One version: Watson: "This is the result of five people's discussion, of which I am the representative".
Speaking of the "two-track price system", we have to mention the first seminar for young economists in Moganshan, Zhejiang Province in September, 1984. The meeting was divided into eight groups and discussed different issues, especially the discussion of the price group. According to Watson, one of the participants, all the main organs and secretaries of the central government attended the meeting, which broke the ice of the planned price. This is a relatively extensive version at present. Watson said that the proposal to implement the "two-track price system" was the conclusion he reached during the discussion with Luo, He Jiacheng and others in the Moganshan conference group. During the meeting, he spoke on behalf of the group and gained the upper hand in the debate with the "adjustment" faction who advocated continuing to implement the planned price and the "liberalization" faction who advocated completely liberalizing the price. He got the support of the meeting, and was sent to report to Zhang Jinfu, then State Councilor and head of the Central Price Group, which was approved and adopted by the central government and subsequently became an important policy popular throughout the 1980s. In order to prove this point, Watson pointed out that the article "I will be 46 years old in 2000" published in China Youth in April 1985 is a true review of this. China Youth magazine is one of the organizers of the conference. In this article, the author Ping Fan wrote: "At this Moganshan meeting, he (referring to Watson) discussed with four students, He Jiacheng, Jiang Yue, Gao Liang and Zhang Shaojie, and wrote the Paper on Price Reform." The first price dual-track system was put forward by five people at the Moganshan meeting. This is one of the versions.
Version 2: Luo: "The historical fact is that I first proposed the' price dual-track system'."
Luo is a member of Watson's discussion group. He has different views. Luo believes that the historical fact is that the idea of "price dual-track system" was not the result of discussion by five people, but he was the first to put forward it at the meeting. This is the second edition.
Luo, who is far away in the United States, said in an email that Watson and He Jia Chengdu were in the group he chaired during the Moganshan meeting. "According to my memory, their papers at that time tended to let go of the price. Their argument is that the proportion of urban residents' expenditure structure in different income groups in China is highly consistent. Therefore, there is no risk when wages are indexed and prices are liberalized. This view is very naive today. When I refuted them according to my own experience in the pilot price liberalization in Hebei, I pointed out that neither planned price nor free price was feasible, so I could only adopt the dual-track price. I believe that they began to discuss the dual-track system with the students of the graduate school at that time, including the eminent monks, and produced a series of arguments in support of the dual-track system. Watson took the lead in defeating the representative's "deployment" in the free debate, that is, the planned price school and the representative's "free price school". Therefore, the dual-track system has become the mainstream view of the Moganshan Conference. "
Luo Xiaopeng also mentioned another witness, "Many years ago, I had a conversation with Gao Liang. I told him that I was the first to put forward the "dual track system" at the group meeting. I still remember highlighting a sentence: no wonder Watson never talked about the dual-track system in the past. "
In Luo's view, Watson's contribution to the price dual-track system lies in his eloquence. "He turned this idea into the mainstream of the conference and played an irreplaceable role in persuading the central people." From this perspective, "among the younger generation at that time, his contribution was indeed the greatest, and he should be a well-deserved representative of the' dual track system'."
Version 3: Zhang: "I wrote the article" Price Dual-track System "long before the Moganshan Conference, and this article was selected for the Moganshan Conference."
The figure involved in the third edition is Zhang, the current president of Beijing Guanghua School of Management. He is also one of the participants in the Moganshan Conference. After the meeting, he became famous.
Unlike Watson and Luo, Zhang believes that he put forward the "dual price system" before the Moganshan meeting.
Zhang's secretary wrote three copies for this purpose, one of which was Zhang's article "Promoting the reform of the whole economic system with the reform of the price system as the center" published in the proposal of the Energy Group of the State Council Technical and Economic Research Center, which was the original document of Zhang's "price dual-track system". The article was completed on April 2 1, 1984 and published on June 1984, three months earlier than the Moganshan meeting. Zhang was elected to the Moganshan Conference because of this article. The reporter saw a passage in the article: "For the specific measures of price system reform, we can refer to the measures of agricultural and sideline products price reform, implement the dual-track price system, manage the old price with the old method, manage the new price with the new method, and finally establish a brand-new alternative price system. Compared with price adjustment, price system reform is a continuous process. The question is not whether the first step is completely reasonable, but whether it tends to be reasonable. " This manuscript is called "an orphan" by Watson, that is, only Zhang has this original, "no one else has seen it". However, the reporter found that Economic Daily selected four conference papers on September 29th after the Moganshan Conference 1984, among which Zhang's "Price System Reform is the Central Link of Reform" was taken from the above article.
Zhang also wrote in a recent article: "Although I personally put forward and systematically demonstrated the reform idea of the dual-track system in April 1984, the dual-track system actually came into being spontaneously with the economic restructuring, decentralization and the emergence of township enterprises in the early 1980s. My contribution is in two points: first, the market price system is clearly regarded as the target model of reform; Second, the spontaneous dual-track system phenomenon has been promoted to a conscious price reform road in theory. This is similar to the idea of' blocking' and' sparse' in Dayu's water control. "
Since Zhang put forward the "price dual-track system" before the Moganshan meeting, why did he turn into a "liberalization" faction and advocate the liberalization of prices? Zhang wrote in a recent article: "Liberalization is the core of the price dual-track system reform." "If you don't understand this, it means that you don't really understand what the dual-track reform is." Cenke, a financial commentator who has more contact with Zhang, said that "liberalization" has always been Zhang's proposition, but it is difficult to achieve this goal in one step, so he proposed "price dual-track system" as a transitional way of reform. As for the length of the transition period, according to Cenke's observation and reading, Zhang was "not explicitly mentioned". As for why he didn't mention that he had written this article until the 1990s, Cenke said it was a "false question". "At the beginning, no one expected that there would be later controversy, and of course, they would not deliberately say that their articles were earlier than others' opinions. Only when there is controversy will it be necessary to clarify and verify whose article is earlier than whose opinion. "
However, Watson believes that the article published by Zhang in the proposal is actually "not related to reform." So, "it doesn't count."
Version 4: Cheng Zhiping: "It was Lv Dong who first put forward the concept of' price dual-track system'."
From 1982 to 1990, Cheng Zhiping, who served as the director of the Price Bureau for nine years, affirmed that it was Lv Dong, the former director of the Economic Commission, who first put forward the concept of price dual-track system and popularized it. When he put it forward, it was 1984, and Cheng Zhiping was the director of the price bureau at this time. So far, this is the fourth edition of this article.
Cheng Zhiping said that the dual-track price system first started in the oil industry. At that time, oil production could not go up. 198 1 decided to implement a turnkey contract in the oil industry, with one price in the contract and one price outside the contract. The planned price is 100 yuan/ton. The overproduction is 644 yuan/ton, and this price gap is the "price dual-track system". 100 yuan/ton is the domestic purchase price, and 644 yuan/ton is the international market price. This is also to prevent the outflow of oil and adopt the method of exporting to domestic sales. 1984, the production in other countries adopts the "price dual-track system".
Cheng Zhiping mentioned in "Thirty Years of Price Reform" that after several years, in order to solve the difficulties in other places, the Economic Commission decided to promote the dual-track price in other producing areas, so that the dual-track price could be popularized. He said that the "Economic Committee" here refers to Lv Dong, then the director of the Economic Committee.