Chapter 9 1981 Cage and Bird

No one expected that the reform situation would take a sharp turn for the worse at the beginning of the year. Charles Abrams was the first American businessman to feel the chill.Just last year in Fortune magazine, he was also described as "the successful representative of the new American dream of going to China to pan for gold." The 57-year-old New York real estate dealer succeeded in a trading company in China, in After visiting China more than forty times, he concluded that China is like a huge company.He has been warmly received by many Chinese officials, from whom he has obtained white papers from several state-owned enterprises, and even some preliminary contracts worth tens of millions.Because of these contracts, he also managed to raise $25 million from the New York stock market.

But in the following year's "Fortune", Abrams became the unlucky guy in another bad news.According to the report, “Beijing has recently suspended contracts in many major industries on a large scale. This behavior has frustrated many Chinese companies and also caused losses to many American companies trying to make money here and start operations.” Abrams is one of them. Bear the brunt of many orders and contracts he got turned into waste paper overnight. Shougang, which became China's first reform pilot three years ago, was one of the first state-owned enterprises to be hit.Over the past two years, Shougang's net profit has grown by an average of 45.32% per year, and its paid profits and taxes have grown by an average of 27.91% per year. The company is showing signs of prosperity.However, trouble soon arose. In April, eight units including the State Economic Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the General Administration of Materials, and the Ministry of Metallurgy jointly issued a notice to impose strict restrictions on the national steel production. Shougang’s production reduction task is 360,000 tons, accounting for 9% of the total steel production in the previous year .Factory director Zhou Guanwu had to order the shutdown of the No. 2 blast furnace, which had just started production.

This is not the only thing to hold your breath. At the same time that the production restriction task was issued, Zhang Peng, the deputy mayor of Beijing, rushed to Shougang again. He brought the city's instructions: due to the government's financial constraints, as the industrial enterprises in Beijing, "Leader", Shougang's handed-in profit this year is guaranteed to reach 270 million yuan, an increase of 9.3% over the previous year.Zhou Guanwu showed the mayor with paper and pen to do the calculations: "Shall out all of Shougang's family assets, and the profit of up to 265 million yuan will be paid up, and the company will keep a cent without employee benefits, and it will fly to the sky." However, Zhang Peng also said very frankly: "This year's life in the city is difficult, just to put pressure on you."

Life will suddenly be difficult, which many people did not expect. After nearly three years of reform, China has completed a "baptism" politically, reform has become the mainstream on the stage, and the public trial of the "Gang of Four" has made the whole people hate leftist ideology. [In November 1980, the special court of the Supreme People's Court made the final verdict on the 10 main criminals of the "Gang of Four" group, and the trial was broadcast to the whole country through television. 】In the countryside, the joint production contract responsibility system that started in Fengyang, Anhui began to spread on a large scale, and the enthusiasm of farmers for production was greatly mobilized; sporadic individual economy.According to the words of many observers at the time, "it is a rare good economic situation since the founding of the People's Republic of China."Accompanied by this, the central finance has experienced serious difficulties.The most notable sign is the two consecutive years of huge fiscal deficits in 1979 and 1980. According to the data disclosed in the "China Economic Yearbook (1981)", the deficit was more than 17 billion yuan in 1979 and more than 12 billion yuan in 1980.By 1980, prices were no longer stable, and commodity prices rose by 6%, of which 8.1% in urban areas and 4.4% in rural areas.

The reason is that the financial crisis is largely brought about by the reform process.In order to improve the living standards of workers and farmers, the central government has issued a series of policies in the past three years, including employee salary increases, bonuses, employment placements, policy refunds, price increases for agricultural products, and expansion of enterprises and local finances. There has been a substantial increase in finances.At the same time, the recovery of the economy will inevitably lead to the revival of infrastructure construction, and the scale of infrastructure construction in various places has continued to expand, gradually reaching the point where the budget cannot be controlled.On the one hand, the reform of delegating power and transferring profits to state-owned enterprises has reduced the revenue of the central government by a large amount. On the other hand, the overall effect of this reform is really unsatisfactory.

