Chapter 31 Chapter 7: Great Responsibility from Heaven——5 The report enters the highest decision-making level

After Du Ying returned to Beijing, he was busy organizing people to write a report to the State Council on the pilot project of the national rural grassroots tax and fee system, and specially invited He Kaiyin and Yang Wenliang to participate in the discussion. The title of the report is very clear: "An important reform measure related to rural development and stability". Vice Premier Jiang Chunyun has been to the Fuyang Experimental Zone in person. After reading the report, he was very happy and quickly issued instructions: "This is a major problem in rural work. The pilot has explored some ideas and ways to solve the problem. It is planned to open a special We will summarize and exchange experience and put forward future opinions.”

Just before the report forwarded by the Ministry of Agriculture and Jiang Chunyun's instructions were delivered to Executive Vice Premier Zhu Jiji, who was in charge of economic work, Zhu Rongji first read an article "Hebei Provincial Adjustment of the Public Grain System Pilot Program” news.Apparently this was the first time that Zhu Rongji came into contact with this kind of news. He was a little surprised, so he approved the article to the then Minister of Finance Liu Zhongli and Vice Minister Xiang Huaicheng: "Comrades Zhongli and Huaicheng please read it." At the same time, he approved the article to the Secretary-General of the State Council He Chunlin asked him to find out: "What's going on with this pilot project?"

When we first read Zhu Rongji's instructions from "Memorabilia of the Reform of the Public Grain System in Hebei Province", we were very surprised.Because the reform of rural taxes and fees has gone through five long springs and autumns, from proposal to trial, from secret trial to public trial, until it developed into a "prairie fire" in 50 counties in seven provinces, not to mention big newspapers and tabloids. This has been fully disclosed. Hebei Province also held a wide-ranging seminar in Beijing. Comrades from many relevant departments of the State Council attended the meeting. How could Vice Premier Zhu Rongji know nothing about this matter?

Later, when I thought about it carefully, I found it was not surprising.The article on He Kaiyin's reform ideas was published in the "Compilation of Situations" of the "People's Daily", which attracted the attention of Premier Li Peng and delivered an important speech, but it was after all in the spring of 1990, and Zhu Rongji was still working in Shanghai , It is quite normal to be ignorant of all this.Later, when he went to Beijing to take charge of the economic work of the State Council, it was at a time when China's economic growth rate was at a low point, industrial production was slumping, and the central government's finances were tight. In front of him, the "triangular debt" owed by the whole country alone was as high as 5,000 yuan. With more than 100 million yuan, if he wanted to make a living in such a tight predicament, he was almost punching and kicking, and even used iron fists to launch an offensive to pay off debts; Counterfeit product activity.In 1992, after Deng Xiaoping’s speech on the southern tour, there was an upsurge of speeding up construction. However, at that time, China’s economic work was far from getting out of the embarrassing situation of “death when caught, chaos when released”, and the economic High growth is almost at the same time as chaos. The development fever, fund-raising fever, and land speculation fever have reached the point where Zhu Rongji expressed "Crazy" (crazy) in English. The "overheated" economy has triggered China's worst crisis since the founding of the People's Republic of China. inflation.Next, Zhu Rongji used economic, legal, and administrative measures in a comprehensive manner, and personally served as the governor of the People's Bank of China to vigorously rectify the financial order.

Zhu Rongji really didn't have more energy and time to focus on rural work like he did on the city's economy. Besides, he was far less familiar with rural conditions than urban work.In his speech at the National Grain Purchase and Sales Work Conference held in 1993, he was not as confident in raising and lowering grain prices as he was in finance and state-owned enterprise reform.He said: "Last year, we lacked experience. We relaxed grain prices a little too quickly, and we didn't have enough preparations. We haven't worked on a market economy, so we don't know how powerful it is. As a result, grain prices skyrocketed after November, and we didn't follow the planned price adjustment steps." , caught off guard."

However, he attaches great importance to China's agriculture, and empathizes with the burden of farmers.In mid-May 1993, during his inspection trip to Hunan, he found that the summer grain purchase funds in some areas were not in place, and he gave IOUs to the farmers who sold the grain. The life and production of the farmers were unsustainable. He was extremely angry and severely reprimanded Hunan The leader of the province, and said to the person in charge of the following areas: "I left my phone number, when you have collected enough funds, call me, and I want to see how long it will last!" Back After Beijing, he was deeply aware of the seriousness of the problem, so he personally instructed the "People's Daily" to publish the three documents of the Ministry of Agriculture to clean up the burden on farmers, publicize the items and scope of tax collection, and expressly stipulate that the upper limit of 5% of the net income of farmers in the previous year should not be exceeded. , Anyone who does not obey the order shall be dealt with according to law.

Just four days after Zhu Rongji asked the Secretary-General of the State Council, He Chunlin, to clarify what was going on with the Hebei Provincial Public Grain System Pilot, Finance Minister Liu Zhongli published the article "Hebei Province Adjusts the Public Grain System Pilot" by Ye Bingnan, a Xinhua News Agency reporter who also had Zhu Rongji's instructions. The Plan" was approved and forwarded to the Department of Taxation and Administration of the Ministry: "Please review it with the Department of Taxation and Administration. Please contact the Third Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation. The Agricultural Taxation Office will also send people to take part."

The instruction made by Minister Liu Zhongli is undoubtedly superfluous, because judging from the time, before he saw Zhu Rongji's instruction, that is to say, before his subordinates "contact" and "understand" one day, Zhu Rongji I have received the relevant report of the Fuyang Seminar forwarded to him by Jiang Chunyun.After Zhu Rongji finished reading the report, it became clear what was going on with the pilot reform of the public grain system in Hebei Province. Although Jiang Chunyun has fully affirmed the experience of the rural tax and fee reform pilot projects in various places in the report’s instructions, and believes that “the pilot projects have explored some ideas and ways to solve problems”, his suggestions are also very specific: “ Hold a special meeting to summarize and exchange experience and put forward future opinions." Perhaps it is precisely because Jiang Chunyun emphasized in his instructions that "this is a major problem in rural work." After reading the report, Zhu Rongji handled it quite well. cautious.He ignored the suggestion of "planning to hold a special meeting" and approved the report to He Chunlin, Secretary-General of the State Council.However, this time the approval went on, adding Jin Renqing, director of the State Taxation Bureau: "Chunlin, Comrade Renqing, please read it. This matter needs to seek opinions from the Ministry of Finance, the State Administration of Taxation and the comprehensive department."

Zhu Rongji apparently did not express any specific opinions, but only made specific explanations.On this day, June 9, 1995, the experiment of rural tax and fee reform that has become a prairie fire appeared in various parts of China, entered his field of vision, and aroused his attention.