Chapter 71 The role of local government: active participation and risk support

Zhang Wuchang pointed out in his book "China's Economic System" published in 2009 that competition among county-level governments was the root cause of China's economic miracle in the past 30 years. He even believed that: "In China today, the main economic power is not in the The village is not in the town, city, province, or Beijing, but in the hands of the county.”This theory has caused great controversy in the academic circles, but he did see a side of the truth.In the 1980s, two regional development models emerged in the non-state-owned economic field, one was the Southern Jiangsu model with collective enterprises as the main force, and the other was the Wenzhou model with private enterprises as the main force.In these two models, county governments play different but equally important roles.

Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou in southern Jiangsu have been the most important textile, grain processing, and machinery manufacturing bases since the Westernization Movement. Even during the "Cultural Revolution" period, communes and brigades here still existed widely.After the reform and opening up, the southern part of Jiangsu, which has a lot of people and little land, quickly transitioned to non-agriculturalization. A group of "economically capable people" appeared in each county, and they led the establishment of tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises. These capable people often As a village and town administrative leader and a corporate legal person, on the one hand, he is engaged in industrial and commercial activities, and on the other hand, he can mobilize all public and policy resources in his jurisdiction free of charge—especially land and tax incentives, so he has demonstrated strong growth capabilities , this model is called "local government corporatism".Similar patterns also emerged in Guangdong's Pearl River Delta region and Shandong's Jiaodong Peninsula.

In the Wenzhou, Taizhou and Jinhua regions in southern Zhejiang, another economic development model emerged.The geographical conditions, natural resources, and human quality of these places cannot be compared with those of southern Jiangsu. They belong to remote and poor places. Since ancient times, there has been a tradition of going to Nanyang and going out to work as laborers.Since the end of the 1970s, it has become a distribution center for smuggling, reselling second-hand materials, and producing and selling inferior commodities. The people have opened up many small commodity markets in some remote villages with negligent control.The Wenzhou model has become synonymous with the development of private economy.However, what is often overlooked is that the burgeoning of the private economy in southern Zhejiang has a lot to do with the adventurous support of local officials.Officials in southern Zhejiang issued the first individual industrial and commercial household license after the founding of New China, announced the first policy allowing people to set up stalls in the county, and creatively drafted the first charter of a joint-stock cooperative enterprise.Many years later, if you go to the counties in southern Zhejiang for research, the local people can still casually report the names of many officials at that time, and they are very grateful to them. Without the adventurous support of these people, it would be inconceivable that the private economy would sprout.This scene also appeared in the Quanzhou and Jinjiang areas of Fujian, and the Chaoshan area of ​​Guangdong.

Whether it is the Southern Jiangsu model with active participation or the Wenzhou model with risky support, it shows that local governments are not inactive in the initial stage of reform, on the contrary, they are the leaders of incremental reform.During this period, the economic growth of a region had little to do with natural resources, but mainly benefited from the open-mindedness of the people and local officials.This historical fact once again confirms a basic point of view in this book: under the unified centralized system, the central government and local governments have their own administrative demands, and they have a game-playing and complementary relationship in the process of economic development. The government has never given up its intervention and control over the economy.