1991 was a year destined to leave a legacy in world history. This year, the former superpower, the Soviet Union, collapsed, and the Cold War, which lasted for nearly half a century, came to an end.
The disintegration of the Soviet Union had a very far-reaching impact on the world order, and our relations with the Soviet Union were intricate, so its disintegration had a particularly significant impact on us.
At the same time, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western values swept the world, and the voices of China's decline were heard endlessly, and the whole world was waiting for China's collapse. At this critical juncture, how will Deng Xiaoping, as the leader, turn the tide of the tide from falling and help the building to fall?
(Collapse of the Soviet Union)
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="4" > the upheavals in Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Soviet Union</h1>
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not happen overnight, and there were many harbingers long before it happened. Although people at that time did not believe that the great Soviet Union would come to an end, the constant news made people of insight in China realize that something big might happen in the north.
In January 1989, Poland held a round table and decided to hold elections for parliament and the Senate. The political changes in Poland had a chain reaction, followed by Hungary with a similar fate as Poland.
Subsequently, the two Germanys moved toward reunification, a series of events such as the "palace coup" in Bulgaria, the "velvet revolution" in Czechoslovakia, and the disintegration of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia broke out one after another.
In the face of the surging crisis, many people were confused, and at the critical moment Deng Xiaoping came forward to stabilize the situation. In the face of external pressure, Deng Gong said the most: "Calm observation, steady position, calm response, make a difference." The public only sees the appearance of the front layer, but he has already seen through the essence of the problem.
Deng Gong actively unites all the forces that can be united, and he firmly believes that the Chinese united are an invincible force. Since 1978, China has made great progress, and as long as the people's living standards continue to improve, they can win the continuous support of the people.
(The Berlin Wall was torn down in 1989)
At the end of 1989, Deng Gong began to use "Whatever happened in Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union" as the opening sentence. No matter how the outside world hypes up the "China collapse theory", Deng Gong's confidence in China's smooth passage through the crisis has never wavered.
On October 5, 1991, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia broke away from the Soviet Union, setting the stage for the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A few weeks later, Mr. Deng received North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, who had come from afar. He said that "China will still adhere to economic reform and opening up, but also adhere to the four cardinal principles."
Deng used the floods that occurred that year to prove that China needed a communist system, and in the face of natural disasters, China's efficiency proved the applicability of the system.
(Deng Xiaoping meets with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung)
On any occasion, Deng Gong was calm and self-assured, firmly convinced that "socialism works." After the collapse of the Soviet Union, China adopted a pragmatic foreign strategy and quickly recognized the countries that had broken away from the Soviet Union.
In the face of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Deng Gong reiterated his view that despite the turbulence of the external situation, thanks to the success of reform and opening up, China can withstand external pressure and continue to move forward.
The great changes in the world pattern are both crises and opportunities, and the more such a time comes, the more we cannot rest on our laurels. We must forge ahead, seize the opportunities brought about by the great changes, and embark on the fast track of rapid development.
(At 19:32 on December 25, 1991, the Kremlin lowered the Soviet flag)
Deng Gong is well aware that the problems facing China are mainly economic problems. If we want to convince people that socialism is a healthy road, we must find ways to improve the living standards of the masses of the people. If we want to raise the living standards of the masses, we must persist in reform and opening up.
However, the road to reform was not smooth, and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was widespread fear that China would also follow the old path of the Soviet Union, and it was very cautious about drastic reforms. Although reform and opening up has become the consensus of the whole country, how to reform has become the focus of people's debate.
In the ideological field, the voices of the surname "capital" or the surname "society" are intertwined, like a big net dragging down the pace of China's in-depth reform. In the face of this dilemma, how will Deng Gong break through?
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="6" > the debate over whether the surname "Zi" or the surname "She"</h1>
In the two years after Deng Gong announced his "complete withdrawal from politics," he spent the Spring Festival in Shanghai. As the chief architect of China's reform and opening up, Deng Gong has a very rich experience in the problems that will inevitably arise in the reform process. During his time in Shanghai, he often expressed some of his own views.
