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198 24 Summation Speech at the 1993 National Conference on Economic Work december 3, 1993 this national conference on economic work has already met for three days. We have all unanimously supported the “decision of the Party central committee on certain Questions regarding the establishment of a Socialist Market economy” (the “decision”) adopted at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 14th central committee of the Party and accepted the report made by Li Peng at the conference’s opening ceremony. everyone expressed approval of the reform program to be carried out next year, and the scale of the overall plan for next year was generally regarded as appropriate. during the discussions, people brought up some noteworthy issues and quite a lot of good supplementary ideas. Premier Li Peng has asked me to present a summary of the discussions of the various smaller groups and offer some explanations of the issues and ideas raised there. i’ll discuss these from the two separate aspects of reform and development. regarding the reform program, everyone felt that the thinking on reform— which would establish a socialist market economy, as decided at the 3rd Plenary Session of the 14th central committee of the Party—and the specific reform program based on this thinking drawn up by the State council, are broad and penetrating, the kind of reforms rarely seen in history. When completed, they will establish the basic framework of a socialist market economy. this is a great historic opportunity. We should seize this opportunity, promote the reforms in a timely way, truly rationalize all our economic relationships, and enable our national economy to develop sustainably, rapidly, and healthily. everyone felt that these reform programs are quite workable, quite specific, quite well meshed, and quite easy to put into practice. At the same time, the programs have taken the views of all parties into consideration: the developed regions, developing regions, and underdeveloped regions. Furthermore, these deliberations were quite thorough. these reform programs have indeed been amply discussed beforehand. We had face-to-face exchanges of views with leading members from almost half our provinces, autonomous regions, and centrally administered municipalities, as well as comrades from comprehensive economic departments, and we gave their opinions a full hearing. Summation Speech at the 1993 National Conference on Economic Work 199 the small group discussions at this conference have also been a sort of reform—the groups brought people from these three types of regions together so that views from the different regions could be exchanged. this helped everyone understand the big picture and enabled them to take the interests of all parties into account, with the result that comments on the reform program were more well rounded. People from many regions, particularly the coastal regions, said that they should make greater contributions for the sake of the big picture. the overall view of these reform programs was unanimously positive. Your opinions and suggestions focused mainly on three points: —First, you feel that this reform will be very forceful, and also very difficult ; that there has been fairly extensive top-down preparatory work, but rather inadequate bottom-up preparatory work. hence, some are worried about things going awry. —Second, some are concerned that this reform will overcentralize power and affect the enthusiasm of the locals and their ability to control [their economies]. —third, some worry that this reform will add to the burden of Soes. i’ll say a few words about these issues. 1. On the Question of Reform these reforms are indeed unprecedented in their breadth and depth, and extremely rich in content. it will take some effort to digest these reform programs and their details. At first glance, it seems as if all the reforms will be carried out across the board, and that their starting dates are all closely bunched together. Actually, many things have already been done or are under way. not everything will be new, nor will all projects be scheduled to start together on january 1 next year. the more difficult ones are mainly the tax-streaming system and tax reform, as well as the reform to make exchange rates converge. these two reforms are quite daunting and complex, and they entail some risk. reforms in the other areas are already under way and have been proceeding quite smoothly. We can say that with the correct leadership of the Party central committee and State council, with the united efforts of the entire country, and with the desire to forge ahead, the...

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