Chapter 23 Chapter Thirty: 1976: The Eve of the Turning Point

1976, from the outset, proved to be an extraordinary year. In this year, three of China's most important politicians passed away one after another. On January 8, Zhou Enlai, Premier of the State Council, passed away; on July 6, Zhu De, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, passed away; on September 9, Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, passed away at the age of 55. Hua Guofeng was designated as his successor. During the period from late March to the Qingming Festival, crowds spontaneously mourned Zhou Enlai in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.The people's resentment against the ultra-left line was greatly vented here, and an anonymous poem quickly became popular all over the country-"If you want to be sad and hear ghosts screaming, I cry and laugh. Tears are sacrificed to heroes, and eyebrows are raised and swords are unsheathed." The poem is sharp, Directly pointing at Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao and others who were anti-Zhou. (After investigation, it was found that the author of this poem was Wang Lishan, a young worker in a machinery factory in Shanxi.) Someone also hung a banner with a sense of humor on the Tiananmen viewing platform: "To deeply criticize Deng: Comrade Xiaoping, how can you use that?" High wages, you can’t work if you don’t come out!” This mass action was classified as the “Tiananmen counter-revolutionary incident” and Deng Xiaoping became the “behind-the-scenes mastermind.” As a result, he was dismissed from all posts inside and outside the party, and retained his membership in the party to see the aftermath.

On July 28, a strong earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale occurred in Tangshan, Hebei Province. The city of Tangshan was completely destroyed. On October 6, Hua Guofeng cooperated with Ye Jianying and other military veterans to conduct quarantine inspections on Jiang Qing, Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and Yao Wenyuan. They were called the "Gang of Four."The complete liquidation of this ultra-left group is a very important political event in the history of the Republic, and it is also a sign of a major turning point in the national development strategy. Affected by natural disasters and political fluctuations, the total industrial and agricultural output value in 1976 only increased by 1.7% over the previous year, far below the 7%-7.5% required by the plan, and there was also a deficit of 2.96 billion yuan in national fiscal revenue.Under the planned economic system with state investment as the main means, political struggle is the main factor affecting economic fluctuations. From 1965 to 1976, China experienced four economic peaks, namely 1965, 1970, 1973 and 1975. In addition, there were four troughs in 1967, 1972, 1974 and 1976.But during this period, because prices were strictly controlled, macro changes were not related to inflation, which was very different from the situation after 1978.

Judging from the newspapers this year, public opinion has been constantly condemning Deng Xiaoping's economic policies. On June 16, 1976, "Guangming Daily" had an article "Relying on the "Responsibility System" or Relying on Enlightenment?" " article, its signer is "Shanghai Qiuxin Shipyard Copper Bending Group", the article wrote: Deng Xiaoping, the largest unrepentant capitalist roader in the party, ordered the "Regulations" to advocate the so-called "Responsibility system" is nonsense that "the key to the rules and regulations is a responsibility system".We shipbuilders know best what this kind of "responsibility system" that doesn't talk about the line and doesn't talk about the communist style is what it is.

The article said that the "post responsibility system" implements control, blocking, and pressure on the masses. There are special jobs for cars, clamps, planers, and millers. Welders and painters are not allowed to mess around. There is no way to overstep the threshold between the types of work. If there is any "deviant" behavior, wages will be deducted and penalties will be imposed.This "responsibility system" has tightly bound the hands and feet of our workers and strangled the enthusiasm of our workers for socialism. Its evil purpose is to cancel the leading position of the working class, lure the workers to immerse themselves in production, and let them ignore proletarian politics. Carry out the revisionist line and restore capitalism.

