Yang Yihe has been dissatisfied with the Beixi Steel Plant for a long time, but it was only in the past year or so that he had the idea of rectifying the Beixi Steel Plant.
Last year, the Central Plenary Session passed a decision on economic system reform. The core content can be summarized in four words, which is "streamlining administration and delegating power."
In China, the division of responsibilities between the central and local governments has gone through several iterations. Sometimes the central government controls power, and sometimes it delegates power to local governments. Since the reform and opening up, the central government's policies have generally been moving towards decentralizing power to local governments.
direction of development, and last year’s economic system reform decision clearly proposed the principle of expanding local autonomy.
With this spring breeze, a vigorous construction boom has taken place across the country. Local governments are trying every means to raise funds and start construction of various projects. Coupled with the sudden rise of township and village enterprises, the scale of infrastructure construction across the country has continued to expand, creating an extremely prosperous situation.
Behind this prosperity, local leaders like Yang Yihe can clearly see that the foundation of prosperity is very weak. In order to build infrastructure, in addition to funds, we also need the support of raw materials, especially steel.
In the past year, the national output of finished steel products was only 36 million tons. After deducting the portion required to ensure key national construction projects, the steel that ultimately fell into the hands of local governments for infrastructure construction was a drop in the bucket.
When there is insufficient steel in the national plan, there are only two ways for local governments to obtain steel. One is to import from abroad, and the other is to mobilize local steel plants to expand production scale and provide more unplanned steel to meet local needs.
Needed. Anhe Province does not have as much export foreign exchange reserves as the coastal provinces, so the import of steel products is not feasible. The remaining way is to let the steel plants in the province tap their potential and innovate to increase production.
With this idea in mind, Yang Yihe, who was in charge of industry in the province, went to all the steel plants in the province, trying to make the deputy governor look bad, and begged the factory directors to expand production.
In front of him, the director of a steel factory beat his chest so hard that he just bit his middle finger and wrote a bloody letter to guarantee it. But after saying these heroic words, there were a lot of difficulties, such as insufficient funds.
The equipment is backward and raw materials are in short supply...it boils down to one sentence: no chance!
If only one steel factory complained to Yang Yihe like this, he would have ignored it and even removed the factory director from his position and hired a good person to take over the job. But all the steel factories in the province seemed to have made an appointment and even said it
The reasons were all similar, and Yang Yihe couldn't deal with it. He even had some doubts about whether the steel problem was indeed an unsolvable problem, and it was impossible for An Ho Province to solve such a difficulty.
This time, he and Yue Guoyang came to Beixi to deal with the slag problem. Yang Yihe had an unexpected gain, that is, he heard from Yue Guoyang about a Qin Hai who could create miracles. According to Yue Guoyang, Qin Hai started from scratch and did not want a country.
With one penny support, the long-shuttered Pingyuan Iron and Steel Plant was revitalized. Now the plant's production is booming, and it is said that it is planning to add equipment to expand its scale.
Yang Yihe didn't know how Qin Hai did this, but he wanted to seek medical treatment in a hurry. He still planned to have a chat with Qin Hai to see if this young man had a way to solve the steel shortage problem in Anhe Province.
Yang Yihe has always believed that geniuses exist in this world. So he doesn't think Qin Hai's age is a flaw.
After hearing Yang Yihe's request, Qin Hai pondered for a moment and said: "The problem of Beixi Steel Plant is not fundamentally a technical problem, but an... institutional problem."
When talking about institutional issues, Qin Hai was a little hesitant. He didn't know if Yang Yihe would be displeased by saying this. Officials at that time were very fashionable to talk about institutional reforms, but they were very shy about the flaws of the system. This may sound contradictory.
But such contradictions are indeed widespread. For example, everyone knows that the planning system was an important reason for constraining productivity at the time, but when it comes to reform ideas, no one dares to directly deny the planning system. They can only cover their ears and say so.
What kind of "planned commodity economy" should be established?
As a time traveler, Qin Hai knew very well the root cause of the nationwide shortage of raw materials back then, but his ideas for solving the problem were ahead of the times. He didn't know if such ideas could be accepted by veteran cadres like Yang Yihe.
"How do you talk about institutional issues?" Yang Yihe said. He was not surprised by Qin Hai's words because he had also thought about some issues before.
Now that he had started, Qin Hai was not polite. He said: "First of all, the unreasonable price system is the main reason why the steel plant lacks production enthusiasm and makes it difficult to carry out equipment transformation. Governor Yang should have heard of this."
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"I've heard of it, but... I'm afraid this problem cannot be solved by the province." Yang Yihe smiled bitterly.
