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Gu Liji will always remember that Saturday morning when he was 34 years old. It was the spring of 1982, when a 65-year-old man rode to Tsinghua Garden and knocked on the door of a boys' dormitory. Gu Liji quietly left a room full of young people who were still sleeping, and followed the old man to the bench downstairs to "sit and talk.". More than half an hour later, the young man who came to Beijing from Shanghai to study decided to go to Shenzhen.
The 65-year-old man named Yuan Geng, a 40-year-old member of the Communist Party of China, participated in the War of Resistance Against Japan, served as the commander of the artillery regiment, did foreign affairs and intelligence work for many years, went to prison during the "Cultural Revolution", and was appointed executive vice chairman of the Hong Kong Merchants Bureau of the Ministry of Communications in 1978.
What impressed Gu Liji was a sentence by Yuan Geng. The latter told the younger 30-year-old that the past system was like "a bunch of crabs in a bag", the legs of the crabs you clamped me, I restrained you, no one wanted to move, no one could move. But in that place in Shekou, Shenzhen, "you can break a road, change the status quo of 'you contain me, I contain you', and everyone goes forward together."
In 1982, like Gu Liji, many people came to Shenzhen and Shekou from all over the country alone. This is the fourth year of the official opening of reform and opening up, the third year of the official emergence of the "Special Economic Zone", and the third year of the renaming of Bao'an County in Guangdong Province to "Shenzhen".
The song that later spread across the country has not yet begun to compose lyrics, but the South China Sea has begun to stage "The Story of Spring".
Statue of Deng Xiaoping at the top of Lotus Hill in Shenzhen. Xinhua News Agency
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Before impressing Gu Liji, Yuan Geng also impressed China's top leadership.
On January 31, 1979, Yuan Geng and Vice Minister of Communications Peng Deqing, along with Vice Premier Gu Mu, met with Li Xiannian, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, vice chairman, and vice premier of the State Council. Yuan Geng, carrying a map with him, told Li Xiannian that as long as the central government nodded and signed a letter on the report, the value of this piece of land would be greatly increased.
Li Xiannian finally nodded, and used a pencil to draw a place on the map, that is, the South Head Peninsula of Shekou. Earlier, Yuan Geng persuaded Ye Fei, then minister of transport, to build an industrial zone in Shekou and to manage it "with reference to Hong Kong's characteristics and take care of domestic conditions".
It is a commune belonging to Bao'an County, Guangdong Province, just a stone's throw from Hong Kong. In Yuan Geng's view, this place "can not only use the cheaper land and labor in the interior, but also facilitate the use of international funds, advanced technologies and raw materials", and it is a natural place to reopen the situation for the China Merchants Bureau, which has been silent for many years.
For the whole country, the breakthrough of this place is also imperative.
Yuan Geng (the finger) took a boat to inspect Shekou. (Xinhua News Agency)
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Bao'an is the closest place to Hong Kong and the place where you can feel the gap the most. Bounded by a 20-meter-wide Shenzhen River, a farmer's annual income in Bao'an County on the north bank is only 143 yuan, while in Hong Kong on the south bank, the farmer's annual income is 13,000 Hong Kong dollars. The disparity between the two places has led to a large number of mainland people finding another way at the cost of their lives.
In 1955, the phenomenon of "fleeing port" began to appear. There was once a folk song circulating in the local area: "There are only three treasures in Bao'an, flies, mosquitoes, and manhole oysters." Ten houses and nine empty fled hong Kong, leaving only the old and the young at home. "Adventurers tried to swim across the Shenzhen River or climb the mountain over barbed wire into the New Territories, but the casualties were severe. In 1978, more than 46,000 fugitives were intercepted and taken into custody in Bao'an County; there were even more than 200 "corpse pullers" active in Shekou, and for every body of a fugitive buried, they could receive 15 yuan in Shekou Commune.
This summer, Xi Zhongxun went south to take charge of Guangdong, and the first stop of the grassroots inspection was Bao'an County, which was on the cusp of smuggling into the harbor. After continuously inspecting the border areas of Luofang, Liantang, Shatoujiao, and Huanggang, Xi Zhongxun refuted the concept that "fleeing Hong Kong is a political problem": "The main reason for the smuggling of the masses is the policy problem, as long as the policy is right, the economy can soon be engaged, and the problem of smuggling will be solved." ”
Archives declassified many years later tell people that as early as 1977, Deng Xiaoping had said in Guangzhou that fleeing Hong Kong was "a problem with our policy" and that "this matter is not something that the troops can manage." The desire for change was now at its peak. "They (Hong Kong) are very prosperous on that side, and our side is very desolate, so how can we embody the superiority of socialism?" In Sha Tau Kok, Xi Zhongxun made a decision on the spot for local instructions for small-scale trade and transit farming, "Do what you say, don't wait." ”
In 1978, Xi Zhongxun visited the Huizhou area of Guangdong Province.