At the end of 1980, Hu Yaobang sent the General Office of the Central Committee to organize an investigation team to investigate the pilot projects of expanding the autonomy of enterprises in Sichuan, Anhui, and Zhejiang. The Survey Report on the Pilot Program of Autonomy stated that the pilot reform situation is not optimistic. On the one hand, decentralization is still limited, and corporate power is still very small in terms of enterprise profit retention, raw material supply, labor management system, wage system, and unplanned production. has a limited effect.On the other hand, the price system under centralized management and unreasonable price comparisons lead to wide disparities in the profit levels of various industrial sectors. The most typical is that the cost-profit ratio of the oil industry is 100 times higher than that of the coal industry, resulting in uneven competition and unfair competition. and compare with each other.The investigation team also found that in the absence of hard budgetary constraints, the pilot enterprises had behaviors such as "withholding tax profits, distributing costs indiscriminately, and distributing bonuses and subsidies indiscriminately", and the effect of the reform of decentralization and profit transfer is diminishing.Hierarchical fiscal management has strengthened local interests. "Separate regimes" have begun to appear in a few areas, which not only compete for profits from top to bottom, but also hinder horizontal economic linkages." Competition for raw materials between urban and rural areas, and between regions, redundant construction, blind production, The chaotic phenomenon of crowding the big with the small and crowding the advanced with the backward has also developed.In foreign economic exchanges, there have also been phenomena in which bulls compete with each other, and "fertile water falls into other people's field".In response to this situation, Deng Xiaoping raised a warning in time.Extensive management and technical gap make the efficiency of state-owned enterprises very low. In 1980, China needed to consume nearly 2,140 tons of standard coal to produce an output value of 1 million US dollars, while India, a typical country of the so-called "catch-up strategy", only needed 40% of China's energy to produce the same amount of output value, and Brazil used 25% of China's energy. In other developing countries, such as Egypt and South Korea, their energy consumption is only half of China's if they produce an output value of 1 million US dollars, and Yugoslavia is 35% of China's.This energy-consuming development model is a very obvious feature of the growth of Chinese enterprises.

Under such circumstances, the first macro-control of China's reform and opening up began in the third year after 1978. Deng Xiaoping's thinking was very clear: First, to protect the central government's finances, take emergency braking measures, comprehensively reduce unplanned investment, borrow local financial deposits, issue treasury bills to enterprises and local governments, temporarily freeze free funds of enterprises in banks, and reduce bank loans. In 1981, infrastructure investment decreased by 12.6 billion yuan compared with the previous year, and the accumulation rate reached 28.3%, keeping the national deficit within 3.5 billion yuan.The direct result of these measures is that the enthusiasm for investment in various places has been greatly reduced, and the projects negotiated with foreign countries have been stranded one by one, so the scenes described in Fortune at the beginning of this chapter appeared.The second is to protect state-owned enterprises.

How to protect state-owned enterprises has been controversial.On the issue of the diminishing effect of the state-owned enterprise pilot program, there were two voices in the economic circles to respond.The promotion group, represented by Xue Muqiao, an economist who participated in the overall plan of the reform at that time, believed that the reform of releasing profits and transferring power had limitations, and advocated that the reform should focus on "reform of the price management system" and "reform of distribution channels". Gradually make fun of the administrative pricing system, and establish a commodity market and a financial market.In his memoirs published 16 years later, he said that if he had followed his ideas, China's economic reform would have avoided many detours.Another opinion is that the reform of state-owned enterprises "must strengthen the centralization and unification" and "the final foothold is the centralization and unification". A bird cannot always tie its wings and let it fly freely. However, the state-owned economic system is a big cage. No matter how the bird flies, it should not fly out of this cage.These expositions finally convinced the central decision-makers that "cages and birds" ruled the enterprise reform ideas throughout the 1980s, and the reform of state-owned enterprise restructuring became a "reform in a cage."

