SOME COMMENTS ON THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE’S “DECISION ON STRENGTHENING TIES WITH THE PEOPLE”1 (DRAFT FOR FEEDBACK)
(FEBRUARY 26, 1990)
I’d like to discuss three problems that have bearing on the Central Committee’s draft report on strengthening ties with the people: the Party’s poor relations with the populace; lack of distinction between Party, government, and enterprises; and inequity in allocation.
Poor Relations with the People
Why are the Party’s relations with the people so poor right now? At the moment, Party and power are intertwined. We are the party in power, but our socialist democracy and legal institutions have yet to make Party members and ordinary people all equal before the law—it’s always the case that “punishments do not extend up to senior officials.” That’s why they say that the Party’s standards for its members are sinking lower and lower. It used to be that Party members were supposed to “be the first to taste hardship.” Although they now stress “going through thick and thin together,” often they can’t even do that much. It won’t do for us not to give this issue a prominent place in our discussions.
Our Party members, and especially Party members in leadership positions, do have some special powers and privileges. We need to raise this problem to a higher level; we need to have a method [of dealing with it]. As the highest organ of power and of legislation, the People’s Congress should play a role in oversight, and the Party and the people should be equal before the law.
Lack of Distinction between Party, Government, and Enterprises
Some of our institutions make no distinction between Party and government, between government and enterprises, or between Party and enterprises—this gives rise to corruption. During my recent extended stay in villages,2 I discovered that the housing problem discussed in this draft document is only one aspect [of the overall issue], that housing allocations is another. The housing allocated to Party members and cadres isn’t just one or two times greater than for ordinary farmers; it is several times or even several dozen times greater. What led to such a situation? It’s because from the township level on down, there is no distinction between Party and government, or between Party and enterprises.
When housing is discussed in this document, it suggests the concept of “township and above.” In terms of the actual situation in Shanghai, this regulation fails to get to the heart of the problem, because in Shanghai we are [already] quite tightly focused on cadres at the township level and above. We’ve already dealt with several township heads as well as with one member of the Municipal Party Committee. Cadres from the township level up to the county level don’t dare to misbehave because we have our eye on them. The serious problems now are at the level of “township and below”: although we can still exercise a little supervision of township heads and township finances at this level, the villager committees [at this level] are mass-based self-governance organizations and not primary-level government authorities. Moreover, the chairperson of each committee is also the head of [the village’s] cooperative economic entity, as well as the secretary of the village’s Party branch in charge of all the village’s enterprises. That is to say, Party, government, enterprises, people, money, and materials—these are all in the pocket of this one person. Things are done the way he wants them done; permits are given to those he says should receive them; promotions are given to those he wants to promote, and money is spent however he wishes to spend it. Without a system of supervision, it would be hard for someone not to become corrupt no matter how strong his Party discipline is.
That is even more the case with the factory directors of town and village enterprises (TVEs). Once someone becomes a factory director, all the account books are under his thumb. Each account is handled the way he says to handle it, and each expenditure is paid out the way he says to pay it—you have no say in the matter. Fiscal contracting is not much different—as long as the sum contracted for the year is met, no one is in charge of what happens to the rest. This system must be reformed, and I’m organizing some people to investigate and study this matter. Of course it’s hard to change it all at once because villager committees are prescribed by the constitution, but we must study this and think of ways. Party and government must be separated, government and enterprises must be separated, and even more important, Party and enterprises must be separated.
Attending a group wedding of young people in Chuansha County, January 14, 1990, while Zhu Rongji was on an extended stay doing research on rural work. The theme of the wedding was “to create a new social ethos and become couples with ideals, morals, culture, and discipline.” Far left, Chen Zhen, Communist Youth League secretary of Chuansha County; third from left, Xiang Weimin, deputy Party secretary of the county; fourth, county head Han Kunlin; fifth, Zhu Rongji’s spouse, Lao An. Far right, Zhang Buzhi, deputy director of the Municipal Research Office; third from right, Meng Jianzhu, Party secretary of the county; fourth, Zhang Yan, chair of the Municipal Agricultural Commission; fifth, Ma Songshan, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai municipal government and director of its general office.