In the era of planned economy, the prices of all commodities on the market were set by the state, and enterprises had no pricing power. Since the reform, the state has successively liberalized the prices of agricultural products and light industrial products, but has never dared to liberalize the prices of heavy industrial products.
Because the latter is in the upstream of the industrial chain, once it is liberalized, it will lead to chain price increases of downstream products and create unpredictable social risks.
However, as a result, there has been an incoordination in the prices of light and heavy industrial products. The prices of light industrial products have continued to rise, which has continuously increased the living costs of residents in the whole society. However, the prices of heavy industrial products have remained unchanged, making it impossible for the income of heavy industry enterprises to increase. In
Under such circumstances, the more heavy industrial enterprises produce, the more they lose money. The limited profits used to pay wages to employees seem to be insufficient, and there is no spare money to update equipment and improve technology.
The only way to solve this problem is to relax price controls on heavy industry in a timely manner and gradually increase the prices of heavy industry products, so that heavy industry enterprises can obtain the funds needed to expand reproduction and form a virtuous cycle. To achieve this, it is indeed not a province.
It can be done. In order for steel plants to produce, they also need the state to allocate ore, coal and other raw materials through mandatory plans. Therefore, it is unrealistic to escape planned management.
"The second aspect is the issue of the internal mechanism of state-owned enterprises. To improve workers' work enthusiasm and encourage them to improve their technical level, there must be a more flexible mechanism. I have piloted this in Pingyuan Iron and Steel Plant and achieved great results.
Results. However, I can guarantee that it is impossible for Beixi Steel Plant to adopt such a mechanism." Qin Hai continued.
In essence, Pingyuan Iron and Steel Plant is no longer the original state-owned enterprise, but a private enterprise under Qin Hai's name. At Pingyuan Iron and Steel Plant, Qin Hai has implemented a complete set of market-oriented salary and personnel systems, and workers with good skills can
Workers who work more can also get more money. Workers who are neither willing to learn skills nor contribute effort will be fired directly. Under this mechanism, the production efficiency of Pingyuan Steel Plant is higher than in the past.
The amount has been increased several times, and the workers are happy to work and count money happily. There is no overstaffing phenomenon like in old state-owned enterprises.
Although Qin Hai has not had in-depth contact with the Beixi Steel Plant, he can know the current situation in the plant based on his own imagination. He said that it is impossible for the Beixi Steel Plant to adopt such a mechanism, which is completely in line with the actual situation.
"So, there is no hope for the Beixi Steel Plant?" Yang Yihe asked.
Qin Hai shook his head: "At least I don't see any hope. Beixi Steel Plant has too many problems, which cannot be solved with one or two ideas."
Yang Yihe thought for a while and suddenly said: "What if I hand over Beixi Steel Plant to you, can you solve the problem?"
Qin Hai was startled: "Governor Yang, although I am young, my heart is not very strong. Don't scare me like this."
Yang Yihe smiled: "I'm not scaring you, I'm serious. I just thought that if you can revitalize the Pingyuan Steel Plant, why not give you the Beixi Steel Plant to revitalize? The central government is now promoting diversified economies.
Since the Beixi Steel Plant is hopeless in terms of joint ventures between different forms, why not use it as a pilot project for joint ventures by the province?"
Qin Hai stared at Yang Yihe's eyes, trying to find some joking expression in them, but what he saw was a calm look. He hesitated for a moment and asked: "Governor Yang, are you really not joking?"
"Jun Wu Jieyan, I am a deputy governor after all. How can I make such a joke with you, a young worker?" Yang Yihe said.
Qin Hai shook his head and said: "This matter is difficult. Pingyuan Iron and Steel Plant is a closed factory. I just borrowed its shell without any ties. But Beixi Iron and Steel Plant is completely different.
It is still a normal business. Although the efficiency is not very good now, wages and benefits can be paid out. Except for you, Governor Yang, everyone thinks it is not bad. In this case, if you want to treat it
Carrying out reforms is as difficult as climbing to the sky. What's more, I just offended Wang Yiqiao, does Governor Yang think he can cooperate with me happily?"
Yang Yihe said: "Wang Yiqiao's matter is not something you need to consider. I said that handing over Beixi Steel Plant to you is not something that can be done immediately. Well, you can think about this issue from now on. Wait until
In the next year, when the province has resolved the relevant issues, we will discuss what method to use to revitalize the Beixi Steel Plant so that it can truly play its role as a basic industry."
"Okay, I will also use this time to think about it. However, I hope that Governor Yang can change his original intention and stop putting me, a young man, on the fire." Qin Hai said half-jokingly.
Yang Yihe shook his head and sighed: "Young people, how can you grow up without going through some ups and downs? Others can't find such an opportunity to be roasted on the fire, but you are still pushing back and forth. It's really impossible to hold up the wall with mud.