I C Orr Esq
APA
HONG KONG
KESTRICTED
British Embassy
PEKING
37
28 November 1980
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POLICIES TOWARDS GUANGDONG
1.
An important Party meeting was held in Guangzhou on
•
a på N12/12
(cony on
First
non-unl
Guangdong proge. Lyze)
18-20 November at which the newly-installed provincial Party, Secretary, Ren Zhongyi, transmitted "the suggestions of leading Central comrades on work in Guangdong" A report of the meeting was the lead story in the People's Daily of 25 November, and almost certainly fuller accounts are available to you from local monitoring. I shall confine myself therefore to general comments on the implications of what Ren had to say.
2. I interpret the message from the Centre as a reaffirmation and even a strengthening of the special role that Guangdong has to play. Much was made of the need for a further emancipation of thinking and , a fuller exploitation of the province's special advantages. In
particular Ren reported the insistence of Central leaders that "by special zones we do not just mean the areas in Shenzhen and Zhuhai, but the whole provinces of Guangdong and Fujian" In his view the special advantages of Guangdong were twofold. First the Centre had given the province the right to solve its problems independently and autonomously, and had given it wider local powers. Second Guangdong had permission to open still further to the outside world, to be a focal point and a show-window for China's contacts with foreign countries.
3. This very positive approach was balanced by emphasis on ideological discipline and social order. In administering the special zones, in implementing special policies and flexible measures Ren emphasised the need to maintain the four basic political principles (the socialist road, Party leadership, the dictatorship of the proletariat and Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong thought) and to prevent the corrosive effects of corrupt bourgeois ideology. In Guangdong the re were particularly serious problems of smuggling and bribery, which were one reflection of bourgeois corruption. These should be analysed and made the object of more effective struggle.
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