The way the problem of housing construction is described in this draft document just won’t do. The situation varies from place to place, and the way of dealing with it described therein won’t work. After investigations and studies of three counties, I see that it won’t be easy to solve this problem or even touch it at the township level and below—the people building houses are all Party secretaries, village heads, township heads, and leaders of commune and brigade enterprises. I took photos of some houses in Chuansha County—just take a look and you’ll understand. Why are they able to build such fine houses? There are four reasons:
—First, they have power. They can assign land as they please, they can assign several hundred square meters of land, and the land is free. We have no choice but to use Shandong’s method: there must be compensation for land use; otherwise things would be terrible and all the farmland in Shanghai would be gone.
—Second, the materials they use for building their houses cost very little; the construction materials allocated at low mandated prices by the state to the villages all wind up in the hands of these rural cadres, who are Party members.
—Third, work units all help them build houses: a deputy county chief in Shanghai County who had already been removed from office had 18 units provide him with vehicles to transport bricks, sand, and marble—at no charge for the labor or the vehicles.
—Fourth, they owe money borrowed from public funds, ranging from a few thousand to several tens of thousands of renminbi; they take public funds and at first they say they’re borrowing it, but years later they still haven’t repaid it, nor are they able to repay it.
A document regulating such behavior was issued in the past, but it’s just a useless sheet of paper—nobody is enforcing it. We are thinking that there should be a statute of limitations, and cases should be treated differently depending on when they occurred. For those that took place before that document was issued, we can be lenient about what happened in the past and call for some repayments—but we must be determined to be strict in the future.
Judging from the situation in Shanghai, I can sense that detachment from the people is a more serious problem in the countryside than in the city. If we handle this problem well, farmers will become more zealous and agricultural production can be greatly increased. Our Municipal Party Committee is preparing to do some investigations and studies in this area, and to take this work very seriously. We really do need some policies to promote agricultural development in Shanghai.
Inequity in Allocation
The current allocation policy is not conducive to promoting ties between the Party and the people. This problem doesn’t just rest with any individual Party member—by implementing such a policy, the Party becomes detached from the great majority of people. Studies indicate that 10 types of people in Shanghai have high incomes, and these 10 types are all the result of policies.
Overall, the policies of the past 10 years of reform and opening up have been correct and should be continued, but there have been some side effects. How should we manage the degree of imbalance? This is a rather complicated matter. Right now, salaries at Sino-foreign joint ventures and other companies are as high as can be. At foreign-associated hotels, in particular, it’s common to see monthly salaries of RMB 1,000 or more. A waiter makes more than we do, and company managers make several times more than we do, although of course their salaries are very low compared with those of the foreigners. That’s why staff at state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are all trying to find ways to go off to work at joint venture enterprises. Meanwhile SOEs that shouldn’t be joint ventures are writing reports asking permission to become joint ventures. There’s a reason for this: once a factory becomes a joint venture, the director’s salary will increase tenfold, the salaries of all staff will double, and that of managers will increase several-fold.
The National People’s Congress has recently been discussing a law on joint ventures. I’ve repeatedly asked Ruan Chongwu3 not to set [salaries] too high. Salaries are so high now that without such controls, alongside Shanghai’s practice of keeping salaries lower than at other locales, the city would fall apart. If we keep functioning like this, all the capable people working in the agencies of the Municipal Party Committee and government will leave to join companies and joint ventures. How can we let that happen?!
1. On February 26, 1990, Qiao Shi (then a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and secretary of the Central Discipline Commission) convened a meeting in Shanghai of leading members of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee, and the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. Its purpose was to solicit opinions on the “Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Strengthening Ties with the People” (Draft for Feedback). These are the main points of Zhu Rongji’s remarks at the meeting.
2. In order to implement the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 13th Central Committee regarding “mobilizing the entire Party and country to concentrate our forces on doing good work in agriculture” and having “all levels of Party and government giving high priority to agriculture and implementing a program of taking agriculture as the foundation of all economic work,” Zhu Rongji led cadres from the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and government for extended investigations in rural areas from late December 1989 to early March 1990. They conducted on-site studies of rural work in three counties within Shanghai Municipality: Jinchuan County, Chuansha County, and Jiading County.
3. Ruan Chongwu was then Minister of Labor.