At the beginning of the Spring Festival in 1991, Shanghai's "Liberation Daily" published four articles signed "Huang Fuping" in succession based on the content of his speech. The article proposes that we should persist in emancipating our minds, forge ahead in carrying out reform and opening up, and refrain from falling into the cross-examination of the surname "capital" and the surname "society."
(Huang Fuping's article in Liberation Daily)
As soon as the article came out, it set off a monstrous wave in China's public opinion circles. Because the article did not indicate the source of the idea, a tidal wave of criticism followed. The two sides quarreled in the field of public opinion, and many local cadres could not see the direction of progress in this storm of public opinion.
In May 1991, a retired cadre wrote a letter to Beijing. In his letter, he revealed that the merchants in Wenzhou "rode the Honda King, wore the A-bottom King, slept on a spring bed, and held the Flower King." After Beijing received the letter, it specially sent a working group to Wenzhou to inspect the situation.
(Wenzhou Street)
When wenzhou officials reported on the situation of reform and opening up, they carefully introduced what the "joint-stock cooperative system" was, called it a new type of collective economy, and demonstrated its "essential difference" from the private economy. The leader of the inspection team is a person who firmly supports reform and opening up, so he has not embarrassed these officials.
Although reform and opening up is the trend of the times, when it comes to the core issue of whether the surname "capital" or the surname "society" is involved, the decision-makers will often be tied up, and it is naturally impossible to talk about deepening reform.
This debate lasted for a whole year, until Deng Gong set out for the south, ending the controversy and concentrating people's energy on economic development. What did Deng Gong say in the south?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="8" > Southern Conversation</h1>
On January 17, 1992, Deng Gong and his family left Beijing in the name of "going out on vacation" and set off for the south. The journey was extraordinary from the start, except for his family, he did not even bring the Xinhua reporter who was supposed to accompany him, and the media did not do any relevant reports.
Deng Gong first arrived in Wuhan, an important town in the central region, and the leaders of Hubei Province personally came to receive him. On the platform, Deng Gong criticized the problems existing in the leading cadres in harsh terms in front of many leaders.
He said: "As soon as the TV is turned on, it is full of meetings, meetings, articles are too long, speeches are too long, and the content is repetitive. They were asked to do more and say less, and finally turned the topic to reform and opening up, reiterating the principle of adhering to reform.
(Deng Xiaoping speaks on the platform of Wuhan, Hubei Province, 1992)
After the speech, Deng Gong came to Changsha without stopping. Speaking to the secretary of the Hunan Provincial CPC Committee and other provincial-level cadres who came to greet him, he first affirmed that the Hunan Provincial CPC Committee had achieved a bumper agricultural harvest despite encountering natural disasters.
Then the conversation turned sharply, and once again talked about reform and opening up. Deng Gong encouraged: "Hunan should be bolder in carrying out reform and opening up, and it is necessary to speed up economic development." ”
Although Deng Gong announced his withdrawal from politics two years ago, as the chief architect of China's reform and opening up, the central government still attaches great importance to Deng Gong's opinions.
Just when Deng Gong left Hunan and went to Guangdong. The central government proposed that "we should speed up the pace of opening up, restore the policy of opening up to the outside world, and reduce the number of meetings." ”
(Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen)
Guangdong is the forefront of reform and opening up, Shenzhen is the bridgehead of this frontier zone, it can be said that the achievements of Shenzhen's reform are related to the success or failure of reform and opening up. Deng Gong naturally attached great importance to the reform of Guangdong, and Guangdong also became the top priority of his trip to the south.
Since the 19th, he has been inspecting Shenzhen and Zhuhai for 11 days. As the vanguard of reform and opening up, Shenzhen has also attracted the judgment of conservatives while making achievements in reform.
Deng Gong has been leading the process of reform and opening up for more than a decade, and he naturally sees these problems very thoroughly, and he knows very well that if he wants to promote further reform and opening up, he must make breakthroughs in ideology.