From August 13 to October 6, the "People's Daily" alone published a total of 110 articles "criticizing Deng".The three "Criticizing Deng" pamphlets compiled by the critical groups of Peking University and Tsinghua University have sold tens of millions of copies.The policies of opening up and rectification that Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yun and others had implemented over the past two years or so were almost completely overturned. Deng Xiaoping came back again in July 1977.Due to the insistence of Marshal Ye Jianying and others, at the Third Plenary Session of the Tenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping was elected as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, Vice Premier of the State Council, and Chief of Staff of the Chinese People's Liberation Army.At the Eleventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China on August 12, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China passed a resolution announcing the official end of the ten-year "Cultural Revolution".

In 1976 and 1977, the disadvantages of the planned economy were fully revealed, and people were completely tired of one after another, endless political campaigns without any benefits.According to Hu Angang's statistics, from 1949 to 1976, China carried out as many as 67 major and minor political campaigns, with an average of 2.5 campaigns per year.After the "Gang of Four" was eliminated, Hua Guofeng still engaged in political campaigns and adhered to the "two whatevers" policy, that is, "We will firmly uphold whatever decisions Chairman Mao makes; firmly follow".The sublation of this policy will go through a famous discussion, and the dust will not be settled until the end of 1978.

The impact of the ten-year Cultural Revolution on contemporary Chinese history was enormous. It produced two consequences. One was to greatly delay China's modernization drive, and the other was to thoroughly expose the drawbacks of the planned economy, creating psychological and institutional conditions for the subsequent reform and opening up. space. First, the Cultural Revolution caused unprecedented social harm and economic loss.In 1960, China's GNP was 145.7 billion yuan, comparable to that of Japan.By 1977, China's economic size was less than one-third that of Japan and only one-tenth that of the United States.It was during these ten years that Japan grew into a super economic power, and the "Four Tigers" in Asia, including South Korea and Singapore, emerged one after another.

Hu Angang made a quantitative analysis of the economic losses during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution.According to his calculations, the long-term growth potential of the Chinese economy is about 9%. The real GDP growth rate was 9.2% from 1952 to 1957, 9.3% from 1978 to 2003, and 9.3% from 1957 to 1978. The growth rate is 5.4%, which is 4 percentage points lower, and this growth rate is far lower than other developing countries in Asia. During the ten-year Cultural Revolution, due to mistakes in the education system, the country lost 1 million college graduates and 2 million technical secondary school graduates, which delayed a generation. According to Yang's research, the Cultural Revolution reduced the stock of potential human capital by 14.3%.

For the impact of the ten-year catastrophe, scholars at home and abroad also put forward some other observation angles.Dwight at Harvard?Perkins believes: "The most destructive consequences of the Cultural Revolution were not caused by the disorder of the Red Guards, but by the quality of planning and management that followed a unique development strategy for a long time and were produced by the strategy. Therefore, to solve this long-standing problem in China requires a fundamental change in strategy, but China's planners did not fully realize this until 10 years later." Perkins' so-called "ten years later" is Refers to 1976.

What Perkins meant was that although the Cultural Revolution caused turmoil in the national economy, the model and logic of economic governance remained unchanged during this period.These models and logic include: a highly centralized planned economic system, a product economy model that restricts and gradually eliminates commodity and trade relations, an investment strategy that prioritizes heavy industry and military industry, economic governance ideas that completely rely on state investment and completely ban private capital, restrictions on Labor distribution promotes the principle of egalitarianism, opposes the norms of authoritarianism and abolishing professional division of labor, insists on independent closure and opposes international trade, and so on.Wu Jinglian also expressed the same point of view in the book "The Choice of China's Growth Model". He wrote, "The Great Leap Forward Movement, which attempted to drive high-speed economic growth with massive investment, caused the extreme deterioration of my country's economic situation and the huge loss of wealth and even life. However, even with such a catastrophe, the traditional industrialization strategy has not been corrected. Economic growth mainly relies on investment, especially investment in heavy and chemical industries. fundamental feature of our economic development."