Starting from this theory, looking at the situation in 1980, it is very easy to draw a conclusion: the reform of state-owned enterprises must be carried out gradually and gradually under the control of the central government, and how to reform can be "crossing the river by feeling the stones". step.The most urgent task is to rectify those "birds outside the cage" that do not obey orders and cannot be controlled. It is they that have disrupted the entire economic situation. "Crossing the river by feeling the stones" is one of the most vivid expressions of the reform of Chinese enterprises. It first appeared in the "Opinions on Several Issues Concerning the Economic Responsibility System for Internship Industrial Production" approved by the State Council in October 1981. The "Opinions" stated that " The implementation of the economic responsibility system is still in the exploratory stage, and we must cross the river by feeling the stones."

This judgment of the central government is likely to be echoed by state-owned enterprises.Soon, a lot of voices appeared in the local media and internal reports, all complaining about how those unplanned small factories competed with the regulated state-owned enterprises for raw materials, how they disrupted the market order, and how they caused the state-owned enterprises to suffer huge losses.All in all, if the pilot enterprises fail to do well, it is all the fault of the wild birds outside the cage. The judgment of the situation and the resulting directional decisions directly lead to a major turning point in the reform policy.

In fact, before the beginning of 1981, the direction of the policy was still moving towards encouraging the individual economy. At the National Labor and Employment Work Conference held in June 1980, the central government still proposed to "encourage and support the proper development of the individual economy, different economic forms can compete on the same stage, and all law-abiding individual workers should be respected by the society."At the symposium of provincial and municipal first secretaries in September, it was also proposed to allow "rural handicraftsmen and small traders engaged in self-employment to go out to work and operate with a certificate after signing a contract with the production team." In October, the State Council promulgated the "Interim Regulations on Developing and Protecting Socialist Competition", proposing to "allow and promote competition among various economic forms and enterprises."But by 1981, there was a big shift in caliber. In January 1981, the State Council issued two emergency documents "Crackdown on Speculation and Smuggling". , it is not allowed to sell industrial products", "Rural communes and brigades collectively may traffic in the second and third types of agricultural and sideline products that are not purchased by the state and are not purchased by the state. similar products", "private purchase of automobiles, tractors, motor boats and other large means of transport is not allowed for sale".Then, on the 30th, the State Council issued a document "Several Regulations on Adjusting the Industrial and Commercial Tax Burden of Rural Cooperatives and Brigade Enterprises", which clearly stated that "in order to limit the competition for raw materials with large and medium-sized advanced The two-to-three-year regulation on the Industrial and Commercial Income Tax has been changed to treat it differently according to different situations... All communal and brigade enterprises that compete with large advanced enterprises for raw materials and make more profits, whether they are new or existing enterprises, shall be taxed according to the regulations. Income tax.” These two documents are strict in tone and detailed in measures, and both are required to be reported on the front pages of major media.For a time, "cracking down on speculation" became the most important economic activity of the year. These two strict documents of the State Council (they were not officially abolished by the State Council until July 1986), if interpreted from a policy perspective, they are not groundless. "Regulations on Several Issues Concerning the Development of Community and Team Enterprises (Trial Draft)".Through this comparison of documents, we can see that in the early 1980s, the central government defined the roles and functions of private enterprises, especially township enterprises that sprouted in the countryside. Generally speaking, the "Regulations on Several Issues Concerning the Development of Communal and Team Enterprises (Trial Draft)" encourages the establishment and development of commune and brigade enterprises, and the regulations also put forward very specific guiding directions.However, in the details of the articles of association, traces of the planned economy can be clearly published. From the strategic thinking of development, it can be seen that the central government's development of commune and brigade enterprises