At the same time, Guangdong is struggling to win support from the central government. At the end of 1978 and the beginning of 1979, Guangdong Province twice wrote to the Central Committee that it hoped to establish an industrial zone in Shekou. In the meantime, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee was held, and reform and opening up officially began.
By April 1979, when Xi Zhongxun went to Beijing to report to Deng Xiaoping and others and proposed to Guangdong greater autonomy and build export processing zones based on the experience of foreign countries and the "Four Tigers" of Asia, the wheel of history was already moving in a new direction.
These conventional ideas drew some criticism, but they were eventually endorsed by Deng Xiaoping. It was on that occasion that Deng Xiaoping gave an answer that would later go down in history:
"It is better to call the SAR, the central authorities can give some policies, you go and do it yourself, and kill a bloody road."
On July 15, 1979, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council approved the reports of the two provincial party committees of Guangdong and Fujian, and decided to implement "special policies and flexible measures" for Guangdong and Fujian provinces. A week earlier, the first cannon of the Shekou Industrial Zone had exploded. Bao'an had earlier been renamed Shenzhen; a year later, the Party Central Committee and the State Council formally approved the establishment of special economic zones in Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Shantou and Xiamen. Wu Nansheng, who was also the first secretary of the Shenzhen Municipal Party Committee, later recalled: "A few days after the promulgation of the SAR regulations, the crowd of people who had fled Hong Kong suddenly disappeared! ”
And so the turning point came.
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Many years later, Yuan Geng made an analogy. "Edison's first incandescent lamp brought only 8 minutes of light," he said, "but this short 8 minutes heralded a leap of time, and the world quickly became brilliant."
Xi Zhongxun recalled in 1992 that he was "happy with one and feared by one": he was happy to be able to take a step ahead in reforming the economic management system, and he was afraid that the burden was very heavy and he had no experience, but "we are sure that the road is out of people."
Shenzhen is a special zone, and Shekou is regarded as a "special zone within a special zone". The Shekou Industrial Zone, which was born first, was regarded as a "test tube", and if the projectile land failed, "it was also rotten meat in the pot". It was also because it was a test tube, and some reforms that were unheard of and unimaginable in most parts of China at that time were able to stand out here.
Soon after the opening of Shekou Mountain, the "big pot of rice" was broken. In 1981, the People's Daily reported on the experience of the open bidding system in the field of infrastructure construction here; in 1982, Gu Liji, who had just arrived in Shekou, caught up with the reform of the cadre and personnel system. Here in the country for the first time open recruitment of talents, and boldly with modern knowledge and breakthrough awareness of young people "top" the position of old cadres. The story of a general manager who encountered "can go up and down" has been in the newspaper: "There is a famous 'sea world' in Shekou, Shenzhen, and its general manager was dismissed not long ago, this person has a decent style, hard work, but has not made a pioneering career, so he was dismissed." This is the new shekou concept. ”
Since then, many "national firsts" such as management system reform, housing system reform, and the creation of social insurance companies have landed in Shekou and repeatedly stirred up waves. Yuan Geng, who knows how to use people and is extremely eloquent, has a large number of fans. But at the same time, the criticism has never been far from this test area.
In 1984, the "Time is Money, Efficiency is Life" sign in the Shekou Industrial Zone. Xinhua News Agency
In an era when "surnames, social and surnames" are often debated, the vanguard of reform will inevitably be placed in the middle of the whirlpool of public opinion. Someone once asked Yuan Geng: In 1949, you led the army to the south to liberate Shekou, drove the capitalists away, and established a public ownership society, but now, you have developed a large area of land in Shekou and invited the capitalists back to engage in the economy. Are you engaged in capitalism or socialism in Shekou?
Similar questions have been repeatedly thrown to Shenzhen and even the special economic zones of the whole country. Some people say, "In the land of Shenzhen, except for the five-star red flag, everything else is 'yellow'"; others say, "after decades of hard work, overnight became before liberation"; some people even say that Shenzhen has become "the testing ground of Western capitalism and colonialism".
Also attracting criticism is Shenzhen's most famous slogan: "Time is money, efficiency is life." Its inventor, Yuan Geng, once had it made into a sign and placed it in the most prominent position of shekou. Before Deng Xiaoping inspected Shenzhen in 1984, it was Yuan Geng who had him rush to make a sign overnight and place it on the dividing line between Shenzhen's urban areas and Shekou. However, Yuan Geng has asked people to take it down several times, only because there is too much criticism of reform and opening up - in the year when most people were still "ashamed to talk about money", the publicity of "money" was tantamount to a great rebellion.
