Written by | Cai Yiyi
On June 27, the China Economic System Reform Research Association issued an obituary that Comrade Gao Shangquan, former deputy director of the State Structural Reform Commission and former president of the China Economic System Reform Research Association, died at peking union hospital at 3:02 p.m. on June 27, 2021 at peking union hospital at the age of 92 due to ineffective medical treatment.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="3" > "small high, there is your article on the radio"</h1>
Gao Shangquan, born in 1929, is a native of Jiading, Shanghai. Former deputy director of the State System Reform Commission.
Gao Shangquan was born in the countryside of Jiading, Shanghai. After graduating from junior high school, he was admitted to the high school attached to St. John's University, and after finishing high school, he was admitted to the Department of Economics of St. John's University and the Department of Oceanography of Fudan University at the same time, and he chose the former.
(Gao Shangquan took a photo at the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1954)
After graduating from university, Gao Shangquan went to the northeast and was assigned to work in the Machinery Industry Bureau of the Ministry of Industry of the Northeast People's Government; 7 months later, the major economic zones were abolished and transferred to the First Machinery Industry Department in Shanghai.
During his work in the first machine department, he found many strange phenomena that made people cry and laugh.
For example, in the summer of 1956, the weather in Shanghai was particularly hot. At that time, there was no air conditioner, in order not to affect production, a company wanted to buy a blower, so it applied for a report. The big thing of sesame seeds has to go through the approval of 7 departments at all levels. By the time the application was approved, the summer had already passed.
Gao Shangquan later recalled the details of the time in a later interview with the media.
"I wrote an article for the People's Daily entitled "Enterprises Must Have a Certain Degree of Autonomy", and when I published it, I also accompanied a cartoon "Necessary Procedures". The gist is that if the autonomy of enterprises is too small and the central authorities are too much and too detailed, it will not only limit the enthusiasm and initiative of enterprises, but also cause a great waste of human and financial resources to the state and promote bureaucracy. ”
He said that after the article was published, he once accompanied Wang Daohan (then deputy director of the Ministry of Machinery) on a business trip to Shenyang, and when Wang Daohan took a walk in the morning, he said to him: "Xiao Gao, just now the Central People's Radio broadcast your article in the People's Daily. "I can hear that he is more appreciative.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="37" > participated in the drafting of 6 central economic documents</h1>
Since 1982, Gao Shangquan has been engaged in the research, design and leadership of economic structural reform in the National Economic System Reform Commission.
After Hong Kong's return to the motherland, it was Gao Shangquan who presided over the work of the Economic Group of the Preparatory Committee for the Special Administrative Region. In the new century, he was one of the first scholars to propose government governance reform.
In 1987, Gao Shangquan (front row, second from left) answered reporters' questions at a Chinese and foreign press conference held at the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of China
Public reports show that in the more than 20 years that Gao Shangquan has been engaged in the research and decision-making of reform theory, he has paid special attention to issues such as economic structural reform and development, market economy, and other issues.
(Some of Gao Shangquan's writings)
Gao Shangquan participated in the drafting of central economic documents for 6 times:
One is the report of the 15th Party Congress, the second is the proposal of the Central Committee on the Five-Year Plan, and the third is the decision of the Third Plenary Session of the Third Plenary Session of the Twelfth Central Committee in 1984, the Third Plenary Session of the Fourteenth Central Committee in 1993, and the Third Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee in 2003. Before the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee, he made two more proposals to the Central Committee, both of which touched on the core issues of reform.
He wrote the "commodity economy" into the central documents and can be called an important promoter of the reform of the socialist market economy.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="38" > to "save" Huawei</h1>
According to reports, Gao Shangquan also insisted on "saving" Huawei.
In 1997, when Gao Shangquan participated in the drafting of the report of the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, someone wrote to the central government to "report" Huawei Technology Company, saying that its surname was "capital" and not "she".
The reason is that Huawei has no investment in the state, it is a non-public enterprise, and it has engaged in employee shareholding, deviating from the socialist direction.
After that, Gao Shangquan offered to go to Shenzhen for field research.
He was excited about the results of the survey. Huawei's founder Ren Zhengfei started with 21,000 yuan, the state did not invest a penny, but the company created huge taxes and wealth for the country, solved the employment of more than 100,000 people, and employees also shared the fruits of development. Such an enterprise should be a typical example of reform! Why not take the surname "She"? Gao Shangquan believes that it precisely "answers the question of what socialism is and how to build socialism."
Later, the report of the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly put forward that "the labor union of workers and the capital union of workers should be promoted and encouraged in particular", which included inspiration from Huawei.
In November 2014, Ren Zhengfei led someone to find Gao Shangquan and said, "Why don't you say that you have done a good deed?" ”
Gao Shangquan said: "I am not a business for you, people say that your surname is 'capital', I say that this is the surname 'society', I don't need to tell you, I don't want anything." Ren Zhengfei said: "Then you must come to Huawei to see." ”
In 2018, Gao Shangquan wrote that as a reformer who has been in his old age, I know very well in my heart that there is no waste in these 40 years, and the years of reform have never been fought for the day.
"Reforms like our country, which are tasked with the dual transformation from a highly centralized planned economy to a market economy and from a backward agricultural economy to a modern industrial economy, are unprecedented and rare in the world. In the face of such a huge challenge, we must overcome the conservative ideological inhibition and create and establish a new system without experience. ”
He wrote, "I'm 88 years old, so why do I still have to stay on the job from nine to five?" It is to help the reform pioneers of the new era have more experience to learn from and more methods to apply."
He said: Reform is my pursuit in this life, and it is also my concern in this life.
Information | Xinhua News Agency, Jiefang Daily, Financial Magazine, First Finance, People's Daily, etc
Proofreading | Item warfare