is mainly to solve rural problems.In the second chapter of this regulation, "Development Policy", it is clearly stipulated that communes and brigade enterprises must adhere to the direction of socialism, actively produce products needed by society, mainly serve agricultural production, serve people's lives, and also serve large-scale industry. , For export services.The development of commune and brigade enterprises must be tailored to local conditions, according to local resource conditions and social needs, from small to large, from low-level to high-level.Do not engage in "cooking without rice", do not engage in processing industries with excess production capacity, do not compete with advanced large industrial enterprises for raw materials and power, and do not destroy national resources. In the above article, "mainly serving agricultural production" specifies the industrial direction and product direction of commune and brigade enterprises, while "not competing with advanced large industrial enterprises for raw materials and power" limits the growth radius of commune and brigade enterprises.Therefore, when after nearly two years of development, the commune and brigade enterprises suddenly flourished outside the wages and began to compete with the state-owned enterprises inside the cage for market and raw materials in certain fields, these restrictive clauses in the regulations were activated . "The days in 1981 were very difficult." Many years later, Lu Guanqiu of Xiaoshan recalled that the price of steel was increased by 1.3 times, the price of coal was increased by 5 times, and the cost continued to rise. It was suspended, and there was only one reason, "According to the regulations of the higher authorities, we can no longer enter the products of township enterprises."Lu Guanqiu wanted to get a college student in the university. At that time, there was only one high school student among the hundreds of people in the factory, let alone an engineer.The person from the university distribution office looked at him as if he saw an alien: "Did you come to the wrong place?" In Daqiuzhuang, Tianjin, Yu Zuomin, who was running a prosperous cold-rolled strip steel factory, also came under pressure from above. His steel factory clearly competed with state-owned enterprises for raw materials, and the steel it produced was Disturbing the planned market for steel is the first thing this movement will strike.Soon, the county dispatched an investigation team.Then, a dramatic scene appeared. First, the powerful Yu Zuomin was very resistant to the investigation team.A member of the investigation team said to him, "You have done nothing wrong, and you are not afraid of ghosts knocking on the door." Yu Zuomin, who is very gifted in language, immediately retorted: "Although you have done nothing wrong, but the old ghost knocks on your door, life will be easier." Is it?" Under his leadership, the attitude of the villagers in Daqiuzhuang towards the inspection team can be imagined. Every day, an old man would come to question the inspection team with a stick, "We just had a good few days, and you came, we Why don’t you come when you’re starving?” Some young men also came to “bomb” them, “We’ve been single for many years, and we just found a partner, but you broke up as soon as you came, if you can’t find this daughter-in-law, you will be responsible!” The investigation team I fell into the unbearable "people's war", and finally I couldn't live in Daqiuzhuang, so I had to move to the countryside. Such struggles and wrestling are going on one after another in various places.Regarding factories like Lu Guanqiu and Yu Zuomin that have emerged from the countryside, the government’s attitude is very clear: please continue to develop locally, provide farmers with a radius of about ten kilometers with necessary labor farm tools, and solve the problem of idleness in rural areas. In addition to the employment problem of the population, we must not go to the city—or to grab food in a cage.In order to prevent the urban population from being "harassed" by the rural population, where the educated youths who returned to the city had been under great employment pressure, on December 30, the State Council even issued a notice, "Strictly control the rural labor force from entering the city to work, and control the agricultural population from turning into non-agricultural population". This series of measures objectively resulted in two facts. On the one hand, it effectively controlled the direction of the macro-economy and avoided all kinds of turmoil and instability that may arise due to overheating. The budding township enterprises suffered the first cold wave, and almost all the enterprises established around 1980 had their economic indicators decline or stagnate in 1981. Adjustments to the macroeconomy are not merely changes in economic policies, but also involve ideological debates.People who were already quite disapproving of the loose policy