Thirty Years of Turbulence - Chinese Enterprises

作者：admin  点击次数：50  发布时间：2025-08-15

The controversy over the Baosteel project was ultimately shattered by Deng Xiaoping's decisive decision.

This year, the only thing that can be called a "big investment" is the CITIC Corporation founded by Rong Yiren in 1978. This "China's first red capitalist" and Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference finally dug the first "big gold mine".

In the past two years, Rong Yiren, who is in his 60s, has been leading his director Li Wenjie, who is in his 70s, to meet with various foreign guests every day. From 1979 to 1981, the company received more than 6000 foreign visitors, and he also invited former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger as an advisor to CITIC. However, despite all his efforts, CITIC only managed to negotiate three or four insignificant projects. One day, Rong Yiren was chatting with Wang Jianshi, a director of CITIC who came from a business background. Suddenly, he came up with the idea of "raising funds by issuing bonds through local projects". Rong Yiren, who has served as the Deputy Minister of Textile for more than ten years, remembered that there is a chemical fiber project in Yizheng, Jiangsu. It was originally a major project of 22 national key projects, with a design capacity of producing 500000 tons of chemical fiber raw materials annually, equivalent to the total output of chemical fibers in the country. The total investment was 1 billion yuan, but due to insufficient funds, it was about to be dismantled. CITIC was ready to take over. Rong Yiren came up with the idea of raising funds through borrowing. He proposed to the State Council to revive the Yizheng Project by issuing bonds abroad. "New China has always had a proud record, that is, it has neither domestic debt nor foreign debt. Rong Lao wanted to borrow money from foreigners, first of all, he could not live ideologically." Chen Guanren, the author of "Rong's father and son", recorded the controversy at that time, and many people went to the State Council to report to the letter. What kind of economy is socialism borrowing money from capitalism? What does CITIC really want to do