(Deng Xiaoping inspects Guangdong Pearl River Refrigerator Factory)
Deng Gong has a kind of urgency for deepening reform and expanding opening up, which is difficult for ordinary people to understand. When visiting the old customs site of the Qing Dynasty in Zhuhai, he said to Liang Guangguang, secretary of the Zhuhai Municipal Party Committee, who was next to him: "Backwardness will be beaten, we have been poor for thousands of years, and we cannot be poor anymore." If we do not pay attention to science and technology and education, we will be beaten. ”
From this sentence, we can feel some of Deng Gong's mood. He is very worried that the pace of reform will slow down, and unlike the fear that the expansion of capital will change the nature of socialism and bring about the risk of "peaceful evolution", he is more worried that China's development will not keep pace with the times.
In the face of the drastic changes in the international situation, Deng Gong realized that only by speeding up development, expanding opening up, and improving the living standards of the people can we win the support of the people and the country can continue for a long time.
(Shenzhen in the 1990s)
On February 21, 1992, Deng Gong ended his trip to the south and returned to Beijing. Regarding Deng Gong's conversation in the south, unlike the scramble for foreign media coverage, the domestic media remained silent at first. In this brief silence, various currents of thought clashed in secret.
Although the media has not yet reported on Deng Gong's relevant talks in the south, at the people's congress meeting that year, voices supporting in-depth reform and expanding opening up have prevailed. Comrade Yang Baibing announced on March 23 that the army should "escort the reform and opening up."
On March 26, the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Daily took the lead in publishing an article entitled "The Oriental Wind Comes with Spring in the Eyes -- Documentary of Comrade Deng Xiaoping in Shenzhen."
The next day, major media outlets across the country retweeted the article on the front page. The date of publication of this article coincided with the period of the two sessions, and the sensational effect it produced was not difficult to imagine.
(The article in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Daily "Oriental Wind Comes full of spring")
At the Politburo meeting, 15 Politburo members unanimously affirmed Deng Gongnan's view of speeding up the pace of reform and opening up in his speech and agreed to make it the core content of the 14th National Congress.
On 9 June, when General Secretary Jiang Zemin delivered a speech at the Central Party School to students at various provincial and ministerial levels, he put forward the concept of "socialist market economy" based on the "market economy" put forward by Deng Gong in 1985.
Four months later, the Fourteenth Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly put forward the goal of establishing a socialist market economic system, and at the same time wrote the theory of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the party's basic line into the party constitution.
(The 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China)
From the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee in 1978, Deng Gong proposed to "shift the focus of the work of the whole party to socialist modernization." By the 14th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1992, the goal of the market economic system was clearly defined, and in 15 years, Deng used his wisdom to clear the ideological barriers for China's development.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="10" > postscript</h1>
When we look back at this period of history, we can't help but sigh that 1991 was really an extraordinary year. This year, the superpower Soviet Union fell, and the Western countries led by the United States completely grasped the right to speak in world public opinion.
At the critical moment, Deng Gong was not disturbed by the sounds of the outside world, he always maintained his calmness, calmly observed, thought, and insisted. His persistence has successfully provided a stable environment for China's subsequent rapid development.
(Deng Xiaoping)
Around 1991, the eve of the sudden change in the global new technology industry, few people realized how the information revolution brought about by the Internet would profoundly change the way the world worked.
It was at this critical turning point of the era that Deng Gong made China complete a magnificent turnaround through his trip to the south, and promoted the reform and opening up to a deeper level.
We have endured a century of humiliation by missing out on the Industrial Revolution. Fortunately, at a time when the information revolution was about to erupt, we embraced the world.
Today, we have completed the anti-overtaking in the 5G era, 6G technology is also on the agenda, and the upcoming third information revolution - the era of the Internet of Everything, we also have great hopes to become the leader of the times.
All this stems from Deng Xiaoping, the chief architect of China's reform and opening up. Deng Gong once said that he did not want people to praise him, and hoped to appear in front of people in the most authentic form. He always presented himself as the "son of Chinese" and practiced the oath of "serving the people".
Resources:
1: The Deng Xiaoping Era, Vogel
2: Thirty Years of Turbulence" Wu Xiaobo