The above-mentioned patterns and logics have been consistent since the 1950s, without major changes. During the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, as many high and middle-level officials who were proficient in economic management were either overthrown or sent to the lower levels, the negative nature of the planned economic system became more intense and intensified. presented in a more extreme manner.In this sense, the Cultural Revolution, as a costly "negative teaching material," created space for future ideological emancipation and economic system reform. New China after 1949 has never been subjected to military aggression by foreign powers.By 1976, it was already a great power that could not be bullied or slighted, no matter in the sense of population, economy or military. From 1952 to 1976, China's population death rate decreased from 1.8% to 0.73%, the proportion of irrigated land increased from 18.5% to 45.3%, and the use of chemical fertilizer per mu increased from 0.2 kg to 19.4 kg.China's steel production increased by 129 times, coal production by 15 times, power generation by 47 times, oil production by 726 times, fertilizer production by 874 times, cement production by 71 times, grain production by 2.5 times, and cotton production by 4.6 times. .China's railway mileage has increased by 2.2 times, highway mileage has increased by 10.2 times, water transport and air mileage have increased by 1.9 times and 8.6 times respectively.It took China less than 30 years to establish an independent and relatively complete industrial system and national economic system. China is also one of the few countries in the world without inflation. From 1952 to 1978, the average annual inflation rate was only 1.7%.The number of students enrolled in primary and secondary schools in China has increased by 8.4 times, and the number of students in colleges and universities has increased by 5.3 times.The Chinese government has also established public medical care and cooperative medical care systems in urban and rural areas.China was also one of the four nuclear weapons clubs in the world at that time - the United States, the Soviet Union, France and China. Despite the above achievements, China is obviously not one of the fastest growing countries in the world, and even because of political turmoil, especially the ten-year catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution, economic growth has always been interrupted and stagnant .According to Angus?In the book "The Long-term Performance of China's Economy: AD 960-2030", Maddison calculated the per capita GDP growth rate of Asian countries. Between 1952 and 1978, China lagged behind other countries and regions as a whole. of.China's per capita GDP growth rate is 2.3%, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan are: 6.7%, 6.3%, 4.8%, 5.4%, 6.6%.From 1952 to 1978, China's exports only doubled. (In comparison, from 1978 to 2003, China’s per capita GDP growth rate reached 6.6%, while that of Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan was 2.1%, 6.3%, 4.8%, and 3.9%. % and 4.7%. From 1978 to 2003, China’s exports increased 28 times. The ratio of exports to GDP rose from 4.6% to 26.6%.) In 1976, with the end of the Cultural Revolution, the country's rulers faced a dire economic situation. "The situation in China before 1978 may have been the worst situation." This comment by Professor Chen Zhiwu of Yale University in the United States is a consensus in the economic circles. The construction of a command-planned economic system has made the industrial economy very inefficient.Food and basic consumer goods in cities are rationed, and the state-owned enterprise sector is very large. Price controls on production materials are generally implemented. Even a penny increase in the price of matches must be discussed and approved by the State Council.Private property is not protected by law, and the private economy is almost zero.In the field of state-owned enterprises, factories have no enthusiasm for production, the double decline in efficiency and benefit is very alarming, and the rigid planned economic system has come to an end.The research of Justin Yifu Lin and others shows that the traditional industrialization path has resulted in deformed industrial structure and low economic efficiency, so that the figure of output value growth cannot reflect the substantial economic growth. In the total national investment, the proportion of heavy industry was as high as 51.1% and 49.6% during the two consecutive "Five-Year Plans", but the production efficiency and economic benefits have gradually declined.Although it has emphasized "taking steel as the key link" for many years, the steel output in 1976 was only 20.4 million tons, which was only equivalent to the level in 1971.The entire industry, by 1976, experienced "six astonishing" major setbacks - first, astonishingly high consumption, second, astonishingly low labor productivity, third, astonishingly large losses, fourth, astonishing equipment damage, and fifth The "beard project" (delayed for a long time, unable to be built for a long