Chen Yun

Chen Yun 1959

Chén Yún ( Chinese  陳雲  /  陈云 , originally Liao Chenyun 廖陳雲  /  廖陈云 , born June 13, 1905 in Qingpu near Shanghai , Chinese Empire ; † October 4, 1995 ) was an important economic politician in the People's Republic of China and practiced mainly in the 1950s Years and the late 1970s. Chen Yun belonged to the "first generation of Chinese leaders " during the reform era from 1978. Especially during the 1980s, Chen Yun played a major role in the power struggle over the direction of reform policy.

Life

Chen Yun was born on 1905 in Zhangliantang Town, Qingpu District, Shanghai City.

Chen Yun initially worked as a typesetter. He became a union official at the age of 16 and joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1925 . From then on he was one of the leading organizers of the labor movement in Shanghai.

In 1931, Chen Yun appeared in the Jiangxi Soviet, which was liberated from Guomindang rule . In 1934 he was elected to the CCP Central Committee , of which he was a member until 1987. In 1937, after a stay in Moscow, he went to Yan'an , where the Chinese Communists had established their center after the Long March . Here he began to work on economic issues. In 1940 he became chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Economic Council. He was promoted to the Politburo at the CCP's Seventh Congress in June 1945 . After defeating the Japanese army , Chen Yun was sent to Manchuria to head the financial and economic administration. There the material basis for the final victory of the People's Liberation Army over the Guomindang troops was laid.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, Chen Yun took over the leadership of the government's Finance and Economic Council and became Deputy Prime Minister. In 1956 he was elected by the delegates of the Eighth Party Congress to the highest governing body of the party, the Standing Committee of the Politburo . When the leadership around Mao Zedong started the big leap forward in 1958 as an attempt to combine agricultural collectivization with industrialization, Chen Yun was one of the few top officials who expressed concerns about this gigantic show of strength, which then actually resulted in a catastrophe. In 1961, Chen led the reorganization of the Chinese economy.

In the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 , Chen Yun was criticized as a right wing. In 1969 he lost his seat in the Politburo, but remained a member of the Central Committee . It was only after Mao Zedong's death in 1976 that Chen, although already over 70 years old, regained influence. In 1978 he was again a member of the Politburo and the Standing Committee. The reform-oriented wing of the party around Deng Xiaoping relied on Chen's expertise in economic issues. Chen Yun was the actual architect of Deng's reform program at the time.

From around 1982, however, there were conflicts between Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun. At the end of the 1970s, the cohesion of Deng's party faction was primarily based on the opposition to the wing around the then party chairman Hua Guofeng , which clung to a late Maoist political style and cultural revolutionary rhetoric . After his disempowerment in 1981, differences of opinion emerged within the Deng camp about the type and scope of the reforms sought. At the time, Chen Yun was considered the most influential spokesman for the conservatives who wanted to limit reforms. In fact, he warned of uncontrollable developments with his bird cage theory: If you want to enjoy a bird, Chen Yun argued, you have to keep it in a cage so it doesn't fly away - just as you have to to take advantage of a market economy to keep them strictly under state control.

While Deng saw the development of the economy as the sole criterion of politics, Chen emphasized the necessity of its connection with the development of "socialist spiritual civilization". In doing so he turned against westernization and spiritual pollution . Nonetheless, in some situations he showed himself to be far more understanding and willing to enter into dialogue with democratic demands than Deng himself. Some facts speak against the widespread clichéd portrayal of Chen as a hardliner: in 1979 he spoke out against the imprisonment of the dissident Wei Jingsheng , and in 1989 he withdrew from the military questioned at the Tian'anmen massacre in Beijing.

In 1987, Chen Yun retired from active politics. Until his death, he was still considered a person of high authority.

In June 2005, the CCP Central Committee recognized Chen Yun's accomplishments on the occasion of his 100th birthday.

Publications

• Speech on the XII. Chinese Communist Party Congress. (in: The XII Congress of the Communist Party of China. Documents. Foreign Language Literature Publishing House, Beijing 1982.)

literature

• Chen Jun , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 21/1995 from May 15, 1995, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Chen is the family name here, Yun is the first name.