry, with increasingly strong demand and gradual changes in the internal mechanism of the enterprise, the rapid growth of Shougang's profits is almost inevitable.As a result, Shougang became richer and richer, Zhou Guanwu's voice became louder and louder, and the relevant departments demanded more and more profits from it. The contract base of Shougang's profit turned over was 5% at first, and then increased. to 6.2%, and then rose to 7%.The conflict between the two parties finally intensified in 1986. In December of this year, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Finance issued a notice requiring Shougang to make up 1,089.96 billion yuan in profits.Zhou Guanwu refused to implement it, so the Finance Bureau forcibly deducted 25 million yuan from Shougang's account through the bank.At this time, Zhou Guanwu, who was already a reform figure in the country, immediately wrote to the State Council and Deng Xiaoping, saying in the letter, "If we are asked to pay 100 million yuan, the technical transformation projects, housing and welfare facilities projects under construction can only be stopped immediately. , part of the work bonus that employees have received according to the original contract and linkage method will be refunded, and the wages of employees in December will not be paid.” So far, the writing has been quite threatening. (For this letter, see Wang Zongren's "Shougang Reform Record Series One") A month later, Deng Xiaoping's instructions came down: Shougang's contracting methods remained unchanged. While Zhou Guanwu in the north is fighting for corporate autonomy, in the south, another group of people is trying to create a new economic kingdom out of nothing.Under Deng Xiaoping's direct intervention, the "special economic zone" that had been discussed by high-level officials for a period of time quietly became a reality.A man named Yuan Geng came to the front desk. In the history of China's century-old enterprises, the No. 1 large enterprise in Tianzi is called "China Merchants". The Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau and the New Textile Bureau were the three largest state-owned enterprises of the Qing government. In the Westernization Movement in the late Qing Dynasty, China Merchants had the same status. In the past few years, I have been the most proficient in writing." (According to Li Hongzhang's "Reply to Liu Zhongliang Fangbo").After the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China, although the China Merchants Bureau has changed its functions and is no longer as prominent as it was in the past, this signboard has survived miraculously.By 1979, the twenty-ninth chairman of China Merchants was named Yuan Geng. At that time, China Merchants was affiliated to the Ministry of Communications, and Yuan Geng, who served as the deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Ministry of Communications, was also in charge of this institution with a great historical reputation and little real power.Yuan Geng is tall and burly, with a square face and big eyes, and he looks like a soldier. He went south with the army in his early years and served as the intelligence section chief of the Dongjiang Column. He provided important information when the Allied forces landed on the southeast coast of China in 1944. In 1949, Yuan Geng, who became the commander of the artillery regiment, liberated Shenzhen. In the early 1950s, he followed Chen Geng into Vietnam and served as Ho Chi Minh’s anti-French military adviser. In 1955, he became the Chinese Consul General in Jakarta. "crime" and was imprisoned in Qincheng Prison in Beijing for seven years. After the "Gang of Four" was overthrown, Yuan Geng returned to the world.Not long after he arrived at China Merchants, he submitted a bold report. This titled "Request for Instructions on Making Full Use of the Hong Kong Merchants Bureau" was reported to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council in the name of the Ministry of Communications on October 9, 1978. To conduct investigations and do business” is an opening-up suggestion.A few days later, Yuan Geng formally proposed the idea of ​​building the Shekou Industrial Development Zone in Shekou, Shenzhen. He proposed: "I chose to build an industrial zone in Bao'an Shekou Commune, which is close to Hong Kong. This will not only make use of the relatively cheap land and labor in China, It is also convenient to use international funds, advanced technology and raw materials, and make full use of and combine the existing favorable conditions of the two." On December 18, at the same time as the Third Plenum officially opened in Beijing, the Ministry of Communications and Guangdong Province agreed to Yuan Geng's idea. Twenty-five days later, at 10 am on