Peng Sen, Chairman of the China Economic System Reform Research Association, former Deputy Director of the National Development and Reform Commission.He has been engaged in policy research, macroeconomic system reform and overall planning of China's economic system reform in government departments for a long time.
Witnessing the 40 years of reform and opening up middot; figures - Peng Sen
Reform is the relay of passing the torch from generation to generation
Our reporter/Jiang Xuan, this article first appeared in the 882nd issue of China News Weekly
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up. As a witness and witness of the reform, Peng Sen is very busy, frequently attending meetings related to commemorating the reform and opening up, and writing his memoirs.For more than 30 years, Peng Sen has been at the core of reform, engaged in policy research, macroeconomic system reform and overall planning of China's economic system reform, and has experienced different stages and major events of China's reform.
As a witness, beneficiary and participant of the reform, we should have a clear understanding of how China will comprehensively deepen reform, and what hurdles to pass and what major problems still need to be solved to realize the socialist market economy in accordance with the requirements of goal orientation.understanding.Peng Sen said in an interview with China News Weekly.
Economical to the people
During middle school, Peng Sen learned a concept of economics from his father: ownership.His father told him a story about a foreign professor teaching them a lesson.At that time, the professor took off the watch on his wrist and threw it on the ground, and then told the stunned students: What is ownership?It is the unconditional right to possess, control and dispose of an item.
This story is still fresh in his memory, and his father was his economics enlightenment.Peng Sen was born in April 1951 in an intellectual family in Shenyang, Liaoning. His grandfather had participated in the Northern Expedition.After the failure of the Great Revolution, my grandfather returned to his hometown and sold his property to set up Nandu Middle School and served as the principal.
Peng Sen's father studied at the Department of Economics of National Wuhan University and the Graduate School of Central University, and then stayed in the United States to study financial theory at the University of Colorado and New York University. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he responded to the call and returned to China to participate in socialist construction. He was assigned to Northeast Shenyang and participated in Dongbei Finance and EconomicsThe establishment of the college and Liaoning University.In this family atmosphere, Peng Sen developed the habit of reading reference news when he was in elementary school, and gradually came into contact with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Marx's Capital, Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, and Stalin's Soviet Union in middle school.Political, economic, and historical masterpieces such as socialist economic issues.If there was no "Cultural Revolution", I would probably choose to study history and become a middle school history teacher after graduation.That's pretty much what my parents expected of me.Peng Sen told China News Weekly.
Growing up in a family of senior intellectuals with political and historical problems (his father joined the Kuomintang during the Anti-Japanese War), Peng Sen felt pressure and discrimination from his surroundings since he was a child.However, after five years of experience as an educated youth jumping in the queue, he saw the impact of the people's communes on agricultural production and farmers, and the strangling of the creativity of economic life in the process of transforming a highly centralized planned economy into a ticket economy and a shortage economy.My understanding of the concept of lsquo "economy" began to shift from lsquo "savings" to lsquo "efficiency" of resource allocation, and I began to have the determination and mission of lsquo "economics for the people".Penson said.
The college entrance examination resumed in 1977, and Peng Sen won the opportunity. In 1978, he passed the college entrance examination and was admitted to the Department of Economics of Peking University majoring in political economy.
In the same year, the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee emphasized economic construction as the center, and China has since entered a new era of reform and opening up.Various academic schools and theoretical trends are active on the university campus.In those few years, students often fought over a major national event, academic freedom and sense of social responsibility bowed their heads.Today, many leading figures in China's political, business, and academic circles are college students in the 77th and 78th grades. This is called the 77th and 78th grade phenomenon.
Peng Sen is still grateful for the abundance of teachers in the 77th and 78th grades.At Peking University, he met Chen Daisun, Hu Daiguang, Fan Jiaxiang, Zhao Jing, Li Yining and other economic masters.Chen Daisun, the head of the Department of Economics, who is nearly 80 years old, was called Dai Lao by teachers and students. The government of the Republic of China once hired him as the Minister of Finance, but Dai Lao refused because he was not in office.Peng Sen recalled that the history of economic theory, the last course taught by Mr. Dai for undergraduates, was compiled into a book from classical economics to Marx, which became very popular for a while.
Li Yining, who is now 88 years old, was an early person who combined Western economics with China's reform. He made his first lecture at Peking University and took the lead in offering macro and micro economics courses for students.He speaks in a very general way, and the students like to ask him questions, some of them are quite sharp.Penson recalled.
Peng Sen met Lin Yifu in class.Due to the tense cross-strait relations at the time, the identity of Lin Yifu, who had just arrived in the mainland, was still kept secret. The comrades in the department explained the situation to Peng Sen mysteriously and asked him to take care of Lin's study and safety.
From the beginning, Peng Sen focused on economic theory, especially the theory of economic history, and turned to the study of practical problems in the reform, starting with the writing of his graduation thesis.In his graduation thesis titled On China’s Agricultural Socialist Thought, he analyzed that the essence of the Chinese Agricultural Socialist Thought that occurred before and after the founding of the People’s Republic of China was absolute egalitarianism under the banner of socialism, which led to mistakes in the land reform.A series of policies such as attacking and eradicating rich peasants, violating the interests of industry and commerce, and finally moving towards the people's communes.
