Chen Yun (13 June 1905 – 10 April 1995) was a statesman of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China. He was one of the most prominent leaders during the periods when China was governed by Mao Zedong and later by Deng Xiaoping. In the 1980s, Chen was considered the second most powerful figure in China, ranking only behind Deng Xiaoping. Chen Yun was also known as Liao Chenyun (), as he took his uncle's (Liao Wenguang; ) family name when he was adopted by him after his parents died.

A major Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political figure before the establishment of the PRC, Chen first joined the CCP Central Committee in 1931, and the Politburo in 1934. He became the head of the CCP's Organization Department in 1937, and became one of CCP leader Mao Zedong's close advisors. He played an important role in the Yan'an Rectification Movement of 1942, and started becoming responsible for economic affairs that year, ultimately heading the Central Finance and Economic Commission from 1949.

After the establishment of the PRC, Chen was a key figure in moderating many of Mao's radical economic ideas and participated in the drafting of the First five-year plan. Chen was instrumental in China's economic reconstruction following the disastrous Great Leap Forward (1958–1960) along with Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai, advocating for a "bird cage" economy in which the market economy should be allowed to play a role but kept contained like a "bird in a cage". Chen was demoted during the Cultural Revolution though he returned to power after Mao's death in 1976.

After Deng Xiaoping's rehabilitation, Chen voiced his criticism of Maoist policies, decrying China's lack of economic policies, and later became one of the architects of Deng's reform and opening up policy. During the 1980s and the 1990s, Chen was regarded as the second-most powerful person in China after Deng and was later recognized as one of the Eight Elders of the Chinese Communist Party. Initially a strong advocate for the reform and opening up, Chen increasingly became conservative towards the reforms as they progressed, becoming a key figure in slowing many reforms and becoming the leader of CCP's conservative factions. Chen resigned from the Central Committee in 1987 though keeping his influence as the chairman of the Central Advisory Committee until 1992, when he fully retired from politics.

Early life

Chen was born in Qingpu, Jiangsu (now part of Shanghai) in 1905. Chen was typesetter for the famous Commercial Press of Shanghai, which printed revolutionary books and even Protestant Bibles. He played a prominent role as a younger organizer in the labor movement during the early and mid-1920s, joining the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1924. Following the May Thirtieth Movement of 1925, Chen was an important organizer under Zhou Enlai and Liu Shaoqi. For a time, Zhou and Yun resided at a Church of Christ in Changting which was the site of a revolutionary committee. After Chiang Kai-shek turned against the CCP in 1927, Chen fled to his hometown, but soon returned to Shanghai and secretly continued his work as a labor unionist.

Chen was one of the few Communist Party organizers from an urban working-class background; he worked underground as a union organizer in the late 1920s, participated in the Long March, and served on the Central Committee from 1931 to 1987. He was active throughout his career in the field of economics, despite receiving no formal education after elementary school.

Early Communist Party career

He served on the Central Committee in the Third Plenary Session of 6th Central Committee of CCP in 1930 and became a member of the Politburo in 1934. In 1933 he evacuated to Ruijin, in Jiangxi province, the headquarters of the CCP's main "soviet" area. He was in overall charge of the Party's "white areas" work, that is, underground activities in places not under Party control. On the Long March he was one of the four Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau who attended the January 1935 Zunyi Conference. He left the Long March sometime in the spring of 1935, returning to Shanghai, and in September 1935 he went to Moscow, serving as one of the CCP's representatives to the Comintern sent by the Fifth Plenum Politburo, although he did not take part in the work of the delegation because he was sent to the Stalingrad Tractor Factory as a punishment for his participation in the Luo Zhanglong faction.

thumb|alt=Chen Yun with other members of the presidium of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee|Members of the presidium of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee in 1938. (From left to right in the front row: Kang Sheng, Mao Zedong, Wang Jiaxiang, Zhu De, Xiang Ying, Wang Ming; from left to right in the back row: Chen Yun, Bo Gu, Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhang Wentian)

In 1937 Chen returned to China as an adviser to the Xinjiang leader Sheng Shicai. Chen later joined Mao in Yan'an, probably before the end of 1937. In November 1937 he became director of the Party's Organization Department, serving in that capacity until 1944, and by the early 1940s was in the inner circle of Mao's advisers. His writings on organization, ideology, and cadre training were included in the important study materials for the Yan'an Rectification Movement of 1942, a campaign of political persecutions which consolidated Mao's power within the Party. During this time, it is known that he protected some comrades accused of being Trotskyites, and criticized the exaggerations of the campaign in the Shandong base area. The Northeast Administrative Commission formed the Northeastern Economic Planning Committee (the primary bureaucratic body responsible for economic planning in Manchuria region), with Chen as the committee's head.

Economic management

thumb|alt=Chen Yun on June 8, 1958, in Beijing|Chen Yun on June 8, 1958, in Beijing listening to a report on the development of the oil industry

During the 1950s and 1960s, Chen was a proponent of more market-oriented economic measures. Looking back, Chen would later believe that it was Mao's errors that most kept China from achieving its Five-Year Plans. In 1956, when the 8th National Congress of Chinese Communist Party was held, Chen was elected a vice chairman of the Central Committee. Around that time, both Mao and Chen had come to believe that the economic system, modeled on that of the Soviet Union, was overly centralized, but had different ideas about what to do about it. Chen believed that markets should have a larger economic role but remain subject to a state-controlled plan. Chen used the metaphor of a caged bird to describe the socialist economy. If the cage was too small, the bird would not survive. If the cage was left open, the bird would fly away. Chen was made the head of the finance group.