January 31, 1979, Yuan Geng flew to Beijing to report to Li Xiannian and Vice Premier Gu Mu in Zhongnanhai.Yuan Geng proposed to give China Merchants a piece of industrial land. "At that time, I took all the maps and said that China Merchants has almost nothing since its establishment 106 years ago. Now I hope the country can give me a piece of land." Li Xiannian used With a stroke of the pen on the map, the area of ​​70 to 80 square kilometers including the current Bao'an District to Overseas Chinese Town was drawn in, and he said, "Yuan Geng, this is all for you." Yuan Geng was startled and said, " How dare I ask for so much.” Then, Li Xiannian lightly ticked the map with a red pencil, and said to Yuan Geng with a smile, “Then I will give you this peninsula.” This peninsula will be the Shekou Industrial Zone in the future. The so-called "Shekou", as the name suggests, is an extension of the peninsula. Yuan Geng recalled, "Before the establishment of the industrial zone, this was the entrance to smuggling into Hong Kong by sea, and there were often people who escaped from the country being flooded." The floating corpses after death floated on the beach, and most of these wild corpses are young laborers in the countryside." The emergence of the Shekou Industrial Zone took only three months from fantasy to action. This decision-making process was simple and fast. It is rare in the bureaucracy.Yuan Geng directly promoted the establishment of China's first development zone as a deputy bureau-level middle-level cadre, which can be regarded as a wonderful encounter. The Shekou Industrial Zone has a radius of only 2.14 kilometers, but Yuan Geng has built an avenue in this screw shell.Once the industrial zone was approved, his first project was to move mountains and fill the sea to build a wharf. It took China Merchants nearly a year to build a 600-meter wharf berth, which can accommodate cargo ships of less than 5,000 tons. The function of the industrial zone and Hong Kong intercommunication of passenger flights solves the bottleneck of freight traffic. Yuan Geng set up an industrial zone. Firstly, it was not included in the national plan, and secondly, there was no financial allocation. However, he won two powers. First, he can independently approve industrial projects with a value of less than 5 million US dollars, and second, he is allowed to borrow money from foreign banks.Therefore, he traveled all over Hong Kong, borrowing funds from Hong Kong businessmen and banks. In the past two years, China Merchants borrowed 1.5 billion yuan. When foreign businessmen set up companies in Shekou, everything from land, agreements to recruitment is usually done in a few months.Shekou soon became the most open "industrial zone" in China, and enterprises and talents poured in. In more than two years, there were more than 100 enterprises in Shekou, and a stretch of tidal flats and beaches became very lively.In China in 1979, the emergence of Shekou and Yuan Geng opened a big hole in the iron curtain-like planned economy that could never be filled.Six months after the establishment of the Shekou Development Zone, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone began to be established. In Wuhu, Anhui, an illiterate peddler who called himself a "fool" posed a huge problem for theorists all over China. The 42-year-old Nian Guangjiu is an insignificant little man in the local area. He is illiterate. He started picking up cigarette butts in the streets to earn money at the age of 7, started an apprentice business at the age of 9, and took over his father’s fruit stand in his teens. He was sentenced to one year in prison for the "crime of speculation". After he was released from prison, in order to make ends meet, Nian Guangjiu started frying sunflower seeds.He learned a skill secretly from nowhere, and the fried melon seeds were actually very delicious, with three petals in one knock, the fragrance filled his mouth, and he gradually became famous.This year, he wanted to name his melon seeds. After much deliberation, he suddenly realized that his father was called "fool" by the neighbors, and he was also called "little fool" since he was a child, so he simply called "fool melon seeds". "Come on. As soon as the sign of "Fool's Melon Seeds" was put up, he didn't expect it to attract a lot of applause. His business became more and more prosperous, and he could sell two to three thousand catties of melon seeds a day, so he invited some unemployed young people to be his helpers. These people increased one by one, and in autumn, someone helped him to count them, and there were actually 12 of them. Nian Guangjiu’s business is doing well, which made people around him envious. Now he has hired 12 hired workers. Some people