time) is surprisingly long, and the sixth is that the investment return is surprisingly low. There are some data that can vividly show how terrible the inefficiency of investment has reached.According to the calculation of the National Bureau of Statistics, in 1976, the investment required to produce one kilowatt of electricity was three times higher than that in 1966, the investment required to produce one ton of steel was nearly twice as high, and the investment required for each ton of transport kilometers exceeded 40. %.According to the statistics of "Contemporary History of China" written by Li Anzeng and Wang Lisheng, the national income increased by every 100 yuan accumulated was 35 yuan in 1955, and it had dropped to 16 yuan by 1976; The annual income was still 34.5 yuan, which dropped to 19.3 yuan in 1976; the profit and tax realized by business per 100 yuan was 20 yuan in 1957, and only 9.7 yuan in 1976. By the end of 1976, the private economy had disappeared in our country, and the individual economy was also negligible. There were only 190,000 individual industrial and commercial persons in cities and towns nationwide, which was only 12.2% of that at the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, a sharp drop of 87.8%, of which the individual industry decreased by 88.9% , The individual construction industry has decreased by 60%, the individual transportation industry has decreased by 88.9%, the individual business, catering and service industries have decreased by 75%, and other individual operators have decreased by 98.4%.In Shanghai, there are only 1,283 collective commercial outlets for daily-use industrial products in the city, and there are only 3,085 individual traders left. In terms of people's livelihood, the industrial development strategy that one-sidedly emphasizes the priority of heavy industry has made it impossible to fundamentally change the shortage of materials. People's daily life is troubled by various bills, but income has not increased all year round. From 1958 to 1977, the per capita income of Chinese urban residents increased by less than 4 yuan, and that of farmers was less than 2.6 yuan.At that time, the monthly salary of a factory apprentice was 18 yuan, while the highest monthly salary of the most experienced "eighth-level" veteran worker was 108 yuan, which was already the highest income among ordinary people.In 1976, a worker in Beijing could get half a catty of oil stamps every month. In addition, with a non-staple food supply certificate, he could buy half a catty of eggs, one and a half catties of pork, half a catty of tofu, two taels of vermicelli and one tael of sesame paste. In terms of prices, there was a contrast between the relatively low price of daily food and the extremely expensive household industrial products. In 1976, one yuan could buy 12 to 13 eggs, a bowl of plain noodles cost 8 cents, and meat noodles cost 14 cents. , the monthly grain ration standard for an adult is 30 catties, the price of a catty of rice is less than 30 cents, and the price of a catty of rapeseed oil is less than 60 cents. The first-grade meat is 8 cents more than a catty, and the leanest fourth-grade meat is 4 cents more than a catty.In comparison, the price of industrial products is much more expensive. A Phoenix brand bicycle costs 156 yuan, a Butterfly brand sewing machine costs 187 yuan, and a Shanghai brand watch costs 120 yuan.In order to obtain the above-mentioned "three major items", people have to save money on food and clothing.The reason why the price of industrial products is so expensive is that apart from the factors of shortage of supply, it is also to prevent the housing conditions of urban residents from being improved for a long time. It is not uncommon for three or even four generations to live in the same room. According to the city's survey report, the urban housing area was 4.5 square meters per capita in 1949, but dropped to 3.6 square meters in 1978.Beginning in 1976, residents of Beijing, Shenyang and other cities began to boldly "build small houses" in violation of regulations.Writer Wang Meng described: "Everyone turned (public) building materials into their own. At the beginning, although this kind of 'stealing' was blatant, there was still some restraint and certain measure: some people tried to pick some half-cut bricks, and the rotten bricks Wooden boards, all kinds of leftovers, that is to say, the things that were eliminated from the construction site were moved to their own homes. Gradually, some people unscrupulously opened and dismantled all kinds of protective barriers on the construction site, picked up the best building materials and went home. When this When some bold people were dissuaded by people on the construction site, telling them that it was wrong to use public property for private work, they replied: "What is a public house? I belong to the public house! I belong to the country! Even my life is at stake." Belongs to the public!' He shouted loudly, declared openly, plausibly, confidently, and soared into the sky!" In the countryside, the idealistic people's commune proved