But the reform vanguard did not mean to change the course of this. At that time, more than one student of the enterprise management training class remembered the "poisonous oath" that Yuan Geng once issued: "If we succeed, we have nothing to say, if we fail, rest assured, I will take the lead, and we will jump into the sea together." In the early days of Shekou's establishment, when the investment promotion was not smooth and attracted many criticisms, he also said a sentence: "Big deal, go back to Qincheng." ”
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Of course, Yuan Geng did not need to return to Qincheng. Those reforms that were questioned and even attacked eventually withstood the test of history.
Someone once asked Yuan Geng, "How did Shekou develop," and he replied, "It began with the transformation of people's concepts and social reforms." Despite the resistance, change is ultimately the trend of the times. At that time, this was not only the small environment of the special zone, but also the big weather of the whole country.
In February 1984, after visiting Shenzhen, Deng Xiaoping made a speech: "The construction speed of Shenzhen is quite fast... Shenzhen's Shekou Industrial Zone is faster because it gives them a little power, spending less than $5 million to make their own decisions, and their slogan is 'time is money, efficiency is life'. ”
Five years after the germination of the SAR's strategic vision, Deng Xiaoping systematically expressed his understanding of the SAR: "It is a window of technology, a window of management, a window of knowledge, and a window of foreign policy"; "The SAR has become a base for opening up, which will not only benefit us in terms of economy and talent training, but also expand China's foreign influence." ”
Then, on a series of occasions, the chief designer expressed his firm belief in the direction of the future in various ways.
"From the very beginning, there were different opinions on the establishment of the SAR, and I was worried about whether to engage in capitalism. Shenzhen's construction achievements clearly answer those who have such and such worries. The SAR's surname is 'She' and not 'Zi'. ”
"When we establish special economic zones and implement an open policy, we have a guiding ideology to be clear, that is, not to collect, but to release."
"Our policy of openness will not lead to capitalism. With the policy of opening up to the outside world, some capitalist things will enter. But socialism is more powerful and will develop even more. ”
"The criterion for judging should mainly be whether it is conducive to developing the productive forces of socialist society, whether it is conducive to enhancing the comprehensive national strength of socialist countries, and whether it is conducive to improving the people's living standards."
Until the southern conversation in 1992, the dispute over the "surname society and surname capital" in the special economic zone finally subsided, and it began to continuously refresh the "Shenzhen speed" and "special zone speed", and boosted the entire country to refresh the "Chinese speed". Later, people often sought the origin of the spirit of the SAR, and in fact, it came from a simple concept of development - as Deng Xiaoping said, "Poverty is not socialism, let alone communism."
Xi Zhongxun recalled his original choice many years later: "No matter how much you say a thousand words, it is useless, and the only way to improve the people's living standards is the only way." ”
Shenzhen today. Xinhua News Agency
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"No city in the world can catch up with Shenzhen's development, which is another southern gateway for China to the world."
In 2020, Vogel, an expert on China issues and an American scholar, wrote this comment for Shenzhen in the last moments of his life.
In the preface to a collection of essays entitled "Learning from Shenzhen," Vogel, who had studied Guangdong's reform and opening up and Deng Xiaoping, wrote: Shenzhen's establishment of a special economic zone ignited the spark of China's reform and opening up, and "Shenzhen is a pioneer and a pioneer in helping to shape China's modern life." At this time, 41 years have passed since the cannon fire in Shekou, and the history of the special economic zone has been fully 40 years. Shenzhen has contributed more than 1,000 "national firsts" and has also turned itself into an international metropolis from scratch.
"The sound of the Shekou cannon in that year is still in the ears, and today's Shenzhen Special Economic Zone is full of vitality, showing the world the majestic power of China's reform and opening up and the bright prospects of socialism with Chinese characteristics." On October 14, 2020, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the People's Republic of China, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, felt this way in Shenzhen.
This is an evaluation of the SAR, and in fact, it is also an evaluation of a magnificent history. At the celebration of the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, Xi Jinping solemnly declared to the outside world: "The successful practice of Shenzhen and other special economic zones fully proves that the strategic decision of the Party Central Committee on the establishment of special economic zones is completely correct. ”
The new background of the times and the development environment at home and abroad urgently need to continue to write a new "spring story" here - "special economic zones must not only continue to run, but also do better and do a higher level." This is also a solemn declaration.
Doing a better job and at a higher level means that "reform does not stop, and opening up does not stop." 40 years of history has proven that this is the only way out and a proven path to success. The road ahead may not be smooth, but the wise man's choice is to move forward.
Just like back then, Yuan Geng left 6 words in the most difficult moments: "Go forward, don't look back."
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhang Jun Text Editor: Zhu Minqi Title Image Source: Xinhua News Agency Editor's Email: [email protected]
Source: Author: Zhu Min