Zhao Ziyang - Return To Government

Return To Government

Zhao spent four years as a fitter in Hunan, at the Xianzhong Mechanics Factory. Zhao Wujun, the youngest of his four sons, worked with him (Zhao also had a younger daughter). While in political exile, Zhao's family lived in a small apartment close to his factory, with a small suitcase in the living room that served as a dinner table.

Zhao's rehabilitation began in April 1971, when he and his family were woken in the middle of the night by someone banging on the door. Without much explanation, the Party chief of the factory that Zhao was working at informed Zhao that he was to go at once to Changsha, the provincial capital. The factory's only means of transport was a three-wheeled motorcycle, which was ready to take him.

Zhao was driven to Changsha's airport, where a plane had been prepared to fly him to Beijing. Still unaware of what was happening, Zhao boarded the plane. He was checked into the comfortable Beijing Hotel, but wasn't able to get to sleep: he later claimed that, after years of living in poverty, the mattress was too soft.

In the morning, Zhao was taken to a meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai at the Great Hall of the People. Soon after they met, Zhao began a speech that he had prepared over the previous night: "I have been rethinking the Cultural Revolution during these years as a labourer..." Zhou cut him off, saying "You've been called to Beijing because the Central Committee has decided to name you as a deputy Party chief of Inner Mongolia."

After being recalled from political exile, Zhao attempted to portray himself as a born-again Maoist, and publicly renounced any interest in encouraging private enterprise or material incentive. Zhao's late conversion to Maoism did not last long, and he later became a "principle architect" of the sweeping, pro-capitalist changes that followed the death of Mao. Despite his important role in guiding the economy of China over the course of his career, Zhao had no formal training in economics.

Throughout 1972 Zhou Enlai directed Zhao's political rehabilitation. Zhao was appointed to the Central Committee, and in Inner Mongolia became the Revolutionary Committee Secretary and Vice Chairman in March 1972. Zhao was elevated to the 10th Central Committee in August 1973, and returned to Guangdong as 1st CPC Secretary and Revolutionary Committee Chair in April 1974. He became Political Commissar of the Chengdu Military Region in December 1975.

Zhao was appointed Party Secretary of Sichuan in 1975, effectively the province's highest-ranking official. Earlier in the Cultural Revolution, Sichuan had been notable for the violent battles that rival organizations of local Red Guards had fought against each other. At the time, Sichuan was China's most populous province, but it had been economically devastated by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, whose collective policies had collapsed the province's agricultural production to levels not seen since the 1930s, despite a great increase in the province's population. The economic situation was so bad that citizens in Sichuan were reportedly selling their daughters for food. Soon after taking office Zhao introduced a series of successful market-oriented reforms, leading to an increase in industrial production by 81% and agricultural output by 25% within three years. Zhao's reforms made him popular in Sichuan, where the local people created a saying: "yao chi liang, zhao Ziyang". (This saying is a pun on Zhao's name, which can be loosely translated as: "if you want to eat, look for Ziyang.")