found a weapon to attack.And the first target they attacked was the newly ascendant special zone in the south. Ren Zhongyi, the first secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, was the one under the most pressure.At the beginning of the year, the central government held a working meeting and informed the heads of all provinces and regions in the country that all heads of state must be present. The central topic of the meeting was to discuss the adjustment of the national economy. During the meeting, someone distributed a letter written by four young people to the central leadership about economic adjustment. .In the letter, the 12-character policy of "slowing down reform, suppressing demand, readjustment, and abandoning development" was put forward.The upright Ren Zhongyi certainly could not evade this challenge. He spoke at the meeting: "The starting point of the letter is good, but the prescription is wrong. What is 'slow reform'? This is precisely because of the conservative thinking in the past, unwillingness and dare not to carry out reforms, and the pace of reforms was too slow, so many economic problems occurred. "Suppressing demand"? It is inevitable and normal for society's needs and people's material and cultural needs to increase continuously, which can only be solved and met step by step, especially under the circumstances at that time. Emphasis is placed on suppressing the needs of the masses. For the vast majority of the masses, their lives are already hard enough, and their needs cannot be suppressed. Adjustments are necessary, but it is wrong to "give up development". To implement special and flexible policies for Guangdong, and to set up a special zone, is to hope that Guangdong will take a step ahead and develop faster. If it is implemented according to the "12-word policy", especially to "slow reform" and "give up development", how can Guangdong take the lead? What about one step?" Ren Zhongyi's remarks did not match the tone of the meeting, and some even ran counter to it.Many years later, Ren Zhongyi said to reporters who came to interview this period of history: "Guangdong has to bear tremendous pressure to open a bloody road. At that time, Guangdong's reform and opening up had to be explored, and it had to face some confusion and even accusations. The Guangdong Provincial Party Committee Unswervingly clear up misunderstandings and insist on opening up to the outside world." After he returned to Guangdong, he only made some "articles" in adjustments, and there were no major changes in the SAR and related opening policies. Compared with Ren Zhongyi, Xiang Nan, who has just taken power in Fujian, is in a more delicate situation.Xiang Nan, who was over sixty years old, was sent to Fujian in the autumn of 1980 as the secretary of the provincial party committee. His gift to Fujian was that the central government listed Xiamen and Shantou as the first batch of coastal cities to open to the outside world.Xiang Nan has always acted like a thunderbolt, blowing a new wind into Fujian, which has been sluggish for many years. In terms of opening up to the outside world, Xiang Nan’s actions are no less than Ren Zhongyi’s. Soon after he took office, he asked the central government for special policies: The attractiveness of foreign capital is not as good as Guangdong, let alone Hong Kong and Xiamen.Therefore, Fujian should adopt more favorable and attractive policies than Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao.Specifically, there are "three things to do", that is: if both the foreign businessman and us are beneficial, we will do it; We will do whatever can solve our employment problem.The State Council is requested to approve it in principle. In June 1981, Fujian Hitachi TV Co., Ltd., a joint venture between Fujian and Japan's Hitachi, officially started production. This was the only Sino-foreign joint venture company that started construction in China that year.Before it was put into production, domestic public opinion was already tightening. Discussions about whether this company should be built have been quarreling from Fujian to Beijing. Some people characterized it as a "colonial factory".The Fujian provincial government once decided to let the company temporarily "suspend for a while" and wait for the political wind to make a decision. Only Xiang Nan stood alone and insisted on "going up as soon as possible."Japan's "Yomiuri Shimbun" reviewed the matter two years later and said, "Xiang Nan used his official hat to cut the ribbon for the production of Fujian Hitachi." On the issue of developing the private economy, Xiang Nan was also much more open-minded than his contemporaries. He was one of the few officials who saw the bright future of township enterprises in 1981.He said, "How can the 25 million people in Fujian get rich so quickly? Agriculture and industry can't pay off quickly, so what is the way out? The way out lies in the development of commune and brigade