Chapter 74 The 1980s: "All reforms start with breaking the law"

Despite the somber end to the reforms of the 1980s, China's economy has grown rapidly, the fastest in Asia.As far as the evolution of the global industrial economy is concerned, the rise of China is just a part of globalization. After the second oil crisis in 1980, traditional manufacturing industries shifted from developed countries such as the United States, Europe, and Japan to emerging countries. This was the most important globalization movement in the last 50 years of the 20th century.China has seized this "time window" very keenly and "coincidentally", actively promoted the policy of opening up to the outside world, and completed a late growth by taking advantage of the advantages of labor, land, taxation and environmental costs.Compared with Russia, India, Brazil and other emerging countries, China is undoubtedly the earliest, most active and most successful beneficiary.

In terms of economic changes in the past dynasties, the 1980s was comparable to the "Wenjing" in the Western Han Dynasty, Zhenguan in the early Tang Dynasty, and the early Republic of China. It was a period in the history of the country where the development of the private economy was encouraged. By 1990, the total number of township enterprises There are more than 15 million, and the total industrial output value has accounted for 1/3 of the national total value, with a profit of 26.53 billion yuan, exceeding the 24.6 billion yuan of the state-owned enterprise system.With the increase of folk wealth and the return of the bourgeoisie, China seems to have become a secular society overnight. People's pursuit of material things has become more and more fierce. They believe that "time is money" and money can be measured like time all worth it.The awareness of "official standard" in the whole society has weakened, and there is a popular saying among the people: "Setting up a small stall is better than a county magistrate; once the horn sounds, you will not be a governor." By 1992, at least 100,000 party and government cadres across the country had resigned. business.While the pattern of "equal poverty" was broken, the gap between rich and poor began to widen.

In the 1980s, the central government did many things right, especially the land policy of contracting output to households and the fiscal and taxation contract policy of reducing fiscal expenditures, which activated the enthusiasm of the non-government and local governments, while its aggressive monetary policy It led to the big defeat in 1988, which once again confirmed the core significance of land, finance and currency in China's macroeconomic governance.In the process of delegating power and transferring profits, the scene that has repeatedly appeared in history has also reproduced without any suspense, that is, the authority has been left behind, and the central government has been in a state of distressed deficit for a long time. By 1992, the national fiscal revenue was 350 billion yuan, of which the central government The income is about 100 billion yuan, accounting for only 28% of the total income, the local revenue is about 250 billion yuan, the central fiscal expenditure is about 200 billion yuan, and the deficit is 100 billion yuan. Therefore, it was ridiculed as "begging for finance". Liu Zhongli recalled that at that time, even some central government agencies had reached the point where they could not borrow money and their salaries could not be paid.

Compared with the central government, local governments have seen the expansion of their autonomy and uneven joys and sorrows.The five major contract policies have greatly stimulated local enthusiasm for economic development.And because the contract base of each region is approved according to the data in the early 1980s, some coastal provinces that have risen rapidly after the reform and opening up have a relatively low amount of handover, while the traditional strong provinces (cities) are relatively high.For example, Shanghai pays more than 12 billion yuan a year, Guangdong province 1 billion yuan, and Shandong province (except Qingdao) only 289 million yuan.The result of unequal suffering and happiness naturally led to a chaotic situation of fragmented government and the proliferation of "vassal economies", which hindered the formation of a unified domestic market and the development of a market economy. All provinces were beggar-thy-neighbors and fought fiercely for resources. Province Jiangsu with small resources Taking Zhejiang as an example, the two provinces must fight a "cocoon war" at the junction every spring in order to compete for spring cocoons.

All in all, the period from 1978 to the first two or three years of the 1990s was a period when private productive forces were greatly liberated. The driving force for reform came from outside the planning system, from bottom to top and from outside to inside, so it also had a natural The illegality of the law, once a folk reformer claimed that "all reforms start from breaking the law."In this process, Chinese society has changed beyond recognition, many hard things have disintegrated, and the pattern of the four major interest groups has changed abruptly. After the political turmoil in 1989, the ideology tended to be conservative. Although Deng Xiaoping re-promoted the marketization of the economy in 1992, the threat to the unified system caused by liberalization was vigilant to the highest authorities, especially in 1990. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the "collective discoloration" of the socialist countries in Eastern Europe made the Chinese Communist Party feel an unprecedented crisis in governance. The model of China has been questioned, and economic totalitarianism has become an inevitable choice.