immediately think of the famous statement made by Marx in "Das Kapital", "If you have eight hired workers, it’s no good. Ordinary individual economy, but capitalist economy, is exploitation.” So, rumors that “a capitalist named Nian Guangjiu came out of Anhui” and “Nian Guangjiu is an exploiter” spread all over Anhui.This debate did not seem to have appeared in the public newspapers at the time, but it was widely circulated among government officials, "There was a man in Anhui who hired 12 people for frying melon seeds. Is it considered exploitation?" A very sensitive proposition circulated all over the country, arguing, defending, crusading, and a big debate with strong ideological characteristics began. Obviously, in the orthodox discourse system of political economy at that time, the exploitative nature of age is unquestionable.In "Das Kapital", Volume 1, Part 3, Chapter 9 "Rate of Surplus Value and Quantity of Surplus Value", Marx once clearly divided the boundaries between "small proprietors" and "capitalists". According to his calculations, at that time (19th century In the middle period), those who employ less than 8 workers and directly participate in the production process like workers are "intermediaries between capitalists and workers and become small owners", while those with more than 8 workers begin to "appropriate the workers' surplus value ", for capitalists.In almost all socialist theories, "seven down and eight up" is an iron-clad line.Today, the long-established melon seed factory actually employs 12 workers, and its nature is almost self-evident. A fool is a capitalist, and he won't believe anyone who says it, but it's true when he uses a theory.In the face of vivid reality, "classic" finally showed its paleness and embarrassment.If the foolish melon seeds of Nian Guangjiu should be eliminated, how can the "family sideline" be developed?Is the number of people in all factories must be controlled under 7 people? This difficult problem posed by the "fool" made the theorists all over China red-faced. In fact, in China at that time, Nian Guangjiu was by no means an isolated case. In 1979, about 100,000 individual industrial and commercial households were approved to open nationwide. Whether the number of employees should be limited, whether it can exceed 8, has directly evolved from an abstract theoretical problem to a practical problem.In Gaoyao County, Guangdong Province, a farmer named Chen Zhixiong contracted 105 mu of fish ponds, employed one permanent worker and 400 temporary workers for 400 working days, and earned a net profit of more than 10,000 yuan that year, which also caused a lot of controversy in the local area.In Guangzhou, a self-employed man named Gao Deliang went to the sea to start "Zhou Sheng Ji Tai Ye Chicken". He hired 6 helpers in less than half a year. He was accused by the society of being exploited. He was very unconvinced and wrote a long letter to the central leadership People, reflecting the liberalization of employment and other issues. 1979年底，任仲夷到广东任省委书记，发现广东的个体户相当多，雇工十几个，二十几个，甚至几百个都有。这个问题到底怎么办？他也很苦恼，当时就要广东社科界“好好研究”。 这场大辩论要一直持续到1982年，年广久的瓜子工厂已经雇工105人，日产瓜子9000公斤，赚的钱据说也过100万元了，关于“个体户到底雇几个人算是剥削”的争论却是尘埃未定。这时候，邓小平出来讲话了。在中共中央政治局的一次讨论会上，邓小平建议对私营企业采取“看一看”的方针，他当时便举到了年广久的例子，他说，“不能动年广久，一动就人心不安，群众就会说政策变了，得不偿失。让'傻子瓜子'经营一段怕什么？伤害了社会主义吗？” 年广久因邓公一言而名留中国改革史。而在对待民间企业的政策上，这仅仅是第一道撕开的小口子，一道很小很小的、却决定了中国企业命运的小口子。在政策上，真正去掉对雇工数量的限制，还要等到1987年，在那一年的中央5号文件中，私营企业的雇工人数才被彻底放开。 什么叫“三来一补” 这一年，写出了《日本，世界第一》的美国人傅高义跑到了广东，他发现，一大批的小工厂正在这里悄悄地、大面积地兴起，他们的创办人竟绝大多数是当年的偷渡客，而他们办工厂的形式被当地人称为是“三来一补”。 所谓“三来一补”，指的是工厂的产品样式、原料和设备均由境外运来，生产出来的产品再以补偿贸易的方式出口，内地劳工和政府收取一定的加工费。全国第一家“三来一补”工厂是1978年8月创办于顺德县的大进制衣厂，第一年港商支付的加工费是80万港币。这种形式在珠江三角洲一带迅速蔓延开来。它依靠外来港商解决了原料、技术和市场渠道问题，成为南方工业兴起的主要模式。而有意思的是，这些创办工厂的港商绝大多数是当年的偷渡客。 “很显然，广州的省政府与它下属的县级政府在对待偷渡客的问题上产生了微妙的差异。”傅高义评述说。这一年，广东省的报纸上充斥着打击偷渡客的各类新闻，12月，省政府还通过了一个《关于处理偷渡外逃的规定》，对偷渡未遂者的处罚相当严厉，而同时，在珠江三角洲的一些县市，地方官员则开始欢迎早年的偷渡客回乡办工厂。特别是在东莞、中山等县，大量的“三来一补”项目都是当年的逃港者回来办的。一位东莞干部对前来采访的傅高义说，“十年前我的主要职责就是防止偷渡和拘扣偷渡犯，过去我们把他们当作坏人，但现在我们认为他们富有冒险精神，才能出众，与那些留下来的老实农民不一样。” 为了提高政府的效率，这些。也是在这一年，东莞县政府设立了一个叫做“对外加工装配办公室”的机构，宣称“一个窗口对外，一个图章办事”，港商在这里签一个合同，顶多个把小时，这在当时中国几乎是不可想象的事情。这个全国独一无二的机构一共设了十年，东莞的工厂数目年年猛增，从1978年到1991年，东莞引进外来资金17亿美元，为全国县级城市之冠。 在70年代的最后一个年份，中国人开始从革命的狂热中醒来，贫穷如一根刺穿透刚刚复活的肌肤让人感觉疼痛。在南方的福建，一个叫舒婷的女诗人用委婉的手法写出了人们对摆脱贫困的渴望：我是贫穷/我是悲哀/我是你祖祖辈辈/痛苦的希望呵/是“飞天”袖间/千百年未落到地面的花朵，——祖国呵！ 《经济学人》在年终报道《A good year for gunny sacks》中统计说，“在经过了20年的匮乏后，北京的各项指数开始疯长。1979年，中国制造了3.34亿麻布口袋，8.5亿个白炽灯泡，18.6万辆摩托车，130万台的电视机产量更是比1978年增长了157%。根据国家统计局的数据，中国的通货膨胀率达到5.8%，因此中国政府承认一些人的实际收入事实上下降了，但是国有企业的工人和干部的收入平均增长达到了7.6%。”一位叫H·Jansen的欧洲人回到了上海，三十五年前他在这个远东最大的殖民城市度过了童年，他的父亲是丹麦化学工程师，母亲是俄国人，如今他看到的上海是一个处处遗留着殖民地痕迹的城市。“在毛泽东发起文化大革命的上海，已经没有一张毛泽东画像，没有一个人提及政治。他们更感兴趣的是，商品、进口、美国人是否真的人人都有轿车。” 一个物质化的年代到来了。 , "Extraordinary Marketing", "Exaggerated Mission" and so on.