to be a "false paradise". There are many folk proverbs that satirize the inefficiency and injustice of this system. A jingle circulating in the Anhui area describes the peasants going to work in this way. Scene: "I don't buy the whistle the first time, stretch my head to look at the whistle the second time, shake the whistle slowly three times, forget to bring a hoe when I get to the field, and then go home for a stroll." By 1977, China's per capita grain output was 318 kg , only 30 kilograms more than in 1952 at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Take Fengyang County, Anhui Province as an example. In the 26 years from 1953 to 1978, this land of fish and rice, famous for its Fengyang Flower Drum, was once the birthplace of Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. One hundred million catties, that is to say, after buying and selling, farmers in Fengyang not only did not contribute a grain of grain to the country, but instead ate 371 million catties.Every year in the famine of spring, some production teams in Fengyang County, led by their captains, took a letter of introduction stamped with the official seal, played flower drums, sang bitter songs, and embarked on the road of begging.In the winter of 1978, in Xiaogang Village here, more than a dozen farmers who had been driven to a dead end risked their lives to sign the famous "household production contract" contract. In rural China in 1976, there were 100,000 small factories that deserve special attention. They all resembled the Lu Guanqiu-style factories described in the previous chapters.If we have a pair of "foresighted eyes", we will see that in the next three decades, they will be the first force to start the Chinese economy. These "community and brigade enterprises" established by communes or production brigades are mainly engaged in the following industries: small cement factories, small iron and steel factories, small chemical fertilizer factories and small machine repair factories.They are either used to build houses and improve farmland water conservancy, or to repair agricultural machinery such as tractors.Because the state-run factories in the city really can’t meet these basic living and labor needs of the peasants, their existence is acquiesced, but there are strict restrictions on them. They can only be produced and sold within the commune—at most nearby places. Otherwise, it is speculative. According to the data from the "China Statistical Yearbook", these commune and brigade enterprises have never disappeared. In 1960, in order to "smelt steel", the number of commune and brigade enterprises once reached 117,000. By 1963, they were eliminated 11,000 were left.From 1966, it began to revive again, reaching 45,000 in 1970 and 106,000 in 1976. Independent of the state planning system, these enterprises became a strange economic force.In terms of assets, they are collectively owned by the commune or the production brigade, but their business activities are controlled by certain "capable people", who are even the leaders of the commune or the brigade.After 1978, with the activation of the consumer market, the state-owned enterprises in the city were still unable to operate under the constraints of the system. These natural communes and brigade enterprises "accidentally" became the mainstream force in activating the market and impacting the planning system.This is the "grassroots secret" of China's rise. In order to revive the national economy, there is still a problem of investment sources. Since 1949, all previous major industrial investments have relied on Soviet aid, the "Great Leap Forward" national strategy, and the accumulation of resources formed by the "grain scissors gap". .By 1976, these measures had all failed.Due to years of lock-up policy, foreign direct investment in China is zero. The second equipment introduction plan in 1973 can be seen as a test trip for them to land in China again. When large-scale equipment is introduced, it is followed by the introduction of technology and management methods, and then the introduction of capital and business. Ideas follow.This will be a tortuous and dramatic process. In the following years, the once "smelly" foreign capital enjoyed super-national treatment. In this way, we can roughly describe the corporate structure before 1978 from the perspective of capital structure: state-owned enterprises occupy nearly 100% of the capital and market share, private capital mainly exists in rural areas, with humble status and weak strength, international capital has already The entry knocker slammed.Since the first day China began to develop modern industry, these three forces have been advancing in parallel, fighting and merging. This development model was suspended in 1949. Nearly 30 years later, everything reincarnated and the game started again. This book is coming to an end, and the following Chinese corporate history will present a completely different situation, which I will describe in detail in a book. At this moment, standing on the high ground of history, we might as well look back at the 100 years of ups and downs from