enterprises, and diversification. The commune and brigade enterprises are our Where is the hope?" When all kinds of brakes sounded everywhere, Xiang Nan publicly stated his position on various occasions: "Should the commune and brigade enterprises go up or down? I said yes, we must go up firmly, go up bravely, and overcome all obstacles to go forward." Forward!", "Township enterprises must be treated more closely than their own sons!" Thanks to the tenacious persistence of Xiang Nan, Ren Zhongyi and others, the economies of the Special Economic Zone and South China were not fatally impacted during this macro-control, and these provinces eventually became one of the most active areas of the private economy in the future. In 1981, few new projects were reported.Even those large projects started in the past two years were met with unprecedented doubts at this time. The New York Times published a report titled "Does Shanghai Really Need Steel?" The article said: "A recent article in China's People's Daily criticized the The output of the steel plant completed in Wuhan fell by 25%. However, the main content of the article is to criticize the plan to build a steel plant with an annual output of 6 million tons in Shanghai. This plan was one of China's most ambitious plans in 1978. 1. An official representative of China’s steel sector revealed that these criticisms made it difficult to implement the project smoothly.” In addition, according to German media reports, China also suspended the contract worth 1 billion marks to buy a rolling mill from Germany. The controversy over the Baosteel project was ultimately a false alarm because of Deng Xiaoping's final decision. This year, the only one that can be called "big money" was CITIC Corporation founded by Rong Yiren in 1978. This "China's first red capitalist" and vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference finally dug the first "big gold mine". In the past two years, Rong Yiren, who is in his 60s, led director Li Wenjie, who is in his 70s, to meet various foreign guests every day.From 1979 to 1981, the company received more than 6,000 foreign guests. He also invited former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as a consultant to CITIC. .One day, Rong Yiren chatted with Wang Jianshi, a director of CITIC who was born in a businessman, and suddenly came up with the idea of ​​"borrowing local projects to issue bonds to raise funds".Rong Yiren, who has been the deputy minister of the Ministry of Textiles for more than ten years, recalls that there is a Yizheng chemical fiber project in Jiangsu, which was originally a major project of 22 key national projects, with a design capacity of 500,000 tons of chemical fiber raw materials per year, which is equivalent to the total output of chemical fiber in the country , with a total investment of 1 billion yuan, is preparing to dismantle due to insufficient funds, and CITIC is ready to take over.Rong Yiren thought of a way to raise funds by borrowing money. He proposed to the State Council to revive the Yizheng Project by finding bonds abroad. "New China has always had a proud record, that is, it has neither domestic debt nor foreign debt. If Mr. Rong wanted to borrow money from foreigners, he first had to face ideological difficulties." Chen Guanren, the author of "Rong's Father and Son", recorded at that time Many people went to the State Council to sue CITIC for the controversy. "Socialism borrows money from capitalism. What kind of economy is this? What does CITIC want to do?" If it were to be discussed at the political level, Rong Yiren would definitely not be able to take advantage of it, not to mention that the overall climate at the time was not conducive to his motion at all.Fortunately, with his deep connections, he quickly sought the support of the main leaders, and the State Council agreed with CITIC to issue 10 billion yuan of private placement bonds in Japan. Rong Yiren completed all the preliminary work non-stop for more than half a year. It is no exaggeration to say that his personal credit and political identity have become the most important guarantees for this fundraising.In January 1982, CITIC bonds were successfully issued, and 30 Japanese financial institutions subscribed for the bonds with a term of 12 years and an annual interest rate of 8.7%.Three years later, the first phase of Yizheng Chemical Fiber Project was completed and put into operation.CITIC's approach is known as the "Yizheng model", and after this battle, Rong Yiren and CITIC finally found a feeling. "The capital is back." Rong Yiren later told the American reporter in a nutshell. While issuing bonds externally, CITIC Corporation boldly developed leasing business. In 1981, CITIC, Beijing Electromechanical Company and a Japanese company jointly established a leasing company, leasing 200 cars from Japan for two taxi companies in Beijing, "Beijing" and "Capital", and CITIC helped the taxi company solve the foreign exchange problem , the car company pays RMB.Although the plan was first proposed by some people as a disguised import, but in less than two years, the cars leased by the two rental companies earned back all the money they paid.Since then, the leasing business has flourished in CITIC, and even developed into one of its important business systems.The system includes: China International Leasing Co., Ltd., China Orient Leasing Co., Ltd., which cooperates with foreign trade, and the Leasing Department of CITIC Industrial Bank, etc. In 1981, the two words that appeared most frequently in Chinese newspapers were "tertiary industry" and "stay without pay". The so-called "tertiary industry" refers to the self-rescue business activities carried out by state-owned enterprises after their main business is blocked, for example, knocking down the original factory walls, renting them out to self-employed people to open shops, or organizing idle trucks to form a transportation company Or, the factory directors use their own channels to engage in some commercial business. The active advocacy of the "tertiary industry" is undoubtedly a measure of interests with great sequelae from the perspective of future practice.It is impossible to solve the existing problems of inefficiency in state-owned enterprises. On the contrary, it seems to put aside the difficulties that most need to be solved (such as improving the labor efficiency of enterprises, enhancing the market competitiveness of products, etc.), and state-owned enterprises gradually lose them. leading edge in their respective industries. Although the flow of personnel brought about by the "tertiary industry" and "suspension without pay" can temporarily alleviate the imminent problem of redundant staff, it has fundamentally caused the dissatisfaction within the state-owned enterprises, and no one is willing to be honest. Focusing on their own jobs on the ground, the core competence of the enterprise is easily abandoned.All the people are lazy during the eight hours, but they are very active after get off work.As one economist observed: "Workplace" workers are generally unmotivated, lazy, and take three-hour naps.But at home, these people are busy raising chickens or making furniture or other crafts to keep for their own use or to sell to friends and relatives. In terms of vintage, 1981 was indeed not a very good year for China.Both reform and opening up are not as simple as people imagined two years ago: as long as the country is opened, it will be a smooth road.The first battle of state-owned enterprise reform, which had been placed on high hopes, was at a stalemate. The central government’s finances were tight, and the mind was once again confused. God seemed unwilling to take care of it. Since the beginning of the year, droughts and floods have broken out in the Central Plains. In July, Sichuan flooded and thousands of people died. , 500,000 people were homeless.The United States "Time" disclosed in the article "Flood and Famine" that "Beijing turned to the international community for help for the first time."The article said, "China, the most populous country in the world, is suffering from the worst natural disasters, floods and droughts since the Tangshan earthquake in 1976. The main affected areas include Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, etc. For the first time, the Chinese communist government called Assistance from the international community. At the same time, Chinese and United Nations officials are working hard to control the disclosure of the seriousness of the incident.” In March, the International Monetary Fund promised to give China US$450 million in financing.This is China's first loan to an international organization.And "The Economist" also wrote under the pun title "Chinese Bullina China Shop" (Chinese Bullina China Shop): "Foreign exchange reserves are tight, domestic inflation is serious, oil production is bottlenecked, and exports are declining. The heavy dependence on rare energy resources has caused serious problems in the Chinese economy, and a large number of investment cuts have damaged many major projects and foreign suppliers, including Shanghai Baosteel, Nanjing Petrochemical, Beijing Petrochemical, etc. Relatively speaking, Fortune seems to be a little more optimistic.In the autumn, "Fortune" reporter John Rousey walked into the North China Plain and reported the facts he saw to the world with his eyes: "One golden autumn morning, we were driving a Toyota on Poplar Avenue in Zhengzhou, Henan. .Henan is a province in central China. I came here to work for a short time 40 years ago. At that time, Henan was sometimes drought, sometimes flood, and there were many victims. Today’s Henan has undergone great changes, the most surprising of which The most important thing is its awakened sense of enterprise. The tilt of public opinion towards free enterprise has made this momentum irreversible, which will help China cooperate with Western companies in