Thirty Years of Turbulence - Chinese Enterprises

作者：admin  点击次数：26  发布时间：2025-08-26

[Corporate Historical Figures]

Unforgettable 'Anything'




In the early stages of China's reform and opening up, some local officials were at the forefront of reform and fearlessly pursued progress. In the rural contract responsibility system, there was a folk song called "If you want to eat rice, look for thousands of miles" in Anhui province. In terms of opening up to the outside world, there were Ren Zhongyi from Guangdong and Xiang Nan from Fujian.

Ren Zhongyi and Xiang Nan were both appointed as local officials after the Huajia period. Their terms of office were only five years, but they left the deepest mark on Guangdong and Fujian provinces.

Ren Zhongyi was transferred from Liaoning to Guangdong Province as the first secretary at the age of 66, and was soon given the nickname "Ren You Hu Lai". According to records, the term "private economy" was first publicly proposed by Ren Zhongyi. After arriving in Guangdong, he found that there were already quite a few individual businesses in the area, with hundreds of employees. He demanded that the social science community in Guangdong start researching whether "this is considered exploitation". At that time, a graduate student named Zheng Yanchao sent him his paper "Private Economy in the Primary Stage of Socialism". Ren Zhongyi was very excited and believed that the paper provided important basis for decision-making. He instructed that the vigorous development of the individual economy was an unstoppable trend that could only be supported and not suppressed, and that it should be justified and called "private economy" to make it grow and develop. Ren Zhongyi established the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and Shekou Industrial Zone, giving Yuan Geng and others great government authority and allowing them to grow freely. Some officials criticized that "the special zone no longer has a socialist flavor except for the red national flag". After visiting Shenzhen, an official from a certain province returned home and cried bitterly, saying, "After decades of hard work, I returned to before liberation in one night." In 1982, when the air was tight and the atmosphere was strong, the Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China also compiled a material titled "The Origin of the Old Chinese Concession" and attached an instruction from a central leader at that time: "This matter is being sent to all provinces and cities in China. For economic special zones, we should be vigilant about such issues." Ren Zhongyi was walking on thin ice at the time, and he later admitted, "If it weren't for Deng Xiaoping's support, I would have been unable to pass the border long ago