Chapter 17 Figures in Corporate History: Lei Yu with Two Faces

Beginning in June 1984, Hainan Island, which was lonely overseas for a hundred years, suddenly became a land of turmoil.At the beginning of the year, Deng Xiaoping went south. He said a word about Hainan, "If it takes 20 years to develop Hainan's economy to the level of Taiwan, it will be a great victory." This statement was conveyed as the spirit of the central government. At that time, Lei Yu, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Hainan Administrative District and Director of the Office, was "so excited that he couldn't sleep at night." At that time, the State Council approved and forwarded a document, "Discussion Minutes on Accelerating the Development and Construction of Hainan Island", which pointed out: "The Hainan administrative region can approve the import of industrial and agricultural production materials for production and construction according to needs; it can use local foreign exchange to import some Consumer goods that are in short supply in the Hainan market." However, this "Summary" also clearly stipulates that "the above-listed import and export materials and commodities are limited to use and sales within the Hainan administrative region, and shall not be resold outside the administrative region."

In order to make more use of policies quickly and complete primitive accumulation, Lei Yu and his subordinates naturally thought of cars.At that time, Lei Yu's calculation was, "Import 13,000 vehicles and resell them to the mainland, and earn 200 million yuan." To his surprise, the situation quickly got out of hand as soon as the floodgate opened.After getting an approval document, you can earn tens of thousands of yuan by reselling a car. For Hainanese, it is undoubtedly a big oil well dug at their doorstep.All of a sudden, the whole island fell into madness, everyone scrambled for approval, and everyone resold cars.In the first half of 1984, Hainan imported just over 2,000 cars. By July, the district government had approved the import of 13,000 cars, 36 times higher than the monthly average in the first half of the year.In just half a year, 872 companies appeared on the island, and all of them went straight to the car.Even the army participated in the big operation of transporting vehicles out of the island. The navy used warships to replace all the vehicles with military license plates in the name of deployment.

It was a scorchingly hot summer. Cars poured into Hainan Island like a tide, and they were all parked inside and outside Haikou City. They were densely packed and stretched as far as the eye could see. They were colorful and shining in the sun, forming a spectacular scene.The Industrial and Commercial Bureau actively handles the "fine release" procedures for buyers from all over the country. As long as they are fined four to five thousand yuan and stamped with an official seal, the car can be shipped out of the island in a dignified manner.Among them, corruption, bribery, bribery, arbitrage, all criminal activities are carried out openly in the sun.After the investigation, in just half a year, Hainan signed a total of 89,000 car import release approval documents, ordered more than 70,000 cars, and issued more than 50,000 letters of credit.The total amount for imports is as high as 300 million US dollars.

In September, a large number of imported cars in Hainan attracted the attention of the central government. The State Council sent people to investigate. Lei Yu's reported materials were quite different from the actual situation: "First, all the cars imported in Hainan are sold on the island. Second, it has already arrived. There are less than 15,000 trucks for goods. Third, Hainan has very strict management of imported materials, and no one is allowed to leave the island. Cars are being unloaded at the port of Haikou City. On November 25, Lei Yu still stated in a telegram to the Special Administrative Region Office of the State Council, "So far, all the cars imported from Hainan Island are sold on the island."

Cars are not diamonds. Thousands of cars are imported and exported from the island, but people all over the world treat them as nothing. In December, Lei Yu was summoned to Guangzhou, where the provincial government explicitly ordered him to stop importing cars.At this point, the frenzy stopped abruptly. At the beginning of 1985, a huge investigation team composed of 102 people from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Central Military Commission, and the National Audit Office was stationed in Hainan.According to survey data released shortly after, in one year, Hainan illegally bought 570 million U.S. dollars of foreign exchange from 21 provinces and cities across the country and 15 central government agencies. The total output value of Hainan's industry and agriculture will increase by 1 billion yuan in 2018.In addition to automobiles, 2.86 million TV sets and 252,000 VCRs were imported.

Lei Yu was dismissed and later transferred to the deputy secretary of an agricultural county in Guangdong.From the day he was demoted, he became a "hero" of the reform. In many cases, he was often compared with Hai Rui, an upright official of the Ming Dynasty who died in Hainan. In 1996, when he was 61 years old, he voluntarily resigned from the position of vice chairman of the Guangxi Autonomous Region, and claimed to go home to serve his ninety-year-old mother. From then on, he became a news figure again and received sympathy from public opinion for a while. Objectively speaking, the car incident in Hainan has brought the closed and backward Hainan to the forefront of opening up. Hainanese, who have always been ashamed of commodity transactions, seem to have experienced a deep money education. The "Hainan fever" that emerged in the late 1980s has a lot to do with this.

An intriguing phenomenon is that the reason why Lei Yu is so bold is inseparable from the mentality of the reformers eager for change at that time.When he took office in Hainan, a leader of the central government once said that the central government and Guangdong Province should do nothing to govern Hainan Island. At least for three years, first, there should be no sticks, and second, no "rope".After Deng Xiaoping's southern tour, some leaders encouraged him to say, if you are working on Hainan Island, be more courageous and do whatever you want as soon as possible. In terms of personal morality, Lei Yu is a rare capable and honest official in the Republic. He is upright and upright, dares to resist and speak out, acts like a thunderbolt, has clear thinking, and has a good official voice, which is proved by many people.During his tenure, he worked hard to eliminate the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, rehabilitated all the "rightists" on the island, and made Hainan a "no-right island". He had the habit of handling letters from the people himself. More than 5,000 letters to his people.In the after-the-fact investigation of the "car incident", it was found that Lei Yu personally never reversed a car during the upsurge, and did not accept a single penny of bribes.It is precisely because of this that he has been respected and sympathized for more than ten years, and has been popular among the people as a chivalrous and upright official.

However, from the perspective of the system, the Hainan incident undoubtedly set a very bad precedent.It has made China's economic reform gradually slide to the wanton traversal of the system, and the law is useless.Any behavior in the name of reform can creatively destroy the existing system, and this practice has always been tacitly tolerated and tolerated.In many cases, people's disregard and betrayal of the system even become morally noble, the result is that the entire social environment is gradually grayed out, and the system and moral bottom line are easily broken down. Public opinion’s evaluation of Lei Yu most vividly reflects the conceptual disorder and system paradox in China’s reform process. For quite a long time, legal judgments on the economic behavior of officials and entrepreneurs have been very confusing, even With a lot of randomness and stages, in the end, it had to fall on the specific details of whether he himself "accepted bribes".As everyone knows, whether an official's decision-making behavior or an entrepreneur's business activities are illegal, and whether he personally accepts bribes, there is no necessary connection between the two.

Regarding the Hainan car smuggling incident, Lei Yu has a very unique personal view. In March 2004, he said in an interview with "Xinmin Weekly" reporter Lu Xingsheng: There is only one mistake in the "Hainan car incident", and that is the government's approval. "The government didn't benefit much, and it was scattered to the society"—the Hainan administrative region government at that time was too favorable to the people. This is another angle of event observation.In other words, if the government benefits a lot, can it ignore the system and the law?Under this logic, the government, as an interest group and the owner of specific capital, plays a very clear role in striving for the benefit of the people.

Lei Yu settled in Guangzhou in his later years. In 1999, when a reporter came to interview him, he saw that after lunch, he and his 99-year-old mother were meditating in meditation, just like an old monk.