various aspects, and in turn promote China to become a more active trading partner.” In Lu Xi's words, "Although it is very slow, China is really changing for the better." Through the observations of these foreigners, we seem to be able to feel the tense pulse of China in 1981.The whole world is staring at this oriental giant that has just awakened, guessing whether it will fall asleep again after a slight setback. With the rise of Japan and Asia, the global corporate landscape began to be rewritten. By 1981, one-third of the companies listed in the world's top 500 in 1970 had disappeared.The new US President Reagan abandoned Keynesianism and decided to use more market-oriented means and loose fiscal control to revitalize the sluggish US economy.Those invincible big companies have also begun to make difficult transitions, and a new generation of entrepreneurs with more competitive and innovative spirits has come to the fore.The newly appointed CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch, went to a small city near Los Angeles to visit Peter Drucker, the most famous management scientist in the world, and asked for advice on how to integrate thousands of subsidiaries. Drucker taught him A small trick: "Whether your company is valuable or not, you just need to see if anyone is willing to spend money to buy it." Failure to be No. 1 or No. 2 in the industry will result in elimination.At Intel, President Grove began to build a highly organized and integrated corporate structure, and he even put forward the idea that "only the paranoid can survive". On a technical level, 1981 was an exciting year. On August 13, IBM showed the world the first PC5150 computer and created an industry standard. This day means that the world has entered the era of personal computers, and IBM will rule this market until 1994. This year, Chinese teenagers suddenly got a new toy - the Rubik's Cube.This is a cube plastic toy with six sides and six colors, and each side is composed of nine small cubes. See who can adjust the six sides to the same color in the shortest time.In the classroom, at home and on the road, you can see people racking their brains everywhere.In a sense, the Chinese economy at this time is also very much like a Rubik's cube: there is clearly a way out, but the reality is a bit chaotic, and people can't figure out a clue. Due to the tightening of the entire policy, 1981 naturally became the low tide year for foreign capital to enter China.Only some sporadic joint venture reports appeared in the newspapers.Coca-Cola opened its second bottling plant in Guangzhou.Two years after the old rival entered China, Pepsi also came to China.At that time, Li Wenfu, the business representative of PepsiCo in China, rode a bicycle across the Luohu Bridge towards Shenzhen to form a joint venture with the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone.Negotiations took little effort, and the two sides hit it off immediately. Pepsi-Cola invested 60%, Shenzhen 40%, and built a Pepsi-Cola canning plant in Shenzhen.A year later, the factory covering an area of ​​more than 13,000 square meters was officially put into operation.There were only 110 employees at the time. Germany's Siemens also wants to test the waters in China, but the approach is obviously much more cautious. It did not rush to open a branch or invest in building a factory in China, but quietly carried out business in the form of an informal office.At the age of 33, Bei Yinsi was sent to Beijing from Hong Kong, and later became the president of Siemens China in China. He said humorously: "I used to look at Beijing with a telescope in Hong Kong before, but I have never been here, and I don't know Beijing. What does it look like?" Because the company has not yet registered in China, Bayins cannot do business directly, nor can it go to the factory to meet customers directly.Every morning, he went to the Negotiation Building in Erligou, near the Beijing Zoo, where there was a counter with many envelopes for different companies.If there is an envelope from Siemens, he will open it, and there will be demands for various commodities in it, asking Siemens to provide quotations, and then he will pass the information to Siemens’ Hong Kong company, and they will provide specific quotations and product catalogs. Then, Bei Yin Si can continue to negotiate.这些谈判主要都是在二里沟进行，谈判对象是中国的机械进出口公司和一些军区医院，需要设备的工厂其实都不了解如何跟贝殷思打交道。贝殷思的业务做得很不错，第一年就谈成了大约5000万马克的生意，三年后，西门子的全球总裁卡斯克博士来到了北京，从那时开始，西门子才栓算是真正地进入了中国。 在芝加哥大学，一位长期观察中国问题的学者发表了一篇论文，题目是《中国会走向“资本主义”吗？ ".他认为，“中国最后必会走上私有企业制度的道路。邓小平显然是为了现代化的所需而坚持大开中国的门户——引进科技知识、外汇和资金。从国外逐渐吸纳的知识将有助于降低一般有关经济制度的咨询费用……今日在中国掌权的务实派显然相信，只要有足够的资金及技术，在共产主义下的一切经济失误都是可以克服过来的。” 他进而大胆地写道：“我推测中国假以时日将会采纳一种近似私有产权的产权结构……我可以推断，在未来，劳工、生产工具、机器、建筑物，甚至土地，将会有若干程度的私有使用权及转让权。”这位学者在论文注脚中还说：即使将来中国容许资源的转让及私有使用权，中国可能也永远不会以“资本主义”或“私有产权”等名词来形容其经济制度。十多年后人们发现，他说对了一半，到2000年前后“私有产权”成为一个被公开运用的名词。 这些声音很大胆，他因此在日后的中国名声大噪。不过早1981年，他显得很孤单，紧缩的空气仍然弥漫在整个国家上空，报纸每天在连篇累牍的报道各地整治“投机倒把”的新闻，很多人都隐隐预感到了，更严厉的打击可能即将开始了。