Affinity Reform
In October 1982, after graduating from Peking University, Peng Sen was assigned to work in the Policy Research Office of the Liaoning Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.At that time, it was a period of major adjustments in industrial structure in Northeast China and drastic changes in urban and rural ownership structures. Inspired by the research on China’s economic structure edited by Comrades Ma Hong and Sun Shangqing, Peng Sen began to study the ownership structure and industrial and agricultural structure of Liaoning’s development strategy in his spare time.10 major structural reforms, including urban and rural structure.The water-testing work, A Discussion on Liaoning's Urban Structure, has been well received.However, he was seconded to work at the newly established State Economic Reform Commission before the subsequent articles could be launched.Thinking of this, Peng Sen still felt regretful.
At the beginning of 1985, Peng Sen was officially transferred to the State Economic Reform Commission.For more than 30 years since then, he has been at the core of reform, exploring reform theories, engaging in policy research and administrative management, and has experienced different stages and major events of China's reform.Rural joint production contracting, state-owned enterprise reform, price breakthrough, fiscal and tax distribution system, and the current supply-side structural reform, three reductions, one reduction and one compensation Looking back at the big and small stories experienced in the reform, Peng Sen was filled with emotion.
He clearly remembers what Vice Premier Tian Jiyun said when he accompanied Gao Shang, the then deputy director of the State Restructuring Commission, in the finishing work of Quanhui’s quotation, tax, and financial linkage plan after shelving the State Council’s Restructuring Plan Office in 1987:Don't do it anymore, but the problem of fiscal decentralization will have to be resolved sooner or later.Now the central leaders still have the prestige accumulated during the war years. In the future, the qualifications of the central and local cadres will be similar, and the central finance will not be centralized. How can the local governments obey the macro-control?
He realized the urgency and complexity of central and local reforms.Two years later, when Peng Sen went to Oxford University for a research visit, he chose the relationship between central and local finance in China as his research direction.
In an exclusive interview with China News Weekly in July this year, Peng Sen recalled that in the summer of 1993, he followed Zhu Rongji, then Executive Vice Premier of the State Council, and his party to various provinces for tax-sharing negotiations.Within two months, we visited 13 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, negotiating one place after another, and the negotiation process was extremely difficult.Especially on the two main interest parameters of income division and determination of the base year, the central and local governments continued to play games and finally reached a consensus.
There is no end to reform
In 2018, the 40th anniversary of China's reform and opening up, Peng Sen was invited to give reports and speeches to major media and units.
There is no end to development, and there is no end to reform.Peng Sen appealed in different meetings and occasions that reform is a relay of emancipating the mind, fulfilling the mission and passing the torch from generation to generation.In the report on the progress of economic system reform since the 18th National Congress released by the China Economic System Reform Research Association in September this year, Peng Sen was the president.responsible person.He invited Chi Fulin, Fan Gang, Zhang Siping, Liu Shangxi, Dang Guoying and other think tank academic leaders to be responsible for the research of eight sub-reports, focusing on the reform of state-owned enterprises, land system reform, market environment reform,Important reform progress in various fields of government management system reform, fiscal and taxation system reform, financial system reform, public service and social management system reform, and reform of opening up to the outside world.
Peng Sen believes that the key to the current reform is to properly handle the problems of problem orientation and goal orientation in the reform.In the past, reforms were forced-style reforms, and reforms were made when problems encountered.If we are immersed in the task of problem-oriented reform and forget the direction and goals of reform, reforms in some key links are too lagging behind and will become institutional weaknesses.
There are still many problems to be solved, and reform has a long way to go.For example, it is necessary to establish a modern property rights system with clear ownership, clear rights and responsibilities, strict protection, and smooth circulation. It is necessary to break down administrative monopoly and market barriers, establish a modern market system with free flow of elements and equal exchange, and realize market-oriented allocation of elements.
He expressed concern about the lack of activeness and inaction of some governments, and the conservative practice of officials in power. Now it is not a matter of high trial and error costs, but that the reform process is too slow for a huge economy like China.
On the day of the Influencing China 2018 Person of the Year Awards Ceremony, Zhu Min, the annual scholar awardee, started talking with Peng Sen as soon as he entered the lounge.While taking photos for the magazine cover, he told China News Weekly that many people of his generation were idealists, and they were a group of firm theoretical researchers and practitioners of market-oriented reform.In detail, Ma Kai, Vice Premier of the State Council, Zhou Xiaochuan, former Governor of the Central Bank, Guo Shuqing, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and Lou Jiwei, Chairman of the National Council for Social Security Fund, were all outstanding among them.
When China News Weekly interviewed Peng Sen in July this year, at the end, the old man who had experienced ups and downs leaned on the back of his chair and fell into deep thought.He said that the early batch of reformers were often idealists, who struggled and explored, experienced the baptism of the storm, and also had the glory of being confused or passing by.But the original intention has not changed, the original intention is the happiness of the people and the prosperity of the country.