Role in the reform and opening up

Though Deng Xiaoping is credited as the architect of modern China's reform and opening up, Chen Yun contributed much to the strategy adopted by Deng, and Chen was more directly involved in the details of its planning and construction. A key feature of the reform was to use the market to allocate resources, within the scope of an overall plan. The reforms of the early 1980s were, in effect, the implementation, finally, of the program Chen had outlined in the mid-1950s. Chen called this the "birdcage economy". According to Chen, "the cage is the plan, and it may be large or small. But within the cage the bird [the economy] is free to fly as he wishes."

In 1981 a rival "Financial and Economic Leading Group" was established under Zhao Ziyang and staffed by a balanced mix of economic planners. In 1982 Chen Yun, who was 77 years old, stepped down from the Politburo and Central Committee and served as chairman of the new Central Advisory Commission, an institution set up to provide a place for leadership of the founding generation to remain involved in public affairs.

During the 1980s, Chen was very much involved in policy discussions. In the beginning and as one of the major architects for the reform and opening up, he supported Deng and the liberal market reforms that had been so successful in agriculture to urban areas and the industrial sector. Moreover, he still posited for the state to retain an active role in market development and planning, a policy that would influence future generations of leadership, including Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping. He played an active role in the "Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign" organised in late 1983, to help safeguard China's political status quo and domestic stability.

Chen Yun was widely admired and respected for striking a balance between excessive laissez faire capitalism and retaining state leadership in guiding China's market economy. Deng and Chen's reforms and foresight helped make generations of Chinese become richer since the days of Mao's Cultural Revolution, as well as propel China into becoming one of the top economies in the world (number one by PPP and number two by nominal GDP).

The government's first response to inflation was to issue bonuses to workers in state-owned enterprises, to help make up for the price increases. Chen Yun argued that, if there were to be such bonuses, they should be gauged to increased productivity. In practice, the bonuses were universal throughout the state sector and had the same economic effect as if the government had simply printed more money. Because Chinese farmers were not eligible for bonuses since they were not technically state employees, China's agricultural sector, which had prospered in the first stage of the reform, was especially damaged by inflation.

Chen's theory had been that the market should supplement the plan. In the context of radical Maoism this made him seem like a social democratic proponent of market socialism. It turned out, however, that Chen meant exactly what he had said. He was much less enthusiastic about the market than Deng Xiaoping and Deng's younger colleagues. Although in his "secret" pronouncements of 1979 Chen had shown an unusual personal disdain for Mao, he also indicated he shared the late chairman's worries that China would abandon socialism and revert to capitalism. Chen was skeptical regarding the special economic zones (SEZ), viewing them as a non-socialist experiment. Chen viewed the development of a socialist market economy as unscientific and unrealistic. He was cremated at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery.

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Chen Yun was known for his foundational role in spearheading the reform and opening up alongside Deng Xiaoping. During Deng's term, Chen Yun was the second most powerful person in China. Chen was praised for implementing many of the reforms that made the new generation of Chinese richer, but was also admired for striking a balance between too much laissez-faire economics and retaining state control over key areas of the market. He was liberal in the beginning, but later more cautious and conservative, especially in his last years. He was widely admired by the Chinese populace, known for his wide-sweeping economic strategic planning, morality and incorruptibility.

Chen's political perspective is generally viewed as reformist until about 1980, but conservative after about 1984. Chen Yun remains one of China's most powerful and influential leaders, especially in the PRC's first 50 years, as he was a central decision-maker for the CCP, serving on the Central Committee and Politburo for over 40 years.

In June 2025, CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping held a meeting to commemorate the 120th anniversary of Chen Yun's birth. He called Chen a "great proletarian revolutionary and statesman", saying he was "one of the founding figures of the country's socialist economy" and a "key member" of the first and second generation of leaders. Xi continued by saying Chen had "firm ideals and beliefs, strong party principles, pragmatic style" and a "diligent learning spirit", which he described as "noble qualities of communists" to be studied by all CCP members. Xi said that "When the party's cause encountered difficulties, [Chen] always kept a cool mind, and offered unique insights and effective solutions to problems based on thorough considerations". He called on CCP members to learn from Chen's experiences regarding China's first five-year plan, fighting corruption and to "seek truth from facts".

Chen's eldest son, Chen Yuan, is the founding Governor of the China Development Bank and the former Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

Works

Notes

References

;Bibliography

  • Chen Yunzhuan, Biography of Chen Yun, Jin Chongji and Chen Qun, Beijing: Central Literature Publishing House, 2005, 2 vols.
  • China News Analysis, 1182 (June 6, 1982)
  • Donald W. Klein & Anne B. Clark, Biographic Dictionary of Chinese Communism, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971) Vol 1, pp. 149–153.
  • Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), pp. 195–208.
  • Nicholas R. Lardy and Kenneth Lieberthal, eds., Chen Yün's Strategy for China's Development: A Non-Maoist Alternative (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1983).
  • Ye Yonglie, 1978: Zhongguo Mingyun Da Zhuanzhe (Canton: Guangzhou Renmin Zhubanshe, 1997), pp. 255–260, 584–595.
  • The Tiananmen Papers, compiled by Zhang Liang, edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), p. 308.
  • Chen Yun, Stefan Landsberger's Page