the 1870s to the 1970s. During these more than a hundred years, suffering has given us the opportunity to contemplate and learn a lot.It allows the Chinese to carefully observe what has been experienced, and to observe the thousand-year history more strictly. If we were not humiliated, we might not pay attention to it at all, and we would still be immersed in the illusion of a proud great power. Since the Opium War in 1840, there has been a word covering all topics, and it has become the lifelong ideal of countless passionate Chinese people, which is "powerful country". The urgency of the "powerful country" has made this country extremely anxious, and sometimes it seems that it can't wait. When a truth has not been fully investigated, it does not hesitate to take risks.At many sensitive and critical moments, progressive ideas are often regarded as "reactionary", and subversive revolutions, even bloody violence, have become the choice of the whole people. In the spring and autumn of a century, farce, tragedy and comedy have been staged intertwined. In the past hundred years inspired by the "dream of a strong country", China's revival began at a gloomy and desperate moment of waking up from a dream. The evolution of commerce has always been an important direction for the country's progress and national shame. It is at this time In the process, an emerging entrepreneurial class emerged as an independent force.And their tortuous destinies are entangled with the country's political changes and the decisions of the whole people. They sometimes unite and sometimes break up, but most of the time they are in a state of disharmony.Over the past century, the problems of China's economy can be boiled down to the adjustment of three interest relations: one is the adjustment of government interests and public interests, the other is the adjustment of the interests of the central government and local governments, and the third is the interests of the rich and the poor. Adjustment.As a representative class of the wealthy public, entrepreneurial groups have never reached a principled and constructive consensus on the relationship with the government (including the central government and local government), intellectuals, and the poor public. One of the great reasons to always be interrupted by various events. In fact, since 1929—Kong Xiangxi took advantage of the global economic crisis to raid China’s private banking industry—the entrepreneurial class that believed in a free economy has gradually disappeared in China, accompanied by the growing weakness and disintegration of the middle class. The national desire for authority—especially centralization and leader worship—intensified in later years, eventually leading to an unbearable catastrophe. By 1976, China was a closed economy that was basically "insulated" from the world economic system, highly centralized and without vitality. It is against this background that a great economic transformation is about to kick off. This will be a change without a "blueprint".Almost all the people are clearly or vaguely aware that the ideological model of national governance has been proven to be unworkable, and economic revitalization must be made a new and most important national task.However, what kind of revitalization path should we take?In what way will the rigid and inefficient planned economic system be broken, and what strange appearance will the new economic system present?What is the way out for the reform of state-owned enterprise groups, and how will those private commercial cells that have been suppressed and eliminated for many years be revived?Where will the funds for development come from, and what role will international capital, which has always been regarded as a "scourge", play?More importantly, where are the boundaries of government, and how will the limits of rationality be overcome? The answers to these questions one by one constitute various scenes of China's economic growth in the future.No resolution of confusion is free.Even as I write this book, the reformation is far from complete. There is a German proverb that says: "What happens only once means that it never happened." The problem of Chinese business history is just the opposite. Things always happen again and again after a certain period of time, but people turn a blind eye to them.Over the past hundred years, the internal logic of history has not been interrupted by the change of dynasties. From Li Hongzhang and Sheng Xuanhuai, to Song Ziwen and Kong Xiangxi, to the later state rulers, so many stories with similar plots have been staged again and again like remakes of TV dramas, with different directors , different actors, a script that has not changed for a hundred years, the lines in that script are actually copied and reincarnated from generation to generation like the genetic information in genes. If we look a little farther away, in the past two thousand years, China is the only major country in the world that has maintained a centralized system for a long time.The obsession with authority is still a historical issue that the whole people needs to be vigilant about and urgently to be cracked.The experience of countries around the world tells us that the greed for power is indeed the greatest enemy of mankind. Without institutional constraints, it seems that no nation or regime in the world can consciously control itself and avoid moral and economic constraints. destroy.Gordon, one of the founders of rent-seeking theory?Turok once discussed in "The Economics of Privilege and Rent-seeking": "In modern countries, the total cost of the privileges created by industry is huge. Moreover, if we go back to history, we will find that before the British Industrial Revolution, Almost all governments in the world have huge privileged industries, which is also an important reason why progress was so slow at that time.” China’s modern industrialization road seems to be the most vivid footnote of this discussion. Absurdity only makes sense when people disagree with it, and human beings exist because they are good at reflection. For a country, any period of experience is the common choice of the citizens of that period. History is a piece of clothing we personally weave. Once we put it on, we can never take it off again.As the Norwegian dramatist Henrik ?As Ibsen said, "Everyone is responsible for the society to which he belongs, and he has a share in the ills of that society."Many people seem to disagree with such a view of history, and they often use words such as "deceived", "used", and "deceived" to easily forgive the mistakes at that time.And this is one of the bad roots in the national character.The mistakes of one generation should be shared by at least three generations. If we have such courage and determination, we may never be able to make progress. In November 1977, Deng Xiaoping, who had just come back, went out for inspection. The first stop he chose was Guangdong. At that time, in the southeast coastal area, not only underground bazaars like Shishi appeared, but also an unstoppable "fleeing wave" occurred.In Bao'an County, which borders Hong Kong, in Guangdong Province, thousands of peasants risk crossing the border every year.The stowaways used air pillows as boats and ping-pong paddles as oars. Some even jumped into Lingdingyang with a basketball in their arms. Many people were swallowed by the waves.The reason for farmers fleeing is very simple: across the river, the disparity between the rich and the poor is too glaring. The daily income of a farmer in Baoan County is 0.7 to 1.3 yuan, while the daily income of a farmer in Hong Kong is 60 to 70 Hong Kong dollars. There is a Luofang village here. , the per capita annual income is 134 yuan, and there is also Luofang Village in the New Territories of Hong Kong, with a per capita annual income of 13,000 yuan.In 1977, Bao'an County intercepted and sheltered 46,000 fugitives, and this wave of fleeing even continued until the summer and autumn of 1979. (The "fleeing wave" in Guangdong first began during the Great Famine in the early 1960s. Economist Zhou Qiren believes: "China's reform and opening up has actually been brewing for a long time. There are two events that deserve attention. The first is The famine that occurred in China between 1959 and 1961 caused a large number of people to die abnormally. The second incident was in Bao'an County (Shenzhen), Guangdong Province in 1962, when 100,000 people gathered to smuggle away from Hong Kong. We have reason I believe that today, the main feature of China's economy is not just high-speed growth, but high-speed growth under opening up.") When Deng Xiaoping came to inspect, the large-scale mass escape from Hong Kong was intensifying, and the border guards were unable to guard against it. It was regarded as a vicious political incident, and the leaders of Guangdong Province naturally had to avoid talking about it when reporting on their work.Unexpectedly, after listening to the report, Deng Xiaoping suddenly interrupted and said: "This is a problem with our policy. This matter is beyond the control of the army." Such an answer surprised the cadres present.Deng Xiaoping further expressed his point of view. He said, "Your problems are quite concentrated. It seems that the central problem is still a policy problem. It seems that exposing and criticizing the 'Gang of Four' is the key point, but it will soon be turned and ended. If we want to turn to economic construction, we must focus on economic construction, and we can no longer mention 'class struggle as the key link'." After leaving Guangzhou, Deng Xiaoping inspected Sichuan, where he mentioned what he had seen and heard in Guangdong: "I heard in Guangdong that raising three ducks is socialism, and raising five ducks is capitalism. I think it is ridiculous! It can be seen that Our rural policies need to be changed and reformed.” Everyone could hear the urgency in that voice.As Li Hongzhang, an important official in the late Qing Dynasty, exclaimed in 1880-"Our dynasty is in a strange situation that has not been seen in thousands of years." After a hundred years of ups and downs, the wind and rain are like clouds. At this time, China has reached a moment of change. .